Alpha Morgan presses his lips together. “True. But you have an inner circle, don’t you?”
Ellery pipes up. “There are definitely some deputies I can ask.”
The alpha nods. “Do you want me to call the orcs, see if they can spare a team?”
Ellery looks at his den in thought and then over at me. “I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but yeah. Let’s reach out.”
Orcs. Okay. Yeah. I’m just going to sit here and take another sip of water and pretend that sounds all normal and everyday to me too.
“You said you found a footprint?” Leon, one of Ruger’s dads, asks.
Ellery pulls his phone from his pocket and swipes to unlock it and find the photo. “A partial. Looks too big to be female.” He slides it across the table to the alpha, who plucks it up and studies it before handing it down the line. Each of Ruger’s parents takes a look, zooming in and examining the photo, nodding their heads.
“Just the one imprint? No sign of others?” Jordana questions, passing the phone back to Ellery when it’s completed a full circuit around the table.
“Only one print,” Ruger confirms.
“I know you’ve been looking at dens because of the Hunt angle, but what if you’re dealing with a lone male?” another one of Ruger’s dads asks.
I try to recall his name, but it’s lost in the chaos of the eighty thousand introductions I received tonight.
“Had Fife pull a list of lone wolves. We’re working through the possibilities,” Ellery responds before giving a sigh. His blue eyes glance over at me with a look of apology, as if he’s sorry he hasn’t caught the fucker yet.
I’m sorry too. I offer a look of sympathy right back because I don’t want to be caught up in this chaos any more than I want him to have to deal with it.
Alpha Morgan strokes his chin. “A loner could make sense. Whoever got onto your property last night had an opportunity to take her, but they didn’t. From the sound of things, Gannon out patrolling was the only thing stopping them. We’re probably dealing with someone low in the hierarchy. An individual who can’t beat you in a fight, which is why they’re sneaking around in the shadows.”
I find myself staring down at my empty plate, as the whole table tosses around their theories and suggestions. Warmth colors my cheeks as I listen and absorb their genuine concern. I know the guys take my safety seriously, but to hear the others express the same worries or offer to help in any way they can, it takes me aback.
Not one of them sounds resentful or annoyed that my appearance brought on all this trouble. No one has insinuated that I might not be worth the hassle. It’s so strange. So antithetical to everything I’m used to. Despite all my fears and reservations, a part of me is starting to believe that this den and their family practice what they preach.
Community…pack.
A foreign but welcome feeling fills my chest as I settle back into my seat. I realize that I’ve been a feather in the breeze, drifting, blown around, spinning. But now? Now, I think I might have found a soft spot to land.
When I raise my eyes, I find Melana Arcan staring steadily at me. Tears well in her eyes like she can see my realization written all over my face. She offers me one of her beautiful smiles, and my throat tightens with emotion. A small tear spills down her cheek, and she lifts her hand to wipe it.
Something in the way she moves, or maybe it’s the way she’s looking at me, jars me. And all at once I’m no longer sitting at a table on Alpha Morgan’s back deck. I’m standing in a dirty, dimly lit warehouse, and someone’s crying.
I look around, completely confused, and discover a group of kids who are roughhousing quietly next to me. I can’t see any of their faces, they’ve got a tight ring going, and I’m trapped outside of it, facing their backs as they all bend over a pair of turtles. What clothes they have on are tattered and filthy, not that the skinny bodies inside the worn fabric are much cleaner.
“I don’t think they want us to eat them,” a little emaciated girl declares sullenly while poking a stick at one of the shells, the body of the turtle locked safely inside.
An older boy with dirty dark hair snorts and reaches out to flick the girl on the head. She growls at him and rubs the spot he abused, leaning away to keep him from doing it again.
“Prey never want to be eaten, stupid,” the boy jeers, and several other kids his age scoff their agreement.
“There’s not enough here to feed more than one of us anyway,” a tall thin girl sighs.
“Do you think Alpha will be back soon? Think his mate will feed us?” another girl asks.
The mean dark-haired kid barks a cruel laugh. “I don’t think she’ll be alive long enough to do anything. Alpha was pissed. He’s going to do to her what he did to his den, make ’em pay for questioning him.”
A few of the littler kids whimper and tuck themselves close to one boy. He’s tall and has dark hair like the pitiless kid, but when he wraps his arms protectively around the scared ones, it’s clear the similarities between the two stop there.
I move closer to the kind boy, drawn to him in a way I can’t explain but feel on a visceral level. I want to reach out and tap him on the shoulder, force him to turn to me so I can see his face—a face, I can feel in my gut, I’ll know instantly.
“B, can you take us out hunting?” another boy asks the cruel kid, who rolls his eyes.
Before he can answer though, wails sound off from somewhere outside the metal walls of the building. I look around, the screams and cries growing louder with each passing second. A door crashes open, the boom of metal striking metal making me jump. It’s so loud that it almost drowns out the surprised cries some of the children make.
A massive man storms in, his thickly muscled arms holding a woman who’s doing everything she can to get away. His greasy hair clings to his head, and his thick brows are drawn in anger. Compared to him, the woman is tiny, clothed in little more than dirty rags. A clump of her hair is missing from her head, and a trickle of blood is visible on her neck.
“You will fucking submit,” the man bellows in her face, and she screams something unintelligible back.
“Where is she, you bastard?” the woman snarls, and the man tosses her away from him. She flies through the air, crashing against the metal wall of the warehouse, and the collision reverberates through the entire building.
“Mommy!” a tiny voice cries out, and then little feet are pattering across the concrete floor to get to the groaning woman as she tries to push herself up from the ground.
The vision blurs for a second, then suddenly I’m the one moving closer to the hurt woman, and when I look down, the tiny feet and the child’s body belong to me.
The big man roars in outrage, but I don’t pay the fury radiating off him any attention, my sole focus on getting to the woman on the ground. Her head snaps up and a familiar blue-green gaze fixes on me, a gaze I would know anywhere despite how long it’s been since I last saw it.
My mother.
Her battered face hardens with determination, and her eyes start to glow. Black veins crawl up her neck, and a tear spills down her cheek. She opens her mouth, and with every ounce of strength she has left, she screams, “RUN!”