Chapter Sixteen
True
Walking away from Hazel was painful, like I was doing something wrong, leaving my mate behind me.
My wolf pushed at me, begging me to turn back around, but she needed space.
And as much as my instincts screamed to protect and stay front and center for her, she deserved to have the time she requested.
Lindon was all up in his head. I recognized the look.
He was working on a plan. I could always count on him for that.
He made the decisions, and, right now, there were a lot of them.
Shiloh and I never questioned him or wanted part of this process.
It was his gift, and we let him shine. We trusted him with our lives. And now with our mate.
Shiloh was less in control. I could scent his beast. He kept looking back. I suspected that if Lindon and I weren’t there, he’d have gone back to her already, if he had managed to leave in the first place.
The more I thought about what Hazel told us, the more my heart broke for her, and the more I needed vengeance.
Her father sucked. I’d maybe have felt bad for him raising a child on his own if he hadn’t been such a horrible person.
Yes, drugs were involved, but he tried to use her to settle his own fucking debt and there was no excusing that.
Who does that? No one who deserves to be breathing.
He treated her like property, like she was just another asset to be bartered and traded. And now the asshole he promised her to was after her. Hearing Shiloh say that that man owned her had me seething and my beast crying out for blood.
The contract we took came from an agency. I didn’t know if it was the man who owned her or her dad who was looking for her. I suspected the first, her father not having any money. Didn’t matter. I wanted them both dead.
The second we got in the room, Shiloh blurted out through gritted teeth, “We’re not giving her to him.”
“Obviously.” Lindon put his hand on the back of Shiloh’s neck. He used that method a lot, sometimes like this one, to calm us, others with a bit of claw to let us know to stay in place. It wasn’t that he was taking control from us; we offered it freely to him. It was his job, and he did it well.
We all agreed she was ours, and she was no longer part of the job. But that didn’t make the job no longer there, and that was where the dilemma came in.
“I say we find the bastard who bought her and bleed him dry.” Shiloh was not his normal playful self. He was dead serious.
What shocked me wasn’t that he said it or that I felt it too, it was that Lindon didn’t look that opposed to it.
But we couldn’t just run out. We didn’t have enough information and would be going without direction.
We had a name of who we assumed took out the contract, which wasn’t the same as fact.
“What happens to the contract if the man disappears?” I asked. “Does the agency close it?” We’ve never had a case like that before, not that we were aware of.
“That’s the thing.” Lindon pinched the bridge of his nose. “If he thinks he owns her, that means whoever gets his estate would, by default, own her too. Or maybe they would revert it back to her father.”
Just hearing him discuss who owned our mate had me wanting to puke.
This short conversation opened our eyes to the horrible fact that we couldn’t just seek vengeance, because killing one wouldn’t matter if there were more in line. We needed to obliterate the entire threat. All. Of. It.
“I need to take a shower,” Shiloh grumbled. “A freezing one.” And if he’d been human, that would’ve sounded like he was talking about his erection, but with Shiloh, it meant he was trying to get his beast to retreat. His wolf hated cold water.
“I’m going to get us food and then research,” Lindon announced.
“Where are you going to get it?” I didn’t want to say I didn’t trust him, but none of our wolves were really that trustworthy right now.
“To make instant noodles in the kitchen.”
I nodded. And as he went to do that, I opened up the laptop and popped the name Hazel gave us into it.
This was where I shined. I might not be able to lead the way Lindon did or understand the emotional side the way Shiloh did, but I could research like a boss.
I could take a name and connect it to an address, connect it to a business, connect it to money, connect it to people, and follow the trail anywhere.
I could hunt down the impossible by looking at one photo.
This was my element.
My first goal was to connect this man back to the agency. And the more I dug, the more I found. I trusted that she didn’t exaggerate the danger. This guy was awful, and I’d barely scratched the surface.
I dug and dug and dug. I needed more time than we had and a heck of a lot more focus.
When Lindon came back with the noodles, Shiloh had just emerged looking more like himself.
“Find something good?” Shiloh asked.
“No. But I found a whole lot of bad. We need to figure out what we’re going to do. Should we break the contract completely? Make up some excuse?” I didn’t love that idea, but it might be the safest. We were the best, and we could protect her from the others. Or could we?
I was already starting to piece together how wrong I was when Lindon said, “It’ll never end if we do that. Do we want her to live with a bounty over her head?”
“We need to protect her.” Not having someone with her now was nearly killing me. “She’s pretty out in the open here.”
This small town might not be a super popular or a populated place, but that didn’t mean people didn’t drive through it from time to time.
It would take only one wrong person to see her or take a photo of her for their Insta showing the cool shop, for her to be found. If we found her, someone else could.
Shiloh suggested we have someone near Hazel at all times. My wolf loved that idea. He was all for it. I didn’t like it, because I understood Hazel enough to know that she would see that as control, and she would see it as exchanging her father for us.
“How about we watch the town instead?” I countered. “While we’re researching and making a plan, we keep an eye out for outsiders and stay close enough to her shop so if something happens, we can get to her before they do.”
We decided that was the way to go, but nothing was set in stone.
I kept researching, but my mind wasn’t in it. It kept wandering back to her in the clearing and how her shift had destroyed her clothes. She walked out wearing Lindon’s shirt and a pair of shoes.
“She needs clothes.” That was the conclusion I drew from all that research. Maybe not helpful long term, but it was something we could do now. Her clothes were destroyed. We were her mates. Every instinct shouted it was our job to provide for her.
Lindon nodded. This was something we could do. We could replace the outfit she lost. Just one outfit, shoes, and socks. Nothing overwhelming. Just enough to say that we noticed a need and met it, and enough to calm my wolf’s pacing for a while.
I had no idea about women’s clothing, what sizes to pick.
She was curvy but small. We went to a small boutique in town.
The owner, Sean, was amazing help. He’d seen her at his shop and said he could figure out the size.
The older man was also a tailor and had taken to selling premade as a way to slow down. He knew his stuff.
We picked out pants, shirts, sweaters, socks, shoes then more shoes because we didn’t know what kind she would like. We ended up with far more than we said we were going to. So much for the plan to not overwhelm her.
“I think she deserves those things.” I crossed my fingers that we wouldn’t overwhelm her.
We didn’t want to bother her or to break our promise to give her space. That’d scare her more, but so would leaving random clothes there for her. Instead, I wrote a note from the three of us.
Hazel,
We are replacing the clothes you lost in your shift, but we didn’t know what you’d like. We probably bought too much. Keep, return, or donate any of this. There are no strings attached.
We would like to have dinner with you. But remember, “No” is a complete sentence. You owe us nothing.
I showed it to each of the guys, and they gave their agreement. We each wrote our name down and brought it to the Velvet Vial. She would find it when the door opened.
I wanted to knock. Heck, so did Shiloh and Lindon, but none of us would. We respected her. We were going to give her the time she needed.
Now that this had been taken care of, I was ready to go and focus on research. If nothing else, we were going to figure out a way to make sure no one took her choices away from her ever again, not even us.