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AARYN

"What do you mean, you\'ve seen her?" Elreth snarled.

Aaryn\'s skin prickled as the scent of her hit the back of his throat, as he knew it would to everyone in the room. Without warning, Elreth was on the verge of launching herself across the room at her brother. Tarkyn was already clearly aggravated and meeting eyes with others in the Security Council. But none of them were any more relaxed than El.

"You knew something about this and didn\'t tell us?" she accused her brother.

"Not… not the way you think," Gar muttered. "I\'ve been looking for her. I\'ve come across her once before. I didn\'t know she had a weapon. I assumed she\'d been brought by one of the disformed. I thought… I thought she just needed to be managed. Coached to head after the others. That someone had gotten loose with the protocols—or that they were hiding her until they could join her. I didn\'t know… I didn\'t know she\'d come without us until I got back to the City and everything was blowing up. And I haven\'t been able to find her since."

He looked very uncomfortable at that, and Aaryn wasn\'t surprised. Gar was remarkably good at tracking humans. He seemed to have a sixth sense about it. Probably because he\'d been across to their world so many times.

It was one of the secrets Aaryn had been keeping for him.

What had started as Gar\'s rebellion—his way of acting out against his parents by putting himself in danger and exploring the human world—had turned into a purpose. A role. Aaryn had watched him, even before he was fully adult, turn from an angry male acting out against his father, to a soldier.

And he\'d seen that no one else had noticed. And that Gar didn\'t want to tell them.

He\'d confronted Gar on it more than once—knowing what he did, what he offered, how much time and energy he gave to other Anima, how he put himself in danger, it would have changed his father\'s attitude towards him, Aaryn was certain.

But the one time he\'d said so directly, Gar had just about dominated him. He\'d been spitting angry and stalked off, snarling that if Aaryn ever told anyone without Gar\'s permission, he\'d find him in his bed and kill him.

Aaryn had hoped it was exaggeration, but he hadn\'t been sure.

Gar had stubbornly continued his… crusade? Whatever it was, he\'d done it without any applause, or recognition, except among the disformed themselves.

If Elreth only knew: Every time a new disformed was taking the traverse for the first time, Gar insisted on being the one to be protected. So if the Protector didn\'t make it across, they only person they\'d lose would be Gar.

As far as they knew, the only Anima that could cross the traverse at the same time as another was a Protector. What they\'d never learned was what happened if a Protector gave in to the voices.

So Gar put himself in that position of vulnerability. He refused to let anyone else so much as try it. He said he didn\'t have a mate, didn\'t have a family, and was expendable.

At least, he had been. He insisted that because he\'d crossed the traverse himself many times, if a training Protector failed, he might still be capable of it. But they knew that when Anima tried to cross together with the Protector\'s shield, they disappeared. Always.

Gar knew that the likelihood was that if a Protector failed, they\'d both be dead. Or in the hands of the voices.

And even if they weren\'t automatically given over, the traverse was a risk even for someone like Gar who\'d done it before. Perhaps even more so.

Aaryn had never crossed but he\'d heard the stories. Even Protectors were not immune to the evil that crawled through that space.

Aaryn had seen Gar when he spoke about crossing without a Protector.

The male still paled whenever he thought of it.

Aaryn shook himself back to the present to find Gar stubbornly staring down Elreth, who was seething.

"You knew about this human—whether you knew where she was from or not—and didn\'t tell us? Didn\'t warn us!"

"Yes," he said. "But understand that because of the nature of what the disformed do—because we know there are other Anima beyond the boundaries of the WildWood—it didn\'t appear to be a threat. I know a lot about the prophecy and I didn\'t make the connection immediately. She seemed harmless. I left her alone. It wasn\'t until I did some exploring and learned that no one had recently brought a human through, that they weren\'t expecting any of the disformed that were currently over there back… that\'s when I realized there might be a problem. But it wasn\'t until that Pricklepig…"

"You had to have scented her!"

"It\'s very faint. I\'m not certain."

"Bullshit!"

"I\'m not lying, El," he growled. "I wasn\'t certain, and didn\'t want to… you were already sending a team out to find her. There was nothing I could have added to that that would have helped."

"Except that she\'s female and… how long have you known she was here?" Elreth asked quickly.

Gar shifted in his seat. "Not sure. A couple weeks?"

"What?!"

There were sharp protests from everyone, even Gwyn at that. But it was Elreth\'s voice that rose above the rest. 

"We\'ve known two days, and you\'ve known two weeks! Gar! This is what I was talking about! You can\'t let your personal ideals run your tribe! We can\'t win a war we don\'t know we\'re fighting!"

"I was not the Alpha then," Gar growled. "It wasn\'t my responsibility—"

"It would have been pure, Anima decency! I was Queen! You could have told no one but me!"

"And I will, if it comes to that again," he muttered. "But I cannot change the past, Elreth. I know more now than I did then. If I could go back, I would do it differently. But I can\'t. And besides, this has to be the way the Creator wanted it. If I\'d known, if I\'d brought that to you, it likely would have changed everything and I wouldn\'t be Alpha now. So it was meant to be."

"That\'s very convenient way to look at it!" she snarled.

Gar didn\'t challenge her, but he also didn\'t concede. "I\'m not your enemy, El."

"No, you\'re in submission—or at least, supposed to be."

"I am!"

"Then tell me why I should trust you—we might have had an invasion already beginning and you would have just let them continue to bring humans in!"

"No!" he snarled. "I checked her. Watched her when she didn\'t know I was watching. I knew she was no threat."

"No threat?! She has a weapon!"

Gar shifted again and his jaw twitched. "I didn\'t know that at the time. She wasn\'t carrying it."

Elreth threw up her hands and shook her head. Aaryn put a hand to her knee to remind her that this wasn\'t just a meeting with her family. That the others were here, and they were all in this boat together.

She glanced up at him and sighed, then nodded. "Very well, then," she said finally. "We know what has brought this about—or at least, who. And we know how long they\'ve been here. Now we have to figure out how to protect ourselves from it. So tell me: Who among the dis—the Protectors knows about the weapons? Who has spent enough time with the humans to help us understand how to protect against them?"

Gar rubbed his face, lines appearing again around his mouth and forehead. "That\'s just the thing, El. There\'s basically no way to protect against that. If they bring weapons in in numbers… the Anima will lose.. Every time."