Chapter 7
Aiden’s eyes flashed orange. His jaw was clenched. He yanked his cellphone out of his back pocket and banged away on the screen.
“Who’re you calling?” Jamie asked, keeping his voice as even as possible. Aiden was furious. Jamie needed to keep him calm.
Aiden glanced up briefly, then resumed typing. “I’m texting Leah. We need to speak to her. Find out what she knows about this.”
Jamie took a step closer and held out a hand. “No, it’s OK.”
“What?” Aiden asked. He studied Jamie.
“Well, we asked her already when she brought the picture over. But before we even looked at it, we asked her if Quinn could have been the one to free Jamie,” Iris said.
Aiden raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Well, what did she say?”
“She was surprised. She didn’t know anything about him freeing me but said he could have done it. She swore she didn’t know anything about where I was held,” Jamie said. “And I believe her,” he added.
“Me, too,” Iris said. “She sounded sincere.”
Aiden frowned and shoved his phone back in his pocket. He huffed out a breath and shook his head. “Ugh, I know. Besides, she’s our friend. I think she’d have told us if she knew anything about her brother freeing you.” He paced back and forth behind the counter, and then stopped, his back to them. “I just wish we could speak to him. Find out what other info he’s keeping from us. He has to know where you were kept at least,” he mumbled.
Jamie walked over to Aiden and placed a hand on his shoulder. Aiden flinched and turned. Shoot, his eyes were flashing the orange of his beast.
“Keep him calm. His beast is upset,” Jamie’s wolf begged.
“It’s alright. Leah will do what she can to try to get a hold of Quinn. She’s going to speak with Piper about a tracking spell,” Jamie said. Piper was one of the Guardians, along with Leah, Iris, Jamie, and their other friends Mac and May. Piper was a black bear shifter like Iris. She ran the local library and had powerful spellcasting powers. She was mated to reindeer shifter Jasper, who was a Shifter Crime Bureau investigator. The SCB was like the FBI of the shifter world. They worked in concert with local authorities to help protect shifters and humans living among them.
Aiden nodded, still frowning.
“We’ll find out where he was held. I’ll speak to the other Guardians. See if Jasper and the SCB can help us,” Iris said.
“Who’s watching over Tessa right now?” Jamie asked. All of the Guardians and their mates were on a rotating schedule. Each pair was assigned to watch over the sleeping phoenix until she completed the rebirthing process.
“Mac and Heath are there right now,” Iris said. “They relieved me and Deacon last night.” Iris’s mate was a wolf shifter and a Grey Lake police officer. Deacon was the beta to the Grey Lake wolf pack’s alpha wolf Heath Jensen.
While Tessa’s phoenix was undergoing its transition, she was vulnerable to attack. It would be the ideal time for Alden Williamson to strike. If she was grievously injured before she was reborn into a new body, the process would fail and she would die for good. Any day now, barring any problems, the process would be complete.
The duties of protecting Tessa fell to Iris and Deacon, Piper and Jasper, eagle shifter and healer Mac with her mate, Heath, Leah and Finn, and Heath’s wolf shifter sister, May, who possessed powers of a seer and her grizzly shifter husband, Beau. Aiden and Jamie made up the final pair of guards.
Were he and Aiden really mates? Tessa had told Jamie she believed it to be true. Jamie’s wolf insisted that was the case as well, but he didn’t really know what to do. But he did know he’d suffer anything for Aiden. He’d been his best friend for as long as he could remember. He was the first person he thought of when he woke up in the morning and the last person he thought of before he fell asleep each night. He was certainly attracted to him; there was no doubt about that. But Aiden had never intimated he felt anything other than friendship toward him. If Jamie explained how deep his feelings ran to Aiden, he might pull away completely. Jamie didn’t know what he would do if he lost the man forever. If they just remained best friends, it would have to be enough.
“Pssh, nonsense,” Jamie’s wolf said.
“What are you blathering about?”
“He comforts you when you have nightmares. He’s always checking on you. Making sure you’re OK.”
“Like a friend would do,” Jamie said.
“Hmmpf. Right,” the wolf snipped. “I can’t see the alpha wolf sitting with you during a nightmare. Can’t even picture the beta wolf doing that, can you?”
Jamie considered his beast’s words. Could Aiden feel what he felt? He hoped they’d live through the horror of what Alden Williamson had planned for Grey Lake so he and Aiden would have a chance to find out.