My hand drifted up, settling over a nearly identical mark on my own skin.
“The mark on your neck,” I whispered.
Her eyes went wide and she snatched her hand away. “Honey-”
“Is that ... “ I swallowed hard, pieces of a long forgotten jigsaw puzzle fitting into place. “Mom, were you bonded?”
I could see the struggle in her eyes. The warring between lies and truths.
Finally, she answered simply, “Yes.”
“Who?” I scrambled to find an answer, sifting through countless memories of all the men in Long Mesa.
I was met with silence.
It couldn’t have been someone in Long Mesa. No way. There was no way anyone would let their mate suffer the way my mother had day after day, year after year.
The only other person …
“My dad?” All the air left me in a rush. “Your mate was my father?”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “Yes.”
It all made sense, and yet, nothing made sense.
“Mom, if he was your mate, why did you stay in Long Mesa?”
Remy would have torn the world down to get to me, and I would have walked through the gates of hell to get to him. No mate would ever let their mate suffer the way my mother had.
Tears gathered in her eyes. “It’s complicated.”
I wanted to scream. I hated that word. I was beyond sick of the damn word.
“Honey, we can talk about it when you’re home. Please. I don’t want to have this conversation with you now. Not like this.”
My gaze hardened, turning accusatory. “No, Mom, you never wanted to have this conversation at all.”
She flinched away, the screen tilting as her hand shook holding it.
“You could have told me,” I seethed, anger flaring brightly again. “You could have told me when I bonded with Remy or anytime since then, and you didn’t. How could you keep this from me?”
She shook her head in fast, jerking motions. “I was going to tell you everything when you came back.”
“I don’t know if I believe you,” I admitted. “All you do is keep secrets from me, Mom, and the secrets you keep aren’t helping me. You’re doing it to protect you, not me.”
She flinched, my words landing like a physical blow. “Skye.”
A knock at the door was all the interruption I needed.
“Mom, I have to go.”
“Skye, don’t hang up on me. We need to talk about this!” The desperate pitch of her tone broke my heart, but I was too angry to stop and listen to her right now.
“Yes, we do,” I agreed. I swallowed around the heavy emotions clogging my throat, cutting off my air. “But I can’t do that right now.”
Another knock, this one more insistent than the first.
“I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”
“Skye!” Her voice was pleading now, but I couldn’t bring myself to keep talking.
Maybe I was a bitch, but I needed to digest the fact that my father was my mother’s mate. That they had bonded. That my mom, the one person I thought always had my back, had lied to me multiple times.
My chest ached from the realization that she had been keeping so much from me for so long.
I ended the call and shoved my phone deep into my pocket as I headed to the front door, wrenching it open.
Daniel’s green eyes narrowed when he saw my face. “Are you okay?”
I blinked, stunned to see him standing there. “What? Yeah. I’m … I got in a fight with my mom.” I shoved down the residual emotions and tried to focus on the man in front of me.
His eyes narrowed, the motion barely perceptible. “Is Remy here?”
I shook my head and backed up to let him in.
“Fuck,” he breathed, jaw clenching as his gaze swept the room. His fist tightened around the file tucked in one hand.
“What’s that?” I motioned to the manilla file as I closed the door.
He ignored my question. “What about Gabe? Is he around?”
“They’re all in meetings,” I replied, worry beginning to unfurl in my gut. “I’m not sure where they are.”
His eyes cut to me, and I could see the indecision warring in his eyes.
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, my tone slightly harsher than I intended. But my nerves were shot from the argument with my mom, and I was more than sick and tired of people being all cloak and dagger and shit.
“What about Dante? Luke?”
I held in a growl. “All in meetings. What the hell is going on, Daniel?”
He raked his free hand through his inky black hair. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Remy’s number. It rang once before Daniel pulled it out of my hand and ended the call.
“No,” he said sharply, dropping my phone on the table. “I don’t know who’s around him, and I can’t have people overhearing what I need to tell him.”
Fear spiked in me. “What’s going on?”
He spun, his gaze piercing as he looked at me and then down at the file in his hands before finally settling on me again. “Do you know where they are? Maybe I can get to them.”
I reached out, my hand closing around his wrist as he went to turn away for the door.
He jerked back, the folder falling to the ground and papers fluttering out. I bent to scoop them up, but froze when I saw the name on the page:
SKYE MARKHAM
There were pictures mixed with the papers.
At least a dozen of them. Some in Blackwater, some in Granite Peak. Several with Remy, and at least one of me in Long Mesa.
My hands shook as I looked up at Daniel. “What the hell is this?”
He dropped to his knees, quickly trying to scoop up the evidence, but it was pointless. I had seen it.
I snatched a photo from his hands. It was Remy and me, taken at GPA, wrapped in each other’s arms, our lips a breath away from connecting as snow swirled around us.
It would have been beautiful if it wasn’t such a creepy, total violation of privacy.
