44. Riley
Riley
Ihit send on my assignment and then lay back on the bed, a headache pounding behind my temples. Academia wasn’t for me, I decided. I would much rather be doing physical things, like sparring in the gym or running along the forest trails.
That train of thought prompted a heavy sigh because I had no clue what I was going to do when I left here. It wasn’t as if I had a job or even a home to go back to. Mom had mentioned she had a spare room the last time she called, but did I want to move in with her? No.
Or pick up shifts at the club where she worked, which was her second suggestion.
From what Felix had told me, Club Kitty laundered money for the shifter mafia. I’d tried telling her this, but she wasn’t interested.
“No need to worry about me, darling. I’m living my best life.”
Hmm. At least she wasn’t popping pills anymore. Or not that I’d noticed when she called.
I should probably take a shower, I mused. Or eat. But before I could move a muscle, my phone buzzed with an incoming video chat.
“Hey, cupcake,” Felix drawled. He sat on his sofa, surrounded by shifter energy drinks, which looked like the awful witch brew enhanced by magic and sold by the local coven. I’d tried that shit once and been unable to sleep for three freaking days. Never again. I shuddered at the memory.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve got an ID for the guy Lorna was with at the rest stop.”
That made me sit up and take notice, all thoughts of food forgotten.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” There was a long pause. “He’s a beta wolf from the Montes pack called Callum Strong.”
“Why would she be with a beta wolf? She never mentioned a wolf called Callum. The only guy she wrote about in any detail was a shifter called T, who wasn’t necessarily a wolf,” I said. “How old is this Callum?”
“Thirty-two. Unmated.”
Something didn’t add up. No way would my fun-loving sister hook up with a beta wolf a decade older than her. Not after gushing about T and how he was the one.
“Could this beta wolf have been taking her to meet the shifter she called T?” I mused.
“Maybe,” Felix said. “She didn’t drive and so would have relied on Ubers and public transport to get around. If T was a wolf from the Montes pack and not a student, he might have asked Callum to fetch her from Trinity Falls.
“Send me a photo of Callum, and I’ll ask my feline friends if they recognize him.”
“Be careful, Riles,” Felix warned. “Are you sure you can trust them?”
Felix had blown a gasket after I confessed to revealing my true identity to the females. He’d accused me of taking unnecessary risks.
“Yes, like I already told you, I trust them. Oh, and I gave Raquel your email address. She needs a sex video deleted from the OnlyShifters website.”
Felix spewed out a mouthful of energy drink. “What the fuck? Why?”
“Her asshole ex uploaded it without her consent.” I pouted and fluttered my eyelashes at him. “Please, Felix, she’s super upset about it.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, fiiiine. I’ll look out for her email. But no more pimping me out, Riles! I already have too many clients. Clients that pay me!”
I grinned as I ended the call. Felix might bitch about it, but I knew he’d delete the video for Raquel. Like me, he hated toxic males who did that sort of misogynistic bullshit. Knowing my friend, he’d make the asshole pay by infecting his devices with viruses that outed him as a pervert.
He’d done that to a coyote shifter who’d tried assaulting me two years ago. One week later, the asshole was fired after his employer found troll porn on his work PC. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
“Are you going to the Halloween ball?” I asked Simon as we warmed up in the gym. It was early evening, and for the past few weeks, I’d been teaching him some simple self-defense moves.
The gym was quiet. Most shifters were at dinner, which was where I planned to go once we’d finished our training session. The only other students here were busy lifting weights in a side room, so we could talk freely.
Simon hit the stop button on the treadmill and doubled over, beet red and gasping for oxygen.
“Uh…no…I hate…dances.”
“What about females?” I winked. My friend choked on his spit.
“I, um, would rather not put myself out there,” he said with a shudder. “The females at Moonrise Academy are far too forward for me.”
That tracked. My feline friends were shameless and never missed an opportunity to flirt with someone they liked.
“It’d be good practice,” I pointed out as Simon wiped the sweat from his brow.
“And it’s a costume ball with optional masks, so nobody needs to know it was you.
” The felines had promised to provide a costume for me.
Since the ball was at Moonrise Academy this year, I would arrive early and get changed in their apartment.
Because no males were allowed in the dorms, I’d have to switch back to my feminine self before I arrived on campus.
That meant catching an Uber there rather than waiting for the bus along with everyone else.
