“I figured if I was going for a walk with a wolf. I’m going to have some t-shirts made that say ‘Wolves do it better.’ I’ll have one say ‘Mess with my mate and die. The last one will say, ‘We’re a pack, enter at your own risk.”’
“Make sure you have one made for me.”
She slid her feet into a pair of sandals before they left the house. They walked towards The Wolves Den noticing the relative quiet of the morning.
“Is it always this quiet?”
“No, I can usually hear Mia’s laughter and Cole chasing her making her laugh louder.”
“Ven is telling his mother he’s going for a walk and Enzo is saying not before breakfast. Others might not hear them, but as Alpha, I’m made to pick up their voices.” She nodded and slipped her hand into his.
They kept walking until they got closer to the barrier.
“Who is that?”
“I don’t know. I have Chase and Jasper trying to locate any information on her. She comes several days a week at different times and just stands right there. She never comes closer, and she doesn’t seem to present a threat to us right now.”
“She can see us.”
“I believe she can also. She has been known to wave at Mia when she waves at her.”
She bit her lip and decided that was a mystery for another day. “I’ll guess we’ll know who she is when she crosses the barrier.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know about Kur’iks, but humans don’t case a place they have no interest in entering.”
“Case?”
“Slang. To watch a place, see who comes and goes and when. She’ll make her way in. Then we’ll find out what’s happening with her.”
She tugged on his hand leading him back the way they came. “Do you know what we need?”
“What?”
“Porch furniture. That way we can sit outside enjoy the weather, watch people walk up and down the street and do Alpha things.”
“Alpha things?”
“Yeah, watch the interaction of the pack. That’s a huge one, and this is obviously the main street everyone seems to walk up and down here.”
“We’ll have to shop for that when we shop for living room furniture.”
She stopped in the middle of the street and kissed him.
“I love you, Declyn Lupe.” She took his hand, and they walked back to the house stopping to sit on the top stairs of the porch.
“Declyn, tell me again what happened between you and Deja.” She leaned back on her arms allowing the warmth of the sun to caress her.
“Nothing happened which is why I don’t understand why she has been gone this long.”
“What does nothing mean to you? She is human maybe she took it differently.”
“When I found out that she sent you away I remember feeling anger. I was not happy with her actions. Then we found you and your organs were…” She slipped her hand back into his, as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Just thinking about what happened makes me want to crush something.”
“Something or someone?”
He turned to look at her his eyes narrowing. “Something.”
“But when it happened you wanted to crush Deja?”
“I did. It was like a whisper that went through my body continually circulating telling me it was her fault.”
“Why didn’t you hurt her?”
“She’s pack and my beta. I would never hurt her.”
Her teeth were worrying her bottom lip while the fingers of the hand that was free were drumming into the porch.
“Is that normal behavior for you?”
“No, but it’s also not normal to have an unattached mate that I was unable to protect.”
She nodded it made sense that he would be more protective of her. Still, she didn’t like the feeling that they were missing something.
“So, you didn’t send her away or direct threatening mental messages to her?”
“Of course not. What type of Alpha do you think I am?”
“The best. That’s why this doesn’t make any sense to me. Deja isn’t one to up and leave. Look how long she dealt with Marcus’s shit. She hung in there to the very end.”
“You’re right. I was there for that.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me what really went down and not that story Deja told me.”
“She was trying to protect you. Would she have left to protect you?”
“Protect me from what? Surely not from you.”
“Good question.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the anger I felt. It was like being suffocated.”
Her cell phone rang. She reached into her pocket only to realize it was still on the nightstand. She stood and ran into the house. It stopped ringing the minute she answered it. There was no one there. The number came up as unknown leaving her to wonder who was calling her and why didn’t they leave a voice mail.
“I got to the phone too late.” She walked back to the porch. “Hi Cole, Jessie, and Mia. What are you doing out so early?”
“Mia had a bad dream last night and insisted she tell you about it.”
Fire reached her arms out, and she flew into them. “You’re still shaking. Everything will be okay.”
“Only if you find the bad man. I saw him looking for godmom. Then he found her. He was laughing as he hurt her.”
“Sweetheart Enzo and Ven will keep her safe.”
“They can’t because they don’t know he’s looking for her.”
“I’ll find her, I promise you.”
Mia gave her a bright smile and hugged her neck.
“You’re the only one that can stop him.” She kissed her neck before getting down.
“Can we go eat? I’m hungry.”
“Who knew growing girls could eat so much?” Jessie said with a smile that said she loved feeding her daughter.
“Declyn?” The look in her eyes showed just how worried she was.
“I just sent out a call to both Chase and Jasper. They are to work day and night until she is found and I want her found yesterday.”