I shot to my feet, backpedaling from Daniel so fast that I nearly tripped over the coffee table. “What the fuck is going on?”
My eyes shot to my phone, but Daniel was between me and the lifeline it offered. He was also blocking the front door. I could make a break for the back door, but odds were he could catch me.
Instead of reaching for me, he stood up slowly and took a step back. He raised his hands innocently. “Skye, I need you to calm down and listen to me.”
“Why the hell do you have a freaking file on me?” I raised the photo. “You have pictures of me! Have you been watching me?”
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “Skye, I need to talk to Remy and Gabe.”
I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.
“And you,” he added. “I know you have questions, but I’m not the bad guy here.”
“You have pictures of me in Long Mesa,” I whispered.
How had I been so wrong about this guy? He had protected me from Preston, befriended all of us … How had I missed this?
He rubbed his jaw, the muscles in his neck straining so hard I worried they would snap. “Skye, I didn’t take these pictures.”
“Does Elias know?” My voice rose shrilly. “Does he know that you’ve been spying on me? On my friends?”
He’s been spying on my friends.
Terror, unlike anything I had ever experienced before, drenched me like a five gallon bucket of ice water. My whole body shook, the cold freezing my bones and blood from the inside out.
“You took the missing shifters.” I could barely make my lips form the words.
His gaze sharpened. “Skye, I need you to trust me right now. We need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I fired back, jerking away when he reached for me.
“To find Remy,” he ground out. “We need to find Remy and the others.”
“You expect me to just go with you?”
I asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Give me one good reason why I should,” I snapped.
He inched forward, jerking his chin at the picture in my hand. “Because I found that file in Elias’s shit. He’s the one who’s been keeping a file on you, Skye.”
48
My eyes dropped to the picture I clutched in my hand a second before lifting them to meet Daniel’s gaze. “Why would Elias have a file on me? Pictures of me?”
He snorted and folded his muscular arms across his broad chest, pulling the fabric of the gray t-shirt tight around his biceps. “Probably because he’s obsessed with you.”
“He isn’t obsessed with me,” I countered. “He’s been helping me. He’s my friend.”
“Yeah, well your friend has been keeping tabs on you and your boyfriend,” he retorted coldly.
“Mate,” I corrected instinctively.
He rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Mate. Fine. The point is, Elias has been keeping tabs on you since you first showed up at that school last year. He even went as far as to dig into your history in Long Mesa. It’s all there, Skye.”
“That makes zero sense,” I snapped, narrowing my eyes. “He’s been helping me since I met him.”
“He’s been studying you since you met him.” Daniel scoffed, tossing me a look that was part pitying and part annoyed. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how he’s constantly trying to get you and Remy to ‘test your bond’ or watch you or some other creepy shit.”
“It’s not creepy; it’s his job,” I replied emphatically. “And aren’t you supposed to be working with him? Isn’t that the whole reason you’re even here? Because you’re helping him with his research?”
He growled, the sound low and ominous. “Jesus, wake the fuck up, Skye. I’m not helping him—I’m trying to figure out what his angle is. Elias isn’t the guy you think he is, or the guy my pack thinks he is.”
My spine stiffened. “You said your pack was gone. That you were the last one left.”
“I lied!” He threw his arms wide. “It was a fucking lie that Elias came up with as a cover story. Are you catching on yet?”
I glared at him, my wolf snarling and ready to attack. “Then who the hell are you?”
His arms fell to his side. “A friend.”
“A friend who happens to kidnap women?” I asked archly, still fully aware that he stood between me and the door.
“I’ve never kidnapped anyone, and neither has my pack.” He actually seemed offended at the suggestion. “If you’re talking about kidnappers, you might want to look a little closer to your own circle. Pretty convenient that all the girls who recently went missing are from your school.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I demanded.
“It means, princess,” he seethed, taking a step forward, “that your good buddy Elias has been absent every time one of those girls went missing.”
“Elias is an old man,” I answered coolly, rolling my eyes. “And I was there when two men, neither of whom were Elias, tried to kidnap one of my best friends.”
His jade eyes glittered. “Right. One of them killed himself, right? Blew his brains out in the snow?”
I flinched back at the reminder of the way the crimson sprayed across the freshly fallen snow. The grotesque image was seared into my brain.
“How did you know that?”
“Because his name was Daniel Christopher,” he replied smugly.
My breath caught. “That’s your name.”
“No, that’s the name of a guy Elias told me to be,” he fired back. “An identity he set up for me because he knew a dead man wouldn’t be using that name. A lone wolf he hired to kidnap your friends.”
I started shaking my head slowly. “You’re lying.”
“You know I’m not.”
“No,” I said stubbornly, refusing to pull at that loose thread. If I did, I had a feeling everything would unravel around me.
“My name is Dimitri Dashkov,” he said softly. “I’m from a pack in northern Russia in the Ural Mountains. Dr. Samuels approached my Alpha three years ago when he found out we had been making progress with the fertility issues plaguing all the packs. He wanted to study our methods. We stupidly let him in, and he’s spent the last year bastardizing his own version for his pack.”
