Chapter 172: The Supres Revenge (bonus)
Richard nodded and kept walking, visibly arranging the place in his mind into sectors, paths, and pressure points. It was almost comforting, in a way, that one man in this gathering still looked at a town and saw structure before danger or softness or scent.
They t the traveling settlent near what had once been a church hall and a public reserve. Fifty beast’s, maybe a little more, spread across temporary camp lines and patched vehicles, beast-kin of different types, ard enough to be cautious but not organized enough to be threatening at first glance. Their setup had the ssy functionality of people who had kept moving because staying still had stopped feeling possible. Children. Elderly. Two n on a roofline lookout. Smoke from a cookfire. Enough life to feel almost civilized, which in the current world usually ant danger was hiding sowhere close.
They saw each other at the sa ti.
The settlent tensed first, weapons shifted up heads turned. Then they realized what they were looking at and the tension changed shape. Snow Team and company did not read as easy targets. They read as the kind of group prudent people tried not to insult unless they knew exactly who was standing behind them.
Felicity, because she was Felicity, responded to all of this by stepping half forward with imdiate social instinct. "Hi."
Four of the won nearest the front visibly looked her up and down, took in the shirt, the n around her, the atmosphere of being cherished and escorted, and turned their noses up with such open disdain that even Voss blinked.
Felicity stopped it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t even a full recoil. It was just a little pause, a small soft shift in her expression that probably nobody outside the imdiate group would have noticed.
Richard noticed his hand flexed once at his side, he did not like it.
Neither did Voss.
Emma had already prid them all for this exact sort of reaction, for won who looked at Felicity and saw not a person but a threat, a distortion, sothing to resent on sight. Still, that did not make it easier to watch.
Before Felicity could decide whether to try again, one of the other won a smaller beast woman with russet markings down one arm and a face tired enough to still have kindness in it stepped forward and said gently, "Don’t mind them."
Felicity looked at her at once, relieved and hurt at the sa ti in a way that made Lucan move.
He shifted fully, panther body replacing man in a fluid rush, and before anyone could object he had nudged under Felicity’s hands and lifted her with easy certainty onto his back. She made a tiny sound of surprise and then settled there almost at once, hands in his fur, because at so point this had apparently beco normal too.
Voss fell in on one side.
Richard moved to the other, posture easy but very obviously prepared.
The kind woman’s gaze flicked between them and then back to Felicity. "You’re not the first one they’ve looked at like that," she said quietly. "But you might be the first one with enough people around you to make it stupid."
That got a faint huff from Marx.
Felicity, sitting on Lucan’s back like this was a perfectly ordinary conversation, asked softly, "Why are they upset?"
The woman hesitated then, carefully, "Because won have been disappearing, and what won are left now are competing for stronger males, well those ones are."
That changed the air.
Richard’s expression hardened. Voss’s gaze sharpened at once, the lazy edge leaving him entirely. Damien, who had been quietly scanning the camp from the start, turned his full attention on the speaker. Even Shadow’s broad stillness changed.
"What kind of disappearing," Voss asked.
The woman looked back toward the settlent, toward the husbands gathering near the vehicles and the watchful won who had withdrawn rather than greet. "So taken. So going willingly, at least, that’s what their n tell themselves after." Her mouth tightened. "It’s been getting worse the farther west and south people travel."
Marx and Voss exchanged a look. The Supre sat beneath that kind of pattern like rot under a floorboard. Neither man said it aloud in front of the camp, but they didn’t need to.
They spoke next with the won’s husbands, or enough of them to get the shape of the problem. Wary n, tired n, n carrying too much fear in too small a social container. They admitted what they had to, missing won, broken camps, rumors about safe places that were not safe, talks of groups recruiting and other groups taking by force, stories that changed in detail but not in feeling.
"We were heading for Vineyard," one of them said. "Heard it was stable."
Marx answered before anyone else could. "Not right now."
That man frowned. "You know it."
"We know enough," Marx said thatanswer didn’t comfort anyone.
"It’s all right," another man muttered. "Not many places left to go anyway."
That line sat wrong because it was true.
Because Orange suddenly felt less like a temporary stop and more like a point on a narrowing map.
Felicity, still on Lucan’s back, listened to all of it with growing quiet. The earlier bounce had faded out of her. Not gone. Folded inward. Her fingers had moved deeper into Lucan’s fur without her noticing, and the subtle way he carried her changed too, sothing gentler entering the line of his shoulders as if he could feel each new piece of unpleasantness landing in her.
The kind woman looked at her once more. "Keep your people close," she said. "Especially the n who already know what you are to them."
Felicity swallowed and nodded.
Nobody liked how much that sounded like advice rather than warning.
They left not long after, with no clean promise to offer and no satisfying threat to make. Orange had beco sothing else in the span of one conversation. The roads around it felt narrower. The faces of strangers felt more dangerous, the possibility that the Supre’s reach was already threading through places they had not touched yet settled into the group like a splinter no one could remove on the march back.
Lucan kept her on his back.
Voss walked close.
Richard walked thinking.
They did not explain it in front of her, that part was deliberate.
Felicity sat comfortably on Lucan’s back, her hands resting lightly in his fur as she looked around the unfamiliar stretch of Orange with quiet curiosity, her attention caught on broken storefronts and overgrown streets rather than the conversation forming behind her. Lucan adjusted his pace slightly to keep her balanced, his tail flicking once as if nothing about the mont required attention, he could hear everything.
Voss moved a fraction closer to Richard, his voice dropping low enough that it blended with movent and distance. "We’ve dealt with sothing like this before," he said, not looking at him directly.
Richard didn’t turn his head, but his attention shifted fully. "Define ’like this.’"
Voss exhaled once, slow. "A man calls himself Supre, strong enough that people stop questioning things when he speaks. Smarter than he should be and patient."
That was enough to change the shape of Richard’s focus.
"What did he do," Richard asked.
Voss’s jaw tightened slightly. "He took her."
Lucan’s ears angled back, just a fraction.
Richard’s gaze sharpened. "Took," he repeated.
"Yeah," Voss said. "Not just grabbed and ran. He tried to control her, tried to bend her into sothing that fit him you know mark her, keep her and cage her, turn her into... sothing that belonged to him." The words sat heavier than they should have.
Richard’s voice dropped. "And he failed."
"He’s alive," Voss said. "So not completely."
That was not reassuring.
"He didn’t get what he wanted," Voss continued, tone flattening slightly. "But he got enough to build sothing out of it a city, people and structure. All of it centered around the idea of her."
Richard finally glanced at him "centered... how?"
"Devotion," Voss said simply. "Control and obsession dressed up as purpose."
Lucan’s jaw flexed once.
Felicity shifted slightly on his back, unaware, her voice soft and bright. "That one has flowers," she said, pointing toward a broken balcony where sothing stubborn had grown through concrete.
Lucan turned his head just enough to look back at her, expression smoothing instantly. "Yeah," he said quietly, "it does."
She smiled, satisfied, and leaned forward again.
Behind him, the conversation continued.
Voss continued, "complete and utter delusion, it didn’t matter what we said or what she said, anything that went he would twist into being what he wanted to hear, hes about on league with victor or victor and Lucan together."
Richard let out a long whistle, "Right, that’s, that’s a lot to take in, so this Supre is now collecting won to do what exactly?"
Marx butt in, "we don’t know, not a clue, but we know him and we know the structure of that city there were no won for months before felicity showed up, and now? not sure what they are planning. we just don’t want her to know."
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