STRAYED

by Amber Lynn Natusch

  “And so few females,” I whispered aloud without thinking.

  “Exactly,” she confirmed. “Once I learned more about what and how much of a commodity I was, I did everything I could to blend into the human population. But without the support of a pack, I had to do what I could to make a living.”

  Cooper growled instinctively.

  “What did you have to do?” he asked with narrowed, golden eyes.

  “Once I knew I wasn't a homicidal maniac every time the moon was full, I moved to New York City. I tried bartending, but I couldn't keep my head above water. I was about to be evicted,” she admitted, unable to meet Cooper's glowing eyes. “One of the girls I worked with was a dancer. She told me I could make great money at it―that I had a unique look that people would go for. So I did it. And that's what I continued to do until the day Deacon found me.”

  Judging by the air of embarrassment radiating off of her, “dancer” was a euphemism for stripper.

  “I told you she was a whore,” Alistair mumbled under his breath. Unfortunately for him, Cooper easily heard his comment.

  And he didn't seem to care for it much.

  Cooper charged him, slamming him hard against the newly sheetrocked wall behind him.

  “I have known her since she was five years old. I grew up practically living at her house. Her dead brother was my best friend. Say anything like that again in my presence and I will blow my fist through your face, grab that narrow mind of yours, and push it through the back of your skull, do you understand?” Alistair nodded as best he could with Cooper's arm pressed tightly across his throat. “Good. Now, as for taking her in, I'll assume that nobody here has any protestations. Ruby, she can have my room. I'll sleep on the couch.”

  Even though I had no intention of putting her out, it was strange to have Cooper be so bossy about things. We'd always discussed plans in the past, but it was abundantly clear that he wouldn't be bending on the Lyla issue.

  “That's fine, Coop. I'll change the bedding and get everything ready.” I turned and gave Lyla a warm but slightly sad smile. Her story was heartbreaking but respectable. Even Scarlet seemed to think so. Her silence spoke volumes. “Welcome to the nuthouse.”

  With a wink, I disappeared from the room, making my way downstairs. I realized on the way that the next five minutes I spent changing Cooper's sheets was the last alone time I was likely to get for some time. My home was becoming a hotel that people checked into and never checked out of. It made me miss the months I had spent by myself when I first came to Portsmouth. But on the flipside, I was gaining an estrogen ally.

  And with four male wolves and an overbearing Sean in my life, I was in desperate need of that.

  Chapter 6

  Once dinner had been eaten and everyone had begun to prepare for bed, I made my way to my bedroom alone, only to turn around and find Cooper standing just inside the door. The boys were readying the living room for their sleeping arrangements and Lyla was safely locked in the bathroom, running down the last of my hot water, no doubt. It looked like I wasn't getting a shower or me-time in before bed.

  “I can't believe this,” Cooper said softly, sitting on the edge of my bed while I picked up a portion of the mess that was spread across my floor. “This can't really be happening. What are the odds?” His questions seemed rhetorical, so I quietly cleaned while he tried to make sense of things he couldn't understand. “This should never have happened to her, Ruby. She was a great kid. Smart. Popular. She was going to go to college, graduate, marry some decent guy, and have kids. That's all she ever wanted. And now—”

  “She won't,” I said roughly. Though I had long accepted that a normal life would never be for me, it didn't mean it hurt any less to be reminded of that fact. Even if he wasn't speaking about me, Lyla and I were not so different in that regard, a point that would undoubtedly bond us over time.

  “It's not right,” he said with sadness in his eyes. “I shouldn't have left them. If I had stayed, Billy would have kept it together and she would never have ended up in this mess.”

  “It's hardly like you had a choice in the matter, Cooper. And even if you had stayed, you can't be certain that things would have turned out differently. You can't hold yourself responsible for this, no matter how unfortunate the outcome is or how much you wish you could change it. Lyla is who she is. All you can do is be there for her now.”

  “She's just so...different.”

  “Well, the path you take in life changes you. She's no exception, I'm sure. Many wouldn't have survived what she did, Cooper. She adapted and lived to see another day. She's strong...she had to be.”

  My words did nothing to abate his pain, so I sat beside him, cradling his shoulders, and did what he and I could do better than anyone else. We sat in comfortable silence. I tried to use my empath abilities to ease his self-punishment, but it was a battle, to say the least. Cooper's guilt ran deep.

  I didn't want to ask for details in that moment, but if my interpretation of the earlier conversation's subtext was correct, he had stayed with Billy and his family after he left home—or was kicked out of it. That made Lyla family to him, and I knew firsthand how hard Cooper took it when someone in his family was hurt, whether or not it was on his watch. I needed him to see that she was okay, that she wasn't permanently damaged during the years he had missed. To do that, I needed to make sure that was true. And Lyla didn't seem the forthcoming type. I would need a degree of tact that I wasn't sure I possessed.

  Something else to add to my clusterfuck list.

  “I need to find out what happened to her,” he said suddenly, shooting up to his feet.

