As well, she didn’t mind spending a few more minutes with Hawkes. She wanted to observe him, figure out what made the handsome wolf tick.
“Come with me.”
The principal’s private quarters were set in the south tower of the castle, as far from the damage as one could get. Lexi thanked the nature gods for that small blessing.
Though the principal’s room was located in the tower, the space was massive, but Tryst couldn’t move his thoughts from the urgency of the rescue to do more than flash a look around the room, not really taking in details. There were still wolves outside. It had been over eight hours since the avalanche hit. They were likely dead, but if the slightest chance existed any could be alive, he had to find them.
Alexis, still dressed in white leather and still sporting the sunglasses inside—though the conference room she led him into was lit with low light—gestured he approach the man seated in a leather chair at the end of a long table. It was an easy chair, and the leg rest was up. A plaid blanket covered him to the chest.
Tryst laid the titanium case on the table and said, “Sorry to be in such a hurry, Principal Connor. My father sends the elixir inside this case with his blessings and wishes you a speedy recovery.”
The elder wolf stared at him with mouth agape. Salt-and-pepper hair curled about a narrow face with loose skin that indicated he must have lost weight and perhaps was normally much more fit. His heavy-lidded eyes made him appear old and weak, yet they stared at Tryst, stunned.
It was then Tryst realized his lack of protocol. He should bow or kneel, or—something—before a pack leader. His father’s instructions rang loudly in his thoughts. He should have waited to first be spoken to.
No time.
“Forgive me. I apologize for the protocol I am stepping on and of which I probably made a huge mess. But I have to leave. The avalanche. There are still many from your pack missing.”
Principal Connor didn’t say a word, merely lowered his tired eyes to the titanium case.
With that, Tryst did bow and backed from the room. He looked to Alexis, who also gaped at him with her soft pink mouth parted, and then knowing he hadn’t the time or the fortitude to make political amends, he turned and raced down the spiraling tower stairs.
“What the hell was that disaster?” Edmonton Connor rasped at his daughter.
Lexi should have explained protocol to the man on the way up to the tower, but she had blindly expected him to behave. Or to have a rudimentary grasp on pack procedures. He’d shown such courage and leadership so far. Was he not a member of a pack? Had he never approached a principal before?
“He’s heading the rescue team, Father. Please accept my apologies for his rudeness. If I had known …” She sighed. She’d been running on full throttle since the disaster, hadn’t eaten, and right now was feeling as tired as her father looked. “Trystan Hawkes has helped our men bring up six who were buried under the snow. And he seems determined to find the remaining six.”
“I see.” Her father looked aside and smoothed his palm caressingly over the titanium case. “I suppose I can overlook it this time. Knowing his father, Rhys Hawkes, I should have expected the insubordinate behavior. He didn’t bring up his son in a pack.”
“He’s an omega?”
The principal nodded. “Where is Vincent?”
Lexi sucked in a breath. This was the part of chatelaine duties she did not enjoy. Reporting to her father was easy. She’d been doing it all her life, ever since her dreams of growing up like Lana had been smashed at puberty. But she never liked delivering bad news to her father, which had to be done on occasion, and most especially now, when he was not well. Stressful news could make him weaker, but neither would she dream to hide the truth from her father.
“Vincent Rapel didn’t make it. Natalie and Reese looked him over and suspect all his bones were crushed. She also concluded he died instantly as a rib bone appeared to have pierced his heart.”
“The witch doctor?” He named Natalie that because she was a real witch who had been taken in by the pack decades earlier. She’d been nurse to Lexi and Lana when they were little, and Lexi had great respect for her, though she knew her father often conflicted with the woman’s “spiritual” ways. “She suspects? She concluded? We need a real medical doctor here, Alexis. Immediately. If there are wounded, they’ll need more than herb-craft and moon voodoo.”
“Father, don’t worry yourself, please. Reese is working alongside Natalie, and you know he has medical training.”
“Veterinary training.” He grunted and slammed his shoulders into the easy chair. “We are not dogs. Why I allowed Natalie to recruit him is beyond my ken. Call Paris. There’s a few practicing werewolves in the city. Check with Rhys Hawkes, he’ll have their contact information.”
“I will. You should be in bed resting. How are you feeling?”
“The same. Weak. Like my blood is sinking to my feet. I’m so light-headed. But this.” He slapped the case. “I’ve had this for ages. This may be my last hope.”
She had no idea what was inside the case but would learn soon enough. “Do you want me to call Natalie here to help you with it?”
He sighed, his drawn face saggy. “Yes, she is my only option at the moment. And Alexis?”
“Yes, Father?”
“I’ll have to elect a new scion since I’m not doing so well.”
“Don’t talk like that. Whatever Monsieur Hawkes sent along in that case will help you recover, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t even know what it is. Nor do you have any idea who Rhys Hawkes and his son Trystan are.”
That statement took her back for a moment. What did it matter if the man had helped only since arriving?
“Trystan seems trustworthy and a man to have around when the chips are down. He’s focused. He impresses me.”
“Yes, well.” Edmonton sighed and gestured she help him to stand. “Be wary, Lexi. He is not from this pack.”
“I will.”
Lexi walked her father into the attached bedroom suite and helped him onto a bed topped with a plush goose-down coverlet.
Her father was a young wolf, only a century old, and had been the picture of health two weeks ago. But he’d begun to decline, slowly yet steadily, and three days ago he’d taken to his bed. The witch doctor hadn’t a clue, but Natalie kept divining her father’s blood, with no results.
Edmonton wouldn’t let her cast a healing spell upon him, because he didn’t believe in witchcraft.
Another reason Edmonton’s mistrust of Natalie ran deep was due to the affair he’d had with her twenty years earlier, after Lexi and Lana’s mother had died. Edmonton Connor was a rogue of the first water, and never apologized for it. Lexi understood he needed connection, love and, yes, to answer the physical cravings all werewolves felt. But the past few years, as far as she knew, he’d not taken any woman under arm or even
