Chapter 24 #3
“Leak all of it. The full footage, unedited and time-stamped. Let every news desk in the country run the audio of him telling my fiancée she owes him sex.” I meet his eyes.
“And while you’re at it, hire a PI to dig into Vivian Banks’ life.
If we can’t go after her professionally, then make it personal.
Have her reputation in shreds. They don’t touch what’s mine. ”
Coach exhales through his nose, but he doesn’t stop me.
Sterling slides the drive into his inside pocket. “And Hudson?”
I sneer at that. “Do you really think Miranda was the first woman he tried to coerce? I don’t care how much money it costs, Sterling. Tear his life apart. Find every woman he’s crossed paths with and see which one hates him the most. Take it from there.”
Miranda isn’t going to be happy about this. She likes to fight her own battles. But she shouldn’t have to when I’m around. I don’t mind doing the dirty work for her.
Sterling holds my gaze a beat longer, then nods once. “I’ll have an update by tonight.”
He lets himself out, briefcase under one arm, already lifting the phone to his ear before he’s reached the porch.
Coach stays. He waits until the door has closed, then walks past me into the kitchen and lowers himself onto a stool, worn through.
I pour two glasses of water and slide one across. “You said you found a body the other day. You never got back to me on that. Was it human?”
He doesn’t respond immediately. “No. It was a half-shifted female. Buried about three feet down, just inside the southern boundary of your territory, in a stand of cedars near the creek.”
I go still. “Anyone we know?”
“The body’s too decomposed for visual identification,” he murmurs.
“I’ve kept it quiet for now. Finding a body is one thing.
Finding a buried body is another thing. Especially if it’s one of our kind.
The personal effects on her are corroded past recognition.
I’ve sent them to a forensics lab for chemical cleaning. They’ll do what they can.”
“How long has she been there?”
Coach takes a sip of the water and sets it down, choosing his words. “Forensics estimates four to five years.”
“Did anyone from our pack go missing four or five years ago?” I ask slowly.
My alpha shakes his head. “No. It’s not a shifter, Grayson.
” His expression is taut. “The position of her body, the partial shift caught in her bones, all of it points one direction.” His eyes are very steady on me.
“She was in the middle of transitioning when she died. A human woman who had just received a mating mark and didn’t survive the change into hybrid. ”
The air in the kitchen suddenly becomes suffocating.
“You’re sure?” I breathe out.
“The forensics team is sure. So are the healers I had walk the site with them. Human females can usually be brought through the transformation if pack healers are on hand to support the change. They don’t always need to intervene, but they have to be in the room.
She didn’t have anyone.” His eyes don’t leave mine.
“Whoever marked her did it alone, whoever buried her did it alone, and whoever did both knew enough about your territory to pick the one spot a wolf wouldn’t stumble across by accident.
It only got found because the Adler pups got out of their yard, and one of the trackers from the south end followed their trail in. ”
I sit down on the stool across from him. “Well, fuck.”
Coach holds my eye without speaking. I drag a hand down my face.
“Grayson, there is a reason why the Council is involved with the approval of human mates. Don’t ever make the mistake of marking Miranda.
You won’t be able to handle her loss. Distance your wolf can handle.
Not death. Not after all this time you’ve spent with her. ”
I sigh, and right now, I don’t speak to him as my alpha but as the man who raised me. “Can’t I just marry her? I promise I won’t—”
He puts his hand on my shoulder, his voice gentle for a change.
“I know you love her, Grayson. You can ask me as many times as you want. But the answer will be the same. Your wolf can control himself once or twice. Not more than that. It will grow feral. You need the Council’s approval, and if they don’t give it, you need to set her free.
For both your sakes.” He looks away from me then, toward the dark window, and for a moment, he can’t seem to find the next words.
His hand comes to rest on the back of my neck, the old grip from when I was a boy.
“I’ve lost one son. I’m not ready to lose you as well. ”
I swallow and nod silently, my wolf miserable and anxious inside me.
“Okay,” I whisper hoarsely. “I’ll petition the Council once everything is over.”
He doesn’t say anything else. He just sits with me until the light through the kitchen window has shifted its angle on the floor, and somewhere upstairs I hear Miranda’s voice, soft and patient, reading a picture book to my son.
And fear settles in my bones.
I can’t lose her.