Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
R onan
“What do you mean she escaped?”
I muster all of the calm I can manage as I pose the question to my brother.
He glares at me from across the kitchen island, arms folded against his chest and leaning against the counter.
A noise from the back door draws my attention. A sniff of the air tells me it’s Montgomery returning home from his day at the construction site.
When he steps inside and glances between the two of us, his expression changes from one of exhaustion to confusion.
Not for the first time, I wonder what makes him so tired. More importantly, why does he only wear such an expression when he doesn’t think anyone is looking at him.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Our middle brother was just about to tell me how he let our mate escape today.” I turn my attention back to Noah.
But Montgomery moves toward the kitchen sink. As he does so, he sniffs the air. “She’s upstairs.”
“Just like I told our oldest brother,” he mocks. “But does the fucker listen? No.”
“Watch your mouth.”
His nostrils flare, but I do not care about his anger.
“You’re only the oldest by a half an hour.”
“Yet, that still makes me the oldest.”
“All three of us are the alphas of this pack,” Noah needlessly reminds me.
I bite down on my retort. I do not appreciate this on edge feeling that has been coursing through me for days. More often I know better than to press Noah too hard for answers before he is ready to give them.
It makes him more stubborn and willful.
Just like a certain person.
Serafina.
My wolf whines.
She has locked herself away in her room once more. Noah said as soon as they arrived home from their shopping trip, she wordlessly charged up the stairs and slammed the door. She has barely made a decibel of noise in the last hour.
Though he has not given me details, I can scent her on him. They have not mated, but her scent on him is enough that I can tell something transpired between them.
“What happened?” I ask Noah in a more regulated tone.
“She slipped out from underneath Erik’s watch,” he replies. “I caught her scent in the electronics store a few doors down from the clothing store she was in. He couldn’t find her there.”
“Why not?” Erik is one of our better hunters. He should have easily tracked her scent if she was that close.
Noah pushes out a breath and looks between Montgomery and me. “You remember,” he says.
My jaw clenches. “ I can barely scent her. She isn’t normal, and therefore, she’s dangerous.”
When our grandfather had said those words to us, I did not understand what he meant at the time. Yet after last night’s pack meeting and Peter’s words the day before about her scent, the pieces are starting to pool together.
“They cannot scent her,” I say out loud, looking Noah in the eye.
He nods slowly.
“What do you mean?” Montgomery asks.
Noah explains to Montgomery that even our best hunters have trouble picking up Serafina’s scent.
“A short distance from the electronics store is where I lost her scent, though, since the strip mall is so close to the highway.”
I nod, knowing every roadway in this state. While us wolves have amazing senses of smells, an open-air space with that many cars, humans, and animals passing by is nearly impossible to keep track of one scent.
“But across the street is Adelaine Park. I had a hint she might be there. I found her there playing with the grade one class.”
“Today is Wednesday,” I recall out loud.
Every Wednesday, our teachers take the children to the parks in town during their lunch to give them extra time and space to run around.
Though most of them have not had their first shift yet, it is still a good opportunity for them to spend time outdoors to let out some energy. Our pups have way more energy than human children, even before they shift.
“What does that mean?” Montgomery asks.
“That’s where I found her. Playing with the children,” Noah elaborates, but Montgomery shakes his head.
“Not that, though that is weird if she was trying to run away,” he says, his forehead wrinkling in confusion.
He then shakes his head before getting to his point. “The scent thing. Peter commented last night that her scent was … off.”
I growl, my wolf getting worked up at the mention of his name.
Montgomery continues, a contemplative shadow crosses his face. “I can scent her easily,” he murmurs as if speaking to himself.
Noah and I look at one another. This is the most our brother has said to either of us in a long while. Noah’s eyebrows pop, but I do not know if it is at the surprise at how much Montgomery has said to us or if it is a result of his next realization.
“I have no problem scenting her,” he says, then looks at me.
“She is our mate. We have never had a problem picking up her scent,” I tell him for both Noah and I. “But grandfather and the others …” I trail off.
“Maybe they just need more time adjusting to her being around, to pick up on her scent,” Noah proposes.
I know it’s nonsense. There’s something about Serafina that none of us can figure out.
“Even wolves need time to?—”
Noah’s words are cut off from the sound of a small growl.
“If it’s Erik’s job to watch over our mate, then he doesn’t have time to adjust.”