  “No. You need to leave her be for now. Trust me. I know a thing or two about ugly pasts. If hers is, she'll share it if she wants to. And if she doesn't want to let you in, you need to let that go, Coop. I mean it. Either you can accept that or not, but you can't force her to tell you. She seemed really skittish to me when she came into the shop. If you push her, she'll bolt. I can sense it.”

  He contemplated my words for a moment, then nodded tightly. He would heed my advice, though it was plain that it would pain him greatly.

  “So what do I do now?” he asked with the earnestness of a child.

  “Now you make her feel safe and welcome—two things that you do better than anyone else I know.” I pulled him in for a hug, letting him feel the sincerity behind my words. “I love you, Coop.”

  “I love you too, Rubes,” he whispered, giving me an extra squeeze at the end.

  “Okay, now that we've got that sort of cleared up—but not really—I think I'm going to go out for a second. I need to get some fresh air...wrap my head around all of this.” He looked at me dubiously. “I won't go far, I promise. And besides, I've already had three bizarre things happen today. You know the Universe only shits on a person in threes.”

  “According to you,” he scoffed. “Do I want to know what the other two things were?”

  “Umm, yes and no. Sean came back early and was surprisingly forthcoming with PC information.”

  “That is bizarre,” he muttered under his breath. “And the other?”

  I started toward the door slowly, prepared to make a break for it.

  “Peyta and Jay are getting married. Gotta go!” With that, I sprinted for the front door, startling the boys while they finished arranging their makeshift beds for the night. “Later!” I shouted as I bolted through the door, slamming it behind me. I knew Cooper was yelling something when I left, but he wasn't going to come after me. He was too worried about Lyla's and the boys' tenuous truce to leave her with them alone. I knew they wouldn't do anything to harm her for fear of repercussions, but Cooper couldn't see past his guilt.

  I used that to my advantage and burst out into the cold night air.

  Portsmouth was a safe town, barring the life-threatening situations that I seemed to bring to it, so walking around in the evening alone didn't seem especially risky. The only thing that seemed threatening to me that night
was my ever-present clusterfuck list and the headache it was giving me. I walked the few blocks between my house and a nearby park quickly, needing to release a little physical energy. I no longer had my dance classes—or studio, for that matter―to work it off, so I had to make do.

  The particular park I made my way to was tiny, and it featured a statue of a civil war hero. I had never bothered to actually read the plaque explaining who he was and what he had done to warrant the erection of the oddly massive granite sculpture, but I sat upon one of the wrought iron and wood benches near the statue. From there, I stared off in the distance, past the 18th century homes and buildings. I needed to enter into an almost meditative state if I wanted to think through the issues I faced, especially if I wanted to get Scarlet to talk to me. I needed to create a false sense of security for her, though I wasn't certain that would help. She tended to see right through my actions.

  Just as my breathing was becoming deep and rhythmic, my heart rate slow and steady, a voice from behind me made me nearly jump right out of my skin.

  “Ruby,” Gavin drawled. “Had to escape the overstayed house guests, did you?”

  I wheeled around to see the old-codger version of Gavin peering down his crooked nose at me. For someone who appeared to be in his seventies or eighties, he looked as sharp, shrewd, and intimidating as ever. I guess it helped that I actually knew who and what he really was—or at least I thought I did.

  “I came to get some time alone and give Cooper a chance to catch up with an old friend,” I replied curtly, turning my eyes back to the starry horizon.

  “Yes, the redhead. Stunning young thing, though I'm not sure I'll ever understand all the piercing the kids do these days,” he rambled, coming to sit beside me on the bench. “Why a beauty like that would mar herself in such a way is a conundrum.”

  “Wait. You mean something actually has you baffled? There's a puzzle that you can't solve? Saints be praised,” I mocked, lifting my hands toward the heavens. “Gavin the Great has been stumped. Never thought I'd live to see the day.”

  “That's because you're often lucky to see tomorrow, living the way you do, my dear. Your beau certainly does nothing to improve that situation.”

  “Here we go again,” I muttered, prepared to launch into the same conversation that we had been having for weeks, the one where he tried everything—other than giving me a valid and tangible reason―to get me to leave Sean. I would in turn argue until I was blue in the face or exhausted, then say something to piss him off and drive him away. My trump card was always to point out Ginger's slip-up, the one where she told me about an extinction of something—some kind of being. That was guaranteed to shut his mouth in record time.

  “Not tonight, Ruby. Tonight, I did not come to fight with you. I came here to talk...about something other than the dark-eyed one.”

  “Interesting,” I mumbled, barely realizing I'd spoken out loud until his eyebrow raised just a bit, creasing his forehead more deeply.

  “Isn't it?” he volleyed. “I saw that he visited you today.”

  “How is this not talking about him?”

  His keen eyes narrowed.

  “If you don't mind,” he said sternly. “I wondered if he had any news about the mitigating circumstances leading up to your unfortunate run-in with Tobias.”

  Scarlet growled viciously in my mind. I had never mentioned the showdown that took place outside of town to Gavin—the one where Tobias came to kidnap me. The one that got me killed—temporarily. Though it should not have surprised me that he knew, I was floored by the fact that he hadn't mentioned a thing about it until that particular moment. Gavin was anything but random.

