by Jami Gray
Behind door number two was a bathroom, and door number three revealed a master bedroom. Even if the unmade king size bed hadn’t clued her in that this was Sebastian’s room, the strength of his familiar clove and citrus scent would have been a dead giveaway. It didn’t take her long to check the bathroom and narrow walk-in closet. She stood in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom when Warrick appeared.
“He’s not here.” She let her gaze roam over the room.
Strangely, other than the messed-up bed, the rest of the room was meticulously neat. Either Sebastian had a maid or he was raising the bar on male cleanliness. Knowing Sebastian, she went with the maid.
Warrick leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s an office at the other end.”
“Find anything interesting?” As the words left her mouth, her attention returned to the bed. There was something…
“What is it?” Warrick asked, the sharpness of his question jerking her gaze to his.
The impact of meeting his gaze shook her. As long as she didn’t look at him, really look at him, she was fine. But now her throat swelled, making it hard to squeeze her voice around the lump inside. Worried she would open her mouth and everything that was boxed away would escape, she looked away. “Nothing,” she choked out.
“Don’t lie to me.” His voice was flat, cold.
That tone was just what she needed to slap herself back in line. Her temper reignited with an almost audible sound, snapping her spine straight. No matter what he thought of her actions, she would not bow her head and let him disrespect her. She stalked toward him, making sure she put enough swagger in her walk to make a dead man sit up and take notice. The burn of frustration and feminine ire provided enough emotional armor to let her get in his face.
He didn’t move from his position, even as she stopped in front of him with no more than mere inches separating them. She tilted her head to the side and in a very deliberate, very soft voice told him, “I don’t lie. Ever.”
“Really?” His lips curved into a small half smile, and his lids slid to half-mast.
Her heartbeat picked up as his scent crowded in until she swore she tasted cinnamon. Her tongue swept over her lower lip. He focused on the revealing move and she could feel the tension tighten between them. “Really.”
“Then tell me, Xander—” His voice dropped and he bent his head closer, until the carved angles of his face blocked everything else from sight and they were practically breathing the same air. “Why did you really go to Cheveyo?”
Because you were being a stubborn ass, was the first answer that popped to mind, but she stuffed it back. There was an intensity to his question that made her hesitate. She searched his face, trying to determine what was really behind the question. Hadn’t he already decided the answer for himself? Unable to read his inscrutable countenance, she heeded the quiet nudge of her battered heart and gave him the truth he hadn’t wanted earlier. “To protect you.”
Her answer turned his half smile into something infinitely tender.
“Silly girl,” he whispered before he took her lips with a gentleness that rattled her.
The heat of his mouth on hers seeped under her skin and bones and began to wrap around the cold wounds from earlier. When he raised his head, her pain and confusion were still there, waiting to be addressed, but now they were tempered with a fragile hope.
She took a careful step back.
He let her go, watching her. “Tell me what was bothering you about the bed.”
With a lessening of the awful tension between them, Xander found it easier to focus on the matter at hand. Turning away, she walked over to the bed. She lifted the bunched up comforter and flipped it back. “It’s just that the sheets are shredded.” Leaning closer, she traced the deep rips with a finger and added, “Not just the sheets, but so is the mattress.”
Warrick went and stood at the foot of the bed. “Claws don’t only come out when you’re fighting.”
Heat washed over her face as last night’s memory of his skin under her nails danced in her head. “This isn’t about sex.”
“Maybe it was good sex.”
She gave him the look every female used when a male was being dense. “I don’t think so.”
Warrick quirked an eyebrow.
“Single toothbrush in the bathroom, no unexplainable underwear lying around, and the only scent I’ve been picking up in here is his.” She glanced back down and frowned. “I don’t know, maybe bad dreams? Unless he’s an extremely restless sleeper.” She shook her head, unable to pin down why such a small thing was bothering her. “Never mind.” She made her way around the bed until she stood next to Warrick. “Did you find anything in the office?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” He motioned her ahead of him. They both headed back down the hall. “There’s a password-protected laptop on the desk.”
“We can call Ryuu and see if he can help us crack it.”
Warrick wrapped his hand around her wrist, stopping her before she entered the office. Turning her head, she looked at him.
His face was grim. “You really believe Sebastian would turn on the pack?” On me?
There was no missing his unspoken question. “Maybe there’s another explanation,” she offered, trying to give him something.
“But it’s not looking good,” he growled.
“No, it’s not,” she said.
His jaw tightened, but he gave her a short nod before letting her go.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty minutes later, Warrick was wearing a path in the beige carpet in front of Sebastian’s desk as Xander followed the last of Ryuu’s instructions.
“Okay, I think that’s it,” she said and hit Enter. The black and white text on the screen disappeared, only to be replaced with a heavily muscled troll-like figure hefting an overly large ax and standing on top of a pile of blood-soaked bodies. “Lovely,” she muttered.
“You should be in.”
Even over the tinny speaker of the phone she could hear the grimness in Ryuu’s voice. He wasn’t at all pleased with their poking around in Sebastian’s business. Good thing Warrick was with her. Otherwise she would’ve wasted time arguing with him.
