Chapter 36: Chapter 35 - Takeshi

Wednesday 16 December

~*Takeshi’s POV*~

“Are we in agreement about Owen?”

I looked around the table at each person present, silently requesting a nod or shake of the head from Spence, Kennedy, Emery, and Casey. They all nodded.

“Okay. Noted,” I said, scribbling their opinions in our records. I glanced at the next name on the list. “Kadin.” I lifted my gaze up from the table. “Thoughts?”

Spence leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his barrelled chest in pride. A smug smile graced his face, but he remained silent.

“She’s showing remarkable fighting skill in her wolf form for her age, and her cunning during Capture the Flag is exemplary,” Kennedy said. “She’s got suitable form in human sparring, but there’s room for improvement.”

Spence leaned forward to place his elbows on the table. He pointed at Kennedy. “Improvement that can be made over the next two years.”

Kennedy inclined his head in acceptance. “Of course. I’m simply calling it as I presently see it.” He raised an eyebrow at Spence. “Isn’t that why we’re all here tonight? To judge how each Camp member is faring in case they apply for the Warrior Training course?”

Spence huffed and leaned back into his chair, crossing his arms again. He glared at Kennedy.

“I tend to agree,” Casey said, backing up Kennedy. Spence turned his furious gaze to Casey. “Oh, don’t give me that, Spence. You know she needs work.” Casey lifted his glass of water and sipped.

I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, preferring to watch how this all played out. I was glad that Casey was staying sober for this, especially if he was willing to go up against Spence. Given his primary job as a rural firefighter, I had no problems with his predilections towards illicit substances, but I appreciated that he always put the students first. I knew that as soon as we had finished here, he’d be heading home to open a bottle of tequila and would stare at the empty bottom by the time he was ready to go to bed, just like he did every night.

I couldn’t blame him for leaning heavily on the things that would ease the pain in his heart. I’d been there. We wouldn’t be able to help him until he wanted to be helped. I prayed every day to the Goddess above that he would find his fated mate soon. Maybe then he could find some semblance of peace.

“Kadin is perfectly capable of wiping the floor with any of the other Campers, regardless of which form she takes,” Spence said, frowning fiercely at anyone who even looked like disagreeing with him. “She’s got Beta blood. She knows how to handle herself.”

“That might be so, Spence,” Emery said, wading into the conversation. “But that doesn’t mean that we should automatically give her a free ride into Warrior status.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Spence spat. “You all know who her grandfather was. She deserves to be a Warrior.”

I frowned. I had a feeling that this was going to be brought up tonight when we were talking about Kadin. Her grandfather, Spence’s father, had been a great Beta from one of the other Big Five packs in Victoria. Matlock was the third biggest pack and a member of the ‘Big Five’, only overshadowed by the Tambo Valley Pack, and the largest pack in Victoria, the Mount Buller Pack. The Mitchell River and the Dartmouth packs were the other two that made up the Big Five. Beta Rory Stewart had been a great warrior for the Mount Buller Pack when he was younger, and his fighting prowess had passed down to his sons and grandchildren.

Unfortunately, his ingrained sense of fairness and mateship hadn’t.

Rory had died in battle when Spence was thirteen, and Kadin’s father, Val, was eleven. The Alpha of the Mount Buller Pack at the time had felt, for some unknown reason, that it was better to cast Rory’s widow and young family out of the Mount Buller Pack. The Matlock Alpha at the time had taken them in and cared for them as best as he could, but the damage had been done. Spence and Val had both grown up with a chip on their shoulder the size of Mount Everest.

I had made Spence the Beta of Matlock under pressure from the pack Council. The same Council members who were giving me grief now were the ones who petitioned for Spence, feeling that his bloodline was strong enough to overcome everything else. Although he infuriated me at times, I had to admit that he typically did well in his role.

Except when it came to dealing with the Mount Buller Pack.

He also had a sense of entitlement a mile wide. I had somehow managed to keep it in check for most of his tenure as Beta. As he had never found his mate, he had no children of his own, so he had taken his niece Kadin under his wing and trained her like she was his own daughter, much to the approval of his brother Val. Spence now expected everyone to fall in line and give Kadin free passage to become a Warrior.

Unfortunately for him, I wouldn’t let that happen. And it appeared, neither would Kennedy, Casey, or Emery.

“Spence, stop.” Casey stared at Spence with something that I could only liken to boredom. “I can’t talk for anyone else here, but I honestly don’t give two shits about who her grandfather was.” Spence’s face turned purple, ready to explode at Casey’s dismissal. Casey held his hand up to stop the onslaught before it began. “I’m not saying that we should keep her out of the Warrior Training course. I’m just saying that I need more time to assess her before I vote one way or the other.”

Kennedy and Emery nodded in agreement.

Spence turned to me, still fuming. I could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. I had to give Casey credit. He was young, still only twenty-three, but he was not shy about going up against a much older and fitter Spence. I sometimes wondered if Casey had a death wish.

“You know the rules, Spence,” I said. “We all get a vote. Majority rules on each nomination.”

“This is bullshit.” Spence got out of his seat and started pacing. “Utter fucking crap.”

“That may be, Spence, but rules are rules.” I tried to soothe him, but I knew that he’d have to walk his anger out, so I let him pace. “Are we done with Kadin?”

“Not by a fucking long shot,” muttered Spence.

“Yes,” came the chorus from the other three, ignoring Spence entirely.

“Okay, noted.” I looked at the next name and grimaced. If Spence was angry now, he was going to be spitting chips soon.

“Who’s next, Takeshi? We should be done, yeah?” Spence was still pacing and was itching to get out of the meeting.

“Nat.” I paused with unease. I honestly wasn’t sure how this was going to go. “Thoughts?”

Spence spoke up immediately. “She’s not a Matlock pack member. We should disqualify her from the running.”

