Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Marcus
The wolf drags me out of sleep before dawn, and it wants to claim the woman by my side.
My mouth is already at the back of Jessa’s neck when I surface, my teeth aching with how badly the animal wants to sink into her skin.
A single bite would brand her mine before every wolf who ever caught her scent.
I haul myself back so hard the mattress dips.
She doesn’t wake. Exhaustion has her too deep for that, sprawled on her stomach with her face turned from me, the sheet slack at her waist. Faint marks track down her spine where my lips wandered in the dark, and seeing them should quiet the beast pacing behind my ribs.
It doesn’t. The wolf noses toward that untouched place at the curve of her throat, hungry for the one mark I didn’t give.
Sitting up slowly, the covers pooling at my hips, I make myself look at her rather than reach for her.
None of this is right. My animal has never latched on to a person before, not with this ferocity, least of all a grown woman I met weeks ago.
Every hour she breathes under my roof, it claws at me to close the distance.
There’s only one creature a wolf strains toward this hard, and that’s a fated mate.
I’ve been waiting for the bond since the night her car died on my road, waiting for the cord to draw tight inside me.
Nothing pulls. No tether, no low hum, none of what Daniel described the year he found Hannah.
Still the instinct roars at me to take her, to tilt her throat and make it permanent.
Getting up without waking her takes real care.
In the bathroom, I wet a cloth under the hot tap, then wipe her down where the night left her spent.
She murmurs into the pillow and burrows deeper.
I kept her up past any decent hour, some dam between us broken clean through, until she was pleading for rest and I finally gave her mercy.
Guilt tugs low in my gut as I draw the sheet over her shoulder.
A quick shower, and I dress in the dark. The wolf wants out. It wants four legs, the cold air, a straight line back to that bed, so I leave it leashed and go out on two feet instead.
The path along the edge of my land is wet from the night.
I walk it out of habit, my thoughts sliding to the email I read off her phone.
The job’s in Brenton, three states away, a firm with a fatter title and a company apartment waiting.
I could kill that offer with two calls. Their name stuck with me, and I know men who know the men who run it.
One quiet word from me, and the door closes.
But if Jessa ever traced it back to me, whatever we’ve built here will be damaged for good, and I’d deserve it. I have to talk her into staying, and that won’t be easy. Even now she watches every exit. One foot’s already out the door, and she’s not hiding that.
The path bends toward the old house. Ten years, and my feet still know the way. Daniel’s place sits back in the trees past the second creek, dark under a decade of ivy. I’ve run past it a hundred times and never once gone in. This morning I climb the rotted steps and put my hand to the door.
It gives with a groan. Inside, the dust lies thick, gone gray on the furniture Hannah chose.
Nothing’s been moved. Their coats still hang by the door.
A child’s rattle sits on the side table, right where it was set down.
My chest goes tight as I move through the front rooms, past the kitchen, past the stairs, every room exactly as it stood the night they died.
The study stops me cold.
Where the rest of the house sits frozen in place, Daniel’s study has been torn apart.
Drawers hang open, their contents dumped across the boards.
Books lie splayed off the shelves. Someone dragged the desk from the wall, papers fanned everywhere, a decade of dust over the wreck.
The damage is old, layered under years of grime.
Memory of the night I found them surfaces.
Coming through the front, I caught the smell of blood and went straight to the bedroom where they lay.
I passed this room on the way. The door stood open, and the study was whole.
I’m sure of it. Someone came back afterward, into this one room, hunting for something Daniel kept.
The signet ring rises in my mind, the one Adrian pried from a dead girl’s fist three territories away. My father gave it to Daniel, and Daniel never took it off. It shouldn’t exist anywhere but on his hand or in his grave. I pull out my phone and call Adrian.
He picks up on the second ring. “It’s early.”
“You get anywhere on who worked Daniel’s case?”
A pause while he shifts gears. “Your uncle ran it with two men he brought in.”
“Adrian, I need their file.”
My friend hesitates. “It won’t be easy to get, but I’ll find a way.
But there’s something else. While I was asking around about Daniel, I came across something.
” He exhales. “His sister-in-law said something that stuck with me. She said that after your father passed, after you left on tour, Daniel was tired all the time, wrung out.”
