Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The following morning, Leo followed the sound of soft laughter through the big house to the kitchen.
When he’d woken up a little bit ago, the bed was empty, and he knew Mira had headed down to find her family.
They’d stayed up late talking. Leo had enjoyed getting to know her brother, dads, and uncles.
Mira had positively glowed the whole time, and her mom and sister had looked so full of love and happiness, too.
It was sweet to witness.
The borrowed house in the walled city had plenty of bedrooms, a stocked kitchen, and a beautiful view of thick woods with lots of pine trees.
In the kitchen, he found everyone but the uncles at the table. Mira was listening, wide-eyed, as her brother told her a story from the past. Leo waited until the story was finished to move into the kitchen and drop a kiss on her cheek.
“Morning, sweetness,” he said.
“Hi!” She pushed back her chair. “I made you a plate. Let me grab it.”
Leo greeted her family, then joined Mira to fix a cup of coffee and take the plate she’d fixed for him.
“Did you sleep well?” Auron asked when Leo and Mira sat back down.
“Yeah, I did, thanks.”
“It’s really nice here,” Layla said. “We’ve visited Jantha a few times over the years.
They moved the pride here to Northern Ohio because of the number of shifter groups who call this area home.
Then Chance and Jes met Danika at a big get-together with the bear shifters, and the lions moved in here. ”
“There are bears here?” Mira asked, looking at Leo.
“Yep. And dragons and tigers. All the shifter groups are allied together, and then we’re also allies with the Wiccans and vampires,” Leo answered.
“I thought vampires and shifters didn’t get along?” Theron asked.
“They do when the vampire master says they have to get along with them,” Leo said. “The vampires pay humans to feed them at their club. They don’t have shifters feed them because our blood is too strong and can be addictive.”
“Wow,” Mira said. “I had no idea Northern Ohio was so interesting.”
Leo agreed.
He listened to the family chatter, talking about their travels and Mira’s life, and how they’d often been in the same state, close but far at the same time.
“So,” Rami said, settling back in the chair, “we wanted to go with Mira to the bed-and-breakfast and meet up with Daphne, Gideon, and the others. We have a lot to discuss. Mira told us there’s an anti-shifter group causing problems for you guys and that you don’t go anywhere without an escort, so we’d like to offer ourselves as escorts to get you back to Thorn Hollow, and then we would take Mira with us to the bed-and-breakfast.”
Leo nodded. “That works for me. I haven’t called for a pack escort yet.”
When the meal was finished, they hustled out to the vehicles, with Leo and Mira in the lead, and an SUV and a truck behind them, filled with her family.
She leaned against his shoulder with a yawn. He kissed the top of her head.
“Did your family talk at all this morning about their plans for the future?” he asked. “Before I joined you guys?”
“Yeah, actually, they’re considering staying. Jantha said they could stay in Bishop, but they don’t know if they want to do that. I’m not sure what their options are, but they do have the RVs, so maybe a campground?”
He hummed. “I’ll talk to Adam. If they want to stay in Northern Ohio, there are lots of options.”
They stopped in Thorn Hollow so he and Mira could clean up and change, and then he gave her a kiss goodbye and waved as she left with her family to talk to her other family.
He shook his head with a chuckle. She was in for an interesting day.
Someone honked, and he looked over his shoulder and saw Solan waving from his truck. “I’m driving ya, get in!”
Leo jogged over and got in. “Thanks, man.”
“You bet. How’s mated life treating you?” Solan asked as he pulled away from the curb.
“Unbelievable. I’ve never been happier. She’s everything.”
“I’m happy for you. And I definitely can’t wait to find my truemate.”
“I know it’s cliché, but she’ll show up when the time is right. I wasn’t really even looking for a mate, and our paths crossed. Fate has a strange sense of humor.”
“Most definitely.” There was longing in Solan’s voice, and Leo hoped that his friend would find his other half soon. Solan cleared his throat. “So I heard a bit from Brick this morning about what happened in Bishop. Tell me the tea, dude.”
“It’s totally insane,” he said. “So it turns out Mira’s biological family wasn’t dead at all…”
* * *
They pulled into the dealership lot. At first glance, things looked fine. The neat rows of cars for sale gleamed in the morning sun. But as soon as Solan parked, something prickled in warning for Leo.
“Hold up,” Leo said. “The cars look weird.”
Solan followed Leo’s gaze to the row of SUVs at the front of the lot. They all seemed to be sitting at odd angles, tilted toward one side or the other unevenly.
“Shit. That doesn’t look right at all,” Solan said.
They got out of the truck, both of them wary, and approached the SUVs. Leo crouched and looked at the front tire as Solan scanned the lot with a low growl. The tire was entirely flat. The valve stem had been cut.
“Damn it,” Leo said. He stood and moved to the other tires of the SUV, finding the same thing. It took him only a few minutes of checking in the first row to see that all the valve stems had been cut on every single tire.
“What the actual hell?” Solan demanded.
