Darrel held out his phone, and I silently mouthed a thank you as I answered.
“Scarlet,” my father said through the receiver. “I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. You okay?”
“Sorry, there was a substantial leak, and I had to do some outside repairs, so I locked my phone in my desk, and—”
“Scarlet—sorry, Alpha. I mean Alpha—”
“Dad, you can call me Scarlet. I always called you dad.”
“Honey, listen. We’ve been contacted by the police. A member of our pack went to a party—a party where you switch couples with other couples.” He broke off and cleared his throat.
“A swinger party?”
“Thank you. Everyone at that party died—twenty-six people, humans and fae. Our wolf was the only one who survived. He’s in police custody at the station.”
Chapter Two
Scarlet
The room spun. I closed my eyes and pressed my back against the wall for stability. I’d misheard my father. There was no way. The sheer idea that a wolf from our pack had casually attended a sex party and committed mass murder was ludicrous. The first part I’d believe of over half of the pack, the second part I’d bet my life against even being a possibility.
When I didn’t respond, my father cleared his throat again. “The officer I spoke to said that only the Seven Rivers pack alpha, the pack lawyer, or a representative from NALC could get in. When I couldn’t reach you, I called Lance. He said he could be there before eight with his lawyer, as we don’t currently have one.”
“That’s fifteen minutes from now,” Darrel said, clearly overhearing my dad’s side of the conversation.
“Dad, who was at the sex party?”
He took a moment to answer, and I could hear him gulp over the line. “Zane Reed.”
“What the—” After a few stunned moments, I managed to whisper, “Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Wow. Just, wow. My stomach sank and squeezed at the same time, as if my body was torn about whether to be worried or outraged. Now I knew why my father was so reluctant to tell me.
Up until about a month ago, Zane Reed and I had been in a long-term relationship. That had ended when I discovered that my sister frequently gave Zane blow-jobs in alleyways. He’d even given her a nom de guerre on his phone, “Hospital,” so I wouldn’t find out their frequent sexting.
That all culminated in Zane and Zeezee breaking into an unused unit in my building and having sex for the first time—only to realize that they were true mates. When I caught them, Zane had the audacity to suggest that he and I keep going as a couple. Needless to say, he wasn’t my favorite person.
Could I believe that Zane would cheat on his true mate and go to a sex party?
Yeah, I could. Cheating on your werewolf true mate was supposedly antithesis to our nature, but if any werewolf couple were to embrace that taboo, it was them.
Hell, I could even see my sister giving Zane the thumbs up—she was a complicated werewolf, and no part of me wanted to understand Zane and her relationship. I got enough fallout from having to hear complaints from Oorg in the apartment next to theirs, who said the two were always fighting, screwing, or playing music, and all of it was at excessive volume.
But could I see Zane killing anyone?
No.
"Does Zeezee have any idea what's going on?" I asked.
“Your mother is texting with her. Zeezee seems worried and has been hounding your mom for details. She said she didn’t know about the party or anything about the circumstances of Zane’s attendance, only that Zane was going out. Your mother got the impression that Zeezee was with company herself. She's under an understandable amount of stress right now. Hopefully more information will arise in her mind when her endorphin levels subside. Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than what I’ve just told you. I’ve been sorting through my books, but I’ll need some information to narrow down my research. Zane is—well, he’s not perfect, as you know. But I can’t imagine what led to him landing in such circumstances.”
Circumstances? More like hell.
My father took an audible breath and then added, “We have to take care of this as a pack, but you don’t have to do it, Scar. If you want to delegate this to me as your beta—”
“Thanks, Dad, but I’ll take care of this.”
I might have imagined it, but I thought I heard my father covertly sighing on the other end. "I'll be here, sorting through volumes and waiting for an update. Don’t worry. We’ll get him out."
The moment I hung up my phone, Darrel leaned in. “What do you need me to do?”
I headed for the door, fishing in my jacket pockets for my keys. “We’ll head straight to the police station and call Lance on the way. I just need to grab… Damn it. Where are my keys?”