“We’ve trained other pack’s members in the past, Spence,” I reminded him, thinking of Konstantine. His parents had sent him from the United States when he was fifteen after he’d broken one too many rules in his own pack. His father had seen no other option than to send him halfway around the world to get him straightened out. He had never become a Matlock pack member, but he had studied and trained as one during the time he had spent with us before being called back to the U.S. suddenly. His father had died, leaving him as Alpha of a pack he hadn’t actively been part of for five years. The transition was incredibly rough on him, not that he would ever have admitted it to anyone at the time.

“Yeah, and you know how I felt about that, too,” Spence grumbled.

“I do. Simply pointing out that there’s precedence,” I said quietly, but calmly. I looked at the others to see what they thought.

Emery was the first to speak up. “Nat’s impressive as a fighter, but she has impulse control issues. There was an incident yesterday when she was sparring with Bells, where she should have tapped out, but she refused to. She ended up fainting.”

“She’s stubborn, I grant you,” Casey chimed in. “But that could be of significant benefit on the battlefield. It shows that she’s not willing to give up easily.”

“True, but she needs to work on knowing where her limits are,” said Emery.

“She’s only got two weeks of memories. I think she’s re-learning what all her limits are at the moment.” Kennedy sat back in his chair, watching the others with interest. “She’s also remarkably quick. Have any of you ever seen anyone else with her speed before?”

Emery and Casey both made rumblings of agreement. Spence remained staunchly quiet as he wore holes in the carpet from his pacing.

“Another factor that we need to take into consideration is that she and Kadin are butting heads.” Kennedy tapped the tabletop with his pen absentmindedly. “I get the impression that it’s got something to do with Bells?”

“Kadin and Bells used to date,” said Spence reluctantly.

“Ah… That would explain things,” Kennedy said, nodding.

Casey frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I think Bells and Nat are going out,” explained Emery. “You should have seen Bells yesterday after Nat blacked out. He was beside himself.”

“Oh, okay.” Casey shrugged. “I can never keep track of all that high school bullshit.”

I smirked. Casey wasn’t far out of high school himself. If he was at all interested, he would have had no problems keeping track of the couples in the Camp.

Kennedy looked at me. “What are your thoughts, Takeshi?”

I thought things through before I responded. “I think Nat has the potential to be great. She’s still relying heavily on running defence and needs to work on her offense.” Before I continued, I paused. “I agree that she’s incredibly fast, but speed won’t help her in every situation. I haven’t seen enough of her skill in Capture the Flag to ascertain her shrewdness.”

Kennedy and Emery nodded in thought. Casey looked somewhat disinterested, but I knew he was paying attention. Spence, on the other hand, was scowling.

“She can also pick up new things unusually quickly.” I sat back, placed one elbow on the arm of the chair, and stroked my chin. “But not knowing her history, it could all be muscle memory.”

“That’s it though, isn’t it?” Spence spat. “We don’t know her history. Someone could have sent her to spy on us.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Nat? A spy? Seriously, Spence?”

“What? She could be!”

The smile slowly fell from my face when I realised he was completely serious. “Spence, come on. You don’t think if that was the case that she would have fought against being placed with a bunch of high school graduates at a camp?”

“She could be biding her time.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem!”

“You don’t think that Auden would have figured out if Nat was faking her amnesia?” I was quickly losing patience.

“It wouldn’t be the first time Auden has been wrong on a diagnosis.”

I jumped from my chair, snarling. Kennedy was the only one who dared to get between us, Emery and Casey both jumping back from the table and out of the way. I knew exactly what Spence was alluding to, and I wasn’t having it.

Kadin had been two when her eleven-month-old brother, Tate, started having issues with his eyes. Auden was his primary care physician at the time but had missed the initial signs of the bilateral retinoblastoma, mistakenly believing that it was Coats’ disease. By the time they made the correct diagnosis, both eyes were well beyond saving and the only way to ease Tate’s suffering was to remove them. Even though the prognosis was too late to stop the total removal of his eyes, he had responded well to treatment and was now cancer free.

Val and his family, including Spence, had never forgiven Auden, and blamed her entirely for Tate’s blindness, even though the cancer was genetic and would have shown up, regardless.

I understood Spence’s feelings on the matter, but he hadn’t seen how much Auden beat herself up over her error in judgement. She threw herself into her books, swearing that she would never get something so wrong again, and she never had. Every time she had even an inkling of doubt in her mind about a diagnosis, she called for a second opinion. And every single time, her initial analysis had proven to be correct. In a sad twist of fate, Tate’s blindness had made Auden a better doctor, something that the pack had ultimately benefitted from.

“Easy, Takeshi.” Kennedy put his hands on my shoulders in an attempt to settle me. I pushed against him, dangerously close to jumping over the table and ripping Spence’s head off.

Spence stood carefully still, waiting to see how far my anger would take me. I could tell that he was coiled, ready to spring a counterattack if he needed to.

“Let’s just take things down a notch, yeah?” Kennedy asked, not expecting a reply from anyone. “There’s no guarantee that Nat will still be here when we assign Warrior Training spots. This is all hypothetical, okay?” He looked from me to Spence, who was still eyeing me with caution. “Okay?”

Spence slowly peeled his eyes from mine to meet Kennedy’s. “Sure.” His tone contradicted his agreement, letting everyone in the room know that he had no intention of letting this go. He returned his narrowed eyes to mine. “Whatever you say, Kennedy.”

I growled at him, pushing forward at Kennedy’s hands one last time, before letting the tension in the room ease.

I knew Spence was upset about Nat being in Matlock. Obviously, I had underestimated how truly angry he felt about the situation.

I would need to keep a closer eye on both him and Nat. This had the potential to become a much larger problem than I had anticipated.