“Have you guys been paying attention at all?” Camden asked.
“Not in the slightest.” Cillian flashed Camden a grin, which was returned by an exasperated stare and a magnificent eye roll from the alpha. Cillian shrugged. “You asked.”
“Just go do your jobs,” Camden said. “And if you forget any of the stuff I just told you, then that’s on you.”
The other three nodded, but no one made a move to leave at the moment.
“Are you going to help me train tonight, Cillian?” Jasper asked.
Ever since they rescued the women from the Ironbrand pack, Jasper had been training them in self-defense, giving them tips and techniques for them to use to get out of thorny situations. Over the last couple of months, Cillian had stepped in and begun helping, with the classes seeming to get more popular by the week.
Cillian thought for a moment, considering for the briefest of moments to check his mental calendar. It didn’t take long, considering how empty it was.
“Yeah, I should be good for that,” Cillian said, kicking back. He put his feet on Camden’s desk. Camden scowled. Cillian grinned and didn’t move his legs. “It’s not as though there’s a whole lot for us to do right now. Things have been quiet ever since the Lucas debacle.”
“There’s always administrative work,” Camden pointed out. “You know, the job that you’re supposed to be doing instead of resting your dirty shoes on my desk.”
“They’re not dirty,” retorted Cillian, laughing when Camden finally shoved Cillian’s feet back down to the floor.
“I don’t care,” Camden groused. “I don’t want them on my desk.”
“Does anyone else think it’s almost dull?” Franco asked. “Not in a bad way, but man, it’s a bit quiet. I’m used to more excitement.”
“Joys of being retired,” Cillian said. “We actually get to breathe instead of having to go from one mission to the next to the next.”
“Yeah, but there’s a difference between that and bored,” Franco pointed out. “I don’t know. It just feels unnatural, like we should be doing something.”
Cillian didn’t respond, but he understood what Franco meant. They had been trained for years to follow the mission. Having an open schedule now felt almost like they were committing an egregious crime. It didn’t help that all of them preferred having something to do, something active that didn’t involve sitting in the pack house, listening to Camden drone on. That restlessness that spread through him whenever he was idle for more than a couple of days was what had convinced him to help Jasper with training the women who used to be under Alpha Sier’s thumb in the Ironbrand pack.
Granted, it had other perks as well. Some of the women there were very easy on the eyes.
His phone rang. Glancing down, he blinked at the name. Isaac. One of his team members from his time with the Onyx Team, before he joined up with Camden and the others. His smirk slipped, then melted away entirely. He hadn’t spoken to Isaac in years. If he was calling, it was bad news.
“Gonna take this,” he grunted, pushing himself up to a standing position and slipping out of his seat.
“You good?” Franco asked, frowning, his head tilted.
“Yeah.” Cillian waved him off and disappeared into the hall. Once the door was closed and he was out of earshot, he answered the call. “Isaac?”
“Cillian,” Isaac’s gruff but friendly voice sounded through the phone, but Cillian didn’t miss the slight edge to the words, some tension that others might have missed but that he picked up on thanks to years of working with the man. “Been a while.”
“No kidding. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
There was a pause. Cillian waited, listening to his old teammate’s breathing on the other end of the line. Something about Isaac’s tone set him on high alert. He stiffened, his hand gripping the phone tightly.
“Isaac?” Cillian said.
“Yeah, sorry. Just not a pleasant topic. You remember that group up north? The ones who called themselves the Night Pack?”
It took a moment for Cillian to respond. Not because he didn’t remember the Night Pack—he doubted he would ever forget them, not after everything they had done—but because he hadn’t expected to hear about them ever again, despite the fact that they had a permanent residency in his thoughts. His fingers around the phone clenched, grasping tight.
“Hard to forget. What about them?” he asked.
One of Cillian’s first missions when he was in the military had been to go after the Night Pack, a group of shifters who had wanted to take over as many packs as possible, using whatever tactics they could. They had killed hundreds of innocents during their rise to power. Eventually, Cillian’s crew had been sent to dispatch them. But somehow, the Night Pack got word of the attack ahead of time, and some of them had managed to get away before the attack. Cillian’s group had killed the leader, and the Night Pack had vanished, but Cillian had never forgotten that some of those bastards had gotten away.
It still gnawed at him—some of the Night Pack slinking into the dark while the rest got what they deserved was one of the few big regrets in his life. During his reconnaissance for that mission, he had gone through the town that the Night Pack had taken over, talking to some of the locals. He’d never forget theterror on their faces. The women had blanched whenever he had mentioned them, and he hadn’t missed the way some townsfolk had unconsciously prodded at bruises or cuts on their bodies when Cillian made inquiries.
It had been one of his first missions, and it had never left him. Although he tried to keep it hidden—it wasn’t the type of thing he wanted strangers or even some of his friends to see—he had a dark side hidden behind his casual demeanor and quips. If he had the opportunity, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill every single one of the Night Pack for what they had done. They deserved nothing less.