“Did you bring them up with you?” Darrel asked before nodding to the door. “We used mine to get in.”
“I swear I did. They were in my jeans pocket and then… Did I throw them away?” Heading toward the kitchen, I pulled out the trash can where Darrel and I had stuffed our destroyed clothing.
“Want me to do it?” Darrel asked, grimacing at the trashcan that now reeked of sour onions. He wrinkled his nose. “Or I could just call a taxi. I don’t think taking my bike is the best idea right now.”
Between the reek and the emotions swimming inside me, I felt ill enough to add to the unpleasantness in the trash can, but I needed to get my shit together and handle this.
“No, I need my ID, which is in my wallet, which was in my pants, and I’m already doing this.” Shoving on some thick rubber gloves, I started rifling through the scraps of acid-eaten material as fast as I could, but they were all in a tangle.
“Scarlet?”
“Yeah?” I looked up.
Darrel studied me as he pulled on plastic gloves from under the sink. “Are you okay? This still has to be pretty raw for you.”
“About Zane? No, that’s fine.” I swallowed hard. “I can compartmentalize my duties as alpha and my feelings toward what he did. That’s what being alpha is, right?” Looking down at what I was doing, I added, “I’m already having to compartmentalize being his landlord.”
“Actually, I wanted to ask you about that.” Darrel grabbed a second trash bag, and without asking, started transferring the trash I’d already searched through into the second bag. His dark blue eyes met mine. “The apartment you lived in before, which your sister and Zane now occupy, is one you got rent-free in exchange for working here, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little absently as I finally found my jeans, pulled them out, and realized that I held only a pant leg. “Crap.”
“Well, is Marie paying you more now that you no longer get your rent free?”
I let out a laugh with a bitter edge that surprised even me. “Marie wouldn’t raise the salary on my job if droves of these things attacked the complex every day, and it was part of my daily duties to fight them off.”
“What if she could give that rent cut to another tenant in exchange for that tenant taking over some of your duties around the complex? You said this Gretel lost her job as a plumber.”
“The rent break is a really good idea, but I’m managing.” Groaning, I threw down the top of my jeans which definitely didn’t have my keys or wallet. “They probably sank to the bottom. Well, this is going to be disgusting.” Holding my breath, I started shoveling the material into Darrel’s bag to get deeper.
A key scraped in the lock of the front door, and Lance stalked in. Of the three "celestial arranged marriages" I'd been thrown into by the universe, the one that fit the least comfortably was with the alpha of San Francisco. In truth, Lance and my true mate bond hadn't even been confirmed yet. We'd have to get down and dirty for that one, and I was far from ready to do that with this enigma of an alpha.
He was, however, the best person I could possibly think of to have on my side in a crisis. I was breathing my own sigh of relief seei
ng him here.
His piercing gaze immediately found mine, while I stood with my arms deep in a trashcan. He looked the exact same as he had four days ago when he'd left Arcata to head to his domain to "handle a couple of critical matters." When my packmates saw Lance again, they all assumed he had spent his time away from our pack as a biker and then reformed into a businessman. It was an easy mistake to make as he had red and black tattoos ringing his neck and wrists that his ten-thousand-dollar tailored suit did nothing to hide.
But from what I discerned from the tidbits I got off Aaron and Darrel, their brother was always both a businessman and a biker, and he was so confident that his business skills would earn him respect, he didn’t care what his associates thought of the tattoos covering his whole body. Even in these circumstances, seeing him made something inside of me flutter. His brow wrinkled as his gaze drifted down to what I was doing while one of his hands absently held the door open for one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.
The werewolf woman wore a pantsuit and had what Mack would call sumptuous curves. She wore no-nonsense heels, and her stick-straight black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. The severe hairstyle did nothing to diminish her beauty. She had deep-set eyes, a straight chiseled nose, and full lips. A briefcase rested under her arm while the smartphone in her hand claimed all of her attention.
