Chapter 6
Chapter six
“Hey, I got that information you wanted on Sammy’s mom.” Striding into the office with a tablet clutched in his hand, Saint sank into one of the armchairs across from Dominic’s desk.
Turning away from his laptop, Dominic swiveled to face his brother. “What did you find?”
“Six partners in a hundred and sixty years doesn’t seem that excessive.”
Saint glanced up from his tablet with an arched eyebrow. “They all died.”
“Humans?” Not that shocking. They were fragile creatures prone to expiring.
“One of them.”
He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. Okay, that changed things. “Do we know how they died?”
“Nothing in this report.” Saint flicked the end of the tablet upward and tilted his head. “I can look into it, if you want, but why do you care?”
He didn’t, not really. Sammy might, though, and for some reason, that mattered to him. “Never mind. What else did you find?”
“She has a pretty impressive rap sheet. Fraud. Extortion. Money laundering.” Saint scanned the screen again, a strange smile tugging at his lips. “She always managed to avoid jail time, though. Until five years ago.”
“What happened five years ago?”
“She did two years in Wyvern for identity theft.”
Dominic sat back in his chair again and templed his fingers under his chin.
The Ministry rarely became involved in non-violent crimes.
Even then, they only stepped in when a situation threatened disapproval from the non-paranormal population.
Otherwise, they preferred to leave it to human law enforcement.
They sure as fuck didn’t send Otherlings to magical, maximum-security prisons for it.
“Explain.”
“She was caught impersonating the mayor of some town in Texas and misappropriating government funds.”
So, she had run afoul of human government and stolen from taxpayers. That would definitely do it. The fact that she had gotten away with it for any length of time told him a lot too.
Molding their appearance, gestures, voice, and demeanor to fit someone else’s preferences came easily for changelings. He had never met one who could transform into a perfect replica of another person, though.
He had to assume her magical heritage played a role. Either by enhancing her innate abilities, or possibly with the addition of glamour spells.
“She really sold her own kid?” Saint asked, his expression a perfect blend of disgust and disbelief.
“She did, and it sounds like she’s looking to do it again.”
Saint lowered the tablet to his thigh and sighed. “Well, she sounds lovely.”
He understood the reaction, but they couldn’t afford to get emotional about it. “Do we know where she went after she left the club?”
“Albuquerque, Denver, Memphis.” Saint glanced at the tablet again. “She stayed in each location for about twenty-four hours. We traced her as far as Chicago, but that’s where the trail goes cold.”
“I doubt she’s still in the city, but send a team anyway.”
“Already did.”
“Good.” It wasn’t much, but at least it was a start. “Anything else?”
“Not yet, but I’ll keep digging.” Business concluded, Saint pushed up from his chair, but he lingered on the other side of the desk. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to check out the club.”
And the siren who worked there. Something about the whole situation felt off, and he suspected the guy knew more than he’d let on to Sammy.
“Want me to tag along?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got it.”
Once Saint left the office, Dominic turned back to his computer to finish going over the inventory reports. Typically, he would leave the admin stuff to someone more suited to the task, but the busy work helped quiet his mind.
At the very least, it distracted him from the fact that his mate had spent the last thirty-six hours avoiding him.
Sammy rarely left his room. He didn’t come to the kitchen for mealtimes, preferring to eat alone. He didn’t seek out Dominic’s company, or anyone else’s for that matter. He hadn’t even explored the house or the grounds.
Then again, a lot had happened in a short time, none of which Sammy had any control over.
His fate had collided with Dominic’s at a time when his future was murky at best. His freedom and autonomy had been threatened by his own mother. He’d been torn away from his life in Hunters Hollow and deposited in the middle of the woods with a pack of werewolves.
In that context, it made sense that he would retreat into himself, and to be fair, Dominic hadn’t gone out of his way to reach out either.
From the moment they had locked eyes at the bakery, his thoughts had been consumed with the changeling. He felt restless when he couldn’t see him. His blood pressure spiked when he thought about Sammy being taken from him, and with every passing hour, that pull became stronger and harder to resist.
He felt everything he was supposed to. He just didn’t know if he could trust it.