My knees shook, threatening to give out. I blindly reached back for the edge of the couch before perching precariously on the arm. “No way.”
“Skye,” he crouched down in front of me, the move putting us almost at eye level, “I need to find Remy or Gabe and tell them about this.”
“Tell them about what? That you’re a liar and Elias helped you?”
His jaw clenched. “You haven’t asked one of the more important questions, you know.”
I glared at him. “Enlighten me, asshole.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’ll let that slide. What you should be asking is: ‘What pack is Elias from?’”
“He’s never claimed allegiance to any pack,” I replied. It was what allowed him to move freely between packs and conduct his research.
“His nephew is Damien Valois.”
My head snapped up.
“Elias Samuels is from Norwood,” he said slowly.
I shot to my feet. “No!”
“Think about it, Skye,” Daniel—no, Dimitri—hissed. “All the girls who went missing are from your school. Who knows the security systems and protocols of that place better than Dr. Samuels and the packs that left? They knew exactly how to get in, unseen, and take the girls they wanted.”
“Maren,” I gasped, my hand flying to my throat. “You’re saying they took Maren?”
He frowned. “I don’t know the names of all the ones they took. But if she went missing from the school, then, yeah. Odds are she’s in New York, inside the Norwood territory.”
“And they did this because of the theory that your pack came up with?”
“It’s a little more involved than that, but yes.” He glared at me. “The North American packs aren’t the only ones who have felt the strain of what’s happening to our species. But our Alpha had a theory, and so far? It’s working. It isn’t a full fix, but it’s enough to buy us more time.”
“What’s the theory?”
“Skye, I’ll tell you all of that, but right now? I need to find your Alpha or your mate and tell them something is going on.”
The gravity in his voice shook me. Something that looked like fear lingered deep in his eyes.
“They’re probably in the main building,” I muttered.
He turned on his heel. “Stay here. I’ll find—”
“Like hell,” I snapped, following on his heels.
He pulled open the door and paused, but I shoved him enough that he stumbled through the doorway and I could slip outside.
His hand clamped around my wrist, and the animalistic growl that ripped from my throat was a barely controlled warning from my wolf.
He had no right to touch us.
He held eye contact with me, but slowly removed his hand and stepped back to put distance between us.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and it sounded sincere. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”
I rubbed my wrist. It didn’t hurt, but I didn’t like the feel of anyone else touching me that wasn’t Remy.
And my wolf definitely didn’t approve. She was currently Team Rip-His-Throat-Out.
“It’s probably safer for you if you stay here,” he added quietly.
“Safer?”
“Yeah.”
“Safer means Remy could be in danger then, right?”
He barely nodded.
“Then I’m coming with you.” I turned and stormed down the stairs, trying to swallow the rising tide of panic. “Keep up.”
He started to mutter something under his breath, his boots stomping down the floorboards of the steps like they had personally offended him, when someone yelled my name from the right.
�
�Wait up, guys!” Tate called, jogging to cross the distance between us. The smile on her face slipped as she looked at us. “What’s going on?”
“Have you talked to Dante or your dad?” Dimitri demanded by way of greeting.
Tate’s eyebrows rose, her gaze flitting to me. “Not since they left this morning. Are you guys headed to the lodge?”
“Yeah. Apparently something is going on that Daniel,” I grimaced, “needs to talk to them about.”
“Yeah, I do, and it would be better if you both waited here,” he snapped back.
“You said Remy’s in danger,” I retorted coldly. “That means I’m coming.”
“Whoa!” Tate yelled, stepping between us with her hands up. “What kind of danger?”
Dimitri looked ready to explode. “The kind that will probably happen if we keep standing around here talking about it. I’ll explain everything, but first we need to find them.”
“My dad and Dante are in trouble, too?” Tate asked softly.
“Honestly? I think we’re all in trouble.”
“Then I’m done waiting,” I replied, spinning around in the direction of the lodge.
I made it three steps before the world exploded in front of me. Glass, stone, and wood flew in every direction as the main lodge erupted into a fireball.
The force of the explosion knocked me clear off my feet, hurling me backwards. My head hit the ground and everything went black.
49
Pain ripped me out of the dark. I gasped, my eyes opening and then squeezing shut against the bright light around me.
“Easy,” a warm voice admonished.
I managed to crack an eye and saw Daniel perched on the edge of the chair across from me.
No, not Daniel.
Dimitri.
I swallowed a wave of nausea that burned up my throat. My bones throbbed and ached, my joints were swollen and stiff. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Maybe I had fallen off another cliff.
The sound of the top twisting off a plastic bottle filled the air. “Drink this.”
“What is it?” I asked, my voice a ragged murmur.
“It’ll help with the pain.” He pressed the cold bottle into my hand.
I struggled to clear the haze of pain and fog from my memories. “What happened?”
Prey (Blackwater Pack Book 2) Page 43