Free Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 by Cecilia Dominic

“Would you like a drink?”
    “Well, I can’t help but notice that open bottle of Oban you’ve got.”
    I poured two fingers of the whiskey into a square glass, and he waved off my offer of water or ice to go in it. I grabbed a glass of water and led him into the den, where I sat on the brown and green-striped couch. He took the leather recliner.
    “Ah, now this is more like it,” he said and leaned back. “Can’t complain about this modern invention.”
    “Right, because back in the day, all you had to sit on were rocks and piles of straw.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep my patience, but all I wanted was to take a long run and then a hot bath. Both would help me process the day, but I needed to know what the Council had met about and what it meant for the continuation of the Institute.
    “You’re getting better,” he observed. “I remember a time when you would have snapped at me to spill my news.”
    “I was very young. I haven’t gotten impatient with a Council member since the seventies.”
    “You’re doing better than your father, then. Back in the Victorian days, he was a hothead.”
    Again, a mention of my father. I wondered if the uniform-clad ghost followed me still, but I didn’t feel any cold drafts or other signs of something supernatural, which gave me some small sense of relief. Not that I thought he’d hurt me, but it did cause some discomfort knowing I was being watched and possibly judged.
    “Well, I’m not him, although I am starting to grow impatient. You come to my home, drink my whiskey, and drop hints but nothing of substance. What did the Council meet about?”
    He set his empty glass on the coffee table and leaned forward. “You.”
    “What about me?”
    “That’s what the Council met about: you. That’s why you weren’t invited.”
    I raised my eyebrows, my strange meeting with Morena coming to mind. “Are they considering replacing me as Investigator?”
    “No, you’re coming into your maturity, so they’re thinking of promoting you to full Council member.”
    “About damn time. But why now? I’ve been mature for decades. I’m close to eighty years old, David.”
    He nodded slowly. “It’s something we don’t talk about generally—don’t want others to know too much about our inner workings, you see—but that’s how it works: the youngest member starts out as Investigator, and if they come into their full power, they get promoted up. If not, they get asked to leave, but that’s not happened in recent memory because the Council families are, through careful mate selection for offspring, very strong, and it’s rare for one of them to not achieve full lycanthrope power. You were a wild card, though, because of your human mother.”
    “Wait…” I massaged my temples. “What indicates that something’s happening now? As I said, I’ve been fully grown for several decades.”
    “Some of it’s how you’ve recently learned to use your werewolf senses while in human form, although you’re still developing that talent. You can only use one at a time, after all.”
    “I thought that was because males don’t multitask.”
    “It’s also a sense not unlike what you do with the schoolboys,” he continued, ignoring my attempt at humor. “Some things you just know.”
    “What am I supposed to do? What did the Council decide?”
    “We voted four to two to wait it out and see what happens.” He drew his brows together. “Some are not convinced that you will achieve full power in spite of the signs, and they’re especially cautious because your championed cause—the Institute—seems to be falling apart.”
    “And you can’t tell me who voted against me,” I said.
    He shook his head. “You can likely guess.”
    “Probably Cora because of her connection to the Purists and Dimitri, who’s been cool to me lately. Why are you helping me, David? You said you had some interest in the Institute, but this is personal, and you could get in serious