Noah and I, again, look at one another, taken by surprise by Montgomery’s words. They were delivered straight from his wolf.
“Are you trying to say the wolf I chose to watch over our mate is incompetent?” Noah questions, now injecting his wolf into his tone.
Immediately, my wolf rises to his feet. It’s never a good thing when two wolves square off on one another, especially not two alpha wolves. It is particularly egregious when alpha wolves of the same pack do so.
“He was supposed to watch over her and failed. She could’ve been hurt or worse,” Montgomery replies, an undeniable wolf growl in his tone. To make matters, worse his eyes start to glow.
Noah, never one to back down from any type of challenge, responds in kind. “And where the fuck were you?”
He approaches Montgomery, who stands on the opposite side of the kitchen.
“Last time I fucking checked, I asked you to come with me into town to watch over her, but you had more important shit to do. Like, stack bricks at the construction site.”
I move in between the two of them.
“Calm down,” I say, looking Noah in the eye. Yes, his wolf takes that as a challenge, but I rather he challenges me than Montgomery.
“Fuck that,” he spits back. “He just called me incompetent at taking care of our mate.”
“I never said that,” Montgomery says back over my shoulder. “But if the so-called best hunter in our pack can’t keep an eye on her for thirty minutes, we’ve got a damn problem.”
“He just did it again.”
“Back up.” I press my hands against Noah’s chest when he tries to get around me. “ He’s our brother,” I remind him through our bond. “ You will not attack him.”
“He just attacked me,” Noah says out loud. “He won’t even talk to us or eat a damn meal with us, but he wants to criticize me for how I choose to guard our mate.”
“Then we all need to do a better job of watching over her,” Montgomery throws back. “We’ve had her for a few days and almost lost her twice.”
His words cause pain to sear across my chest.
He’s right. my wolf agrees, making me flinch. Both my wolf and I know Montgomery speak the truth.
But this is on me. Not Noah.
Once again, I’ve failed to protect us.
“It will not happen again,” I say, looking between Noah and Montgomery. “But neither one of you will go after one another. That’s not how the three of us work.”
“Isn’t it?” Noah asks. “Do the three of us even work?” His angry gaze shifts from Montgomery to me.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I question.
“It means we’re supposed to be a unit. Everyone has told us that since the day we were born but we don’t fucking work. He,” he gestures toward Montgomery, “doesn’t talk to us. How the hell are we a unit when even though he’s back, he refuses to speak to us, let alone run a damn pack with us?”
“Noah,” I growl through gritted teeth. “You’re pushing it.”
“I’m not?—”
“I don’t need this shit,” Montgomery growls before storming off. He storms out of the back door, ripping his shirt off as he goes. A beat later, through the door screen, I see his wolf racing toward the woods.
“What is wrong with you?” I shove Noah.
He blinks, shocked, I assume, with my over-the-top reaction. At least for me it is.
“Me? You know not a damn thing I just said isn’t true. He stays as far away from us as damn possible but wants to turn around and blame me for not protecting our mate? Fuck him.”
I get in Noah’s face, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. “Don’t ever say that again. He’s our brother, our triplet.”
“Get off of me.” He, not so gently, pushes me away.
Noah is rearing for a fight, for some reason. Montgomery’s comment must’ve really gotten to him. But I won’t give him the fight he’s looking for.
Not when this is all my fault. I won’t see either of my brother’s hurt, injured, or put into danger because of my failings.
I take a step back, shaking my head to clear it.
“It’s dinner. You should eat something.” I run my hand through my hair. “Serafina too. She hasn’t been out of her room since you two arrived home. She must be hungry.”
I don’t need to hear her say it to know that is the cause. The tugging feeling in the middle of my stomach tells me of her hunger. I don’t know how I know that’s what it is, but it is a new experience I had not had this afternoon.
“She’s hungry,” Noah says without looking at me. He must sense it too because he presses a palm to his stomach.
In all of my years, I have never heard of a mate being able to feel his mate’s hunger in his own body.
“You know as well as I do she’ll refuse to come down,” Noah reminds me, needlessly.
I grit my teeth as my wolf whines in my damn chest. He wants to see her. We have not laid eyes on her since this morning. Though he knows she’s safe inside of our house, hearing that she went missing for some time during the day, coupled with her stubbornness to come out of her room, has my wolf on edge.
“I will take it to her,” I tell Noah before beginning to make a plate of food out of the leftovers Montgomery left from the day before.