Xander figured if she was wrong, she could apologize later, but for now, she’d rather piss off Sebastian by violating his privacy than risk Zeke’s continued good health. “Yeah, I am.”
“Did you find anything on Zeke’s computer?” Warrick asked from the other side of the desk, his steps measured and deliberate.
Unsurprisingly, he was driving her crazy with his pacing, so she hissed at him. He raised his head and she frowned pointedly then gave a sharp shake to her head. He stopped directly in front of her, leaned his hands on either side of the laptop, and curled a lip. She raised an eyebrow, smiled sweetly, then went back to scanning the contents of Sebastian’s laptop.
“Maybe,” Ryuu answered. “Gavin and I have been running Zeke’s history from today and he was poking around in some old reports and files. One of the reports was the one on the cage fighting incident.”
“And the others?” Warrick asked.
The pause on the other end of the phone was damning. “Another was the incident report on the rogue, Kurt Stevenson. Zeke had also pulled files up on each of the dead wolves. He was following Sebastian’s activity log.”
“Sebastian could have been trying to find a link between the attack and the dead wolves,” Warrick said.
Xander peeked at Warrick from under her lashes. His voice may have been bland, but with him so close, she didn’t miss his nails gouging the desk’s surface. Unable to resist, she covered one of his hands and gave it a soft squeeze. Under her touch, his fingers flexed.
“Ryuu, look at this,” Gavin said. There was the sound of a chair being rolled across a floor and some shuffling.
Xander let go of Warrick’s hand and went back to the laptop. Opening Sebastian’s email, she began combing through the various me
ssages and folders.
A string of curses had her fingers halting and she looked at the phone. “Ryuu?”
“Dammit, Xander,” his voice came back, taut with tension,
She winced at the underlying layer of pained betrayal in those two words. “What did you find?”
“Zeke traced an online chat room identity back to Sebastian.”
Validation of her suspicions didn’t make her feel any better. Instead, a sick sensation crawled into her stomach and made itself at home. “Which chat rooms?”
“One of the ones that went dark before Warrick headed to Arizona.”
“The same one the Bitten were discussing possible cures in?”
“Yeah,” Ryuu said flatly.
“But that doesn’t make sense.” She met Warrick’s gaze. “Sebastian’s a Born wolf, not Bitten. Plus, you said he was upset because you chose me as your mate, but the bond happened in Arizona. So if that was his trigger, what was he doing in the chat rooms before that?”
“Because he knew I was going to choose you before Arizona.” Warrick straightened and resumed his pacing as if I hadn’t just dropped a bomb.
Stunned, Xander got up from her chair and rounded the desk until she was directly in Warrick’s path.
He stopped in front of her.
“You want to explain that?” she asked quietly.
His jaw tightened, a hint of color rising along his cheekbones, and his shoulders straightened. “You’ve been mine for a while now, Xander.” When she stood there, silent, he continued. “We’d been together for over a year. Neither my wolf nor I would waste our time on someone we didn’t want. The damn bond is a bonus, but I’d chosen you as my mate long before that.”
Instead of being offended at his propriety statement, she found herself stifling a smile that threatened to bloom at the sound of his growly, put-upon tone. She held the proof of her importance to him close, letting it sooth some of her ragged edges, and cleared her throat. “Nice of you to let me know.”
Whatever Warrick planned to say was cut off by Ryuu. “That wasn’t all Zeke found. That GPS unit you two found in the rental, he managed to get a printout of the route.”
Warrick’s gaze shifted to the phone. “And?”
“There were a couple of stops before they hit your place. One was a hotel in downtown Portland, the other is an address.”
“They could’ve checked into the hotel,” Warrick offered as Xander went back to the desk to bend over the laptop.
She pulled up Sebastian’s Internet and went to Google Maps. “Give me the address.”
“4327 SW North Shore Drive, Gaston.”
“Son of a—” Her bitten-off curse had Warrick coming up behind her.
“What?” Ryuu asked.
“Sebastian’s definitely linked to the address. It’s the last place he mapped.” As the proof of Sebastian’s betrayal mounted, disbelief and fury began to build.
There was the clatter of computer keys through the phone line. “Gavin’s checking property records to see who it belongs to now.”
Xander pulled out her phone and began typing in the address. She and Warrick would need it.
“Xander, was there anything else on the laptop?” Ryuu asked.
“Nothing glaringly obvious,” she answered.
“If you bring it back with you, I’ll go over it.” Based on the sharp edge of Ryuu’s voice, there was no more hesitancy in invading Sebastian’s privacy.
“It’ll have to wait until we check out this address,” Warrick cut in, leaving no room for arguments.
“Vidis, I don’t think the two of you should head out there without some back up. We have no idea who Sebastian’s working with or why.”
“Or what that spell can really do,” Xander added under her breath.
Warrick’s glare and warning snarl made Xander wince. He shifted his fury to Ryuu. “I’m not sitting around and leaving Zeke alone with that bastard longer than I have to. He’s not expecting us to be able to track him so soon. Once you have a name, you and Gavin head over to the hotel and see what you can find out.”
