25. Kane
The next night, we’re no closer to finding Kate or Storm’s little sister Ivy. There haven’t been any reports of descriptions that match Henrik or Salem crossing the border.
I should be happy about that, but they could have boarded a ferry or a ship. It would be easy to pay off someone and be a stowaway, and no one would be the wiser.
Her being in Canada feels off, but there isn’t a reason I can fathom to keep her in the States. She has to be there, yet my gut says to keep searching here.
Since waking this morning, there’s a heavier weight pressing against my chest than last night. It’s as though she’s closer than she was. I felt the same way while driving through Seattle a few days ago. I thought I could feel her, but I know that isn’t possible.
She wears my bite, but I don’t wear hers. There isn’t a solid bond connecting us… except she may be pregnant with my pup.
Still… I can’t run off of a gut feeling alone.
I need a fucking break.
Something.
Anything to guide me in her direction.
So far, Storm scrying for her sister’s location isn’t panning out like she was so sure it would.
“This is Caleb,” a gruff voice greets me, my ear pressed against my smartphone.
“Kane from Moonwake,” I reply.
“And what can I do for the Bloodmoon alpha?” There’s a smugness to his tone, but I expected that. My father warned me that the Yukon pack alpha was a cocky son of a bitch, despite being a born beta. “Ready to take me up on the offer I made to your parents two weeks ago?”
“No,” I deadpan, being honest with him. “But I need to know if it comes to that, do I have you as an ally?”
A beat of silence follows my question, a pause too long for what Dad and Eli assured me he was willing to do. Bringing war to Richard Everhart’s territory.
“Do you want to find your mate and brother, or is it Everhart’s daughter you’d rather have more, Orion?”
I swallow the growl that tries to rumble past my throat, the flutter in my chest telling me that my beast heard his mention of Kate. My finger goes to my lips when Trez opens his mouth. To say what, I don’t know, but I don’t want Caleb Drake to know my brother is listening.
Alphas have an unspoken rule amongst ourselves. When we communicate with another alpha, we do so in private. Should we choose to relay the details of our conversation to another, that’s on us. It’s meant to be out of respect and because we’re of the same rank, but I’ve always included my beta when dealing with pack business. If it concerns my pack, it concerns Jagger too. He can’t do his job if I keep him out of the loop, and since he took Kate’s bike to my shop this morning, he hasn’t returned.
After we found Kate’s racing bike behind the gas station building, I didn’t want to leave it. Trez helped me lift the bike into the back of my truck and strap it down.
“Kate,” I say with noticeable irritation, “is no concern of yours.”
“I don’t know about that,” he quips. “From everything I’d heard, she sounds like my type. Maybe I want Richard’s territory plus his daughter as payment for my help.”
“Touch her, and I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”
My fingers tighten around the device clutched in my hand so tightly that the crack in the glass muffles his warning growl.
“Take that however you want to, Drake. Kate is mine,” I declare. “If you’re looking for pussy, look somewhere else, or we’re going to have a problem that can only be solved one way.”
I don’t want to start a war with him or his pack. Not when the potential of another is so high. Caleb could easily swap sides and help Richard defeat us instead of allying with my pack.
“Careful, Orion. My pack numbers triple yours. I’m not an enemy you want to make.”
He sounds so sure of himself that his voice is starting to piss me off.
“You aren’t my only option, and if you go sniffing around a woman I’ve already claimed, it’ll be me who you don’t want as an enemy of yours.”
I yank the phone away from the side of my head, bringing it in front of me. Sure enough, the screen is shattered, but the end call button is still viewable, so I tap it and hang up on the motherfucker.
I wasn’t bluffing when I told him he wasn’t my only option. Miles McKenna wants Richard’s territory as much as he does. The Alberta alpha has never shied away from spouting off his dislike for all Marked Crest shifters.
McKenna and his wife are friends with my parents as well as Elijah and Annalise. Once a year, in the Spring, Miles travels to our pack for five days, and my parents go to his land in the Fall. He never understood why my father allowed Kate and Trez to visit, whereas his wife, Addy, thought differently. I once overheard her tell my mother that it could be a sign of a change to come in the future.
“So now you’ve claimed Kate, not your wolf?” Trez remarks, making my gaze flick to where he stands, his arms crossed, his back against the post. We’re outside the lodge on the porch, me sitting in one of the chairs and him across from me, irritation marring his face. “My sister would likely kick your ass if she’d heard that declaration.”
“Probably,” I agree, ignoring the fact that he continues to refer to Kate as his sister every chance he gets. I don’t know if he wishes the truth about who they are wasn’t ever revealed or if he’s holding on to the only thing he’s ever known.
Kate.
The only family he’s truly ever had until now.
I know what he’s feeling, but I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking. He’s overwhelmed, but above everything, he’s worried about Kate, so he continues to push everything else to the back burner.
“We’re going to find her,” I say, my eyes never leaving his amber ones.
“She’d already be here if you hadn’t flipped out on her.” His arms drop and he turns, giving me his back while bracing his hands on the railing. “There’s no telling what our... what Dick is doing to her.”
An audible exhale leaves his mouth, then his head shakes ever so slowly while his fingers tighten around the wood and his claws extend.
I’m standing in the next breath. Taking a stride forward and then another, I mirror his stance beside him. There aren’t any shifters in the lodge tonight. They’ve been giving me a wide berth since the confrontation with my mother last night.
“She isn’t there.”
Saying the words out loud feels right, but I can already tell Trez doesn’t share the same intuition before he turns, facing my profile. His anger coats my tongue and burns down my esophagus.