  “I would ask how you know about that, but I'm not sure I need any more fuel for my raging headache, so let's just skip to the part where you tell me what you know about that night.”

  With his most put-upon expression, he let me know that he had no intention of breaking that down for me. I wasn't exactly surprised, but a girl has to try sometimes.

  “I'm resourceful, Ruby. My eyes are always open.”

  “Well, that means your eyes were there. Thanks for helping out and all. You could have saved me the discomfort of slicing my own throat.”

  His expression darkened.

  “That was a fool move if ever I saw one. The dark-eyed one would have never let Tobias leave with you.”

  “Would you have?” I asked, thinking it a rather pertinent question. It was met with silence. “Awesome, so you want to know about the goings-on that led up to that debacle, but won't offer me anything in return. That's not going to happen, Gavin. Tit for tat, my friend. Tit for tat.”

  Frustrated, I stood to walk away. But his next words stopped me cold.

  “Tobias was controlling them, wasn't he?”

  My head snapped back to look at him so quickly that I strained a muscle in my neck for my efforts.

  “What did you say?” I whispered into the darkness, rubbing my neck. “How do you know about―”

  “I could sense it, Ruby. I am surprised that you couldn't.” He eyed me strangely, assessing my response to his words, but I gave nothing away. “I told you something about them didn't feel quite right.”

  In fairness, he had, but in true Gavin fashion he hadn’t just come out and said it. Instead, he’d woven it creepily into his rhetoric, which had just made me ignore his warning. If one could call that a warning at all.

  “I think you need a crash course in how to clearly make a point. It usually involves being up front and transparent though, which are two things I'm uncertain you're familiar with or have any experience exercising.”

  “I exercise timing, Ruby. There was no need to bring this up before now.”

  “Whatever. Get on with your monologue, please. Cooper's going to start to worry.”

  “As he should, Ruby, but not about where you are at the moment. He should be worried about what could possibly be coming.”

  “And that is?”

  “Something I have endeavored to find out. I do not wish to alarm you, so I will reserve certain details until I am sure they're pertinent. What I will tell you is that the implications of what happened to Cooper and your squatters are grim, to say the least.”

  I pondered his words for a moment, trying to figure out what angle he was working. And then it dawned on me.

  “You think there are others...”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “From the London pack? Like, some of them got away?”

  “No. I don’t think that Tobias came up with this technological ability on his own,” he paused to let my mind catch up to his. “I think that whoever brought it to him in the first place is still at large.”

  “Yeah. But we already know that. Sean is working on tracking down the responsible party now.”

  “And my suspicion is that it will lead them to nothing helpful. Whoever has manufactured this will not be so easily caught.”

  “So what's your point then, Gavin? You're not telling me anything we didn’t already know.”

  “What I am saying, Ruby, is that I think there are others—others being controlled. That is what I am going to get to the bottom of.”

  “How could you possibly know that? Where are they? Who are they?”

  “Those are answers I am searching for, rest assured.”

  “If that's the case, then I need to tell Sean. The implications of that technology being widespread could be catastrophic, especially in the wrong hands.”

  “Which is where things of that nature always end up,” he growled. There was more to his statement than he was letting on. It wasn't just about the idea of mind control capability falling into the hands of another sociopathic alpha. I could feel his energy. It was cold and harsh, and it ran deep. He was speaking from personal experience.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and started to dial Sean. I hadn't heard from him since he left to meet Trey. I hoped that meant they were onto something.

  The phone rang once before
Gavin snatched it away from me, ending the call.

  “What are you doing?” he snarled, eyes blazing with rage.

  “Calling Sean. He needs to―”

  “You will say nothing to him of this, do you understand me?”

  “I'm not going to tell him who told me, Gavin. Christ...what a mess that would make. But he still needs to know. We're all working toward the same end, Gavin.”

  The fury rolling off his elderly body nearly drove me to the ground.

  “He and I are not working to the same end, Ruby, of that I can assure you. Nor will we ever be.” He got up to leave, tossing my phone to me as he turned in the direction of the docks. “You will have to choose one day, Ruby. And that time will soon be upon us.”

  I watched him disappear into the darkness while I contemplated not only his words but his emotions too. Gavin and I had a convoluted past, involving empty threats, enigmatic messages, and unsolvable riddles. In every instance, he proved to be one thing: confident. But on that night, his hardened façade cracked ever so slightly, betraying him. Fear and doubt seeped through, shrouding me in yet another mystery to solve.

  What could be bad enough for Gavin to fear for me?

  The vibration of the phone in my hand snapped my attention back to the present. I didn't bother to look at the display; I knew who it would be.

  “Hey, Sean.”

  “Why did you hang up on me? Is something wrong? Where are you?”

  “Calm down. Everything is fine. You know I'm a klutz; I fumbled the phone, that's all.”

  Lie.

  “I'm still with Trey trying to sort through this elaborate web of accounts and fake companies. It's taking longer than I had anticipated. I was hoping to make it back tonight to see you, but I won't be able to. Not unless you need me.”

  “No, no, that's totally fine. I understand,” I said, pausing for a moment. The pros and cons of telling him about Gavin's suspicions weighed heavily on me.