There was a lot that could go wrong with our plan, but I was way too excited about the prospect of dressing as a female again to care.
Besides, I was hoping I’d find a moment to question Tate about Lorna. He’d be more willing to talk once he’d had a few glasses of fae wine, which the felines assured me would be readily available.
“I’d rather not go,” Simon admitted.
I patted him on the shoulder. “That’s cool. I’d rather not go too, but I need to question more people on my list and figure it will be easier if alcohol is involved.”
“How’s the investigation going?” We moved over to a punchbag suspended from the ceiling so Simon could practice hitting a rock-hard object that didn’t hit back.
His punches were a lot more powerful than when we’d first tried this.
Sure, he’d never land a hit on someone like Tate, but at least he now had a fighting chance against the less trained assholes.
“Slowly. My friend Felix identified a guy caught on camera with Lorna just before she stopped replying to my messages, a wolf called Callum Strong. He’s a beta with the Montes pack.
” I chewed my lip. “Tate Montes seems most likely to be the shifter Lorna was seeing, but I don’t understand why she’d be in a car with a beta from his pack.
” Simon stopped wailing on the punchbag and turned to me, his brow pinched with concern.
“You need to be careful, Riley. Remember what I told you about the shifter mafia trafficking females? The Montes pack is powerful. If that kind of thing is happening around here, they are almost certainly involved. Asking Tate Montes questions might put you in danger.”
“I’m worried, Felix. The more I find out, the more I’m sure the shifter mafia is behind Lorna’s disappearance.”
It was late. Night had fallen outside, but I wasn’t ready for sleep. Or in the mood for reading. So I lay on my bed with my phone propped up against the pillow. Felix’s face filled the screen as he frowned.
“Not gonna lie, Riles. That’s what I think happened.
Disappearing completely is very difficult these days because of human surveillance networks.
That there’ve been no sightings of Lorna aside from the photo captured at the rest stop tells me someone wiped all traces of her or took her somewhere not covered by human security cameras. ”
“Simon thinks the Montes pack is involved in trafficking females.”
“It has to be,” Felix agreed. “No way would the Montes pack alpha not know about shit like that going on in his area.”
“Simon is worried my talking to Tate Montes will put me on their radar.”
“He’s right about that too, which is why I think you should call it quits and come home, Riley.”
Felix never used my full name unless he wanted to make a point or was mad with me. Like Simon, he seemed more than a little worried. Honestly, so was I.
I’d spent most of my evening doing a deep-dive into online reports of female trafficking.
There wasn’t much out there. Only vague rumors on small forums and social media posts from magicals asking for help to find their missing loved ones.
From what I could tell, most of the missing were rarer females from lesser magical communities, such as wood sprites, trolls, and kelpies.
I’d also seen a few posts on ShifterTok about missing bunny shifters and other smaller prey shifters.
It all painted a disturbing picture.
“Lorna would have been a target for traffickers,” I said.
“Snow leopard shifters are extremely rare.” Guilt made the protein bar I’d eaten solidify into a hard lump in my stomach.
I should never have encouraged Lorna to leave our father’s protection.
Yes, he was a controlling, misogynistic asshole who wanted to marry her off for his own gain, but at least she’d been safe from traffickers there.
“It’s not your fault, Riles,” Felix huffed, reading my mind like always. “Lorna would have left with or without your help.”
“Yeah, but I made it a lot fucking easier.” I’d put her in touch with a small organization that helped abused females leave toxic family situations. They had helped my mom when she first ran away from my father.
The shifters running the program picked Lorna up from the border of the pack territory and placed her in a safe house while they set up a new ID for her so she could build a new life.
My eyes pricked with tears when I thought back to how happy she’d been when she first arrived in Europe.
“You helped her escape, Riles. If you hadn’t, she’d have been married off to that fat, ugly wolf alpha from the Blackwood pack.”
“The one with the yellow teeth and toe fungus,” I sniffled.
“Don’t forget the spiky nose hair.” Felix chuckled softly.
I’d nearly vomited when Lorna sent me a photo of her fiancé. The guy was not a catch, and at sixty-two, he was old enough to be her grandfather.
“Yeah, she dodged a bullet there.”
Or had she jumped from the frying pan into a raging bonfire?
“I can’t leave until I know what happened, Felix. I refuse to give up on this.”
“And what happens if the glamour stops working?”
“Let’s hope I figure it out before that happens.”