God, we’d been so stupid. Maybe Calder had a point about my intellect, although he’d mated Jared, so that was a little hypocritical.
We found steady, commonsensical Matt in the long upstairs hallway, obviously handling things competently as usual, having a hushed but intense phone conversation near the window at the end.
“The Ruiz family’s in that room,” Calder said quietly, pointing at a door that had been left open a crack. That room had its own bathroom and a bigger bed, so good call on someone’s part. “Amy’s in there with them. She’s holding the baby.Jonathan’s lying down with his mom, because he couldn’t settle anywhere else, and he can’t hurt her squirming around now that Arik’s healed her up. She had a concussion, a fractured pelvis, two broken ribs, and a punctured lung, plus a broken wrist and a bunch of bruises on her back.”
Something about that sounded wrong to me above and beyond being shitty and painful, but before I could think it through, Matt ended the call and beckoned to us. We trooped down the hall as quietly as possible. We still sounded like a herd of elephants. The subfloor needed repairs, obviously. Well, the subfloor could get in fucking line.
“That was Colin,” Matt said as we got closer.
My brother looked more like our dad, with dark hair and (for an alpha werewolf, anyway) a lankier build, while I took after our mom, redheaded and sturdy. But we both had blue eyes, mine light and his dark, both of us with straight brows and a similar expression. People always picked out our eyes as the feature that made us look like siblings.
Right now, Matt’s held an all-too-familiar grim, worried look in them. I’d seen it on him more than I’d have liked, and on myself nearly as often when I glanced in the mirror.
“Let me guess. Bad news,” I said. “Would it kill him to give us a call just to say Merry Christmas?”
Colin Kimball, leader of the neighboring Kimball pack, had been our ally ever since he took over for his father. Sam Kimball had died on our land while attacking us in a monstrous, magically-mutated shifted form that still gave me nightmares when I’d had too much to drink—maybe because he’d died from me ripping his head off with my bare hands. Even with some serious competition, that had to be the grossest thing I’d ever experienced, although to be fair, it’d probably been worse for Sam Kimball. Briefly, anyway.
Yeah, maybe I should take it as a win that we got along fine with Colin and his pack now and stop looking for heartfelt season’s greetings.
“He did actually say Merry Christmas, but he also told us he’d gotten a call from a werewolf from a pack down south, claiming to be worried about his missing wife and children.” Matt gestured in the direction of the bedroom currently occupied by a prime example of a werewolf’s potentially missing wife and children. He forestalled my next questions with, “Yes, his name’s Roger Diaz, and his wife’s name is Jessica. The identification’s solid. And I guess Jessica has family who own a farm north of here, so he thought she might come through this way. Guess he was right.”
“She’s human,” Calder said. He’d leaned up against the wall, crossing his arms and frowning in thought. At moments like these, when Calder showed mannerisms uncannily like Arik’s—or rather, the other way around—I’d have believed it if they told me they were blood related. “Why would she go anywhere near a werewolf pack for help, or for anything else? If she’d left her mate’s pack to start with. And why did she leave? Missing from what, exactly?”
It finally twigged, the thing about her injuries that’d struck me as so incongruous.
“Bruises all over her back,” I said, feeling sick. “And a broken wrist? I mean, the concussion and fractured pelvis are from the crash, that makes sense. The ribs, maybe. But the other injuries? On a woman who’s running away from something?”
I really wanted to be wrong. I really, really fucking wanted to be wrong, because I had a human mate, and no matter how much magic Nate might command, I spent every second of my life conscious of how fragile he was compared to me. How careful I had to be when I had the privilege of touching him, and how much he depended on my physical strength and resilienceto keep him safe. I’d kill anyone who hurt him. Ihadkilled people who’d hurt him. Hurting him myself…I tasted bile.
“It fits all the facts we have so far,” Matt said, and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Damn it. It’s still possible Diaz is on the level. There could be some other explanation.”
“Suggest one.” Calder’s tone held heavy skepticism. “I hope there is. But I can’t think of anything. What human woman runs away from some unknown threat alone with her little children instead of getting as much protection as she can from her werewolf mate, those children’s father? If he’s not the threat himself, she’d be infinitely safer with him than without him.”
Silence fell for a minute while we contemplated what kind of utter piece of shit excuse for a werewolf would beat his mate. I didn’t need to be psychic to know we were all thinking the same thing. Jared and Arik might be a lot stronger than Nate, but we were all alphas, and all capable of overpowering our better halves.
“Hang on a minute,” I said, as something else occurred to me. Ha! Let them call me stupid now! “Wife, or mate? What word did this shitbag actually use when he talked to Colin?”
Werewolf genetics tended to be dominant when we mated with other species, and also tended to produce a lot more male offspring than female. Which meant that male werewolves getting with human women happened quite a bit. At the same time, a lot more shifters than we liked to admit considered humans inferior, good enough for breeding stock to make more shifters, maybe, but not for a mating between equals.
“Huh,” Matt said, sounding genuinely intrigued. “That’s a damn good question, Ian.” He pulled out his phone and tapped out a text, and a moment later nodded as the screen lit up. “Wife. Colin definitely remembers wife.” Matt looked up. “Very, very good catch.”
“You don’t need to sound so fucking surprised.”
“I’m not,” he said, with a slight smile that I’d have wrestled off his dumb face under less serious circumstances. “You never surprise me. I’ve known you since you were born, remember? I’m always a step ahead.”
I flipped him off, all that deserved as an answer. “Anyway, now we know what kind of prick Jessica’s been dealing with. Now what?”
“Now we wait for her to wake up and give us her side of the story. I told Colin they’re here, and Colin’s going to stall Diaz if he calls back. He didn’t love the lack of concrete information he got, and he doubly didn’t love the way Diaz seemed to think the Kimballs would leap at the chance to waylay Jessica and the kids and keep them there for Diaz to come and collect at his leisure.”
Colin Kimball had the distinction of being the only alpha I’d ever met who was more laid back than Matt. If this Diaz dude had managed to get Colin’s back up, he had to be a serious dick. Of course, Colin also had a human mate and treated the guy like a prince. Diaz had miscalculated badly if he thought he’d be speaking to someone on his own wavelength about werewolf/human relationships.
“He’s more likely to call you next than Kimball again,” Calder said. “Our pack may be a lot smaller, but he’ll cover all his bases. I assume you’re on the werelist too.”
Most respectable packs, or groups of shifters of any type, had an entry in the North American Association of Shifters and Werecreatures’ Directory. Everyone just called it the werelist.
Matt nodded. “The landline that goes to my office is on there. I’ll check the messages later.”
If it’d been me, I’d probably have given the North American Association my cell number and email address and ended up getting constantly pinged with bullshit like this instead of keeping it contained to an old-fashioned answering machinein the barn annex—yet another reason why everyone rightly viewed Matt as the smart one. Not that I’d say so out loud.
