Chapter TwoWes
Chapter Two
Wes
M y cell phone rang, as I sat at my desk in my office, trying to work, head pounding. I winced, answering, “What?”
I felt like shit all morning. Even a breakfast burrito and three cups of coffee hadn’t fixed it. But I had work to do–even if it hurt to stare at all my monitors.
“Hello to you, too,” my older sister chuckled.
“What do you want?” I growled, not appreciating the interruption.
“I need you to come down to the Eastside station.”
“Eastside?” I frowned at my phone. Lexi usually worked at the Midtown station. My sister was a detective with the Special Victims Unit.
Her voice grew soft. “Some betas tried to assault a young woman sleeping on a park bench. She’s fine but shaken–and clearly suffered some trauma before the betas bothered her.
She doesn’t remember her name or where she’s from and has no ID.
We contacted every hospital, shelter, and in-patient facility in a hundred-mile radius, and no one matches her description.
We even checked local universities and missing person reports. ”
“Wow, that’s awful. Why are you calling me?” My pack was powerful–and rich—and my sister wasn’t afraid to use our resources. But her pack had plenty of their own.
“When we ran her prints and facial recognition, since she has no ID and can’t remember her name, they came up blank.
It’s as if there’s no record of her. When we asked for her designation, she said she was a woman.
We can’t tell exactly what her designation is from her scent, so we did the prick-test, and it came up as unknown .
She also seems to think alphas aren’t real–”
My heart stopped, and my free hand clenched. I’d heard that before. My stomach churned. “Maybe she’s been raised equalist.”
As in those who thought designations shouldn’t exist and were just fabrications to help keep the masses down.
“Maybe. However, she said that once she knew an alpha, but everyone told her that she imagined him,” she told me. “Wes, she said his name was Fade . She smells of peaches. ”
“Don’t fuck with me, Lexi.” I hit my desk with my fist, stomach churning. No one had called me that in a very long time.
“I’m not. She looks an awful lot like the girl in your sketchbooks. Your dream girl from when we were kids,” she breathed.
My jaw gritted. “Grace Ellington doesn’t exist. Neither did where she said she came from. We looked and looked and never found her.”
We’d looked for her hard. I’d hacked databases. Lexi had poked around. Nothing.
“Just come down–”
“No.” It was so sharp it was almost an alpha bark. “While I feel sorry for this young woman, she’s not my Grace, because she doesn’t exist. I have to go.” I hung up and put my head in my hands.
Grace Ellington had nearly destroyed me. Only Evan and the military saved me. There was no way my heart could take that again.
Because the girl I’d been in love with, my soulmate, was only a dream.