Who is Magpie?

When Fiona arrived their meeting had already begun. Ezekiel had walked in exactly on time, still musky from training. He wanted everyone to know that he planned to take this all the way. Bronx shook his head, he had been just as bold before, but now he was doing it with a smile instead of a sneer.

Thoughts were divided, and old issues were being rehashed even as Fiona walked in with the files. Ezekiel opened them eagerly, having spoken to Fiona on the phone briefly the night before. He flipped through the photos of the car accident on top. The car had been flipped, clearly side swiped into the embankment, the front end of the car sliding into a tree. That anyone had survived was likely only due to their ability to heal quickly after the initial impact injuries.

The next paper was the news article declaring the deaths of two adults and a teen in the hospital for minor head injuries. The counsel stopped talking while he walked over to the projector, enlarging the article to plaster it on the wall while Bronx closed the curtains, not clued in and eager to see if he had been on to something.

When the article was zoomed into focus a varying degree of surprised sounds circled the room. The girl in the photo was fuller, like she had been fed to be full and allowed snacks. Ezekiel imagined she didn’t get with the Fae, because it was undeniably her, down to the long hair. She smiled in the photo, standing in front of her mother and step dad with a Yule tree in the background.

Her eyes were the same as they were when she arrived, no gold shine through them, which had Ezekiel wondering where her wolf was then. “That is the Hemlock family.” Bronx had found an older photo of the family from the Fall party and added it beside the first on the projector platform. “Mrs. Hemlock changed their name when she remarried, and they stopped appearing at wolven festivities.”

“So she’s got alpha blood in her…” Wallace murmured. “We should increase the guards minding her cell! A descendant of Harold Hemlock could take out two guards without shifting no problem.”

Ezekiel looked incredulously at the counsellor. “A descendant of Mr. Hemlock would not have….” Ezekiel couldn’t allow himself to entertain Wallace in his good mood. “If she were here for any of the reasons you are worried about, why wouldn’t she have just challenged me for my territory? It would be well within her right and ability.”

“With how often she’s working out, how do you know she won’t?” Avion asked, remaining firmly in grey territory on their verdict.

“Why don’t you have the lovely Fiona bring her up. I’m.. curious to her reaction to the photo.” Chevalier drawled out slowly.

Ezekiel shrugged. “Why not.” He signalled to Fiona to go, honestly just eager to see her.

Fiona returned just a few minutes later, ‘prisoner’ just in front of her with cuffs jangling, who stopped just inside the dark room while her eyes adjusted from the bright foyer.

“That meant to be me?” She asked, looking at the image projected on the wall curiously. She shrugged with one shoulder, smirking sarcastically. “Alright, lay it on me. Am I some long lost royal princess who’s house was burned down for a coo.” She walked to the end, eyes on Ezekiel forbiddingly.

“Kind of.” Chevalier mused, watching her face closely, and she wasn’t disappointed by the reaction.

She laughed, standing beside Ezekiel. “I was kidding.”

“We’re not.” Ezekiel breathed, running his fingers lightly up her arm as she turned to him. “You really don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “I could have been an egg and born fully grown at the Garden for the memories I have before it.”

Ezekiel smirked lightly. “That’s your mom and step dad. You three were in a bad car accident, but they didn’t make it. Your birth father was an alpha. You left wolven society at four and your mom asked for no contact.”

Their eyes locked and in his words she heard some of the answers to the questions she had been wondering. Instead of the relief she wanted to feel she only felt the rise of more questions. Her wolf pranced happily in her mind, not giving much thought to the rest of it except the confirmation of her genetically passed on strength.

“What does this mean?” She asked stiffly, to no one in particular, but her hand reached impulsively to the collar of her shirt.

Ezekiel took her hand, glimpsing the pin in her shirt as he pulled it away. “Your name is Jessamine Hemlock.”

“Fuck, I really do belong in a garden with a name like that,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else but Bronx was wheezing in the corner.

Ezekiel shot him a look and his hands went up. “What, I didn’t say it.”

Jessamine found Bronx refreshing, and directed her question to him for an honest answer. “So what, was I excommunicated or something? Banished with my wonderful genetics.”

Ezekiel revelled in that for a moment. Looking her up and down… she had started to fill out. In the days here when she was fed until she was full and her body wasn’t constantly being poisoned she had begun to look healthier, and her muscles were more pronounced. Her hips held up the baggy pants and he could notice some definition in her shoulders. Other than that her shape was obscured by the shapeless rectangles, so every time she moved Ezekiel’s focus lapsed.

“No.” Hariette spoke up with the alpha’s lack of focus. “Your mom just wanted to keep you safe. She wasn’t a strong wolven, and knew she couldn’t hold your chair until you were old enough. More than that she was terrified that you would be challenged once you were and have to fight or suffer the embarrassment. She thought it best to leave the light while you were too young to remember, in hopes that everyone else would also forget.”

“Do you really think that’s little Jessamine?” Corleone asked, leaning forward.

“Are we going to end these days of debates over a photograph?” Wallace grumbled. “She doesn’t even look a thing like Tawny.”

“Unrequited love much?” Jessamine whispered to Ezekiel who nearly choked on his tongue.

“No, but she’ll be the spitting image of Herald with those cheek bones.” Raymond Horne smirked, looking the girl over as if with new eyes.

