Chapter 20 - Sam
The desert seemed to stretch on as we drove across the landscape, heading toward the mountain rising in the distance, the geological layers of the area showing in colored lines that rose up its side.
“Are you going to tell me what that fight was between you and Rachel?” Elias asked.
Panic lanced through me for the briefest moment. If he had overheard at the wrong moment, then this conversation was about to take an unpleasant turn.
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my tone casual.
“I saw her storming out of your office the other day,” Elias said. “She seemed pretty upset. She didn’t even notice me. So I was curious what had happened to make my kid sister so unhappy.”
His own tone remained just as casual as mine, but I could sense the danger lurking behind the words. I was walking on thin ice, and we both knew it. I had to pick my next words carefully.
The worst part was that I couldn’t even tell him the truth, at least not all of it.
I couldn’t tell him Rachel was pregnant, not without talking to her first, and there was no way I would survive the conversation.
But the secret had been weighing on me for a while, and it had only gotten heavier since she had gotten pregnant.
I had been hiding how I truly felt about Rachel for years, and I was tired of it.
For a moment, I almost threw caution to the wind and told him everything.
I only just managed to snatch the words back before they spilled out.
Rachel was already furious enough with me.
The last thing I wanted to do was antagonize her further by telling her big brother the truth about what was going on.
“I’ve had the guys keeping an eye on her ever since those shifters broke into the store while she worked,” I explained. “She found out and wasn’t particularly thrilled about it.”
Elias raised his eyebrow. “You didn’t tell her about it ahead of time?”
“Hell, no. She would have told me not to.”
Elias barked out a laugh. “Of course she would have. She’s a Thorn at heart.” He said the last bit with a tinge of pride. “So you just acted without letting her know. Forgiveness rather than permission?”
“Something like that,” I said.
He went silent for a long moment.
“Are you about to tell me that I shouldn’t do that?” I asked.
“I’m never going to be pissed off at you for protecting my sister,” he said. “I’m always in favor of keeping my family safe, and you’re doing your job as her mate. But that doesn’t mean you’re going about it the right way.”
I swallowed, glancing away for a long moment as I tried to figure out a way to explain everything and realized that I couldn’t. I wasn’t going to stop protecting Rachel, not with everything going on, and she was just going to have to deal with it.
“How does Emma handle it?” I asked. “The guards, I mean.”
Elias snorted. “Some days are better than others. I used to overdo it, to be honest. She eventually told me I had to ease off so that she could actually get her work done.”
“And you just did?”
Elias shrugged. “We came to an agreement that there would always be someone nearby, just in case something happened. But there isn’t someone breathing down her neck all the time.”
“That’s what I was trying to do with Rachel—”
“Emma knew about it and agreed to it,” Elias countered. “Rachel didn’t.”
I stayed silent as I mulled that over. He had a point.
That didn’t mean I liked it. I didn’t care if Rachel wanted my protection.
I had to give it. Because any second I didn’t know there was someone looking after her was a second my wolf and I were thinking about her and what might be happening, and how much we wanted to be by her side.
I just wanted Rachel to understand that I was doing it for her, for the baby.
I knew she didn’t think I cared about her, but she was all I could think about.
It honestly made things distracting. Knowing she was safe was the only thing that let me focus on the rest of my day.
I wanted her to understand, but every time I tried to tell her, the words wouldn’t come out.
I couldn’t admit how I really felt about her, because that would open up an entirely new can of worms that I wasn’t ready to address.
“What about Grace?” I asked, still trying to keep my voice neutral.
Elias barked out a laugh. “That girl could take on an entire army all on her own,” he said, not bothering to hide his pride as a broad grin spread across his face. “But at the same time, Emma was more adamant about Grace having someone keeping an eye on her while she’s running around than I was.”
We came to a stop maybe a mile away from the formation, far enough away that the car wouldn’t raise too much suspicion. Elias unbuckled his seatbelt as he killed the engine.
“Let’s talk more about this later,” he said, sliding out of the car. “Right now, we have a lair to find.”
