Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Sienna
The bark of the oak digs into my shoulder blades through my blouse. I know, without having to lift my head, that Lucas is standing at his office window, watching me.
I can feel his gaze on me; I always do when I sit here. I turn a page of the territorial assessment, pretend to read it, and let a slow smile touch the corner of my mouth.
Look all you want, Alpha Steele.
My wolf stretches, pleased. It’s been a few days since I caught Lucas sleeping under this tree. It’s kind of cute how hard he pretends not to be interested.
A shadow falls across the document in my lap. I glance up. One of the estate house staff members is standing before me, holding a small tray. Coffee, cream, sugar cubes, a little plate of meat skewers still warm enough to send up steam.
“Miss Carter,” she says shyly, “I was asked to bring this down.”
“Oh.” I accept the tray. “Who sent it?”
Her ears turn red. “Uh…I don’t think I can…”
She glances in the direction of Lucas’s window, and I suppress my smile.
“It’s okay. Thank you.”
She nods and retreats across the lawn.
I arrange the tray on the grass beside me, pick up a skewer, and take a bite. The meat is perfect: smoky and tender. The man who claims not to want me is going to a truly embarrassing amount of trouble to make sure I eat. I hum to myself, enjoying the small treat.
I’ve been skipping breakfast almost since I arrived here because dragging myself out of bed is so hard in the mornings.
But for the past couple of days, if I miss any meal, it is delivered to my office.
It tugs at my heartstrings, being looked after like this, even if the man doing it is pretending he’s not.
My smile fades. I can’t understand Lucas.
Why not just accept me? It’s obvious he wants to.
If there is some issue, why not talk to me about it?
I think about the tie the other day—soft, spring green—and the slow, ridiculous blush that climbed up his neck when I reached out and held it between my fingers.
I think about the way his hand closed around my wrist when I mentioned my assistants.
Work in progress, I tell my wolf.
She yawns and settles.
My phone buzzes. Violet’s name on the screen, a small, green “accept” button, and the usual lift in my chest. I swipe and angle the camera upward.
“Hi,” I say, smiling.
“Hi, yourself.” Violet’s face fills the screen, backlit by a window I recognize as the one in her and Darius’s breakfast room. “You look entirely too comfortable for a woman in enemy territory.”
“It is not enemy territory.” I get to my feet. “Give me a minute. Too many ears everywhere.”
I walk over to the tree line in the distance, where the forest begins.
“Hmm.” She narrows her eyes. “Where are you?”
“Outside. Working.”
“Working outside, in the sunshine, surrounded by trees, at Silvercrest. You sound like a woman on a retreat.”
I laugh. “He’s feeding me skewers from his window now.”
Violet’s eyebrows climb up her forehead. “He’s what?”
“Lucas sends me food whenever he sees me sitting out here. He thinks he’s being subtle. I am a very well-fed woman.”
“I see.” Violet leans back. “How is the stay, really?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And how,” Violet inquires, “is Lucas?”
I tilt my head back and laugh at the branches of the tree I have stopped under. The leaves shift green and gold over my face. “I’m working on him.”
“How close is he to cracking?”
“Who knows? He’s very stubborn.”
“Men, right?” Violet rolls her eyes.
I climb over a log, enjoying the peace of the forest. “And they call us exhausting.” I snicker, and we both laugh. “How is your mother? Is she still planning to come to Moonvale?”
The air on the other end of the call changes. Violet’s smile thins at the edges. She glances off camera for a second, then she’s back.
“She’s coming. Two days. We’re sending escorts for her.”
“Escorts?” I repeat. “Why does she need escorts? Is everything okay?”
She takes a deep breath and lets it out before continuing. “There’s been a run of hybrid disappearances,” she explains. “One of my mother’s closest friends, Lissa, has been missing for three weeks.”
I stare at Violet. “Are you sure she’s not traveling? Your mother and her friends do like to take trips.”
“No, Sienna, she’s gone. Mom went to her place two days ago. There was a half-eaten meal on the table. Her belongings were all there. It’s like she walked out of the apartment in the middle of lunch and…vanished.”
“Oh, Violet…” I murmur.
My friend shakes her head. “She’s not the first one, Sienna. I looked into it. There have been nine hybrids who have gone missing in the past year. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more I don’t know about.”
“Has anything turned up? Any sign of them, any pattern, any suspect?”
