Chapter 7
SEVEN
MONSTER
Prowler called emergency church early. Three hours of sleep wasn’t enough for Monster, but Ulf was alert enough for both of them. He was practically vibrating with anticipation of seeing Carys again soon.
The first thing Monster planned to do was kiss the fuck out of her without the silver cuff. Find out if she was theirs. Then he’d kiss and fuck her until she couldn’t see straight.
Looking around the table, he noticed Bulldog was mainlining coffee while Ghoul chugged an energy drink.
Prowler banged the gavel down so hard on the table that Bulldog’s coffee leaped in his mug.
“We’ve got a situation, so I’m going to cut to the chase.” Prez looked from Bulldog to Monster with something akin to pity in his eyes.
“Tell me everything you know about your most recent overnight guest?”
That was not a question he’d been expecting. Women were rarely discussed unless someone was taking an ol’ lady.
“I don’t see how that’s up for discussion. As of now—”
“When your President asks you a question, you answer it. If he thinks you need further clarification, he’ll give it to you,” Bulldog scolded, but not with as much heat as Monster expected.
Prowler put his hand on his Veep’s shoulder, in an I have it from here gesture.
“Monster, I’ll tell you after you answer. I don’t want anything I have to say to put you on the defensive.”
The defensive? What the fuck. Just saying that put him on the defensive.
“Name’s Carys, don’t know her last name. Drives the Jeep that was parked outside the gate.” The second he said that, Prowler flicked his fingers toward Boogey and Kansas, who were both already clacking away on their keyboards. One likely hacking public record, the other checking shifter files.
“Sick mom, don’t know about a dad, vegetarian, and can suck a trailer hitch through a garden hose. Is that enough?”
Prowler raised an eyebrow in warning to scale back the attitude.
“Sorry, Prez. Ulf is well, restless, and he doesn’t like that we’re discussing her.”
“Is she your mate?” Kansas’s voice held a touch of awe at the possibility.
“I don’t know, but Ulf really fucking likes her. I’m thinking either way I might make her my ol’ lady.”
Prowler and Bulldog exchanged a look he didn’t like one bit.
“Maybe if you didn’t wear that silver all the time, he …” Prowler’s voice trailed off when his eyes drifted down to his wrist where the cuff had always been. “You’re not feral.”
“No, I guess not. Maybe Ulf has calmed with age or enough silver. I don’t know, but he feels more coherent and unified by the minute.”
A round of whoops and table-slapping filled the room.
Monster blushed, actually blushed. He never wanted to find a mate, didn’t really think he was missing out on anything until Carys. Now, he couldn’t wait to kiss her and know for sure.
“Shit,” he heard Bulldog swear under his breath.
“Can I be privy to why we’re discussing this in—”
“Donaldson!” Boogeyman shouted with glee. “Carys Donaldson. Mother Linda, father listed as unknown, thirty-two, a Capricorn, works at a small FBO. She’s a certified aircraft mechanic, annnnnd has an apartment in the southwest part of town.”
Monster listened to all the new things he was learning about Carys with interest. Everything his brother was saying just made her hotter.
He could picture his pixie in greasy coveralls, holding a big wrench next to a small twin-engine aircraft, and fuck, it made him hard.
He was definitely going to ask her to dress up for him next time.
He was pulled out of his fantasy when Kansas kept repeating her mother’s name.
“Linda Donaldson. Linda Donaldson, Linda … I know that name,” he muttered a little more to himself before he looked up at Monster, then to Prowler with wide eyes and a concerned look on his face.
“It’s not the most unusual name. As a matter of fact, Linda Donaldson seems a little common. However, since we’re discussing her daughter in an emergency meeting, it can’t be a coincidence. I mean, what are the—”
“Kansas. Just spit it out, brother. Where do you know that name from?” Boogeyman brought Kansas back to the subject at hand because when he got going, he would wax on for twenty minutes before getting to the point.
The man was a wealth of information and one hell of a King, but it took him two business days to get to the point if you didn’t dial him in.
“Right. Linda Donaldson. That name was in the files I got from Ben a while back. She was their first successful breeding program female. If you call being raped repeatedly by multiple males until you get pregnant successful.” Monster’s stomach bottomed out, and Ulf howled a long, painful keening cry.
Could Carys be the product of that breeding? Monster banged his fist on the table at the thought.
“Is the child’s name mentioned?”