Leo looked at the other rows of vehicles. Each looked wonky, and he was certain that an inspection would show that the valve stems had all been cut as well. It was a catastrophic attack. And he knew exactly who was behind it.
“I’ll call Adam,” Leo said, his phone already out of his pocket.
“I’m going to take a walk around the lot and find out why the security measures in place didn’t alert us to people on the lot.” Solan’s eyes flashed angrily.
As Leo’s call to Adam buzzed, he stared at the rows of vehicles.
Dozens upon dozens of brand new and used vehicles for sale, not to mention the number of customer vehicles waiting for repairs.
Tires weren’t cheap, not even when bought in bulk.
They didn’t have the resources on hand to replace all the tires, let alone the big hit to the pack’s finances and their reputation among their customers.
When Adam answered, Leo told him what he and Solan saw, and Adam growled so loudly that Leo had to pull the phone from his ear.
“Damn that Foley! It has to be him and his anti-shifter assholes. I’ll grab security team members and join you there, and I’ll also increase security around the pack just in case Foley’s planned something while our attention is turned to the dealership.
I’ll call the police once I’ve had a look around. See you soon.”
Leo found Solan at the back of the lot, his hands on his hips and his lips in a grimace.
“The cameras were disabled, but they look fine. It’s like the interior mechanisms were just overloaded and stopped working.
I logged into the system on my cell, and they are still showing as active, so whatever they did messed them up in a way that wasn’t recognized by the system itself. ”
“He’s getting trickier,” Leo said. “Adam’s on the way with the security team. He’s pissed.”
“I’m sure. It’s going to cost a fortune to replace the tires, even with business insurance. Is Adam calling the police?”
“He said he would after he got here; he wants to inspect things first.”
A string of vehicles arrived ten minutes later.
Adam, Brick, several high-ranked males, plus a handful of security team members got out of them and joined Leo and Solan.
Adam’s expression was dark, and he was growling under his breath as he listened to Solan detail what he’d learned about the security system being offline but not showing it, and then Leo explained about the tires.
Adam, a mechanic by trade as well, squatted down by one of the tires and touched the cut valve stem.
“I think they cut these with a cutting wheel. They could make quick work of the valve stems that way if they had a few males doing it.” He rose to his feet and brushed dirt off his hands. “I’m so fucking pissed.”
Leo, Solan, and a few others walked the rows of cars, making a list of the type of tires to be replaced. The police arrived just after they’d finished checking the inventory and took Leo and Solan’s statements.
“What a fucking asshole,” Brick said in a low voice as he watched Adam speaking to one of the officers.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “This is the third attack from Foley this week, and it’s by far the worst. This is hundreds of man-hours just to replace the tires, not to mention the cost. We’ll have to pay out of pocket and wait for reimbursement from the insurance company.”
“I think Foley’s trying to hurt us. He first cut the power, then he cut the cell phones, which were both inconvenient but not devastating.
But this move?” Brick waved his hand toward the vehicles, “It’s a serious mess for us to clean up.
We’ll have to shut down until the vehicles are repaired, and even if we work as fast as possible, we could lose the business. ”
Leo hummed as he looked over the rows of gleaming cars. “Is he just trying to drive us out of the area? Like he wants the pack out of Ohio? Or is there something else going on?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
Hours later, the police report was filed, and the pack had a plan of action in place.
All their tire suppliers were called, with tires ordered for delivery as soon as possible.
Tires would show up that day, but not nearly enough to cover the entire lot.
It would be weeks before they had enough tires to replace every one.
“We’ll prioritize,” Adam said, looking over the group.
He’d called in all the mechanics in the pack while security patrolled the lot.
“Customer vehicles first, then pack members. The stock vehicles for sale can wait until last. We’ll do our best to replace tires immediately as they come in, and we’ll open the lot back up for sales once we have a good number of them ready to go. ”
The pack would have security team members patrolling twenty-four-seven as well, since their electronic monitoring had proven a failure against Foley’s tenacity.
Adam looked at Leo. “You head this up. Set up a rotation for mechanics, around the clock if possible. You can switch from security to working here until things are settled.”
“No problem.”
“And if Mira is up for it, we could use someone manning the phones,” Brick said. “She’d be safe in the offices on shift with you, and we can coach her on what to say.”
“I’ll talk to her about it,” Leo said.
“And hey, if any of her family members can turn a wrench or would be willing to help with security patrols, have them come in, and we’ll pay them,” Adam said.
Leo nodded. “I’ll talk to Mira and her family when I pick her up tonight.”
Everyone dispersed to their jobs, Adam and Brick talking about security for the pack and the dealership, as well as the other pack-owned businesses. Leo’s wolf was restless. He was certain that Foley was escalating, testing the pack’s responses, and looking for weaknesses.
The pack was just existing as they always had, but Foley was clearly watching them and moving against them. They couldn’t just sit idly by anymore; they had to be ready.
But for what?
Leo wasn’t sure what the next move would be, but he was certain it would be bad. Keeping his mate and the pack safe was all he thought about as he headed into the garage to get to work on the customer vehicles.
It was going to be a long day.