“No. That’s the part I can’t let go of. Nine people, and no body, no ransom demand, not even a rumor. It’s clean. Whoever is doing this is good at it.”
My wolf has lifted her head inside me, ears pricked forward.
“Are you sure those are recent disappearances?” I ask slowly.
Violet’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”
“Hybrid wolves were illegal for a long time because of their magical powers. They went into hiding. If people were disappearing then, who would have reported it? Who would have noticed? What if this has been happening for a while but we’re only finding out now because hybrids have come back into the open? ”
“Goddess,” she breathes. “I never thought about it like that.” Violet is silent for several seconds, rubbing her face.
When she drops her hand, she looks tired.
“It took a lot of effort to convince my mother to come here where I can keep an eye on her. Darius is in the process of registering all hybrids, but after what was done to them, do we really think they want to reveal themselves so openly?”
She has a point.
“There may be no way of knowing how many have actually been taken.” I sigh. “I’ll talk to Lucas. He has an investigative network that stretches into every pack in the region. If anyone can find a pattern in the noise, it’s his people. I will get him to loop in Darius and run it jointly.”
Violet gives me a small smile. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I tell her. “There’s going to be a lot of paperwork for this. He’ll be supporting our pack as part of the merger. The work never ends.” Even as I keep my tone lighthearted, I know how worried my friend is. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Violet. Don’t worry.”
“Stay where you are while we figure this out.”
I laugh, a little thinly. “I am in the safest pack in the territory, Violet. I could not be more surrounded by teeth if I tried.”
“Still.”
“Still,” I agree, more softly now. “I hear you.”
We talk for another minute about her mother and about how Anne is doing in her new, mated life. I step between two birch trees without really paying attention to where I’m going.
“Anyway,” Violet is saying, “I’ll let you get back to your work. Tell that grumpy alpha—”
Suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck lifts. Every fine, soft hair, all at once. A cold line of it running from my hairline down into the collar of my blouse.
I stop walking. My wolf is on her feet inside me, hackles raised, a low rumble starting in the base of my chest.
“Sienna?” Violet’s voice is sharp. “What is it?”
I do not answer. I turn my head slowly. The forest presses close around me in green and brown, dappled with sun. There is no birdsong. I didn’t notice until now how quiet it has gotten in here.
“Something is watching me,” I tell my friend, and my voice comes out quiet and even in a way that surprises me.
“Where are you?” Violet asks urgently.
“In the forest.” I swallow. “The one bordering the estate.”
“Sienna, get out of there.”
“I’m trying to.”
I start walking backward, eyes flicking from tree trunk to tree trunk. My heels sink into moss. I hold the phone up. I don’t know why I am still holding the phone up when my wolf is snarling at the back of my throat, a continuous low vibration: run run run.
“Violet, I think I have to shif—”
A snarl rips from the undergrowth to my left. Close. Too close. The sound is strange in a way I don’t have time to parse.
I run.
“Sienna!”
“Don’t hang up!” I gasp, already sprinting. The phone is clenched in my white-knuckled hand. Branches whip at my face. I duck on instinct, pivot around a tree, tear up a slope of loose leaves. “Don’t hang up, don’t hang up.”
Behind me, something is giving pursuit. The impacts are heavy. Four-legged. Fast. I can’t see it. It’s not behind me. It’s running parallel to me!
My wolf is howling inside me to come out, to turn and fight, and I am half a breath from letting her. My skin is already starting to itch with the shift.
Tree line. Get to the tree line.
I can see the brightness of the lawn through the trunks ahead, the pale stone of the low wall.
My lungs burn. My heels are useless on this terrain, and I kick one off and then the other without slowing down.
Barefoot is faster. My claws are starting to extend at my fingertips.
I can feel fangs pressing against my lip.
I break through the last ring of birches at a dead run and slam into a solid wall of male chest.
My claws are up at his throat before my brain has caught up with my body. I have him by the collar, one hand fisted in fabric, the other hooked just under his jaw with half an inch separating the point of my index claw and the skin of his neck.
His hands come up to catch me at the waist.
“Sienna.”
It’s Lucas.
My knees buckle.
He takes my weight instantly, a firm band of arm around my middle, pulling me in against him so I don’t fall to the ground. My claws are still at his throat. I stare at them. I stare at his throat. There is a faint line of red where the tip of one claw has touched skin.
“Oh, Goddess.” My voice comes out shaking. “Oh, Goddess, it’s you. It’s you.”
“You can lower your claws.”