“What is that smell?” She muttered, and then the toe of her shoe caught on the lip at our stoop. Her suitcase went flying, and she grabbed Lance's arm to break her fall.
Without warning, my wolf came roaring to the forefront, trying to wrest control from me. She pushed an image into my mind, a small red wolf lunging and biting into the woman's arm. The wolf's teeth sunk down through the woman's suit sleeve, and blood dripped down from her muzzle. The woman screamed in shock and terror as the wolf ripped her arm away from Lance.
My claws lengthened, shredding the fingers of my gloves. Pain seared in my mouth as my fangs grew and sharpened. With every ounce of control I possessed, I forced my wolf back, sending her deep into my mind. Thank all that was holy that I had spent two years mastering my control over my wolf because she fought me every inch of the way. When I'd finally shoved her down, I blinked into awareness to find a very different scene than I expected. The woman crouched on the floor, prostrate in submission.
Lance had closed the distance, standing just beside me, his eyes glowing golden with his wolf. "What’s going on?" he demanded, his voice a growl. He lifted a section of my hair that must have burned short with acid. "What happened to you? Why is your wolf taking over? Are you injured?"
Inhaling a shaky breath, I peeled off my ruined gloves, reached forward, and cupped his cheeks. Going to my tiptoes, I pressed my forehead to his--knowing it was the best way to soothe Lance's wolf. "I'm fine. Darrel and I just ran into a little trouble, but the creature is dead."
“What creature?” He growled, but his heavy breaths were slowing, and when I checked, his golden eyes were subsiding into their normal green.
“Something we don’t have to worry about right now,” I said.
“Scarlet,” Darrel said, making me step away from Lance. Darrel ran a hand over his beard and tilted his head toward the floor, where Jane was still lying on her belly.
Crap.
Feeling heat surge into my cheeks, I cleared my throat and said through a wince, "Sorry, Jane. Please, come on up. We've had an interesting afternoon, and obviously my wolf is a little overactive."
Her head popped up, and the woman looked over with a little smirk on her mouth, giving me the distinct impression that while she was submitting to me, she wasn’t all that submissive in general. "No worries," she said, climbing off the floor, smoothing her pantsuit and grabbing her briefcase and phone.
Lance gestured between the woman and me. "Scarlet, this is Jane. She’s the pack lawyer and private investigator for San Francisco. Jane, this is Scarlet, alpha of Six Rivers. Scarlet is also my mate, but you've probably already figured that one out."
I was his unconfirmed mate--but no part of me wanted to correct him. Turning to Jane, who still had a knowing grin on her beautiful face, I said hello. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the lawyer and PI parts of the job supposed to be kept separate in court cases?" It was what I'd seen in crime dramas, though obviously I wasn't going to admit that part out loud. "That way, the PI can be called to the stand?"
I half expected her to tell me to stay in my lane, but she took my question in stride. "There are no public cases with witnesses when werewolves murder humans. If this gets to court, it'll just be me, opposing counsel, and a judge in a room. The judge will determine guilt, and you'll be responsible to execute him immediately. But we're not going to let this case get that far." She tucked away her phone and offered me her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Scarlet."
"Likewise," I said, shaking her hand.
My wolf pushed forward just a little, urging me to show the woman our strength by squeezing her fingers, but I managed to dial it back to a firm handshake.
"Just so we're absolutely clear, I'm not a threat to you in any sense of the word," Jane said, sending a new bout of embarrassment through me. Clearly, I was not convincing her that my wolf was simply over-wrought by today's events. She lifted a hand. "I just want to establish that early. The alpha of the San Francisco pack is paying for me to represent any of your pack members who become entangled in this situation, and you, should the NALC become involved. I can only represent all of you with your express permission as alpha of the Six Rivers pack, though."
"You have it," I said, and when she pushed a paper and clipboard at me, I scanned the legal document, noted that I needed to be present for any and all interviews unless I gave explicit direction otherwise, and then I signed it.
"Good," she said, inspecting the paper. "And this all works fine, so long as you're okay with being available if we need to do an investigation. It might be time-consuming."
