Chapter Ten
COLE
The pack council, my mother, and Dax are all staring at me.
My wolf is going insane.
Mate, mate, mate. My mate is devastated and hurting and gone.
Focus, I think desperately.
“We’ve tried to call your brother but he’s out parasailing with his bride for the day,” Council Member Hermann says to me. “No offense,” he adds. “This affects more than just the local pack members.”
“None taken. The fated mate situation is distracting me and the timing is far from ideal.” I would love it if my brother were here right now, but everything is falling on my shoulders.
I look over at Dax. “Let’s go over everything that we know about Robert. Out of all the Frostbane members, he’s never been one of the troublemakers, as far as we know.”
Dax nods. “Agreed. Normally our pack members wouldn’t hire a Frostbane to work for us, but he had a good enough reputation that McFiggins was willing to give him a chance.
He’s an orphan, his father was killed in a death match when he was around twelve, his mother died of grief shortly afterwards.
He gets picked on a fair amount by the other pack members because they’re a bunch of aggressive shitheels and he’s as far from Alpha as could be.
He’s considered kind of a nerd at high school. Very smart.”
I nod, and my brain drifts back to Alexis, desperately wondering where she is. Images of her lying tangled in my arms torment me.
I extend the claws of my right arm and sink them into my leg so sharply that they pierce my jeans and draw blood.
The pain snaps me back to focus.
“So what he’s done so far is somehow caused four people to shift involuntarily.
The shift lasts several hours before they return to their normal state, and they have amnesia.
They’re not violent, and it doesn’t leave any lasting effects.
Also, he coated a spoon in silver and left it at the coffee shop. ”
“And he didn’t even try to hide that the spoon came from the Frostbane pack,” one of the council members shakes his head in disbelief.
“Well, brilliant people don’t always have common sense.” My leg itches as my wounds heal themselves. I struggle to form thoughts. “Smart. He’s smart. He’s a good student.” There’s something there, something nagging at me… “What does he specialize in at school?”
“Science.” My mother speaks up. She’s the superintendent of schools for the Moonstone pack.
“We had a tri-pack science fair and he won in his category, which was – chemistry. He did experiments with some unusual rocks found in the Frostbane mines.” Her eyes widen.
“My goodness. Why didn’t I think of that before? ”
“So what’s our next move?” Hermann demands.
“We reach out to the Frostbane Pack and demand a meeting in town, with the Frostbane pack Alpha and a legal representative in attendance,” Dax says. “If he’s the one who did it…” he draws a finger across his neck.
I nod grimly. I don’t like this at all. Robert’s always been polite and respectful, one of the few decent Frostbane members, and he’s only 17, but if he’s conducting illegal experiments that risk starting a shifter-human war, we have no choice.
“Next order of business,” Hermann says. “What can we do about the human reporter and what she’s observed so far?”
The moment Hermann says “the human reporter,” something in me snaps.
Not figuratively. Literally.
A violent jolt tears through my spine—like someone hooking a live wire straight into my bones. My vision tunnels, edges going white, and every instinct in me roars to life in one deafening command:
Protect her.
My chair screeches backward as I surge to my feet. Heat floods my limbs, skin rippling as fur bursts through it in a rush. Fabric tears, seams popping. My hands hit the floor first, already claws. My jaw distends, bones reshaping, teeth lengthening into fangs.
There’s shouting—I register it dimly—but all I can think is that they’re talking about her like she’s a problem to solve. A threat to neutralize.
A deep, brutal growl rips from my throat, the kind that vibrates the floorboards. My wolf is fully in control now, hackles raised, lips curled back as I whip my head toward Hermann. Anyone who even suggests putting Alexis in danger is suddenly prey.
“Cole!” my mother snaps.
Her voice slices through the red haze—not gentle, not coaxing, but an Alpha command sharpened by maternal authority. An Alpha’s parents can force them back into human form.
“Shift. Back. Now.”
The order hits like a shockwave.
My muscles seize, my wolf snarls in refusal, but it doesn’t matter—when your parent issues that kind of command, it locks onto your instincts with iron certainty. My body jerks, contorts, shrinks. Bones snap back into place. Fur retracts. My vision blurs and clears again in rapid succession.
Suddenly I’m kneeling on the floor, human, breath ragged, sweat cold on my skin.
My mother stands over me, arms crossed, unamused as only a mother who just forced her grown son out of a rage-shift can be. Her voice is calm, but steel-lined.
“Cole. Clothes. Chair. Now.”
I drag in a shaking breath, shove myself upright, and grab the spare sweats Dax tosses me.
“She won’t betray us,” I say firmly. I mean it. I don’t know how I know, but I do.