Ryuu knew when not to argue with his alpha. “Fine, but you keep your cell phones close. I’ll call you as soon as we have a name on the property.” The drone of the dial tone filled the room.
Xander clicked the phone off and shut down the laptop. “Do you really think Sebastian has Zeke?”
It was hard to get the question out. Warrick’s fury led off of him like a dark wind. It took everything she had to keep her hands steady and her wolf under control. Rarely had she been in his presence when he was this angry, generally making a point to stay out of his way when his temper was riding him hard. But she was his mate, which meant her place was beside him. So she sucked it up.
“If he doesn’t, he’s going to tell us who does,” he snarled before stalking out of the small office.
As he and his anger swept out of the room, she sighed. Yeah, this was going to be fun.
Warrick’s sedan bumped over the weather-beaten asphalt as they followed the GPS as it took them away from the edges of Haag Lake and deeper off the beaten path. They made the normal thirty-minute drive in just under twenty. Xander was amazed that Warrick’s blatant speed-racer impression hadn’t attracted the attention of the police.
“Pull over here,” Xander said when the dot representing them on her phone came to the last bend in the road. “If Sebastian’s really there, no point in letting him know he has visitors.”
Warrick didn’t answer, but carefully pulled his sedan off to the side of the road. When he turned off the engine, she shot Ryuu a quick text that they made it, then stashed her phone in a pocket. She reached for the door before realizing that Warrick hadn’t moved. He was sitting still, staring out the windshield, his hand flexing around the steering wheel.
“Warrick?” she called his name softly, worried by his unusual reaction.
“I don’t like this.”
The words were squeezed out, as if by keeping a tight rein on his voice, he could choke back whatever emotion was riding him.
“I’m not a big fan of it either, but we don’t really have a choice,” she said, uncertain what was going on.
In a very wolfish manner, he cocked his head toward her. She sucked in her breath as she found herself staring into the eyes of the wolf. “Not this plan. Having you here.”
She bit her lip, hard. It stopped the urge to snap that this wasn’t the time for his possessive side to come out to play. Even her wolf wanted to claw at him in frustration. They were mates. Mates stood together. When was he going to get that? It was only when her wolf reached out to make her feelings known that Xander realized how tight she had locked down their bond.
Warm fingers grasped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I want you here, but we—” he tapped his chest. “—want to keep you safe. This isn’t going to be safe.”
“You need to let him protect you as much as you need to protect him.” Her mother’s earlier words whispered in her head and resounded in her heart, shedding a new light on their earlier argument.
If she continued to snarl and claw against Warrick’s nature, she would destroy any chance they had at making their relationship work. She had a choice—walk away, or learn to meet him halfway. Considering how vital this man was to her, her decision wasn’t that hard.
She dismantled the barriers she erected and let the bond flow open between them. Piece by piece, she felt each thread slip back into place. A sense of coming home, of finding her center swept through her, smoothing over the ragged edges of hurt feelings. There were still parts of him that were walled off, but she could wait. Her alpha had waited weeks for her to accept their bond and patience wasn’t a virtue most alphas possessed. It was time to step up and take her place at his side. She couldn’t expect Warrick to be anyone other than who he was, which meant if it was her turn to wait for him to figure out how to let her be a partner, then so be it.
Reaching out, she cupped his face. “It�
��s not safe for either of us, but if you watch my back, I’ll watch yours. Deal?”
The taut lines in his face softened as he turned his lips into her palm and pressed a warm, chaste kiss against her skin. “Deal,” he said, his voice husky with emotion.
Warrick and Xander approached the dark house, careful to stay downwind. It helped that the threatening rain finally decided to make an appearance. The steady downpour covered the sounds of their approach and washed away their scent, giving them a welcomed edge.
Together, they decided to approach on two feet instead of four. Even if her nose wasn’t as sharp in human form, she couldn’t argue that opposable thumbs came in damn handy when you were trying to sneak around. Besides, Warrick had reassured her that it wouldn’t take much for him to call his wolf, should the need for fangs and claws come into play.
The house was a long, rectangular ranch style. The blind eyes of the windows looked over the bare porch, spanning the front. As they crossed the oil-stained gravel driveway, no signs of life sputtered from within.
Warrick worked his way around the back while Xander crept up onto the porch, keeping to the darker patches of shadows. She made her way to the door, carefully stepping across the weathered boards of the porch. The dull metal of the front door’s handle was within reach when the low groan of a warped board moaned under her foot. She froze and held her breath, waiting to see if the noise triggered a reaction. The muffled din of the rain against the tin roof of the porch continued without missing a beat. When no other sounds joined in, she let her breath slide out in a soundless exhale.
Wrapping her hand around the cold metal, she twisted it. Locked. She considered breaking in, but before she could make the decision, a silent call resonated under her skin. Warrick had found something.
Sliding under the wooden porch rail, she dropped to the gravel and made her way around to the back of the house. Rounding the side, she met Warrick. He touched her arm then pointed. Set back, closer to the tree line, was the darker outline of another building.