Spiced Apples
Rowan
Heart in my throat, I stretch my arm out long in front of me to push the door wider.
“Ye okay, Pup? It’s Rowan.”
No matter that Lieutenant Colonel Rowan Rangecroft has completed numerous tours in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world, there’s not any part of me that wants to step a single foot around the corner of this suburban bathroom door jamb.
Images of Milo’s brains scattered up the white-tiled wall chill my blood despite the hot and damp air.
Scrunching my eyes shut, I send my wolf’s heightened sense ahead of me.
“Milo?” I call again, but my voice is barely audible.
Nothing.
On an exhale, I fall back on my training, and despite not carrying a weapon, I still breach with a dynamic entry.
My back promptly against the wall, I sweep the small room. Milo’s clothes are abandoned on the floor, the mirror he stole rests in a pool of water on the windowsill, and the shower relentlessly beats onto the bottom of an empty stall.
Stepping closer, I twist off the shower dial, and my wolf scans the drain for any evidence of blood. None.
In a pointless attempt to shed some tension, I swing my arm in an aggravated arc through the air, flinging water drops from the ends of my fingers.
Milo gets easily distracted, I know this, but what could have caused him to leave the shower running?
Exiting the bathroom, I move directly to his bedroom door, but when I knock—a little harder than maybe I usually would—the door opens wide and bounces off the drywall behind. It can’t have been clicked shut.
There’s no Milo here either, but the smell of apples is stronger in here. Not just apples—spiced apples.
His pillow is torn open, the goose-down filling distributed wildly over the bed and floor.
A damp towel rests in a wonky arc, as if Milo had simply let it fall around his feet before stepping clear.
The plastic covering still on the mattress assists my wolf in detecting bodily fluids, but none exist.
I take in the wider room. The window is closed and locked, but even if Milo went out that way, it’s a twenty-five-foot drop onto a gravelled path—my wolf would have heard.
Checking more closely, I discover that the only thing obviously unaccounted for is Milo’s backpack. Growling louder now, my wolf urges me out of the room.
Find. Protect. Pack.
Systematically, I clear every room on this floor before descending the stairs.
Pushing painfully under my skin, my wolf tries to force a shift—tracking Milo would be easier in that form—but I need to formulate a plan. Lurking at the back of my mind is the insidious thought that the reason he seems to have just vanished is that the Luna del Lupo failed to protect him.
Yet, there’s another thought, and that one is even worse.
So bad, in fact, that I raise a fist and knock it against my temple as if it might force the thought out.
Because there’s no way that Milo would be reckless enough to sneak out without me—and there’s definitely no way that my wolf wouldn’t have caught that…
Dining room: clear.
Utility room: clear.
Living room: clear—including cleared of all those fucking crystals. I growl so loudly that the picture frames on the walls rattle.
Backtracking to the front door, I discover that Milo’s boots are also missing. Immediately, I’m battle ready.
I swoop up my laptop on the way through to the kitchen, where I open the pantry, lift out the gun case from under the potatoes at the bottom, and set everything on the counter beside the cooling cookies.
Rushing, I connect my phone to the laptop, and use our tracking software to provide Milo’s current location—assuming he’s with his phone.
While it loads, I rewind the surveillance feed from the camera that covers the front door. My wolf is forward, and the golden glow of his eyes reflects from the darkened screen as the greenish-grey hue of night vision plays back at triple speed.
Time-stamped fourteen minutes ago, right after I checked the cameras in the yard and placed the call to Guardian, Milo snuck out of the house and crept out of view of the camera.
My expression sours. He left my protection willingly.
My brow slides lower, and my lengthening nails bite into the flesh of my palm.
Where would Milo need to go in the middle of the night? And why would he go without me?
Nausea turns my stomach—I know why. What I don’t know is where.
I flip back to the geolocation software. Its last ping was seven minutes ago, and it had Milo almost squarely in the heart of downtown. My expression in the laptop screen is thunderous.
Where are you flying off to, little Magpie? And why now?
The nausea solidifies into bile that burns the back of my throat when I realise why I can’t predict Milo’s destination.
The moment he finished his spell cast, the first thing he did was kiss me—and like the consummate professional I am, instead of getting a debrief, I tactically withdrew to the kitchen.
Milo is armed with three hours of spell crafting with another powerful witch, and I’m armed… with a tray of freshly baked cookies.
I lower my forehead until it rests on the cool countertop. What an absolute fucking—
The buzzing of an incoming call cuts off the end of that thought. The caller ID shows Riley’s name. My sister—this sister, especially—is the last person on earth I want to talk to right now.
“Lee, now isn’t a good—”
“Don’t ye dare give me that line! Do ye know what time it is over here?
Do ye? I’ll tell ye. It’s five a.m., Ro.
Five fucking a.m. Let me translate that into Dog: oh five hundred, Lieutenant Colonel.
Now, ordinarily, it being five o’clock in the fuckin’ morning wouldn’t be a me problem, because I’d be asleep.
But I’m not asleep. Not. Asleep. And would ye like to know why I’m not asleep?