We shifted the second the car doors had slammed shut.
My wolf dug his paws into the dirt, scraping along it, enjoying the warmth in the pads of his paws.
I stretched, first one way, then the other, relishing the strength in my muscles.
It had been too long since I had gone on a run as a wolf, and I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it.
Elias, now a large, dark wolf, shook his entire body. His eyes met mine, and he jerked his head. There was a clear invitation there, one that I recognized from our time as kids.
Let’s race.
We took off. Wind blew through my fur, carrying the scents of the desert as we ran along.
The sun baked down, but I welcomed it. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to let loose until I started racing.
Elias matched me stride for stride as we sprinted toward the mountain.
Eventually, though, I pulled ahead, pressing forward as I increased my speed, leaving him in the dust.
In time, we reached the formation and slowed. I turned around to see Elias trotting up, his tongue lolling, sides heaving. He gave a wide grin as his tail swished, then he jerked his head toward the base of the formation.
We started roaming the area, searching for anything that might indicate the entrance to some lair, a tunnel, or some crack in the formation that might lead to something beneath the mountain.
After some time, though, we still hadn’t found anything.
I was beginning to give up hope when I caught the acrid stench of sulfur.
To my wolf’s senses, it assaulted my nostrils, nearly making me gag on reflex.
But I remembered that smell. It was the same one I smelled whenever the demons were around.
Elias came to stand beside me, his nose twitching as he raised his head, catching the same smell that I had. We followed the odor, tracking it around the corner until we came to a large crevice.
I moved forward and took a sniff, recoiling when the stench slammed into me even harder than the first time. I looked back at Elias and nodded. I didn’t need to go in any further. This was it. We had found it.
Elias thumped his tail, then nudged my shoulder, indicating we should head back to the car and back to town to tell the others what we had discovered.
***
Elias summoned Oz and Drake to a private meeting the second we got back to town.
“I’m going to guess that this means you found the lair?” Drake asked once the door was closed in Elias’s office.
We told them what we had uncovered, giving a brief overview of the route and precisely where on the mountain we had discovered the lair.
“Finally,” Oz breathed once we had finished.
“It’s the best news we’ve had in ages,” Elias said, reclining in his chair as he gave a relieved smile. “We know where its lair is. For the first time, we have the upper hand.”
Drake’s face wrinkled as he frowned. “I’m just going to point out that those words are typically a curse,” he said. “The instant you think things are going to go well, something bad happens to ruin it.”
“You don’t have to be a spoilsport every time something good happens,” Oz quipped, clapping Drake on the back. “You need to lighten up a bit. Stop being so serious.”
“That’s about as likely to happen as snow in Arizona during a heatwave,” I joked. “You should know this by now.”
A frantic pounding thundered on the door, shaking it in its frame.
All of us went quiet as we turned to look at it, the atmosphere in the air shifting from relief to uneasy caution.
Drake hurried over and cracked the door ajar.
I watched as the color drained from his face as he stepped back, pulling the door open, and one of the pack guards, Robert, stumbled into the room.
Robert was young, just starting out, but a good fighter and had potential to go far.
And currently, he was as white as a sheet, a large scrape running down one cheek.
Elias shot to his feet, staring intently at Robert, all sense of celebration dissipating in an instant.
“What happened?” he asked.
Robert swallowed, taking a moment to respond. “The wraith’s on the outskirts of town,” he said, panting.
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed.
“What?” Elias asked.
“It’s close to the oasis,” Robert explained. “It just showed up there and started attacking people. It’s bad. We’ve got to—”
But we were already moving.
“Go get Emma,” Elias told Robert. “Tell her what’s happening and get her to the mountain at the edge of the oasis. She needs the high ground. And for God’s sake, don’t let her out of your sight.”
The fact that Elias trusted Emma enough to let her handle this without him next to her would have amazed me were it not for the fact that I was more preoccupied with everything else going on.
Still, I had to wonder if I could have been able to relinquish that sort of control if it were Rachel and me.