Jen growled back at her mate. “Fine, but Peri has to be the one to open the cage and she’s a little busy with, you know, trying to save my best friend and her fleabag, so it could be a little while. And if she does release him, he might go all Planet of the Apes on our asses.”
“Planet of the Apes?” Decebel asked.
Jen groans. “Yes, because the apes went crazy and started killing the humans. Good grief, man, what do you do in your spare time? Say it with me Dec…Netflix is my friend.”
Decebel said something that Drake couldn’t understand and then Jen was gone, replaced by his Alpha on the phone.
“Drake.”
“I’ve seen my markings on her flesh. She bares my bite. It is enough for now, Alpha. As long as no males approach her,” Drake explained.
“I’m going to have you moved to a suite on the west side of the mansion. That side of the mansion is relatively empty, so there is less chance of encountering any of the males. Give me a few minutes.”
“It will only be a few minutes until you can get the high fae?” Drake asked.
Decebel cleared his throat. “My mate likes to stir up trouble. When she’s stressed, then she wants everyone else stressed.”
“Damn right I do.” Drake heard in the background.
Decebel continued as if his he hadn’t heard her. “Peri set the magic for your cage, and normally she would have to be the one to open it. But I’ve just returned from checking on the condition of Fane and Jacque. While I was there, Peri asked about Bethany. The fae transferred to me the ability to open the cage. She wanted to make sure that you could be freed if something happens to her. She’s eccentric, but she isn’t cruel.”
“Yes, she is.” He heard Jen’s voice again. “She’s cruel and she will chop you up and serve you for dinner if you hurt one hair on any of my wolves.”
Choosing once again to ignore his mate, Decebel said into the phone, “I’ll be in touch soon. You and your mate get ready for a change of scenery.”
The call ended and Drake tossed the phone back through the bars where it landed on a pile of sweatpants.
“We’re leaving?” Bethany asked him sounding hopeful. Drake felt like crap that she’d had to endure being confined in a room on the concrete floor because he couldn’t stand to be away from her.
“Yes,” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Decebel is going to give us a suite on the west side of the mansion. It’s a little more secluded than the rest.”
“West side?” Her eyebrows rose. “How big is this place?”
His lips twitched. “Big enough for a pack of werewolves.”
She snorted out a laugh.
Drake’s smiled slipped away as he watched her. “Beth, are you alright?”
She looked up at him through the bars that kept him from holding her. “I don’t know, Drake. But I think I will be.”
“Okay,” he nodded. “That will have to be good enough for now.”
Jen sat at one of the intricately carved tables in the archive room as Wadim tapped away on a keyboard while staring at his fifty computer screens. Okay so maybe there weren’t fifty, but crap, how many computer screens does one werewolf historian really need?
“Finding anything of use, history boy?” Jen asked absently as she flipped through one of the large old books he’d stacked on the table for her.
“Honestly, Alpha chick, I don’t even know where to start.”
Jen tapped her lips with her forefinger as she considered his answer. “Okay, how about enemies? Who are the enemies of the werewolves, or yet” —she held up a hand— “even more specific, who are the enemies of our packs, the Serbia and Romania packs?”
“Vampires,” Wadim said dryly.
“Do we really think the vampires could have taken her right out from under all of our noses without anyone noticing?”
“Wasn’t there a battle going on?” Wadim asked.
“Yes, but a vampire would have had to weave his way through all that fighting and Sally wouldn’t have gone quietly. She would have fought like a hellcat. Someone would have noticed. We do tend to watch each other’s backs during battles.”
