CHAPTER ONE REED
Some people say love heals all wounds… and yeah, no.
I call bullshit. Whoever said that never had an entire pack—hell, an entire town—depending on them to keep their shit together.
But that didn’t stop my mind from wandering back to my fated mate.
Harris was never far from my thoughts, even if I couldn’t let myself have anything to do with him.
“Reed, have you heard even one thing I just said?” Lindsey raised her eyebrows at me, seeming equal parts annoyed and amused.
I shrugged.
I hadn’t, actually. I’d been too wrapped up in my own head to focus.
For the past four hours, I had been biding my time, waiting for the moment when I could return to my log cabin, lay my head down on my pillow, and dream.
And then I would see Harris again. Complication or no, it was the only thing keeping me going.
“I’m finished with my sections,” she said, arching a brow, her dark eyes glittering under the moonlight. “And I was asking you if you need me to take more, or should I head home?”
We were searching the forest of the Cascade Mountains for a missing hiker.
He’d driven up to Crescent Springs, the nearest town to the pack’s commune, for a day of hiking and had never come back.
That’d been two days ago. The deputy in town had noticed the abandoned vehicle and called the park rangers.
They’d been sending out teams during the day.
By night, it was our turn, even if no one else but us knew that.
“Don’t know why you’re asking me for permission,” I grumbled, in a bad mood from having searched the forest for the last several hours when I’d rather be doing almost anything else. “You’re not even technically one of us.”
“You know, it’s not a smart idea to be alienating your allies,” Lindsey said dangerously, her expression going tight and angry in a heartbeat. “I might not technically be part of your pack, but I am helping. And it sure as shit makes sense for you to let me.”
“Fine. I’m glad you’re here,” I replied, abruptly too exhausted to argue with her.
And besides, it was true. I was acting like a jackass, but I’d be an idiot not to be grateful she had decided to establish a private practice in Crescent Springs instead of going back to her cushy veterinary clinic job in Ellensburg.
And she had done it because she recognized the danger her hometown was in.
The bleeds—interdimensional rifts between our world and the Otherworld, which regularly spewed monsters into the forest—had been dormant for months, but we all knew it wasn’t going to last. It never did.
And if the person we were searching for wasn’t just lost, but actually the victim of one of the monsters that slithered through the bleeds and into the forest surrounding Crescent Springs, it meant we were all in a boatload of danger, now and for the foreseeable future.
The pack was weak enough as it was, and Lindsey was a powerful wolf. Her presence was probably going to end up protecting the lives of the people I cared about most, sooner or later.
It definitely wasn’t her fault I didn’t want to be alpha and never had. Which meant I shouldn’t take my frustrations out on her. I knew that rationally.
I added, “I can cover the rest of the forest. We’re almost done anyhow. You should go home.”
She must have heard the tension in my voice, because the anger in her expression subsided almost immediately.
“Reed Thornwood,” she said, the reproach clear in her words.
Plus, she was using my full name, the way she did when we were growing up, after I’d just gotten in trouble with her—often.
“It’s okay to let other people help you, even now.
You know that, right? It’s okay to let people in. ”
I snorted. But it was all my fault I was in this situation, anyway.
I was the one who had let Jeremy get killed.
The moment I thought that, something knotted deep inside me and I fought back the image of my oldest friend’s pale and lifeless body on the forest floor, his mate—a vampire—holding his bleeding wrist to Jeremy’s mouth, trying desperately to turn him, and all that blood…
knowing with total and perfect clarity I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it.
And because I’d been the second-in-command, the strongest wolf in the pack apart from Jeremy, the power of the alpha—and the crushing responsibility of the pack—had both gone into me the moment Jeremy’s heart stopped.
I could still feel that awful, unwanted rush of power, even though I’d tried to fight it.
And it was all because Jeremy had trusted me and I had failed him.
I was never going to make that mistake again. Never.
“You can be a better alpha than he ever was,” Lindsey said, watching me steadily. “Sure, you’re a bit of a sarcastic edgelord sometimes, but underneath all that, you’re kinder than him. You care about other people so much, Reed.”
“Not anymore,” I snapped, glaring at her. “I can’t anymore. You know that.”
