Chapter 559 Chapter 559
Griffin stood with the cup in his hand and watched the coffee pot fill. They’d moved to a hotel, that as far as he could tell was filled with various shifters from the Alliance. He had no idea where he was, but regardless of how many warriors were lurking near the prince, he didn’t feel safe. He would probably never be safe until Aiden and his associates were all dead. From conversations he’d overheard, they didn’t plan on incarcerating any in the top levels of the sadistic groups, the ones imprisoning shifters on the merit that they were different.
He’d come to understand one more thing in the last two days, humans, or one-forms as they were referred to, were the cruel, maniacal animals, not the shifters. These people he’d met in the past few days were nicer than any of the ones he’d been around all his life.
“You just going to stare at it, or were you going to get some?”
He was jolted out of his head and turned to see Blair smirking at him with a cup in his hand. “Sorry, my mind wandered away.” He grabbed the coffee pot.
“Yeah, that happens.” Blair snorted, “in your case, I’m surprised you can function at all.”
Griffin held out the pot, offering to fill his cup. “How do you mean?”
Blair nodded when the cup was filled to his liking. “With being away from Tomas and getting in touch with your bear for the first time ever,” he set the cup down and opened the cupboard, “and the mate thing is always a mind fuck, so how you’re not a babbling lunatic or tearing wall out, with your bare hands, I have no idea.”
Griffin glanced at Blaise as she leaned over the map and discussed things with Noah. “Well,” he turned back to the other man, “I believe I was told that wasn’t happening.” He shrugged, “not that I have a clue about any of it.”
Blair grinned, “yeah, they say that.” He lifted his cup to his mouth, “until they don’t.” Taking a small sip, he glanced at the table, “you ready to look at some pictures?”
“Of?”
“Men we’ve freed, men we’ve captured, and people that work for the Alliance that we haven’t cleared.”
“Is that a lot of pictures?”
“Hundreds,” Blair toasted him again and then went to the laptop.
Griffin looked over at Blaise again, she was watching him. She did that a lot, he’d noticed. He couldn’t read her expressions though, so he had no idea what she was thinking about. Until they don’t. What the hell did that mean? Deciding less thought about that would be better for his state of mind, he went over and sat down in the chair in front of the laptop.
Devin stood beside him. “The Alliance has been gathering intel and photos for several years.” He glanced at Noah, “we haven’t shared them with anyone, not even you or Rayne. She’s in some of the older ones.” His pale blue eyes flicked to Griffin, “but it’s time for names if you know them.”
Griffin nodded, “I’ll do what I can. I was a background decoration for a lot of meetings. Don’t move. Don’t speak kind of deal.”
Devin nodded to Blair, who tapped a button on the keyboard.
~
How long had passed? He couldn’t be sure, but his leg was cramped, and his cup had been empty for a long time. So far, he’d identified his half-brother, four of Aiden’s top dogs, a few ambassadors, and one captive that had Devin on the phone to someone so fast that Griffin had to wonder where he was that he moved that fast.
“Let’s take a break.” Blair stood up and patted him on the back. “You’ve made me a very happy man, Griffin, I have so many targets now that I won’t need to work out for years.”
“When do you work out?” Noah pushed away from the wall and came over.
“I could,” Blair shrugged, “If I ever had thirty seconds to myself.” His phone chimed, “see.” Answering it, he wandered into the kitchenette area.
“That will be Kobie with an update about the chaos back home.”
“Chaos?” Griffin got up and winced at the stiffness of his muscles.
“I can’t even describe it, teen boys, teen girls, young ones—it’s never-ending motion.”
“Do you live with them?”
Noah shook his head, “no, I have my own house of crazy.” He smirked briefly, “I should go call Coop and Emersyn and see how things are.”
“What’s it like?”
Noah gave him a confused look, “the house of crazy?”
“No, having a mate?”
Noah blew out a breath, “it’s like—I can’t,” he huffed out a breath, “hard to explain, and my mating isn’t exactly normal, but the best I can describe it is your mate is the person who helps you learn many lessons—about yourself and they accept you regardless of your own opinion of yourself.”
“That’s—” he wasn’t even sure.
“Yeah.” Noah turned on his heel and walked toward the door.
“Hey,” he turned to see Devin lower his phone, “do you know where the hyenas working for Tomas are from?”
Griffin ran his hand through his hair, “somewhere in Europe, their accents vary.”
Devin held his look for a second and then nodded and put the phone back to his ear.
Griffin went over and opened the cupboard that the protein bars were in. He wasn’t really hungry but had discovered in the last day that if he stuffed one in his body, often, his bear seemed more content. Still mad but not raging. As soon as everyone was off their phones, he would see if he was allowed to go outside. He needed fresh air as much as he need to snack.
Glancing over at Blaise, he wondered who she was talking to; her facial expression was less, ‘I want to kill everyone’, so he was curious who could take that look off her face, even for a few minutes.
Taking another bite, he chewed the dry bar. They should get these in beef flavor or something a little more appetizing. He looked at the wrapper, it said blueberry, but the taste in his mouth was not any sort of berry.