23. Chapter 23
Riley
Gunnar and I retraced Viggo’s life, starting with his cabin. Dust motes and silence greeted us as we cautiously let ourselves in. Even the mysterious tree in the middle of the great room seemed dormant as we carefully tore the place apart, checking every conceivable hiding place, but found nothing.
We searched for another journal, a USB drive, or even a scribbled note. Anything to help us figure out where Viggo could be. Instead, we found mostly books, canned goods, and a sizeable collection of hiking boots, neatly arranged by color. The man was apparently fond of practical footwear.
Next, we stopped at the sporting goods store in Afton.
The typical small-town store stocked a strange assortment of items, from fishing poles to homemade jerky to snowshoes.
A bait cooler advertising “fresh worms” sat just inside the door.
The eighty-year-old owner stood stooped behind the counter, and we had to raise our voices to be heard.
He told us Viggo had been in the shop for fishing line over a month ago, but he didn’t say much else.
Freda drove us back to Yellowstone in grim silence, her hands steady on the wheel, the beautiful landscape sliding past. My implant quietly worked, the way it often operated when I was tired or depressed.
My phone vibrated, and I listlessly pulled it out and looked down to see who was contacting me. Someone had texted several photos but no comments. I stared down at pictures of Conall letting two beautiful women in expensive, short cocktail dresses into a luxury hotel suite.
I closed the text and stared unseeing out the window. My phone buzzed with an incoming call as Drew’s name lit up my screen.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” His voice sounded distracted, as if he were multitasking. His keyboard clacked in the background.
“Fine. Sleep and some food helped. We’re driving back from Viggo’s cabin.” Gunnar still didn’t know I could Spool. I probably needed to break it to him soon.
“One of us will call you later and fill you in, but the Alpha says we’re holding off on going public with the signatures.”
I straightened. “Why?”
“Public opinion is still trending against Apex. The registration legislation should be dead soon, three senators have called for hearings, and Apollo’s stock is down. We may not need it.” Drew’s voice had a careful, placating edge. I hated it.
“I want people to know.” Gunnar turned around and lifted an eyebrow.
“We may still need it, but not yet.” I could picture Drew pushing up his black-rimmed glasses.
“Where is Conall? Is everything okay?”
The typing stopped for a beat. “He’s fine, but busy. I have to go. Conall will probably call you tonight.”
“Wait, Drew—”
The call ended, and the vehicle fell silent. Gunnar glanced back at me. “That was abrupt.”
I shrugged, feeling restless and raw. “He’s probably doing three things at once.” Freda glanced at me in the rear-view mirror.
The implant processed the exchange, filing away Drew’s behavior as evasive and the photos of Conall and the two women as highly concerning. A cold, uneasy feeling settled in my stomach, reminiscent of the time Conall and his Pack had ghosted me.
The empty road stretched ahead, and jagged, white-capped slopes rose in the distance. My nose and eye had stopped bleeding, but a faint copper taste still lingered at the back of my throat.
When we got home, Gunnar limped to his room for an early night, and Freda went back outside to guard me from the front porch. She hadn’t said more than ten words since she found out I could Spool.
I followed her out and stared at her profile. “We need to talk.”
She didn’t look at me. “I’m a Beta and your bodyguard. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
Her words felt like a slap. My implant tried to wall off the hurt, but it leaked through, biting and sharp. Freda had been with me nonstop for the past month, and she was there when Jamie was injured and Malcolm died. Now she was freezing me out and treating me like an assignment.
“I’m a Resonant,” I reminded her unnecessarily.
She stared out into the darkness. “You’re not just a Resonant, though, are you? There’s nothing I can do about how I feel. Would you prefer someone else? Maybe Bennion?”
“Bennion might be a competent Beta, but he’s also an annoying jerk, so that would be a no.
” I sat in one of the rockers. “When I told Conall what I could do, we were standing in Caleb Campbell’s bedroom, and I’d known him for approximately three hours.
I made him swear a solemn pledge that he wouldn’t disclose it to anyone. ”
Freda’s jaw worked. “Does anyone else in the Pack know besides Drew?” she finally asked.
“Drew and Ash figured it out on their own, but Jamie and Sahara still don’t know.” I swallowed. “You know what would happen to me if the wrong people found out.”
She nodded and gazed out over the gathering darkness, then sat in the other rocker. “Okay.”
“You can be angry if you want, but it was never about trust. It’s about survival.”
“I’m just the Alpha Mate’s bodyguard.” There was no bitterness in her voice now, just a tired statement of fact.
“You’re not just my bodyguard. You’re my friend…
probably one of my best friends. Which is pathetic, I know, since I haven’t known you that long.
I thought maybe you, I don’t know, cared about me besides as the Alpha’s Mate.
” I held up my palm. “It’s okay. Conall became interested in me when he found out I could Spool.
It’s a loaded, dangerous secret, and it changes how people treat me. ”
Freda was quiet for a long moment, then slowly exhaled.
“It scares me. I’ve been assigned to keep you safe, and suddenly I find out I’m not only guarding my Alpha’s beloved mate but also one of the rarest, most gifted Cogs alive.