She sighed, probably exasperated with me. “Look, I love my brother, but he had his problems. He wasn’t really a great alpha. He was way too much like our father.”
At her mention of Hank Brightborn, the previous alpha before Jeremy, her expression darkened.
That wasn’t surprising, given her father’s affair with her mother and subsequent refusal to treat Lindsey as his daughter had been a big part of the reason she’d left Crescent Springs at barely eighteen—immediately after his death—and never looked back.
She let out a deep breath and added, “And besides, Jeremy’s better off now, anyway.”
“He doesn’t have a pulse,” I said dully, guilt gripping my heart. “How is that better?”
She narrowed her gaze at me. With her disapproving expression and the silvery moonlight catching the mahogany skin of her bare shoulders and her short-cropped black hair, she looked almost like a displeased goddess.
“He’s happily married to the love of his life.
Reed, c’mon. Think about it. Who gives a shit if his heart isn’t beating anymore? ”
Jeremy had been my closest friend for my entire life, but things hadn’t been right between us since he became a vampire-werewolf hybrid and ran off with Thierry, the eight-hundred-year-old vampire he was destined to love for all eternity.
The one time I had been brave enough to broach the subject with him, to try apologizing, Jeremy had told me there was nothing to forgive.
But I wasn’t sure I believed that. If I were him, I’d be pissed.
Up until he had turned, we hadn’t even known a werewolf could become a vampire. He had found out the hard way.
“How is he?” I asked before I could stop myself. I winced the moment the words were out. I couldn’t pretend to be a tough-as-nails alpha-hole if I was sitting there asking Lindsey about my best friend’s feelings. Next, I’d be asking her to braid my hair.
“You could always call him up and ask,” she pointed out. “He’s not dead.”
“Technically, he is.”
“Don’t be a dick. The pack was wrong about vampires. You know that.”
She meant what we were all raised to believe—that vampires were all, down to the last of them, soulless and inhuman monsters—had turned out to be wrong.
There was a lot more gray area than we’d originally thought.
Some vampires were like that, but most of them were regular people—sometimes even pretty decent people, like Thierry—with an appetite for fresh blood.
In fact, there was even a vampire permanently living in Crescent Springs for the first time ever, an emissary of sorts from Nathaniel Bailey, the vampire king of Seattle. And Christopher—who insisted everyone call him Topher—seemed like a nice enough guy. He hadn’t caused any issues.
Yet.
Even having met Thierry and watched Jeremy come back from the dead as a vampire-werewolf hybrid, seemingly still himself, most of the pack was still pretty wary around vampires.
Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Jeremy’s happy, Reed. You know he didn’t really want to be the alpha either. It’s not a power anyone ever asks for. And if they do, they’re an idiot. But he went about everything the wrong way. You don’t have to follow in his footsteps. You shouldn’t.”
“Being alpha is fine. It’s good. I feel powerful.”
“Bullshit!” She threw her hands up in exasperation.
And she was apparently not even a little self-conscious that she was entirely naked, concealed only by the tall emerald-green ferns of the forest. But we were all extremely used to nudity at this point.
Her voice dropped dangerously when she added, “You hate this and we both know it. The faster you admit that and start acting like yourself again, the easier this whole thing is going to be for everyone.”
“Right. Thanks,” I replied, a flash of anger tearing through me at her words. Why was she trying so damn hard to disarm me? No one else was. “Anyway, I’m going to keep looking. You ought to head home.”
“A missing person matters to me, Reed,” she replied flatly, either not catching the dismissal in my tone or ignoring it completely. “You know what’s in these woods.”
“If I had a dime for every time we had to find a missing hiker, I’d be a rich wolf.” I said it lightly, but when she just looked at me without saying a word, I heaved a sigh and added, “We’ll find him, okay?”
Or what’s left of him. But I didn’t say that part aloud.
“Just tell me what sections still need to be searched, and we can get done that much faster. You know I’m one of the best trackers you have.”
“I don’t actually have you. None of us do. You’ve made that really clear. You’re not part of the pack. You’re not one of my wolves.”
She let out a long breath, as though attempting to calm herself. “Look, Reed, we both know that I’m going to keep searching either way. You might as well make it so that I don’t waste my time or yours by searching a section you’ve already covered.”