Chapter 4 - Camden
Before he went any further down this path with Flora, he needed to check in with his boss.
As the elite squad leader, Camden had a lot of free rein when they were out on missions, but when they were at home, the alpha’s word was law.
He needed to let Alpha Hughes know what had transpired since they last spoke.
Without his permission, there was no way Camden could proceed with his plan.
Not that he had any intention of letting his uncle tell him no. Flora was going to be his wife, no matter what Uncle Harold had to say about it.
“Camden, my boy!” His uncle greeted him with a benevolent smile when he walked into the alpha’s office. He was in a good mood today, which was good news for Camden. “Welcome home! How was your trip?”
“It was…eventful,” Camden answered honestly. “We went to Ironbrand, as you asked, and did some recon. The pack was unsettled, it seemed.”
“Unsettled?” Alpha Hughes asked. “In what way?”
“Their alpha, Demetrius Sier, rules with an iron fist. The people seem to do whatever he asks of them out of fear rather than loyalty. We couldn’t get much information beyond vague observations, but Jasper—Ryland,” he corrected himself, knowing that his uncle wouldn’t know Jasper’s first name, “found a file on the alpha’s computer labeled ‘expansion.’ It seems like they might be looking to increase their territory.
We should be on alert for any encroachments. ”
“Is there anything else?” the alpha asked, seeming pleased but uninterested in the report.
Camden shifted on his feet. He needed to tell him about Flora, but without raising alarms about how she came to be back in their territory. Telling his uncle that he had kidnapped her from an alpha he had just described as a tyrant wouldn’t be the best choice.
“I found my mate,” he said simply.
This seemed to catch Harold’s attention.
“Did you now?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “And what is she like?”
“She is the perfect match for me,” Camden assured him. “But she was in a dangerous place when I found her. Her daughter wasn’t able to come with us, and we need to go back and get her—with your permission, of course.”
“Who is this woman?” Harold asked.
“You’ve met her before. Flora Jones.”
He could see the wheels turning in Harold’s brain as a crease appeared between his eyebrows. He shook his head, trying to place the name, before realization dawned on him.
“Not that human filth who lived here years ago?” he asked, aghast. “You should have left her where she was. What makes you think she’s a good match for a warrior like you?”
Camden felt rage welling within him at the way his uncle spoke about Flora. She was a far better person than most people in their pack. A far better person than Camden himself.
“She’s going to be my wife,” Camden said, ignoring his uncle’s offensive question.
Harold laughed, but he could tell his uncle wasn’t going to stop him from going through with his plans. He thought he was a fool, but Camden didn’t care.
“If that’s who you choose, so be it,” Harold said, waving his hand dismissively. “Just don’t come crying to me when you realize you’ve made a mistake.”
The alpha dismissed him with a wave of his hand, and Camden left the office.
Nothing had changed in the years that Camden was away.
The pack was stuck in the past, with old-fashioned ideas about the relationship between humans and werewolves.
It had taken Camden years of living outside the confines of their strict hierarchy to see the world in a new way, and now, he could clearly see that the entire pack was in need of a fresh perspective.
Beyond making him happy, bringing Flora into the pack as his wife would do wonders for changing the way the rest of the Silverrose pack viewed humans.
Camden felt sure that he was doing the right thing by keeping Flora with him, but he couldn’t help but ruminate about the tricky situation they were in.
As soon as it was discovered that he had removed Flora from her family and her engagement to Alpha Sier, he would be in big trouble with his uncle.
It could interfere with their ongoing investigation into the Ironbrand pack, especially since they were planning to return for Flora’s daughter.
But Camden knew he couldn’t just leave the girl there.
Especially since her retrieval had been the price of getting Flora to agree to their marriage.
The fact that Flora even had a daughter in the first place was doing his head in.
It wasn’t the most important thing to get to the bottom of right now, but Camden couldn’t help but wonder how that had happened.