“Well, she isn’t here either. Why are you so scared to cross the fucking border anyway? If we stand a chance to find her, then we actually have to go look. I’m done waiting on Storm when it’s Kate I care to find. No one else.”
I don’t disagree with him. We should be out there looking for Kate. I only came back because Jagger couldn’t mentally handle being away from his mate any longer. Finding Kate is my top priority, but I’m still the alpha of Bloodmoon. I have to balance what’s best for the pack and everyone in it. I didn’t know which direction to go that would lead me to find her, whereas I knew where Jag was, so I gave him and Trez what they both needed.
“My reasons for staying out of British Columbia have nothing to do with being afraid,” I finally answer. “I want to rip that motherfucker from limb to limb so bad I can almost taste his blood coating the inside of my mouth.”
“Then what’s holding you back? If you want to kill him, do it. Do something, Kane. You’re the alpha of the pack he stole two shifters from. He took your mate, and now you have the confirmation you’ve been searching for, yet you’re here doing nothing.”
“If I cross the border between his territory and mine, I will hunt him down, and there is no one that will stop me. I will slaughter anyone who gets in my way. That’s why. But whether I like it or not, what was done to me, to Jagger, to our parents is nothing compared to what Everhart did to you and Kate. His life isn’t mine to take. It’s yours, or it’s Kate’s.”
“You want it to be yours,” he states, like he can easily feel my emotions the way I can his now that the mark he wore on his back is gone, and maybe he can. It’s a two-way link. The pack can feel me if I allow them, but shielding my feelings has always been second nature, except with Jagger. I don’t even let Ashleigh in that far. With Trez and Kate, I never needed to put up a wall because I believed they were Marked Crest wolves.
“Of course I do. He tried to destroy this pack before I was born. Because of him and that fucking witch of his, I fought everything I’ve ever felt for Kate, thinking those feelings were wrong. I’ve been at war with my wolf just as much as I have been at war with myself. I don’t just want to kill him, brother. I want to make him hurt. I want to make him regret what he did a thousand times over. I want him to beg for mercy, knowing he won’t find an ounce of it from me.”
“Kate can have Dick. I want his beta,” he bites out as a bitter taste coats my tongue at the same time.
He doesn’t say more, and when I hear the wood creak, my eyes flick down to where he’s gripping the railing.
“Something there I should know about?”
“No,” is all he gives me in reply.
“Trez,” I say, dragging out his name as the hair on the back of my neck stands and anger rolls inside my chest, knowing whatever reason that caused him to hate Henrik Hale so much is one I’m not going to like.
He once told me Richard’s beta caught him fucking another shifter, but he didn’t really go into it, only that he and the other guy, another shifter, both lost their virginity to each other. All I know is that it happened right before the first time they showed up in Moonwake.
Maybe I should have pried more, but he didn’t act like it was a big deal.
“You know I can make you tell me, right?”
I’d only force the truth from his lips if I thought I had to know to ensure his safety, but I’d rather him tell me because I know it isn’t nothing, that’s for damn sure.
Fear and guilt, with remnants of sadness and a mountain of hatred, all wash through him within seconds.
“You probably could, but don’t.” He turns to face me. “It’s my shit. Just let this one go.”
“Tell me why first. Are you ashamed of something, because if that’s?—”
“It’s not that, but if I tell you, if you find out, then it would only be a matter of time before my sister finds out. Kate is who I don’t want to know. I won’t put that on her. Ever. So, I’m asking, Kane, let it go. I’m fine. I’ll be even better if I’m the one that kills Hale. But if not, dead is still dead as long as that’s the end result.”
“Fine,” I concede, and with a sigh, I say, “Then let’s go pick up Jag. Being here isn’t going to find Kate.”
I push off the railing and start toward the steps. “We get her back first, and then we go after Hale and Everhart.”
Trez says something, but whatever it was gets drowned out when Jagger’s voice inside my head stops me in my tracks.
Kate’s in Portland.
“Are you sure?” Trez says out loud, which tells me that Jagger is speaking to us both, using his mate link with Trez and with me through ours.
“How do you know she’s in Portland?” I ask, saying the words out loud and in my head before flipping around to face my brother. Usually, I’m protective over my link with my beta, but it wouldn’t be right to keep it from Trez.
“What the fuck?” is out of his mouth quicker than his eyes flash with jealousy. “You heard him?”
His jaw firms as his teeth gnash together.
“Just get in the truck.” I turn and jump from the top step to the ground. “We’re coming to get you, Jag. You still at the shop?”
The sound of a motorcycle engine roars in the distance, too close to have been my body shop, but the sound is unmistakable—Kate’s bike. Trez and I look at each other when he leaps off the last wooden step.
I’m going after my sister.
A growl comes from Trez’s mouth.
“Come on,” I tell him. “With her bike, he’ll beat us there no matter how fast I drive.”
“Wait.” Storm halts us before we climb into the cab of the truck. “I found her.”
“Ivy?” I question, confused by how Jagger suddenly knows where Kate is, but Storm has been scrying for her little sister since we got home yesterday.
“No. Kate. My sister’s location is still hidden, so I tried looking for Kate. I found her almost instantly.”
Storm lifts her hand, and I see her holding Kate’s leather jacket. When we found her bike, her jacket had been draped over the handlebars.
“Get in,” is all I say, and before her door is latched, I gas it.
I’m going to find you, Kate. I just hope you have it in you to forgive me for all the damage I’ve done to us.