Chapter 14
Of course the one morning where I was sleeping comfortably andnothaving nightmares would be the one in which I was rudely awakened.
Fists slammed on the front doors, making the whole barn echo, and a shrill but commanding voice shouted from behind it. All three of us in the bed shot upright, dazed and startled.
“Oh,” Colton said. “That’s my mom.”
“Hell’s she doing here?” Ramsay demanded. He was already scrambling to throw clothes on, and I did the same.
Colton took his sweet time slipping into a pair of underwear and a shirt. “I dunno. She probably came because I didn’t show up for the past two nights.”
Ramsay groaned.
“Is she allowed to do that?” I asked him anxiously. “Isn’t that technically trespassing on another pack’s territory?”
“Without us with her, yeah,” Ramsay said. “And obviously this isn’t six feet from the water.”
“Then she must be quite angry,” Colton remarked casually, as if his mom wasn’t pounding on the barn doors.
But before any of us could reach them, Eric was the one to greet her.
“Lady Gabrielle,” he said in a steely voice. “What is such a problem that you needed to come all this way?”
Despite the note of annoyance in his tone, I noticed he used more neutral language and didn’t mentiontrespassing on South Pack territory. Maybe he recognized she was already pissed off enough and he didn’t want to start an extra conflict.
“Where is Colton?” Gabrielle demanded. “His scent trail leads here.”
Her eyes snapped up to him as he lazily made his way down the staircase and to the main floor.
“Colton!”
“Hi, Mom.”
Gabrielle practically pushed Eric aside as she rushed to her son, gripping him in a bear hug.
“Ow,” Colton mumbled.
Immediately after the hug, she snarled at him. “What are you doing on these lands? And don’t tell me you were just visiting, like you said you were going to! Your scent is thick all over this place, at least two days worth!”
“Hello Lady Gabrielle, and welcome to South Pack,” Ramsay said dryly. “Please help yourself to anything in the fridge, and don’t mind the fact that guards have probably been trailing you this entire time.”
I noticed for the first time that a group of wolves stood by the edge of the woods behind Ramsay’s barn, but they seemed more confused than angry. It wasn’t every day that the Lady of a different pack came storming through the territory lines.
When Gabrielle ignored him, Ramsay sighed and leaned against the kitchen counter, casually tossing a wild blueberry into his mouth. “The guards have probably already told my folks. Bet they’ll be here any moment to make a scene, too.”
“Iwasvisiting,” Colton insisted to his mother. “I just stayed longer than I meant to. But I was having a good time. Besides, we were trying to solve the prophecy.”
Gabrielle huffed. “I don’t care what you were doing! You cannot run off this way, especially not deep into enemy pack territory.”
Ramsay and Colton exchanged glances. Ramsay raised a stern brow at him, a not-so-subtle suggestion that he probably shouldn’t mention that he had literally slept with the ‘enemy’ last night. Thankfully, Colton took the hint and didn’t bring it up.
“And you!” Gabrielle snapped, turning her attention on Ramsay now. “You should know better. For all I knew, he was being held hostage!”
“Does he look like a hostage to you?” Ramsay asked, gesturing to Colton while he handed him a blueberry. Colton ate it while shrugging at his mother. The display just seemed to confuse and infuriate her more.
“Lady Gabrielle, nothing bad is going on here,” I promised. “It’s true that Colton was here to help us solve the prophecy.”
“I believe the agreement was that the omega comes to stay withourpack,” Gabrielle growled. “Not the other way around.”