Flora had told him that Demetrius wasn’t the father, which only begged the question of who else it could be.
Still, Camden decided to try to put it out of his mind.
All that mattered now was getting Flora to stay with him.
If he had to go on a rescue mission to make that happen, that’s what he would do.
There were a dozen challenges facing them as a couple, but Camden didn’t care.
He knew Flora was supposed to be his mate.
If he was being honest with himself, he had known that for a long time.
It had taken seeing her on the arm of someone else for it to sink in completely, but now that it had, he wasn’t going to back out.
“Flora?” he said as he opened the door to the room she had been staying in. For a split second, he wondered whether she had decided to run away after all, but before he could think about it any further, she was there.
“I’m here,” she assured him. “Did you finish your errands?”
“Yes,” he said, trying not to let the relief he felt seep through into his tone. “We can go pick up your daughter. Do you know where she’ll be?”
Flora nodded. Her face was tight with dissatisfaction as she answered. “She’ll be with my parents—Stella and Ben.”
“I take it that things between you and your parents didn’t improve when you moved away?” Camden asked.
“Ha!” Flora let out a short laugh—half-surprised, half-derisive. “That’s an understatement. Which is why we need to go back and get Sofia. As soon as we can, before they turn their ire on her in my absence.”
Camden nodded his head. He had hoped to have some time to plan this better, but he could tell Flora was itching to leave right away.
“Let’s go,” he said, holding the door open for her.
She seemed surprised by his willingness to help and eyed him suspiciously as she got into the car. Her foot tapped on the floorboards nervously as he pulled out his phone and sent a message to his squad, letting them know to meet him just south of Ironbrand.
“Who are you texting?” Flora asked.
“My squad. If we’re going to get Sofia today, without having time to plan, then I’m going to need more eyes,” he explained.
She nodded in understanding, and the two of them settled in for the ride.
The drive back to Ironbrand was tense. Flora fidgeted with the hem of her borrowed sweatshirt in the passenger seat, and Camden made a mental note to get her some new clothes when they returned.
It wouldn’t do much for her standing in the pack to have her walking around in men’s clothing, even if she did manage to pull the look off.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her, realizing just how good she looked no matter what she wore.
His jeans were baggy on her, but her hips managed to keep them up without the use of a belt.
He was reminded of a pop star from the nineties, although he couldn’t place which one he was thinking of.
“Why do you keep looking at me?” Flora asked, breaking the silence. “It’s not like I can run away while we’re in a moving car. You don’t have to keep monitoring me.”
“I’m not,” he replied quietly.
He was embarrassed that he had been caught by her, but he couldn’t stop stealing glances the rest of the way there.
Flora was even more beautiful than he remembered, but there was a hardness to her that hadn’t been there before.
She had clearly been through more than he realized in the time they had been apart.
Camden pulled off the main road and took a dirt path as they got nearer to the Ironbrand pack house. Up ahead, his squad was waiting for them. When they got out of the car, the confusion was evident on their faces.
“I thought we had orders to get their alpha?” Jasper asked. “Your message said you had a mission for us.”
“I do, but it doesn’t have to do with Alpha Sier,” Camden explained. “You all remember Flora?”
The men nodded their heads at her, and Marbles gave her an awkward wave. Flora had her arms crossed across her chest and a hard look on her face, clearly trying to look intimidating. Camden felt a pang of sadness that she felt she needed to be on guard with these men.
“Flora, this is Jasper, Marbles, and Thompson,” he said, pointing to each of them. “They are like my brothers, and you are safe with them. There is no one in the world more trustworthy than these three.”
“You’re gonna make us blush,” Thompson teased.
“That’s enough of that,” Camden said. “We are heading into a house at this address within the Ironbrand territory.” He passed them a piece of paper on which Flora had written Stella and Ben’s address. “Inside, there is a young girl. She is—”
He looked to Flora, realizing he had no other information about her daughter.
