Doc is silent, not bothering to claim I can trust him. Even if I believed that, I still don’t think he should be left here alone. I have no idea how long it will take the triumvirate to get someone down here, and there’s no doubt the humans will come back eventually.
“Fine,” says Macy, though her voice says it’s anything but. She glares at me, then stomps off toward the kitchen, motioning for Doc to follow her. “I need you to go over your security system with me in case those assholes come back.”
“Of course.” Doc nods and scurries off on her heels.
“She’s really pissed,” says Ollie once they’ve disappeared into the kitchen.
I sigh. “Yeah, but she’ll get over it.” I press a kiss to the top of his head. “Was the woman at the door one of them? From the lab?”
“Maybe,” he says. “I didn’t recognize her voice, but…” He lets the words trail off and he shrugs. “What worries me is how they knew I washere.”
I frown. “Didn’t she say the guy at the wildlife center told them?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “But would he really have given out Doc’s address?”
“No, probably not.”
Howdidthe two humans end up at Doc’s house? And that woman was so sure Ollie was here, as if…
My stomach drops at the pieces come together in my head. “They chipped you like a damn dog.”
Fifteen
Ollie
With all the upsand downs of the morning—the dream, the tears, the conversation, the intimacy—my emotions are already all over the place, and the thought that there’s something inside me, something the humans put there… ugh. That just makes everything worse.
A quiet, distressed whine builds in my throat, and I plaster myself to Luke’s chest, brushing my nose over his arm and taking comfort from his scent. He curls his body around me protectively and rubs his cheek over my hair. I burrow in closer, wanting nothing more than to hide, using his arms as a shelter from the sudden onslaught of anxiety caused by those humans.
And, well, everything else.
“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice soft. “We’ll get rid of it.”
He swings me into a bridal carry, then yells something to Macy about going to pack, before carrying me upstairs to the bedroom and kicking the door shut behind us. Placing me on my feet, he tugs at the hem of my shirt with a single-minded intensity, his brow furrowed and lips pressed into a thin line.
“I’m such an idiot. I can’t believe I didn’t think about the fact they might have put a tracker in you,” he says, voice tight with frustration.
My initial panic has faded enough that I’m able to recognize that he’s blaminghimselffor this mess. And that’s simply not the case.
Grabbing one of his hands, I wait for him to meet my eyes before speaking. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t think of it either.”
“But I’m the Alpha. I should be paying more attention to shit like this.” He goes back to tugging at my clothes, and I allow him to pull my shirt over my head. Next, he picks at the knot holding the sweatpants up and after a few moments, they fall to the floor leaving me completely naked in the middle of the room.
But Luke barely seems to notice, too intent on finding the tracker.
He runs his hands up and down my arms, his touch almost businesslike. After doing the same to my legs, he shakes his head and mumbles something to himself before beginning to strip out of his own clothes.
“What are you doing?” I ask, shivering a little.
He glances up to catch my eye. “I’m going to shift. My wolf’s senses are better than my human ones and I think I can probably sniff it out.”
“Okay, but—”
Luke takes a step backward, then allows the shift to wash over him. His shift is a thing of beauty, a flowing from one form to another with barely a sound. For some reason, that strikes me asodd, as if most shifts aren’t that easy, but without any memories to link that thought to, I ignore it.
Luke pads forward, his snout nudging at my toes as he sniffs first one foot, then the other. His inspection continues from my ankles up my right leg, his breath tickling across my skin as he attempts to sniff out the tracker. He reaches the crease of my thigh and pauses, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath before nuzzling my leg.
I crack a smile.