Kansas typed some until he found what he was looking for. “No, but the DNA test revealed who the father was so she could be bonded to him.” Kansas’s face went white as chalk. “It was Samual.”
Fuck.
“You mean the Samual?” Ghoul asked.
Kansas nodded.
Samual was the wolf who’d volunteered Kansas’s family as guinea pigs.
The one who tried to get Kansas into the lab to test the wolf ejector they were developing.
One that would suppress it enough that it leaped from the body but couldn’t live in another host. If it couldn’t eject itself, it would suffocate and die a slow, painful death.
That was when Kansas had run and never looked back.
The thought of his beautiful pixie being that evil man’s offspring made bile rise in his throat.
So many emotions were assaulting him at once, and he couldn’t sort through them, so Monster focused on facts and information.
Monster was trying to understand what everything meant, but it was hard to see beyond why the club was discussing his woman.
“In light of all that, can I know why we brought her up in the first place, already?”
As hard as he tried to keep his emotions in check, he was failing miserably.
“Bulldog?” Prowler said to his Veep.
Bulldog cleared his throat before speaking. “When we got back from Cliff’s, there was a familiar scent in your room. When I grabbed the note, it was strong, and I tried to place it. It wasn’t until I’d gotten home that I figured it out. That scent was in one of the rooms at Cliff’s place.”
“What the fuck?” Monster stood, almost overturning his chair with the force.
He paced as Ulf howled. He was bashing against the invisible barriers that separated man from beast. Ulf wanted out.
Monster would’ve been tempted to give in to the call of the fur, except he wasn’t sure if Ulf would attack the messenger, so to speak, in his protectiveness over Carys.
“I hate to say it, brother, but what are the odds that she just happened into our bar that night?” Prowler asked.
Kansas slapped the domino that had been hurled at Monster onto the table. “This and the fact that his daughter is connected to us can’t be a coincidence. Samual is very much alive and coming for us. It sounds like Cliff is somehow connected to it. He clearly had ties to Domino.”
Monster didn’t believe in coincidences either, and that broke his fucking heart.
He had started picturing a future with Carys.
Now, he didn’t know how to feel about any of it.
If they let her go, would Ulf revert to his old self?
Monster could feel in his bones that the reason Ulf was changing had to do with Carys.
“So, if she—he couldn’t bear to say her name—is connected to that pack, if she’s Samual’s git, could she have drugged me or something? Somehow changed Ulf?” Could something she’d done have made him feel drawn to her?
He posed the question to himself, but the looks on his brother’s faces were an answer—one he didn’t want.
“Fuck,” Prowler cursed. “We need to make a move, and now. If she, and by extension Cliff, has even a remote connection to the dead pack, then it can get out of hand real fast. Without the threat of the pack, anyone with knowledge of shifters is a danger to us all.”
Everyone murmured in agreement.
“Then let’s do it. Let’s go to Cliff’s, secure him. Then locate Carys. Once she’s secured, we can question them separately. Ask the right questions and see where it all stands,” Ghoul stated.
All the brothers looked horrified at the thought of holding a woman for questioning.
“We don’t hurt women,” Kansas growled.
“I’m not suggesting that. There’s more than one way to secure someone, geez.
What I’m saying is, we get Cliff in my funhouse.
I’ll get the information out of him that way.
As far as the lady is concerned, I was thinking the big guy can woo her back to his bed.
You get the answers your way. If we like what she has to say, done and done. ”
“Sounds good to me. All in favor?” Prowler’s question was met with all ayes.
“Okay, Kansas, Monster, Ghoul, Creedence, myself, and the prospect will head over to Cliff’s right now.
Once he’s secured, Monster, you call the girl and invite her here.
Make sure she parks inside this time so she can’t dip out.
Not that she’ll have free run of the place, but as a precaution.
Boogeyman, why don’t you pay Linda a visit?
Since you can charm the venom out of a rattlesnake, see what information she’d be willing to share.
Take the kid with you too. You’ll stick out less visiting a care facility with a baby-faced boy in tow.
If anyone asks, he’s her long-lost grandson. ”
With everyone clear on their assignments, they headed out in cars and vans.
Monster’s emotions were in a fucking blender set to frappe. Had she set him up? And why him? Or maybe he was just the unlucky one. She had kissed Kansas first. So, was Monster just the gullible one who fell for her tricks?