“She’s five years old and has blond hair and brown eyes,” Flora supplied.
“Hold on,” Jasper said. “We’re kidnapping a kid? Nuh-uh. Boss, we don’t do that shit.”
Camden’s black ops squad followed a strict set of unwritten rules, and he knew they were bound to push back about participating in this when they didn’t have all the information.
“Sofia is my daughter,” Flora said fiercely. “We aren’t kidnapping her, we’re rescuing her. If you aren’t man enough to help an innocent child, then we’ll do it without you.”
Camden was stunned by her outburst, but Thompson laughed, and even Marbles gave her a grin. Jasper held his hands up, palms outward, as if he was simultaneously protecting himself from the onslaught of her passion and offering an apology for misunderstanding.
“My bad,” he said. “Continue.”
“As Flora said, it’s her daughter who’s being held there,” Camden said.
“She and I are going to slip in, but we need your eyes to make sure we aren’t spotted or apprehended.
This mission isn’t on the books with the pack, and we need to make sure our names and faces don’t get back to Alpha Sier or the Ironbrand pack. Got it?”
They nodded in agreement, and the five of them headed toward the edge of town where Flora had lived with her daughter and parents.
The house was small, easily the least valuable home in the entire pack. As newcomers with a human daughter, the Jones family had been given the worst lodgings. Outside, there were no vehicles in the driveway.
“Stella and Ben aren’t home,” Flora whispered nervously.
“Will Sofia have been moved somewhere else?” Camden asked.
Flora pursed her lips and shook her head. “No. They probably left her here by herself. They have better things to do than take care of her.”
Camden signaled for his men to disperse, and they found their positions surrounding the house.
They were completely hidden, but he knew they would be able to see in all directions.
When they were in place, Camden led Flora to the back door and placed a piece of tape along the glass near the lock.
With a sharp rap with the butt of his knife, he broke the window.
After peeling off the tape and the attached glass, he was able to reach inside and unlock the door, which swung outward.
Flora gave him an appreciative glance and headed inside, straight up the stairs, where she stopped in front of a door that was padlocked from the outside.
Camden gritted his teeth. He had known about the cruel treatment Flora had suffered at the hands of her adoptive parents, but seeing the proof like this—a lock to keep in a small child—was almost too much for him to bear.
He wrenched the lock from its place, metal ripping through the wood, and flung it onto the ground at his feet.
Standing aside, he allowed Flora to go inside.
“Mommy?” a small voice said.
“I’m here, baby,” Flora said. “Mommy’s here. Come on, grab your doll. We’re leaving.”
“I’m hungry, Mommy,” the girl replied.
Another wave of anger coursed through Camden. He wondered when the child had last eaten, and whether she was being punished for her mother’s disappearance.
All because of me, he thought. At least he had agreed to come back and get her today, but that did very little to ease the guilt he felt.
“We’ll get you something soon,” Flora promised. “But we need to hurry before Stella and Ben come back. Come on, sweetie.”
They came out of the bedroom, and he glanced down at the girl. She was thin, clearly underfed, and she had dark circles under her brown eyes. She was in no condition to walk the distance back to the cars.
“Can you carry her?” he asked Flora.
At once, Flora hoisted Sofia up into her arms. “Sofia, this is Camden,” she said. “He’s going to help us leave for good, okay? Just like I promised we would someday.”
“Hi,” Sofia said, waving her tiny fingers at him.
Camden smiled at her and waved back before leading them back down the stairs and out of the house. He gave a bird whistle, and three whistles replied. Within seconds, the squad surrounded them, and they hurried out of sight of the houses.
They walked quietly back to the cars, and when Flora started to slow down, Camden reached for Sofia.
“I can carry her,” Flora insisted. But a second later, she relented.
Sofia went willingly to Camden, wrapping one arm behind his neck as the other clutched her doll tightly. Her head rested on his shoulder, and for the first time in a long time, Camden felt like he had done something he could be truly proud of.