Xander and Caden pulled up in front of their house. “We are going to look for signs of Enzo, Deja, and Ven. If we find something, we’ll let you know. Also, there are rumors that Enigma one is stirring.” They pulled off with Declyn staring after them.
“Enigma one?”
“They’re a deadly group of Kur’iks, they are good to have around in a fight.”
She nodded. She would deal with them when they arrived.
“Do things move this fast around here all the time?”
“No, it all started when Deja crossed the barrier.”
“Makes you almost wish you didn’t know us.” She gave a weak laugh.
“For four hundred years, we stayed to ourselves on this planet. We fought no one except the Thalians. Then Deja crossed the barrier bringing with her both life and trouble. I watched my people have a reason to fight again, to come together as one. Then Jessie came bringing her contagious smile and her beautiful daughter. Kur’iks have lined up to have the pleasure of playing with Mia. Then you came bringing happiness and life to my heart and my house. I would never willingly go back. We can defeat what’s coming for us as long as we’re together.”
“I’m not sure what I did right, but whatever it was it gave me you.”
“Let’s go to The Wolves Den that’s where Chase and Jasper are set up. At this rate, I’m going to have to have to have a place built especially for them.”
Chapter Twenty-six
There were Kur’iks walking in and out The Wolves Den asking questions, doing research, leaving then coming back to find out more information.
Fire looked over and ran her hand down Declyn’s arm.
“Stop frowning your people can see you.”
“Lately all we have been using this place for is finding missing mates. I’m trying to remember the last time I had a drink in here.”
“I’ll make sure you have something to drink tonight.”
He flashed her a smile. “Do I get to pick my brand of poison?”
“I’m ignoring you.” She went to walk away, but he wrapped an arm around her middle and pulled her closer kissing the side of her neck before he let her go.
She walked away with a definite wiggle to her ass.
“Alpha,” Chase raised his hand in a wave.
“Chase, Jasper, how is the search going?”
“I’ve been searching for signs of them on the internet. Maybe just a mention of seeing two incredibly tall males with a female. It’s the needle and haystack that Deja told me about.”
“I’ve been looking for transmissions that might have come from them,” Chase added. “I’m looking for cell phone transmissions. They dump their original phones, but they should have picked up another set of phones. I’m not getting anything from a possible phone.”
“Why do they need a phone? They should just be able to talk to each other mentally.”
“Not without you or Declyn picking up their conversation. They would use a tight bandwidth of mental energy, but at some point, it would bleed out, just enough for either of you to pick it up and get a trace on them.”
“It’s not like they could have left the Earth.” She turned to look at Declyn worry in her eyes. “You don’t think they left the Earth, do you?” Her voice was low, but he could still hear the anguish.
“Why would she leave? Deja has always been there for me. Now she just ups and leaves. Do you think I did something to offend her or upset her?”
Declyn took her hand and led her to a table away from the others. He pulled out a chair for her to sit and slid it in when she seated herself.
“I don’t think you did anything to make her leave. Deja is a brilliant female and a sensitive one. You wouldn’t know that because you weren’t around as she began to grow. I’ve been thinking about this since you started questioning me about what I was feeling. I think she left to cut something off.”
She ran her hand through her hair trying to hide the trembling that didn’t seem to want to stop. When Deja first left, she was sure she would be back. No need to worry she assured herself even though she was worrying. That’s what friends did, or at least it was what she did. The longer she was gone, the more acid piled into her stomach making her sure something was wrong.
“We have to find her.”
“You’re our best hope at that. Tell me where she would have gone.”
“If I knew that Declyn, don’t you think I would already be there?” She blew up yelling at him.
He reached over caught the arm of her chair and pulled it until she was right in front of him.
“If Enzo disappeared on the ship he would go the very bottom of it. There was a room that had a view screen that allowed you to look from every possible angle out the ship. It was like being in space with the ability to breathe. No one else would be able to find him. I was the only one who would know where he was.
“Ven found a crawl space when he first came on board the ship. He was so little, and he disappeared one day. Enzo was losing his shit looking for his son. We were going over every word Ven ever said to either of us, that’s how he remembered his casual comment about a roomy crawlspace. Roomy, I still shake my head when I think of that, but we found him.”
“Was there ever a place that Deja talked to you about?”
She stood running her hands up and down her arms before she started pacing. The beauty of the wood floor caught her attention as she moved.
They had their own clubhouse. It was more like an overhang over an old porch for a house that was condemned. They would go there and sit because no one liked to be around that place. They spent hours sitting there and dreaming when they were teens.
“About two hours outside of the city there is a manmade lake. We learned about the lake in school and looked it up once. They rent what looked like estates around the lake. They are private and beautiful, she always wanted to able to vacation there.”