It does something to a person’s head. You’ll have to give me time to adjust.”
I remembered the photos on my phone. “I may be Conall’s mate, but I’m not his beloved anything.
There’s something else you should know. When I went back to the bunker, I wasn’t looking for signs that Viggo had been there.
I was looking for General Wilson’s energy signature. Drew verified that I found it.”
Freda pinched the bridge of her nose. “If you go public as a Spooler, I’m going to need a substantial raise and a lot more help. Your life is going to change.”
I stared up at the night sky and thought about my dad. “I know, but I can’t keep hiding.”
The next morning, Gunnar dragged himself to the kitchen table and spread Viggo’s financial records across the scarred surface. I sat opposite with my laptop, nursing a mug of tea. Viggo had lived a simple life, and it didn’t take us long to get through his records.
“His bank accounts don’t show anything,” Gunnar muttered, scrolling through another statement. “No large withdrawals, no unusual deposits. The man paid bills and saved money. His big splurge was eating out at Emma’s Café and buying hiking boots and fishing shit.”
I rotated my neck and sat back. “His emails and texts are just as boring. Viggo’s idea of excitement was debating about the best types of bait to use. There’s nothing here either.”
Outside, a geyser erupted somewhere in the basin, the distant rumble vibrating through the floorboards.
Gunnar set down the file. “What about surveillance?”
“Nothing on the trail cams, or at the gas stations in Afton or Alpine. The visitor center footage from the day before he disappeared shows him buying a protein bar and talking with a ranger.” I rubbed my eyes, feeling the implant hum at the base of my skull, a steady, cold beat.
“He walked out and vanished into thin air.”
Discouragement settled over me, heavy and suffocating. My father had vanished in an eerily similar way, and helplessness and frustration ate at me.
Months, then years, of training, then searching for clues about my father’s disappearance, with no answers and nothing to show for it, taught me that life was not fair, powerful people got away with almost everything, and you didn’t always find closure. Lord, I was becoming as cynical as Parker.
As frustration mounted, my implant shifted like a gear engaging, and cold clarity washed through me. It began processing. Not the data itself, but the patterns within it.
I opened my laptop again and went back through his purchases. Gunnar was right that Viggo lived a simple life. He bought fish oil pills and protein shakes online regularly.
Until last month, when he paused his purchases.
I started looking through the few apps on his phone when my phone buzzed on the table. My fists tightened as I looked at the screen. It was the same unknown number that had sent me photos yesterday.
Casually, I picked up my phone and made sure Gunnar couldn’t see the screen.
There was only one photo of the blond woman from the previous set.
She was alone, wearing a different outfit.
This time, she wore a snug, short red pencil skirt and a low-cut, sleeveless cream silk blouse.
The woman was walking into Conall’s hotel room, her elegant profile showing off thick blond hair pulled back in a sleek knot and a warm, sensual smile.
Someone had a nice camera to capture all that in the hotel hallway light.
There was no kiss or embrace. Just a beautiful woman entering my mate’s hotel room. I set the phone face down.
Gunnar glanced up. “What’s wrong?” Mangus lay sprawled out on the kitchen floor beside me. He whined softly.
“Nothing. Just tired.” He grunted and went back to reviewing Viggo’s accounts while my heart ached. The woman’s energy wasn’t visible in a photo, but her power and confidence were easy to recognize. She was a wolf shifter.
I remembered what Madison told me about her own father having at least two mates. Granted, the man had been a complete bastard, but the practice wasn’t unheard of. What about lovers? Did Alphas routinely take lovers outside their mate bonds, and I just hadn’t been informed it was going to happen?
My knowledge of wolf shifters was embarrassingly limited for someone mated to an Alpha, and I had no illusions about why Conall chose me. I was a powerful Cog who could Spool. Love and trust would come later. Or so I thought.
We’d never discussed rules, exclusivity, or even a human marriage contract or a prenuptial.
The bond between us was real. I felt it even now, a distant hum against my sternum.
But we’d never defined what it meant to a wolf shifter with a Cog mate who couldn’t shift and run with him under a full moon.
I thought back to the old photos I’d seen online of Conall with other women before I met him. I told myself it was in his past, and it didn’t matter.
Then we’d spent months apart, suffering through the Canis mate-bond sickness. Conall hadn’t spoken to me, and he’d forced an interdiction on his Pack against anyone contacting me. Getting these photos felt like someone had ripped open every jagged scar, and I sat here, bleeding inside.
I didn’t want to make the same mistakes. I couldn’t go through that kind of pain again.
Gunnar looked up when I stood. “I need to talk to Conall. I’ll be back.”
He nodded, and I walked into my bedroom, closed the door, and called him. It rang four times and went to voicemail. His deep voice asked me to leave a message. Instead, I texted him.
Riley: Call me when you can. I need to talk to you
Later that evening, after we cleaned up the dinner dishes, I pulled out my phone for what felt like the hundredth time to see if Conall had called or texted me back.
Nothing.
My mind flashed back to those painful months when he’d blocked me right after the Canis mate-binding ceremony. Maybe I was still hurting or too proud, but I wouldn’t reach out again. We wouldn’t be talking until he contacted me.
No matter how long it took.