Chapter Twelve
“How are things going, Hannah?”
Hannah froze at the sound of Ash’s voice on her phone. She looked around her workshop, breathing a sigh of relief when she didn’t spot either of her mates.
“Why are you contacting me, Ash?”
“What do you mean?” Ash’s tone was the right mixture of concern and confusion. “I told you when we spoke a couple of days ago that I would call you soon. You sound strange. Are you okay?”
“No, not really. Why did you reach out to me on that social network?” Hannah asked, turning to walk into her office. Even without the glass in the wall, she hoped it would offer some privacy.
“What exactly are you asking me, Hannah?” Ash responded after a pause.
Hannah decided to just get to the crux of it. “Did you know that I was their mate? That I was destined to Ryker and Bastian?” There was a telling silence on the other end of the phone that got Hannah’s back up. “You did, didn’t you? Somehow you knew, and you signed up to that social media network, and then you struck up a friendship with me.”
“Aww, now, Hannah.” Hannah jolted a little in shock at the harsh tone in Ash’s voice that had a distinct thread of arrogance through it. He had never used that tone when he was speaking to her before. “You say that like it might have been a little inconvenience for me, when in reality, it was a complete fucking pain in my ass! You are ahuman.” The contempt he injected in that one word spoke volumes. “And I had to actually talk to you as an equal. A fucking equal! What a joke.”
“So, youdidknow that I was their mate? How in the hell were you able to do that? Unless you took a page from your old man’s book and decided to use that old black magic shit. Let me be honest with you, Ash, and yes, I know the concept of honesty is completely foreign to you and your kind, but try to use what limited IQ you have to follow what I’m saying here.” His angry growl had her quietly rejoicing. “Using black magic to force a mating didn’t work so well for your father, so why do you think it’s going to work any better for your dumb ass?”
“Because I am nothing like my father!” Ash roared down the phone, and Hannah flinched away from the handset. “That man was weak. He should never have allowed his pack to be forced from their lands, and he sure as fuck should never have allowed that clan of bears to keep Blackwater Falls. I will take back what is mine, and burn that fucking clan to the ground.”
Hannah laughed bitterly. “You think you have what it takes to take down my mates and their clan? Fuck that! I saw the way your wolves ran from the highway that day, and that was only against two of the Blackwater Falls clan. There are more of them here now. How the hell do you think you can win against them?”
There was a poignant pause, and Hannah started to panic. “Because now I know how to rid myself of your mates, once and for all.” Ash’s tone was now calm, and he sounded almost smug. “I’ll be seeing you soon, Hannah. Real. Soon.”
The click as he disconnected the call sounded loud in her ear. She lowered the phone and pressed the palm of her hand against her pounding heart. She had no idea what in the hell had just happened, but Ash seemed to think he now had the upper hand in this imminent battle. But how? What in the hell could she have said that would give that bastard an advantage?
She turned from where she had been standing by the far wall and ran out into the workshop. She had to speak to her mates. The three of them had to figure out what Ash was up to, and if something she had said did, in fact, give that lying, scheming, son of a bitch an advantage, she’d never forgive herself. Well, at least until she killed him herself, and then she might feel a little more forgiving.
****
"Ash knew that Hannah was our mate," Ryker announced to the clan who had gathered at the town hall. The room erupted into a cacophony of questions and noise. When you considered the fact there were more than twenty bear shifters in the room, the noise level was pretty damn deafening. Because of the arrival of the younger generation of clan members, they’d had to move their meetings to the hall. Their home was too small now.
"Well, you certainly don’t believe in sugar-coating anything, huh?" Hannah asked dryly from beside him, and he shrugged. He'd never been one to mince words.
Landon spoke from the back of the room. "How in the hell was he able to do that?" He had no doubt voiced the question most had uppermost on their minds, and the volume in the room dropped considerably. "If there is a way for us to find our mates, then I for one am all for hearing more about it."
Most of his friends in the room all nodded in agreement, and Ryker growled low in his chest, allowing his dominance to edge out into the room, bringing the voices to an end. "You are all acting like this is something to be celebrated, but it's not. He used black magic to identify who she was and to bring her here." The room seemed to inhale at the same time.
"Why?" Isaac asked.
"For the same damn reason his father did, I would expect," Bastian answered as he looked around the room. "Some of you were there thirty years ago when Harford brought our great-aunt back here. They were after Blackwater Falls, and nothing was going to stop them from getting a slice of this town. Now it seems, with Chubbuck's death, Ash has a plan to see that come to fruition, and for some reason, he has brought our mate to this town as part of it."
"All of this comes back to that fucking wolf," Ryker said, and even he could hear the angry frustration in his voice. "He's not going to come at us head-on, not like his father did. He is working on something bigger, and if I were to guess, deadlier. He made it clear that day out on the boundary road that he wanted to kill me and Bastian. He believed that without us, the clan would be leaderless, and he could somehow step in."
"Well, that’skindatrue," Lucas pointed out. "None of the males that have been born into the clan since you and Bastian have carried the dominance of an Alpha. If you cannot sire a male who does, then we will need to go to the council." He looked around at the bears who had recently returned, and they all nodded. “You boys bring strength back to the clan, but none of you carry that mantle.”
Ryker nodded. "But knowing he wants to kill us is no surprise. He and his kind have been wanting that for as long as I can remember. What we need to work out now is what the crazy bastard’s plans are, and how they involve our mate."
"Ash was the reason I even knew about the garage being on the market," Hannah added. "I hadn't even heard of Blackwater Falls until he sent me information about the garage and the sale. I had been looking to purchase a business like this one for years, but they were all out of my reach, financially. When this one came in just under what I could afford at the time, I jumped at it."
Ryker frowned as he mulled that over. It raised a few questions for the previous owner, but he couldn't see Karl anywhere in the crowd. That, in itself, had alarm bells ringing. When your Alpha called an emergency meeting, you dropped everything and attended. Karl had never been the most active or social member of the clan. In fact, he kept to himself. He and Bastian had often talked about the older man and his tendency to not only keep to himself, but completely isolate himself from the more social aspects of being part of a clan. Lucas had even used words like “narcissist” and “antisocial personality”, but he’d never hurt anyone so they had just let him be. This was the first time he had openly defied an order from his Alpha though.
Hannah seemed to jolt beside him, dragging him from his thoughts, and he stared at her in question, but she smiled at him and shook her head. He frowned but turned back to the clan gathered before him.
"Did any of you know that Kyle was unhappy at the garage and looking to sell before he actually made the announcement that he'd found a buyer?" Ryker asked and watched as the crowd all looked around as if trying to spot him themselves.
"He's often talked about wanting to get out of Blackwater Falls," Henry answered from the back of the room. "I and my mate always thought he never seemed happy here. The older he got, the more aloof he became."