Actually, no. I’ll rephrase. I’m going to tell ye why I’m not asleep.
Because of ye. Ye and yer stupid ginger wolf—”
“Yer a ginger too. Look, I’m at Critical, Lee. No Duff. Unless our parents were in a fatal accident—”
“I haven’t slept a wink, Ro! Not one, because of ye and yer wolf. So ye can take yer Critical, and shove it—”
I growl.
Riley growls back. “Ye infuriate the ever-loving fuck out of me, but yer also my brother, and my wolf is incredibly insistent that yer wolf isn’t okay. So insistent, in fact, that she hasn’t let me sleep.”
“Lee…”
“Don’t. Look, we both know I like feelings about as much as I’d like a case of the clap, so ye could save us some torment by explaining to me—preferably in five words or less—why yer wolf is so… whatever the fuck he is.”
Despite everything, I smile. Of all the Rangecroft siblings, Riley is the most like me—she’s also most definitely been recruited by the Intelligence Corps, because there’s no way this woman can know all the shit she knows and not have been recruited.
“I, um, lost a Package.” I pin the phone in place with my shoulder, and resume opening the gun case. “But I’ll find it.”
Riley clicks her tongue. “That’s some Package to have gotten yer wolf so…”
I clench my jaw as I load the cartridges. “No different than any other.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, what?” I chamber the gun. “Lee, I need to go.”
“This is mission critical, soldier, so ye’ll listen to what I have to say, or I’ll get Mum to call ye.”
I tense. “Yer bluffing.”
“Try me.”
There’s a long pause on the line, and then I exhale my defeat.
“What happens when we deny our wolves?”
Rolling my eyes, I affix a thigh holster for my weapon. I don’t have a concealed-carry permit for this state.
“Answer the question. I already have Mum’s number up on the screen to bring into the call.”
“They weaken and wither.” The textbook answer.
“No, before that.”
Staring at the geolocation software as it updates, I avoid Riley’s question. Milo’s now in the heart of the financial district of downtown—what is he doing? At this time of night, that area is mostly empty skyscrapers.
Fearful of the unknown, and incredibly impatient to begin closing the distance between us, my wolf pushes closer to the surface, which extends my nails to claws. Riley makes a sharp inhale down the line.
“Yeah,” she gasps. “That’s like a cramp over here. Fuck ye very much for that, by the way. But that’s exactly why I’m calling. Ye don’t recognise what this is—clearly—but my wolf does, and so do I.”
She takes another controlled breath, and I move to the doorway to lace up my boots. “Yer wolf reached out to mine because he’s hurting and yer not listening. He needs help, Ro, to protect what’s his.”
I pause with the shoelaces wrapped around my fingers.
“Come again?” I whisper.
“This Package ye’ve lost—she’s family.”
“He,” I correct, because I refuse to acknowledge the rest of what Riley just said.
“He have a name other than Package?”
“Magpie.”
“Magpie belongs to yer wolf, Ro. And yer denying him that won’t make it less true.”
“Magpie can’t…” I swallow past the lump of emotion wedged in my throat. “He can’t be my mate. He’s lived here for days, surely I’d have—”
“Is he a wolf?”
“No, a witch.”
“Then that’s why. Yer not fated mates, Ro, but yer wolf has chosen him all the same.”
“He can’t be my mate,” I repeat, the air feeling very thin.
“Why not? Perfectly possible for a wolf to choose a non-wolf mate. Don’t be one of those dickheads, yeah?”
I shake my head. “No, not that. The job I do… I can’t do it like I need to if he is.”
“Aaaand this is why I’ve been awake all fucking night. Right. Listen, because I’m saying this once and then I’ll deny all knowledge we ever had this chat.”
Despite that she can’t see me, I nod.
“Mates don’t make each other weaker, Ro, it’s the opposite. If ye’d accepted him, Magpie’d be able to ground his magic through ye.”
Memories of the fight in the coffee shop with Janus and his purple crackly hands surge to the front of my mind.
“And ye and yer lovesick wolf, ye’d become faster, stronger, and more alert—instead of moping about our family bond. And I’d be asleep.”
I finish tying my laces and stand to put on my jacket.
“For yer wolf to have chosen him, it means he’s yer equal… And if he’s yer equal, then he’s just like ye. So, if it were ye who’d been lost, what would ye be doing?”
“I’d be finishing the mission.”
“What’s the mission, Ro?”
“Shit.” I rush out of the house and slam the door. “I really have to go now, Lee.”
“Yer going to go reclaim yer Package?”
My wolf answers in a growl.
“Great. I’m going to sleep, then. Don’t disturb me.”
“Thanks, Lee.” The line is already dead—Riley didn’t wait, and I climb into the truck.
While I drive, I go over the facts.
Milo did his last spell cast in the hope of finding out more about the Luna del Lupo, and how to use the enchantment to protect the Romulan Bloodline. His strongest emotion when he finished was elation and happiness, which means it was a success. He must have learned how to stop Janus.
And my reckless, brilliant, stupid, beautiful… mate is going to try and fix it all by himself.