Chapter 21
SEBASTIAN
Billionaire Found Dead in Hollywood Hills
A gruesome discovery on the Griffith Park trail—two hikers found a body mauled by a mountain lion last week.
LAPD Forensics have confirmed the body belongs to Ivan Paska, CEO of Paskal Industries.
He was known to walk the park when staying at his nearby mansion.
Foul play is not suspected. A celebration of life charity event will be announced at a later date.
The Paska family requests privacy during this difficult time.
Returning to the real world wasn't easy, but it was necessary. The world needed to know Ivan Paska was dead, but in a way that wouldn't implicate me and Gunnar.
Help came from an unexpected source. Sergei knew a mountain lion shifter in the Los Angeles Hills, not far from a trail where my dad liked to hike.
Sergei placed a quick call to him to meet us at the landing strip north of the city.
Meanwhile, I bribed Dad's private jet pilot to fly to New York and wait for Dad's visit in a week, when he was scheduled to attend a charity ball to benefit children's brain cancer.
I'd always hated sharing a calendar with him, but now it proved beneficial.
Loftus flew the six of us back to LA, and no one spoke of the two bodies in the cargo hold: Dad and Dr. Bunting.
Sergei and the Chernobyl pack had promised to dispose of the others somewhere they would be found.
Their families deserved to know what had happened to them, and that they had died working for my father.
It would help me shut down his clandestine research projects once and for all.
Saying goodbye to the Chernobyl pack, and to Bettina and Nor, had been harder than I expected.
Our Swiss friends had risked their lives to come to Chernobyl, but Bettina swore she couldn't have stayed at the resort another moment while I was in danger.
Word traveled fast through the shifter world I hadn't even known existed.
They honored me with their acceptance, and I promised I would do everything in my power to keep their secret.
I slept most of the way home, waking up to change diapers and rock the babies back to sleep twice before drowsiness overtook me.
Amber recognized it as a trauma response.
I'd been overtaxed and on edge for months while we were imprisoned.
Now that I was free, and in the air where no one could hurt me, surrounded by the six people I loved most in the world (yes, I included Loftus in that number), I could rest.
Gunnar slept beside me, buckled into his seat.
Across from him, our girls slept in the car seats a strange man had handed us at the airport, no questions asked.
He smelled like a shifter, but I didn't recognize the animal.
Until Sergei mentioned the mountain lions in California, I thought wolves were the only ones.
When we arrived at the small airport outside LA, the mountain lions were already there with a bread truck. We loaded the bodies into the back, gave some instructions on where to leave my dad so it would look like an accident, and explained the state of his body inside the black bag.
"His head's off," Gunnar said with a shrug. "I kept pulling until I knew he was dead."
Yes, that was my dad he was talking about, but after the hell Ivan Paska had put us through, I felt no pang of remorse.
"Sorry if that's gross," I told the twink with surfer hair.
"Fits our MO," he said. "We'll crush the skull to make it look natural, and gnaw on the wounds. It'll look like a mountain lion kill when we're done."
"Won't that put the real mountain lions in danger?" Gunnar asked.
"If it does," I said, "we'll throw money at the authorities until they look the other way."
Gunnar rolled his eyes at me. "You'd bribe them?"
"To save innocent endangered species? Hell yes, I would bribe them."
Gunnar blushed and pretended to cover Chandra's ears. "Swearing."
"We need to get the girls home," Amber said, wrapping both arms around Blossom as though to protect her from the harmless-looking man.
We were all tense around Roach. Unlike the wolves of the Chernobyl pack, whose scents had calmed us, he smelled like a competing predator.
"Don't worry, bro," he said. "We got this.
Drop him in the park, toss the doctor on a popular beach.
No problem." He sauntered toward the driver's side of the truck while the other two shifters climbed in the back with the bodies.
As we watched him drive away, I knew this wasn't the last we would hear from the Griffith pack.
After the funeral and celebration of life ceremony, Gunnar and I reentered society head-on.
We gave a press conference, where we told reporters we had been vacationing in Switzerland while waiting for adoption paperwork to go through.
"It was all very hush-hush, with the blessing of my dad, God rest his soul. "
"He was outraged when he couldn't find you a few months ago," the reporter pushed back.
"All an act." I sniffled and dabbed at the corner of my eye for the cameras. "He knew where we were the entire time." It was close enough to the truth. "No more questions, please."
We waited for a whistleblower to come forward, but no one dared. If anyone knew my father had held us captive in our wolf forms for months, they let it die with him. The truth would have endangered our friends in the Chernobyl pack and risked exposing the existence of shifters.
We were happy when the rumors died down and society accepted Gunnar and me as newlyweds with gorgeous twins adopted from our surrogate, a Swiss woman named Bettina Bertholf. Auntie Bettina, as she wanted the girls to call her, happily encouraged the ruse.
In the early autumn, we returned to Switzerland for a fundraiser. Nosy European donors wanted to know more about my father's disappearance, and I wanted their money to complete the renovation and open the ski resort in the new year.
