Page 101 of Dark Awakening: Hidden Currents
His mother put down the chopsticks she was struggling to use. "I do not dine in restaurants. My Odus cook for me, and when I travel, I use room service." She sighed. "I have not done much traveling lately, though. My eldest daughter and companion found her fated mate, and I have not felt like traveling by myself." She glanced at Ell-rom. "Perhaps when Morelle wakes up, she would like to take the position of my companion."
Ell-rom looked lost for words. "I cannot speak on behalf of my sister. I cannot even guess if this is something she would like to do. When she wakes up, I will have to get to know her as if we didn't grow up together."
Annani smiled. "Of course. We are all waiting with bated breath for her to wake up. I am also waiting for you to get better so I cantake you to my sanctuary in Alaska and show you this marvelous place."
"I wish I could see it," Aru said.
"I wish so, too." Annani cast him a warm smile. "But you will have to get those trackers out of you before I can take you there."
"About that." Aru shifted so he was facing Kian. "Jasmine had an interesting idea about taking them out without faking our deaths."
Kian remembered then that Aru had mentioned something he wanted to talk to him about when he'd called on the weekend. "Is that the issue you wanted to discuss with me?"
"Correct." Aru leaned forward. "Jasmine suggested that we take out our trackers and implant them inside humans, who we would pay to traverse through Tibet, China, and Russia, so it would look as if Negal, Dagor, and I were still looking for the missing pods. The problem is that I don't know whether the trackers transmit biometric information in addition to location, so we will need to test it first. We will remove the tracker from one of us and implant it in a human."
Kian gave Jasmine an appreciative nod. "Good job. You keep coming up with unconventional solutions to things. I'm starting to think that I should hire you as my assistant."
Her eyes widened. "Thank you for the compliment, but I'm not good with business. I would be a horrible assistant."
Kian chuckled. "I was only joking. But I might give you a call here and there when I have a difficult problem. You think outside the box."
"She's also brave," Negal said. "Jasmine volunteered to be the test subject but, of course, we're not going to risk her life like that."
Jasmine rolled her eyes. "Is risking the life of some random unaware human better? At least I'd go into it knowing the potential risks."
Kian noticed the slight movement of Ell-rom's arm as he took Jasmine's hand under the table. He certainly didn't want his mate to endanger herself, and Kian was of the same opinion.
"Testing this on Jasmine is out of the question," he said. "I have a much better solution. We can use one of the human scum that we usually leave for the police to deal with. The traffickers don't deserve to live anyway, so I don't care if the tracker explodes in their body or poisons them."
As a heavy silence fell over the table, Kian glanced around, gauging reactions. To his surprise, even his mother and Syssi were nodding in agreement.
The one exception seemed to be Gabi, who had a wry smile on her face. "What about due process? Your Guardians are already skirting the law with their vigilante missions. The authorities might turn a blind eye to your activity because you do good work, and you leave the scumbags for them to pick up. But if you exterminate the vermin, they might start to worry and go after your people."
Kian turned to her, his eyes hard. "The police don't even arrest people who commit crimes on camera, so I'm not worried about them coming after us. They seem to go after only those they do not fear. And as to the morality of killing one of those rats, anyone who sells children to pedophiles doesn't deserveto live, let alone the protection of a legal system that's already subverted."
Unfazed by his vehemence, Gabi held his gaze for a long moment, and then her smile turned into a grin. "I was just playing devil's advocate. Sometimes, it helps to voice the opposing view to crystallize opinions."
As tension in the room eased and people started discussing the practicalities involved, Kian reflected on Gabi's ruse of devil's advocate. The idea of using human traffickers as test subjects for the tracker removal was pragmatic, even poetic in its justice, but she was right about it representing an ethical line to cross. It was a slippery slope.
Once they started playing judge, jury, and executioner, where did they draw the line?
72
ELL-ROM
Ell-rom did his best to follow the conversation around the table, and most of the time, the earpieces did a good job of translating for him. The problem was when people talked simultaneously. The earpieces jumbled what they were picking up and provided him with a salad of words. If the clan's tech was there, he would have told him that the earpieces needed modification.
Still, he'd had no trouble understanding the exchange about Jasmine volunteering to take the tracker into her body, and he was grateful to Kian for suggesting an alternative. But then Kian had added that the scumbags he wanted to use to test the trackers were selling children, and Ell-rom's rage reached critical boiling point.
As his hand tightened around Jasmine's, she turned to him with alarm in her eyes. "You need to relax, love. Getting so upset is not good for you."
Of course it wasn't good. Was she worried about his supposed ability to kill with a thought?
He didn't know who to direct his thoughts at, so they were safe, but if they were with him in this room and he knew who they were, they would be dead now, no thought-killing ability needed.
His bare hands and fangs would have sufficed.
"I'm okay," he whispered. "I just need to know who is selling children and why." He paused, brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of what he'd heard. "There was that word that the translator must have misunderstood." He turned to Kian. "Why are childish people buying children? And how is it possible to buy and sell people?"