Chapter 15 #2
Cole climbs to his feet, brushing grass off his jeans. “All right. What’s going on?” No play is left in him now. “You don’t call the two of us out of nowhere and plant us on your door for no reason. Is Bella in danger?”
I look at the two of them. Daniel and I learned the game on that muddy strip behind the pack house with these two dogging our heels the whole time.
We all grew up together, including Adrian.
None of them ever turned their backs on Bella.
They still swing by to check on her, the last piece of my brother any of us has left.
“Something’s happened, and I can’t take it to my uncle,” I say.
Tomas pushes up onto his elbows. “Well, spit it out. What happened with Bella?”
“It’s not just Bella.” I keep my voice low, in case it travels. “My daughter, too.”
Cole blinks while Tomas straightens up.
“Your what?” Cole gapes at me.
“Mia.” I hold his stare. “She’s mine.”
Tomas gets there first, counting back the years. “Mia’s yours. Which makes Jessa...” He works it a second. “Hold on. When did the two of you ever...”
“I don’t remember it happening.” Saying it aloud still turns my stomach. “That’s kind of another problem. Voss knows. He also knew she was pregnant.”
Cole’s lip curls. “Voss, that little jackass.” He shakes his head. “He’s been off ever since you started calling. Phone’s dead half the time, and word is he’s looking to change his number.”
“That’s interesting,” I murmur.
Tomas cracks his knuckles. “Say the word, I’ll drive out there tonight and shake it loose out of him.”
“Not yet.” I keep my tone even. “No sense spooking him worse than he already is. What I need is to trace where I actually was those weeks ten years ago, down to the last bar and hotel room.” I look between them. “You two were there for most of it. Can you help?”
Tomas nods slowly. “The bar. That sports place off the river with the bat wings, the one we practically lived in that season.” He glances at Cole. “The same owner runs it to this day.”
Cole’s brow furrows, a memory working loose.
“You were off for quite a while there, Marc, three days or four. Your touch went to hell in practice, and you looked half sick.” He sits forward.
“I flagged it to Voss back then. He waved it off, said you were drinking too hard.” A second passes.
“But I’ve watched you put a whole table under and walk out straight.
That wasn’t the drink. You snapped back afterward, so I stopped chewing on it. ”
I purse my lips. “No bar keeps ten-year-old security footage.”
“Of course not.” Tomas grins. “But the owner forgets nothing, and half the regulars from back then still prop up that same rail. It was a quiet place with no press, which is why we could drink there in peace. People remember us there. I’ll go ask around myself.”
“Show him my picture.” I think it through. “Ask him straight whether I came in with a woman one night that season. I’ll send you a photo of Jessa so he knows the face.”
Cole studies me. “You truly don’t remember this woman, nothing at all?”
“No.” I drag a hand over my jaw. “But my wolf knows her. It’s been climbing the walls since the day she turned up, and it gets louder every time I’m near her.”
Tomas and Cole trade a look. I don’t like where it’s headed.
“Marcus.” Tomas keeps it careful. “You sure she’s not your fated mate?”
“I don’t think so.” The denial comes easily, worn smooth from saying it to Adrian already. “Daniel told me what it was like when he found Hannah. What I’ve got with Jessa isn’t that. My wolf strains toward her, sure. There’s no cord drawn tight between us, though. I’d feel it if there were.”
I pause. “Fated or not, she’s still mine. Both of them are.”
Cole huffs. “Does she know that? Because from where I’m sitting, she barely puts up with you.”
I laugh humorlessly. “She’s got reason to be pissed. Voss really fucked things up for me.” I rub the back of my neck. “She doesn’t know I’ve worked out that Mia’s mine. I’m trying to figure out how to reassure her that I have no plans to abscond with our kid.”
Tomas rubs his temple. “So you know, but she doesn’t know that you know?”
“I feel like we’re speaking in riddles out here,” Cole mutters.
I glance toward the house. “That’s not all. There’s something else happening, the reason why I called you to look after them.”
Both men focus on me.
“Shifters have started going missing in different packs. It’s very low key, kids or young adults, temperamental.”
Cole stares at me. “Okay? And?”
“And I think it’s wolfsbane.”