ALEXIS
I’m standing by my parked car by the edge of town, crying my eyes out, when my phone rings. It’s my boss Keith, owner of the Blakesville Beacon.
“Alexis, I haven’t heard from you,” he snaps by way of greeting.
“Well, it’s been a day.” I sniffle hard.
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Allergies.” I grab a tissue from my purse and blow my nose, hard.
“Allergic to shifters, huh?” he snickers.
“No. I have no problem with shifters.”
“Is that so? You did when they kidnapped your friend.”
I heave a sigh. “We’ve been over this, Keith. I was wrong, I jumped the gun. It never happened. And as I told you, there was no story there.”
“And that’s why I sent you there. To get a story.”
I keep my tone even. “Well, we agreed that I would keep my eye open, and that if there was nothing worrisome going on here, I’d just write a feature.”
He makes a raspberry noise on the phone. Really. A grown man in his forties, blowing a raspberry at me. “Features are boring. Are you trying to tell me that nothing exciting is happening there?”
“Exciting like what?” I ask carefully. Images race through my mind. A little girl crowning me with daisies. A happy older woman so flattered that I loved her peach jam. Boys climbing on a playground under the watchful eye of their adoring parents.
And Cole, the man who promised me forever.
All of them would have targets painted on their backs if humans felt they had reasons to fear shifters again.
He gives an impatient snort. “You know.”
Odd. It sounds like he knows something. Like he sent me here for a reason. Like he never wanted a happy, positive feature story.
“What is it that you think I know? If you have something specific, tell me,” I say impatiently.
There’s a brief pause. He clears his throat. “I hear that there has been a lot of activity going on in downtown Cedar Run, on Main Street over the past couple of weeks.”
“Hear from who?” I demand.
“Doesn’t matter. Are my sources lying?”
Sources. He has sources. Or a source. Somebody is spying on the shifters in Cedar Run, hoping to stir up trouble.
If I were aware of a genuine threat to humans, I would be obligated to report it. But I haven’t seen a threat yet. There’s no nefarious plot by the shifters that I can see, and I’m not going to risk starting another Shifter-Human war just because Keith wants a front-page story.
“I have not seen anything that would constitute a story happening in downtown Cedar Run.” And that’s not even a lie. I haven’t personally observed anything conclusive yet.
“Bullshit,” he snarls. “What, you’ve gone native? You have a shifter boyfriend now, just like your friend? I heard you were getting cozy with one of the Alphas, but I figured you were just laying a little honey trap. Obviously, I sent the wrong reporter to cover this story.”
Now it all makes sense. He sent me here on purpose. After my misunderstanding with Lane, he assumed that I hated shifters and I’d be eager to dig the dirt on them.
There’s only one thing I can do. “I quit,” I inform him coldly, and hang up the phone before he can say another word.
My heart thuds in my chest.
I just quit. I did that. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a reporter, and I just tanked my entire future.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
I made the right decision.
When I was growing up, there was a lot of abuse in our foster homes, a lot of neglect from our caseworkers, and it was swept under the rug.
When I went to college, I wrote an article about it.
It was picked up by a national news agency.
Several caseworkers were fired, as was their supervisor.
New laws were written requiring greater oversight.
I knew then that this was the career that I wanted - a career that could change things for the better.
Telling lies, stirring up trouble where there should be none, that’s not changing things for the better.
I slide into my car seat, turn the car on, and start driving.
I still don’t know what the status of my relationship with Cole is, but I’m starting to see why he doesn’t fully trust humans.
Not all humans have honorable intentions, and for shifters, the consequences could be enormous.
And being away from him opens up a chasm of loneliness in me that I’ve never experienced before.
As I’m driving, an odd smell suddenly tickles my nostrils. Shifters have a kind of distinctive odor about them, not unpleasant, but something wild and woodsy. It’s mixed with sweat that smells like fear.
It’s coming from my back seat.
With a shriek, I pull over and slam on my brakes. I frantically scrabble for the door handle. “Please!” a voice shouts, rasping with fear.
A young man sits up in my back seat. He’s the waiter from Has-Beans, the one who scurried off earlier right after I walked in to the coffee shop. “I’m sorry, I got in your car when you got out to talk on your phone. I didn’t know what else to do. He’s going to kill me!” he cries out frantically.
“Who? Cole? I really don’t think he’d-”
Tears are streaming down his face. I’m twisted around looking at him and he’s so young. He barely has a whisp of a mustache coming in. “Not Cole! Darius. My Alpha. I screwed up really badly, I was just trying to help but I ruined everything. And now I’m dead.”
I shake my head determinedly. “Not if I can help it,” I say. “Lie down on the floor so nobody can see you.”