After my speech, Bettina and the children played in a corner of the room. Gunnar and I took to the dance floor. I would need to field their questions eventually, but I had more important matters to discuss with my mate.
"It's almost my birthday," I whispered in Gunnar's ear.
"We've known each other a year," he said as we swayed. "I still remember wishing you would get so drunk on your birthday, you'd be too sick for the shuttle launch."
"I bet you feel silly now." I sucked his earlobe into my mouth, and he hissed out a breath. "Wolves don't get hangovers."
"If only I'd been a wolf on my twenty-first birthday.
" We'd talked about his disastrous trip to the Las Vegas strip to drink and gamble.
His college roommate had stolen his wallet and his car keys while he was passed out drunk.
He'd ridden back to Colorado Springs with a sweet older couple who hadn't wanted him to hitchhike.
If only he could remember their names. They deserved a nice vacation home to live out their retirement years in comfort.
While not quite ready to retire, Gunnar and I needed a vacation, and I knew just the place. "Want to go back to Vegas for my birthday? If anyone tries to roofie you, they'll have to answer to me and a full security detail."
"Vegas?" He frowned at me. "I hate that place."
"You have bad memories, and rightfully so. Let's make new ones."
He leaned his head against my shoulder. "Only because it's your birthday. Who will watch the girls?"
"We'll leave them with Amber and Lonnie in Hawaii until Lonnie's birthday. Then, we'll come back here before we hit up the night life in Munich. We'll stay with Bettina for the holidays, soft open the resort in January, and join the Chernobyl pack's spring run."
"You think of everything." He heaved an exasperated sigh, and then he laughed. "You really think we can replace the bad memories with good ones?"
"Have you thought about being kidnapped once since we've been here?"
"Yes. Every time I see someone in a tactical suit walk by the windows." He pointed as one walked past.
"I told them to dress up." As the new head of security for Paskal Worldwide, my family's assets recombined under one global entity, Lonnie had refused my request.
I was known for being a pushover with Dad's old guard.
Lonnie was still working through résumés after asking everyone from the warehouses' night shifts to personal bodyguards to reapply for their jobs.
I trusted him to choose the right people to keep our secrets and guard my children with their lives, but that took time.
For now, he wanted a visible show of force, if anyone tried to kidnap us again.
"The girls will be safe wherever they are, now that Lonnie, Amber, and Bettina can shift to protect them." Sergei had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, ones we needed to research in the new year.
Gunnar met my gaze. "We'll celebrate your birthday with a week in Vegas, but then we'll come right back here to help with the final renovations. No vacation in Hawaii until the resort is finished."
He drove a hard bargain, but, "Agreed." I leaned down and kissed him, not caring that we were at a formal event where some of the donors might not appreciate public displays of affection. If they were that pious, or homophobic, I didn't want their money, anyway.
It wasn't like we needed it, but I refused to liquidate any of my new assets before I knew how deep my dad's defense contracts went. So far, I hadn't found any evidence that world governments knew about shifters, but we were still sifting through encrypted folders and secret labs.
Our trip to Vegas would give my employees time to work without their new boss hovering over their shoulders and asking a million questions. Instead, I would be in an air-conditioned hotel room, relearning every inch of my mate's body.
"Amber's birth control shot works," I said as we swayed. "I'm shooting blanks."
"For how long?" Gunnar gazed up at me with glassy eyes.
"It lasted ten days, but it's safe enough to take weekly."
"If you think I'm letting you out of bed while we're in Vegas …"
"Not a chance." I dipped him low, almost knocking into another couple on the dance floor, and kissed him again.
He clung to my shoulders when I brought him back up, his voice breathy. "Is it working now?"
I pretended to look at my watch near his hip, and then I laughed. "Yep. I'm good for the next week."
"Meet me in the steam room in ten minutes," he whispered before wrenching out of my arms. I adjusted my jacket, making sure it covered my obvious erection as he kissed the girls goodnight.
He spoke to Bettina and Lonnie before turning back to wink at me. Then, he disappeared into the hallway that led to the new guest suites with built-in steam rooms.
A donor kept me from following him, and I was pulled back into my role as CEO. The man offered a generous donation in return for a future favor.
"I don't play that game," I said. "If you want to donate, do it. You'll get the same discount as everyone else. If that's not enough," I shrugged, "take your money elsewhere."
He snorted and walked away mumbling something about, "Not the way your father would have done it."
Nothing made me prouder than being the opposite of Ivan Paska. Well, except for the two beautiful girls yawning in their bouncy chairs in the corner. I kissed them goodnight and checked with Bettina. Yes, it was time to put them to bed. No, she wouldn't wait up for us to return.
"Get out of here before you spontaneously combust and take the entire resort with you." She shooed me with both hands. "Go find your mate before your scent sends us all into heat."
Was that one of my new wolfy superpowers? I didn't care. There was only one wolf who garnered my full attention. I would give it to him for as long as he would have me. He called me cheesy when I said it, but I loved him to the moon and back. It wasn't a cliché if it was true.
THE END