My friends stiffen. “You’re full of shit. Wolfsbane? That’s extinct.”
“It wasn’t extinct when Bella was nearly poisoned from it a few weeks ago.” I meet Tomas’s gaze. The two hiss.
“The fuck? Why are you telling us this now?” Cole snaps.
“Because my uncle didn’t think it was wolfsbane. I could have considered it a one-off incident had another attempt not been made recently on both the girls.”
Their expressions are grim as they watch me. “When?”
“The festival. They were given cotton candy laced with it by Kylan’s right-hand man. The fucker must’ve been following us. Bella didn’t take hers, but Mia nearly died.”
Tomas’s face has gone dark. “And the alpha knows all this?”
“He knows about Bella. Considering how dismissive he was, I’m not telling him about Mia.
I need to dig into it. This is where the missing shifters come in.
If wolfsbane has been around, it’s not recent.
I started looking into missing shifters and found two dead and buried, most likely from wolfsbane. ”
Tomas shakes his head. “Wolfsbane. So the hunters are making a move. They’re going after you.”
“Seems like it. But they wouldn’t have known Mia was a shifter. It might just have been a test. Now they know she’s one of us. Whether they can link her to me or not is another story. Either way, she’s in danger. And so is Bella.”
“And you.” Cole frowns at me.
“I can handle myself.”
“What do you need us to do?” Tomas straightens.
“I want you to find out about that night. And I want you to keep your ears to the ground. And be careful. Wolfsbane has a very distinct smell. Sweet, cloying, bitter. You can’t miss it. Don’t eat or drink anything that smells like it. I’m gathering evidence before I take it to my uncle.”
“And what if he disregards it again?” Cole demands. “Honestly, Marcus. Bella is growing up now. You can take back the alpha seat. This is unnatural, having someone who is not alpha born to lead a pack.”
“I need to focus on Bella. If I focus on the pack, I won’t have time for her.” But my words don’t convince myself anymore.
Neither of them pushes. Tomas plucks a blade of grass and splits it down the center. “And if you had someone in it with you? Say you and Jessa were together. Could you hold both then, the seat and the family?”
I look toward the house. Jessa’s framed in the upstairs window, bent over one of the girls. Whatever she says, Mia throws her head back, laughing. My chest goes tight at the sight, an ache I haven’t let myself feel in years.
I let myself picture it, coming home to that every night, the noise and the mess, four places at the table instead of two. My wolf rolls over at the thought, shameless about it.
Tomas elbows Cole without taking his eyes off me. “He’s already gone. Look at his face.”
I don’t tell him to shut it, which is answer enough. Maybe it’s only the daughter I’m after. Or maybe it runs deeper than that. When I try to see the years ahead, it isn’t only Mia standing in them. Jessa’s there too, in every image.
Cole frowns. “Why come at you or at Bella? Why now?”
“I don’t know yet.” The ball rolls back under my boot.
“I don’t know who to trust right now, so I’m keeping this circle small.
If wolfsbane’s moving again, somebody’s growing it somewhere, and we shut that down before it spreads.
” I count it off. “Adrian’s on the missing wolves.
I need you two to focus on whether anything new is getting passed to shifters, any strange drug.
If the hunters are back in business, every pack is in danger. ”
Both nod. Cole rises, all the play gone out of him. “We’re on it.”
“This stays between the four of us,” I add. “Nothing gets to my uncle.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Cole gestures with his head. “Now stop looking so serious. Your girlfriend is watching.”
They head for the house, bickering over the last of the food, the weight already lifting off them the second there’s a task to chase. I hold back in the dark a beat longer.
Four of us stand between my family and everything closing in, a syndicate of hunters, a poison that shouldn’t exist, whatever crew put my brother in the ground. It doesn’t feel like enough.
I keep seeing the signet ring, curled in a dead girl’s fist so far from home.
I’ve grieved Daniel a whole decade and never once thought to ask the right question.
I trusted my uncle to oversee the investigation, so mad in my own grief that all I could see was Bella and how to hold on to her.
I should have taken part in the investigation. I should have pushed.
My eyes harden.
Whoever is behind this won’t stay hidden for long. They made one mistake, leaving that ring in the ground, and I’m going to dig the whole thing out until I’ve got them by the throat.