“I insist on being part of any type of investigation,” I said.
Jane nodded decisively. “Well, then, don’t try to kill me for tripping on the front stoop, and we’ll be fine.”
Touché.
“Alright then.” I clapped my hands together. “We should go if there’s nothing else.” I strode toward the door when Lance touched my shoulder.
“Scarlet, what attacked you and burned your hair?” he asked, his brows rose like he’d been waiting for an explanation and had finally lost any vestige of patience.
“It wasn’t a big deal. Some eyeless, noseless creature that stank like death. It didn’t even have any teeth. At least, I don’t think it did.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but Lance’s expression grew grimmer every moment I spoke.
His jaw clenched and nostrils flared, and he reached into his pocket slowly, pulling out his phone. Unlocking the screen, he fiddled with his apps, doing something I couldn’t see. “Hmm, last missed call from Darrel, two days ago, and the last missed call from Scarlet was… Never. Recent outgoing calls to Scarlet and Darrel, seven fifteen, seven twenty, seven twenty-three, seven thirty-eight...” He lifted his head, “That gap was during take-off when my pilot insisted that I put my phone away—”
I wrapped my hand over his phone, covering the screen. “My phone is locked in my desk drawer, where I put it before the fight, and Darrel left his cell in his motorcycle bag. And after the fight, we rushed up here to wash off the acid—”
“The acid?”
“The creature exploded into acidic sludge. Doesn’t matter.” I threw up my hands. “It wasn’t even a fight. The ghoul, or whatever it was, ran around, attacked Darrel, and died. That’s it.”
“It attacked Scarlet first. Tried to fling her off a three-story ladder in the rain.”
I leveled a death-glare on Darrel. “Traitor.”
He shrugged and leaned against the wall, kicking one of his motorcycle boots over the other.
“Let me get this straight. Scarlet, you climbed up a three-story ladder in the pouring rain with
only Darrel spotting you.”
“Nope, I wasn’t here yet,” Darrel said.
“Double traitor.” I crossed my arms and glared harder.
“I wasn’t,” he said, holding up a hand.
“You know what, I don’t have time for this,” I said. “And there are my keys and wallet.” I snatched my keys from the side table where I must have put them so I couldn’t possibly lose them and shoved my wallet into my jacket pocket. “I need to get to the police station, and only Jane the lawyer and I are invited, so get out of the way.” They weren’t actually in the way, so I decided to stomp through the group, give a nod to Jane, and throw open the door.
Before I made it to safety, Lance called after me, “I’d like to talk about a couple of things when you get back, Scarlet.”
His voice had grown more serious and grave, and somehow his words made my stomach drop and flutter at the same time. Lance and I didn’t talk. We lived in the same house. We passed each other in the hallways. On days I worked late, take-out was always waiting for me, and he had an uncanny way of picking out things I’d never tried before and absolutely loved. One day after Lance passed me in the hall while I struggled to get a threadbare screw out of the wall with a screwdriver, I walked into the apartment to find a brand-new cordless drill.
But we didn’t talk.
It was something I had both been longing for and dreading. It took me a moment to find my voice, and when I did, it sounded hoarse. “Yeah, Lance. I’ll see you tonight when I get home.”
Darrel insisted on walking Jane and I down to my office and then out to my car, carrying the sour-smelling trash bag with him to dump outside. The rain had let up, but the sidewalks were a maze of deep puddles along the night darkened parking lot. No ghouls waited outside, just the same-old beat up trucks and sedans sitting under the glare of the halogen streetlight. Jane barely seemed to notice my dilapidated forest-green sedan as we stopped beside it. She just glanced up from her phone for an instant before climbing into the passenger seat.
Darrel opened my door for me, wrapped his hands over the top, and leaned in a little. “I’m sorry about the reservation, Baby. If you tell me the name of the place, after I wrap things up with Lance, I’ll head over there and see what I can do about making it for tomorrow.”
Filthy Fae: A Dirty Alphas Novel (Heartland Forest Book 2) Page 2