14. Mack
14
MACK
I ’d have preferred the pack meeting was at the dining table because this meeting is serious and we always conduct serious meetings in there.
The den is for relaxing, watching a movie with the pack, or curling up on the couch with Aerin to read a book from one of the many bookcases that fill our home.
But because Aerin’s lower back is hurting more days than not, and the last thing she needs is to be sitting on a hard dining chair for however long this meeting will last, we have it in the den.
Aerin is sitting on a couch, the rest of the pack spread around the room while I stand beside the window that faces the front of the house. “Someone called three times today, and each time I answered, they hung up.”
Bennett cocks his head as he scrutinizes me. “And that’s the reason for this meeting?”
“If the calls hadn’t come after we found signs of a wolf trying to claim territory belonging to me, I wouldn’t think twice about it.” I cross my arms as I examine my pack one by one.
Aerin is frowning.
“Aerin, what is it?” I ask her.
“There seem to be problems everywhere,” she says softly. “It could just be coincidence, but I feel…” Her voice trails off.
Her unease fills the room.
Omegas are all about feelings. Her slight frown tells me she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence at all.
“It could not be a coincidence at all, but something else. Trouble,” I finish.
She nods.
“We live in the middle of nowhere,” Chris says from his seat beside his mate, Zoe.
“That never stopped anyone from finding us when they wanted to bring their brand of trouble here,” Bennett says.
Helena slowly nods. “And everyone knows Aerin is a powerful omega. I’ll bet that idiot Shane spread the news far and wide.”
Aerin smiles faintly. “ Idiot? ”
“ Idiot !” everyone in the room loudly agrees, making her smile grow.
“I love you guys,” she says, her smile turning watery.
I mock-glare at everyone. “Stop making my mate so happy. That’s my job.”
Everyone grins, but when I clear my throat, their smiles fade and we return to the reason for this meeting. “Something is happening. I don’t know what it is, but I feel in my bones that something is.”
“To do with Aerin?” Warren wraps his arm around Tina and tucks her closer to his side of the couch.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I’m going to pretend that it is. Aerin saw something before her fall. She doesn’t think she did, but I do.”
Aerin scrunches her nose and her cheeks turn pink, looking embarrassed. “I was running from a bear—or fast walking—and I didn’t look to see where I was going. That’s why I fell.”
After her fall, my phone blew up with messages from the pack, wanting to know if they should come over. But Aerin was fine, and I wanted her to myself, so I told them not to.
“But you fell for a reason,” I tell her. “And you’re not in the habit of seeing things that aren’t there. What do your instincts tell you?”
She studies me for several seconds, her nose wrinkled. “That someone was there.”
Bennett sits up in his seat. “Did you?—”
I shake my head, cutting off his expected question. “Nothing. I spent a couple of hours this morning looking. But it stormed, so if there had been tracks there, the rain washed it away.”
I’d made a quick breakfast for Aerin and taken it up to her in bed, not knowing how long I’d be. And I’d looped around the house, exploring the forest, but never straying too far away from Aerin. The rain had been torrential when I’d headed out and Aerin, still half-asleep, had told me not to go out in the rain. Some things are more important than getting your fur wet. This was one of them.
“The cabin was a bust,” Colton says. “But there are other places a person could stay in Winter Lake if they wanted to stay hidden.”
“Not with a local,” Chris says. “We’d see them, or someone would want to tell someone else about their newly arrived relative and it would be all around town by the end of the day.”
True.
“They could park up in their car deep in the forest or just outside town,” Warren suggests. “But even then, what do they want? If someone wanted Aerin, they’d have tried to grab her by now. Right?”
Everyone nods.
“What exactly did Moses say was going on with the Dacres?” Bennett asks, scratching his nose. “Cause I’d put money on Shane being the person Aerin might have seen here.”
But already, Aerin is shaking her head. “I know Shane. He’s not the type to watch from a distance. He’s way too impatient. If that was him, and I’m still not sure I didn’t just imagine it, he would have grabbed me when he had the chance.”
I fill everyone in on the earlier conversation with Moses about the Dacres dealing with the fallout of Iain’s death and Bree unveiled as his killer. We don’t know that for sure is what set off the fighting, but ever since Bree and Shane left Winter Lake, I’ve known someone would eventually find out what she did and it would all blow up in their faces.
“Shit.” Bennett sits back in his armchair, frowning first at me, then at Aerin. “She literally killed his dad. How can he still want anything to do with her?”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” Chris says quietly. “Maybe he walked away and what’s happening down there is Bree trying to hold the pack together on her own.”
We all fall silent to consider that. And how soon it will be before we learn the pack killed her because Iain was their beloved former Alpha. They would never accept Bree as their leader once they knew she was responsible for his death.
“I’m surprised your dad isn’t sending someone in to double check,” Penny says to Aerin, who muffles a yawn before she responds.
“My dad won’t risk anyone unless he has to and that will be when or if the fighting spills over onto his territory,” Aerin says.
“Do you think you could call him?” Colton asks Aerin.
“My dad?”
Colton shakes his head. “Shane.”
She blinks at him. “ Call Shane?”
Colton shrugs. “Just call the pack and see who answers. It would be the fastest way of finding out what’s happening with the Dacres without sending anyone in. If Shane answers, then great, we know he’s out of our hair in Minnesota, too busy to cause any problems here. If he doesn’t answer, then we know to keep alert in case he turns up.”
We all look at him, then glance at each other.
“Why the hell not?” I pull my cell phone from my pocket and call the number for the Dacres. I’ve only called it once. To warn Shane and his father away from Winter Lake after Iain threatened to come after Aerin.
The phone rings out.
I end the call with a shrug and a grin. “I guess that would have been too easy, huh?”
“Probably,” Bennett agrees.
“Save for us driving around and looking for Shane or any other trouble to land in our laps, there’s nothing we can do but stay alert,” I say.
The meeting goes on for over an hour. We talk about everything. The scratched tree outside the hotel and anything else that seems the least bit suspicious. And I warn everyone to be vigilant.
No going into town alone. Everyone should always be with someone who has a cell phone in case of emergencies, and all the while I wish over and over again that we all lived under the same roof.
And I look at Aerin.
I will do anything to protect her. But what if someone attacks when I’m not around, or I’m distracted?
What if I fail?