20. Kane
After we left, Ashleigh texted me with the address of a diner, saying Kate had been there for over three hours. When I replied, asking her how she knew that, she simply said she had her ways. I knew about the tracker Ash has been planting on Kate for a few years, but I wouldn’t have thought she would have gotten the chance to do it this time.
I guess I underestimated my third in command, which is exactly why Ashleigh is just that in our pack.
It took two hours to get here, breaking every speed limit law posted along our route, but the pull to find her, to get Kate back, to… fuck. What am I even going to say to her?
I’m sorry I kicked you out of your own pack.
I’m sorry I bit you without your consent.
Turns out, you’re my stolen mate, and I’m a complete fuck up of a man and alpha that I didn’t realize you’d gone into heat last night.
Also, I probably got you pregnant.
None of those excuses will go over well with Kate, and they shouldn’t. Granted, she didn’t know she was in heat either. But I can’t worry about what I will say to her. I have to find her before she crosses the border. It’s a gamble, but I’m banking on her not leaving until she’s certain Trez isn’t here.
I thank the fates she’s an alpha female, knowing it’ll drive her to find him. She’s always been protective over him. It’s in her blood. It’s a force at the center of her being. Even if she weren’t a Luna wolf, Kate would still search for her best friend—the person she believes to be her brother. He’s her family. It’s who Kate is.
Knowing I need fuel, I park my truck next to the gas pump closest to the diner and shut off the engine, noting that I don’t see Kate’s motorcycle anywhere. It’s late, with only two cars parked in front of the brightly lit restaurant.
“I need to call Ash. Kate isn’t here.”
“We don’t know that. We haven’t checked,” Trez replies as he unbuckles his seatbelt.
“Do you see her bike anywhere?” I ask.
“Why don’t I go inside and ask if anyone’s seen her?” Storm says from the backseat behind Trez.
“Do you even know what she looks like? You said you’d never met her.”
“No, I said, I didn’t know they were from the Marked Crest pack. I met Kate once, two years ago,” she informs me. “Plus, they’ll likely tell me more than they would you if Kate’s been here.”
“Fine. I’ll ask the gas clerk.”
When Storm steps down from the truck and shuts the door, I stare out the window, waiting for the fuel attendant to notice us.
“Want to talk about it?” I ask Trez, his head turned away from me as if he’s watching Storm or eyeing inside the diner as she pulls the door open and slips inside.
“Jagger? No,” he deadpans. “Being mated? Fuck no. Being not me? Also, no.”
“You’re still you. Finding out you’re my brother and one of the missing shifters from the Bloodmoon pack doesn’t mean you aren’t you.”
“Is that even my name anymore?” Finally, he twists his head, his eyebrows arched.
“It is until you say otherwise.”
“You sure about that?” He shakes his head. “I don’t even look like me. I look like your father.”
I roll my head, taking in his profile while he goes back to looking out the window. I take a moment to really see the changes in him for the first time. I saw it when it happened, when the marks disappeared from his back, and the pigment of his skin darkened. His appearance changed drastically, but he’s still the same being he’s always been.
“Your bone structure didn’t change. You’re the same height and build. Your eyes are the same brown they’ve always been. You are you, Trez. You just didn’t know the you that you were born as. Neither did I. Jagger didn’t either, but that didn’t stop him from realizing the signs I refused to see.”
“Didn’t stop him from staking claim without asking me if I wanted it first,” he growls, but there’s a lack of heat in his tone that doesn’t go unnoticed by either of us.
“You wouldn’t have bitten him back if you hadn’t wanted it,” I reason.
“Like you wouldn’t have bitten Kate if you hadn’t wanted her?”
Could I have stopped my wolf from biting her if I’d wanted to?
He pushed through so quickly that I’m unsure, but maybe that’s the excuse I told myself to absolve some of my guilt. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I fucked up. I handled everything wrong from the moment I smelled her heat and pounced on her until my beta proved that Trez was my brother and Kate’s my mate.
“Where the fuck is this guy?” I say, ignoring Trez’s question while exiting the truck. My brother is right, but I can’t bring myself to acknowledge it.
I round the front of the truck at the same time Trez jumps out and does the same, meeting me at the bumper corner on the passenger side.
“Oh, so you want to talk about me, but not you and my sister, even though we’re out here looking for her because you were a dick?”
“How about, where you were? What you overheard that you weren’t supposed to hear, and the reason you didn’t tell Kate? Why let her think you were missing, dead? She thought you were fucking dead, man. There was a goddamn urn with ashes inside it.” I step forward, intent on crowding his space when I abruptly stop and jerk my head to the side.
“What is it?” he asks, suddenly as alert as I am.
I smell the night air as he whips his body around to face the threat he saw on my face, but it’s not what he’s imagining. Pins and needles prick down my spine.
“Kate,” I whisper as my throat clogs, dread weighing me down.
“Where is she?” Trez looks in the direction of her scent, but he must not be picking up the smell that I am.
“I smell her blood,” I tell him as acid burns my throat and a sinking feeling takes root in my gut.
Darting around him, I quicken my pace, stopping fifteen steps past the back of my truck where the scent is the strongest.
“Just her blood, or do you smell Kate too?”
Trez halts behind me to my right side while I drop down on my haunches, looking at the dirt. It’s dark, but I have the eyes of a predator, and among the dirt, gravel, and even a penny, I spot droplets of dried blood.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Trez whispers.
My feet twist, swinging my knees around as he swipes something off the ground. He holds the empty dart in the air, a scent of poison and shifter hitting me at once.
“Look familiar?”