Chapter 32: Quinn

Pastor Bob sat in the corner of the hall of the Chelan wolf-kin Clan, his body thrumming with barely contained impatience. He had made his delivery—proven talented beings. Handed them over to whatever fate awaited them. Now, he was anxious to get back on the road, to put distance between himself and this place. The sooner he could collect his payment and leave, the better.

The problem was, he hadn’t been paid yet.

The Alpha—a being of uncertain temperament at the best of times—had unaccountably asked him to “bide a while.” Those words, spoken with a predator’s lazy confidence, had sent a chill down Bob’s spine. In all his years of this work, the exchanges had been swift, businesslike. Drop off the cargo, receive the coin, depart. No delays. No sitting in halls full of wolves who could smell exactly what he was.

He regarded his table companions with a jaundiced eye, an expression he was careful to hide behind a bland mask of patience. The were-kin were a disgusting species—brutish and violent, driven by instincts that civilized beings had learned to control millennia ago. And of all the kin, the wolf-kin were the worst. No thought or restraint, just pack mentality.

The muttering of the beasts around him was making him more nervous by the minute. They could smell the trace of Sidhe blood that ran thin but unmistakable in his veins. And they didn’t like it. No one liked the Sidhe. All beings had memories of the pain and misery the Fair Folk had caused over many centuries. Their half-blood relatives inherited that enmity whether they deserved it or not.

The fact that he trafficked in children was also known, and they didn’t like that either. Oh, they’d take his deliveries readily enough—the Alpha ruled them root and branch, but that didn’t mean they liked or respected the trader.

One grizzled wolf-kin sitting with the Alpha’s crew had been staring at him for the past ten minutes, his yellow eyes unblinking, lips pulled back just enough to show threat. Bob looked away carefull not to meet the challenge. He was in no position to issue challenges. He just wanted to get out of there with a whole skin.

His usual practice was simple: drop off the cargo at the designated location, the Alpha would present him with his coin in a leather pouch that clinked with satisfying weight, and he’d be gone within the hour. Quick, efficient, no complications.

But this time felt different. This time, the Alpha was stalling. Now he was furiously running scenarios in his head. He knew he should just leave, but this last delivery would finally put him over the top. He had almost a hundred pounds of gold and copper now—a fortune amassed over the past twenty years of careful work, of never being too greedy, of always delivering exactly what was promised. It was enough. More than enough. He was finally able to go home to Oldtown, despite his sister’s edict that he stay away.