“We’re on it.” Jasper and Chase said together as they turned back to their computer interfaces.
Fire continued to pace rubbing her hands against her thighs to keep her from pulling at her hair. She took deliberate slow breaths as she wondered how life had become so good and so fucked up at the same time?
“We’re going to have to replace those floor boards.”
“I can’t stop thinking about why she left. Whatever the reason it had something to do with me.”
“Safire.” She stopped him with a shake of her head.
“Friends don’t just leave friends. Maybe some of them do, but Deja wouldn’t have just left.”
Deja never just left, their friendship was built on absolute trust. The only person she trusted as much as she trusted Deja was Declyn.
“Was there a note when you checked their house?”
“Note?”
“Did you check the house?”
“It was empty. What was I checking it for?”
He’s not human. Of course, he wouldn’t check the house.
We should have thought of this earlier.
Fire! I thought we agreed to never run again.
We run if our friend’s life is in danger.
She was out the door and approaching their porch when Declyn caught up with her.
“You’re fast.”
“Shh don’t tell anyone they will want me to run all the time.” The door wasn’t locked, so she was able to just walk in.
“Where would she place a note.”
He walked through the room. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s not for you, it’s for me.” She walked into the kitchen and smiled. “The day I came to visit Deja, she insisted that she make me a cup of tea. It was in this tin canister. She went on about it showing me the canister, but I remember wondering why she had two canisters of the same tea.” She took them down one was filled with tea the other was empty of tea all that was in there was a single sheet of paper.
She pulled it out. “One note.”
She sat down before she read the note. Once she was done, she handed it over to Declyn. He scanned it and then looked at it again.
“Fire,” he read. “The compound is in danger. You’re in danger. The only thing I can do is lead it away from you and the others.”
“She left because she thought something was threatening my life,” she whispered.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“What would you have done?”
He stared at her before looking at the note again. “What’s happening here?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out together.”
He stuck the note in the back pocket of his jeans and took her hand as she stood up.
“We’re going to find all three of them.”
“We are, do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because we don’t leave our people behind. Ever.”
She nodded and followed him out the house.
The walk back to The Wolves Den was quiet as they were each in their own thoughts.
“Did you find anything?” His voice stopped them in their tracks until he relented pulling back his Alpha voice.
Everyone in the room bowed their heads in submission. “Alpha.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
Fire went to ask a question, but Jasper put up his hand stopping her.
“There was nothing out of place. Not a blip of a random transmission. Not a stray physic thought, nothing.”
“It’s too quiet,” Chase added. “It feels like a dampening field has been placed over a thirty-mile radius. We checked it out and narrowed it down to a ten-mile radius. The bleed is what is covering the other twenty miles.”
“What are we waiting for?” She turned to look at Declyn. He was standing still. She opened her mind and allowed herself to connect with him.
He was tel
ling Xander and Caden where to go. They would start the initial search, but they were to watch if they found them but not to approach. He had Cait and Tristan moving towards Cole. Jessie was taking Mia to Amira’s house because she was coming with Cole.
He touched other minds giving them jobs to do before he took Fire’s hand and led her out the club and to their garage.
She got in the car and watched him as he pulled out the garage and left the compound.
“You’re used to this, aren’t you?”
“Every day, for more years than you want to remember, I directed my people in war. I knew where they were, and who and what they were fighting. I never just sat on the ship safe and sound as they fought, I was in the midst of it. A general with my hands everywhere at once directing my troops. I do not invite war. I don’t like it, but I won’t shy away from it either. My people are used to their lives being in danger. It’s how they live it’s what they are used to. We won’t pretend that we don’t know what to do and we will act even if death is the possible outcome. This is who we are.”
“I like who you are. I like who the Kur’iks are. I’m sorry I brought this down on you.”
“Don’t be they were getting bored. We’ve had more action and chances to fight since we’ve started finding mates, than the whole four hundred years we’ve been here.”
“Remember you said that.”
“I will.”
She closed her eyes trying to piece together parts of an incomplete puzzle. Why had Ron been so sure that she was an alien? Pictures of different planets weren’t enough to come to that conclusion. What makes you even think of aliens from another planet being on Earth? Had he seen something that had shaken him or suggested the whole we are not alone line? Could it have been a government project?
Of course, he could have simply fallen in with the wrong people. There was always that, but the look in his eyes said it was so much more. Whatever was happening was related to Ron, but there was more to it. This was bigger than him, but how much bigger.
She needed to talk to Deja.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Where the hell have you been?”
A pair of green eyes and blue eyes stared at her stopping her in her tracks.
Declyn (The Wolves Den Book 3) Page 17