“He was a shifter, Adrian.” My brow creases. “We don’t get tired like that.”
“I know.” His voice drops. “That’s what I found odd.
Marcus, you weren’t here near the end when your father’s health began to decline.
But I was. And the symptoms Lyssa, Hannah’s sister, described were eerily similar.
Your father was exhausted all the time, listless.
He often had trouble shifting. This went on for a year.
Remember how he couldn’t take part in the pack run. ”
My mouth has gone dry. “You’re saying both of them showed the same symptoms for a year?”
“Lyssa said she had been visiting from France and Hannah wanted to go for a run. Daniel shifted, but his wolf was off balance, his gait off. Hannah told her that ever since he took the temporary seat, the workload had him tired.”
“Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?” Anger heats the back of my throat. “Ten years, Adrian.”
“Because nobody looked.” He doesn’t flinch from my tone.
“You asked Daniel to hold the seat while you played for two more seasons. My head was buried in reorganizing the pack. Daniel kept his own counsel after he married, so the two of us drifted apart. When we ran together, I saw nothing wrong with him. But after he became the acting alpha, we didn’t get the time to go for a run together. ”
I think of all the phone calls, the video calls I exchanged with my brother. He never said anything. “Do you think someone was poisoning them?”
“That’s a long reach, Marcus.” However, Adrian doesn’t completely reject the idea.
“Nothing’s too long a reach this morning.” I move to the window and look out at the choked garden. “Walk it through with me. Say three rogues came through that door, even four. They attack Hannah first, Daniel walks in, they go after him.”
“Yeah?”
My jaw is set. “Why did we only find their blood? I can’t believe that Hannah and Daniel didn’t put up a fight. Not with Bella upstairs.”
“I thought the rogues took them by surprise,” Adrian says thoughtfully.
“Even then. Daniel wasn’t alpha-born, but he was still a powerful wolf.
Catch him off guard, and he’d have torn two of them open before they dropped him.
There should’ve been rogue blood on those walls, and there was none.
Even if he wasn’t able to drop them or cause major injuries, he should have gotten a few hits in, drawn some blood.
The only way the lack of blood can be explained is if this was an organized hit.
If they were surprised and held down so they couldn’t fight back.
Rogues tear and run. They don’t pin a wolf down and take their time. ”
Adrian hisses, “That whole night was staged then. There were no rogues.”
“I don’t think so.” Anger simmers in my voice, fueled by grief and frustration. All these years and I never questioned the results of the investigation. All these years and my brother and sister-in-law never got justice.
“I want that file by tomorrow,” I go on, keeping my voice down. “And keep my uncle out of it. The last thing I need is him wondering why I’m digging into Daniel after all this time.”
Adrian’s slow to answer me. “You sure we shouldn’t just bring it to him? We’re getting in deep, Marc. If he learns we’ve been working behind his back, he’ll take it hard.”
“I don’t care how he takes it.” My answer is harsh. “He was investigating this. He should have come to these conclusions back then.”
“I’ll keep asking about Daniel’s state of health during that year,” Adrian murmurs. “I’ll try to keep it low key, but Marcus, people will talk. Word will get to your uncle.”
“If it does, then let’s make sure we have something substantial in hand to show him. We need to reopen that investigation.”
“Where are you right now?” Adrian asks.
I hesitate. “Daniel’s place.”
The line goes still. “Why after all these years?”
“I don’t know.” I look around at the ruin before making my way back to the study. “Somebody tore the study. The place was intact when I entered that night. This was done afterward.”
Adrian makes a sound. “What? How bad is it?”
“Like somebody was looking for something. The rest of the house is untouched. Either they found it or they knew it wouldn’t be in the house. But this was definitely after the murders.”
Crouching, I lift a framed photo out of the debris. Hannah and Daniel stand shoulder to shoulder, a fat-cheeked Bella wedged between them, all three of them mid-laugh at whoever held the camera. My eyes burn, and I breathe through it before I can speak.
“If there’s more to how they died than what my uncle told me,” I manage, my voice rough, “I want it dragged into the light now before another ten years slide past.”