He had never flatly rejected the idea of having a mate. Rather, he hadn’t put much thought into it at all.
Some people romanticized soulmates, and they spent their lives pining for someone they had never met. They described the feeling as an ache, a hollowness, or like some vital part of themselves was missing.
Dominic had never experienced anything like that, and frankly, he’d seen little value in orchestrating his entire existence around a maybe. Especially when the likelihood of an Otherling finding their destined mate in this life was statistically negligible.
Simply by meeting, he and Sammy had beaten the odds, but unless something changed, he didn’t know if fate alone would be enough.
A rap at the door drew him out of his thoughts, and he looked up as Chapel strode into the office.
“Hey, boss. Saint says you need someone to go with you to Galveston.” Without waiting for an invitation, Chapel crossed the office and slid onto the corner of his desk. “What time do we leave?”
Dominic growled and jabbed at his laptop’s keyboard hard enough to crack the plastic. “I’m going to talk to some people at a nightclub. I don’t need backup.”
“Oh, sounds fun. I’ll pack light.”
To the female, that meant only two daggers instead of twelve. “It’s not that kind of mission.”
“Even better.” She held her hand up to the light and wiggled her fingers. “I just got my nails done. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of acrylic?”
He shouldn’t have expected any less. As head of security, she took her position seriously. An admirable trait that had earned her the position in the first place, even if Dominic didn’t personally need her protection.
At the moment, however, he didn’t have the tolerance for her cheekiness.
“I don’t need a fucking babysitter, Chapel.”
Of course, his outburst did nothing to dissuade her. Leaning back on her palms, she stared at him over her shoulder.
“Someone is in a mood.”
“Fuck off,” he muttered, unable to deny it outright.
She tossed her head back and laughed, a bright, happy sound that rang throughout the room. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain changeling, would it?”
“Why would it? I haven’t seen him since he got here.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“He doesn’t even leave his room,” he argued, but there was no heat behind the words.
He told himself he had been giving Sammy space, and he’d even patted himself on the back a couple of times for being so patient. In truth, he’d been waiting for Sammy to make the first move without offering any reason to think an attempt would be well received.
He had little respect for people who expected trust without putting in the work to earn it. Yet, he had been acting the same way by demanding Sammy’s trust without doing anything to deserve it.
Growling, he fell back in his chair, fists clenched and jaw rigid. The realization sat heavy in his chest, a quiet accusation simmering beneath his frustration.
Uncomfortable having an audience while he confronted his own shortcomings, he looked at Chapel and motioned toward the door. “You can leave now.”
“I could,” she allowed, but she sounded distracted as her gaze flickered to the window. “It’s the full moon tonight.”
The atmosphere of the room instantly changed, a subtle but tangible dread settling over them.
“We’ll find them,” he told her, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel.
Reports about shifters going missing throughout Georgia had started trickling in right before Halloween. Nothing alarming at first—drifters, loners, those who existed on the fringes of the pack—and certainly nothing that necessitated Blackrock’s involvement.
But it kept happening. More and more shifters vanished, the disappearances escalating in both scale and frequency as the weeks passed.
Then the first body had been found at the beginning of December, two days after the full moon, naked, bruised, and drained of blood.
From there, the pattern had continued. More shifters went missing. More bodies turned up after every full moon. Not everyone who vanished resurfaced, though, and no one knew why.
“What if we don’t?” Chapel asked, trying and failing to sound detached.
Dominic sighed.
The last report had come three weeks ago from a pack outside of Valdosta, and this one hit different. Three teenagers, taken in the middle of the night, gone without a trace. Not outsiders. Not a crime of convenience. This one felt targeted.
“We’ll find them,” he repeated.
Chapel blinked a couple of times and shook her head as if flinging off intrusive thoughts. “Right, good talk.”
“Chapel.”
Pushing off the desk, she landed on the floor with a light bounce and a crooked grin. “I’ll go get ready. Meet you outside in an hour?”
Dominic sighed, knowing there would be no reasoning with her. “Make it two.”
First, he had another mission. A solo one. One that required finesse rather than brute force and came with a small likelihood of success.
Chapel nodded her agreement and sashayed out of the office, but he didn’t hurry to follow.