“Should we take it to a vote?” Bronx declared, raising the curtains and bringing light back into the room.

Ezekiel hooked his arm around her. “Or are we prepared to take it to a challenge?”

Jessamine’s face lit up in a way Ezekiel didn’t expect. “A challenge? Is it me? Do I get to?”

“No, that would be me.” Ezekiel pat her hip with the hand that wrapped around her and she pouted. “Adorable,” he whispered into her hair, her ear lining up with his mouth.

She blushed and turned away, the chains on her wrists clanking against each other. She moved to place her foot behind his but the cuff was cold and prevented the intended comfort feeling.

He sighed, hating seeing her in them, even if they didn’t hurt. “Sit,” he demanded, making her glare at him so strongly he knew it would be faster to pick her up and place her in the chair. “I am done seeing these on you.”

Ezekiel pulled the pin from his pocket, the pin with a pick that she had had tucked in her waistband. She minutely recalled him placing his hand on top of it, then wrapping a finger under the fabric, feeling the ruff texture of his pinky on the soft skin of her hip, and then him sliding the pin out. That was when she had blushed.

He tried to pick the lock, but couldn’t quite get the click and Jessamine could tell he was getting embarrassed. “If we’re being honest…” she crossed her fingers under either cuff and flipped them open in her lap.

Faces turned toward Fiona who looked shocked. “Hey I locked them. I checked them too.”

“She did.” Jessamine smirked at Ezekiel. “I have fast hands.” Shocked by her own words she realized she was flirting.

Her wolf cooed approvingly, wanting to see and feel Ezekiel’s wolf on a run.

Ezekiel moved toward her ankles and it was Jessamine’s turn to be surprised as he propped both legs up on the table. He pulled up the pant leg to reveal the torn off bottoms of her tight black pants over the ankle cuffs. Jessamine’s face ran red hot, partially due to the embarrassment, but more as he ran his hand over the cuff to pull the legging off and she felt all eyes on her.

“While we’re being honest…” he trailed off, letting the cuffs fall to the floor.

Happy she could cross her arms now, she did so. “I didn’t need those to tell me not to shift, you could have just asked.” She pouted, ready to take the reproachful verbal beating.

“I challenge,” Wallace said, breath hissing through his teeth. “She mocks our proceedings, she interferes with the order of events, and that’s after she worked with the Fae for 7 years and helped them do hell only knows what…. To our city, our people… She deserves to be put down!”

The room fell quiet. The older man stood at his seat at the opposite end of the room, eyes a vicious slit that bore through Jessamine, trying to pin her to her chair. She couldn’t imagine even a death sentence from the wolven being half as bad as half the stuff she had through before and leaned forward into the stare.

Ezekiel placed his hand on her shoulder as she opened her mouth, silencing her before he stepped in front. “I accept. But I win and Jessamine is free to do what she wants, you rule that her actions under the tea were not her own and out of her control.”

Jessamine felt a pang of guilt there. Sure she had no choice, but people were still hurt by her actions. She was sure that if anyone found out which things she specifically had done, that she would never live it down with or without the ruling.

The counsels eyes flicked back and forth between the men. Chevalier looked as if she wanted some popcorn for the main event. It was so quick, if you blinked you would have missed it, but Wallace nodded.

“If you agree I set the time, the time is now, and you may pick the where and how.” Ezekiel was confident.

Despite the counsel being made up of retired alphas who, for the most part, were still able to fight, Ezekiel didn’t think much about it. Wallace could pick any of his own men to stand in because he had no living dependents, but he had already decided he would stand himself. He was cocky, Ezekiel knew that, and he was hoping to put a young alpha in his place.

“The courtyard, as wolven,” Wallace declared, and there was a nod between them.

All at once without further discussion everyone began filing outside. Bronx and Ezekiel hung back with Jessamine as even Fiona left. Jessamine was glaring at the chair Wallace had been in, not having stopped even when Ezekiel got in the way.

“I could take him,” she blurted out suddenly but the mood was too serious for even Bronx to laugh.

“It’s not your place. It’s up to the alpha, a defendant of yours, or someone they’ve selected as a stand in,” Bronx told her, remaining by the window as she stood.

She moved in for the hug, wrapping her arms firmly around him, and he melted into it. Wrapping his arms around her as well, he felt like he was absorbing her warmth and smell into his soul. The fresh sent of deadly lilies told him he was in for hell, and he breathed in every drop of her he could.

As she pulled away he noticed she held a pin in each hand, the one from his pocket and the one from his collar, that he hadn’t even felt her grab. “I won’t risk losing another when you burst from your clothes.” She looked at him, and she thought she saw hurt in his expression. “Maybe I’ll let you wear another, if you don’t shame me by losing and getting me killed.”

She smirked at him, taking in his form and sizing him up against Wallace. Wallace was equally as tall, but his shapeless blazer hid any muscles from view. Still he was up in age, and Ezekiel was a man entering his prime years as a wolven. Smiling a little wider she winked at him.

“He’s older, he’ll be slower, but he will also go for the cheap shot. Try to keep the dirt out of your eyes.” Jessamine turned toward the door. “You better hurry, or he’ll think you forfeit.”

She walked away, bare feet padding on floor flanked by the two men who wondered how she knew the way.