“You’ve been asleep for two days,” a rough voice murmured from somewhere below me.
“Burnout?”
“Burnout.”
Twisting to peer over the edge of the mattress, I noticed Liam stretched across the floor, using his arms as a pillow. He sat upand nudged me back down with a gentle hand to my shoulder. I let him do it, not wanting to cause a scene and wake the others.
“Jess?” I swallowed a few times to wet my throat. “Rochele?”
Sloane would have been my top priority if she hadn’t been chasing rabbits in her sleep beside me.
“Jess was treated with antivenin for the cocktail of poisons in those darts, and she’s on the mend. Sloane too.” He gestured toward her. “She escaped the urgent care center twice before I carried her here and put her in bed with you.” He sighed. “Rochele had a concussion, but she’s fine.” He exhaled. “She’s messed up over Mindy’s betrayal. She’s requested permission to transfer to the pride her sister married into last year, but she’s not going anywhere until we get to the bottom of this.”
Dread twisted my gut, but I had to know. “Mindy?”
“She didn’t make it.” He shook his head. “Hell of a thing.”
“I can’t believe—” bile burned up the back of my throat, “—I killed her.”
“What?” He gripped my shoulder. “No.” He gave me a shake. “It was a car bomb.”
“You weren’t there. You didn’t see.” I hated how the room turned watery. “I couldn’t control my fire.”
“We arrived in time to see what happened with Mindy.” He angled his chin away from me, but I swore I saw a smile fighting to break free. “You burned down Harlan Wentworth’s privacy hedge and part of his neighbor’s storage building, but you missed the car.”
“Are you sure you’re not just trying to make me feel better?”
“As soon as Mindy turned the key, the bomb ignited. The timing must have made it seem like you were the one to blame, but…you missed her by a mile.” He folded in his lips. “Wentworth’s backyard butts up to the house she parked in front of. You overshot. By alot.”
“Okay.” I shoved him off me. “You don’t have to keep rubbing it in.”
“I’m just trying to ease your guilt.” He chuckled once then sobered. “That reminds me. I’ve been thinking about what happened at the lake with you and Rían. I’m not an expert on mates, but it seems to me that forging an intimate connection with him via power sharing might have roused your dragon. She might’ve been attempting to claim him. Except mating bonds originate between dragons, not humans, and you’re not fully fledged. Maybe she sensed her mate nearby, got greedy, and used blunt force to slam through you and into him, burning you both out in the process.”
Hand going to my chest, I ignored the uptick in my pulse. “You think she’s that close to the surface?”
“If she wasn’t before,” he said, sucking on his teeth, “she is now.”
“Did I miss anything else while I was out?”
“No. That’s about it. You’re up to speed on everything else.” The skin around his eyes tightened as he let out a sigh. “I still can’t believe Mindy was in Sartori’s pocket this whole time.”
“Yeah.” I hadn’t known her long enough to form a solid opinion of her, but I wouldn’t have pegged her for this. “Wait.” I leveraged myself up onto my elbow. “How do you know that?”
“We searched her apartment, got our hands on her laptop. She was careful. Hid encrypted USBs in multiple locations, all with duplicate information as far as we can tell. Her primary cache was at GSG, which is likely why she made it her last stop on her way out of town. She was cleaning up after herself. We don’t have the full picture yet, but we will soon.”
“But if she was the mole feeding Carmichael information, then who did this to her?”
“I don’t know, but I promise we’re going to find out.”
“There was a scent on the door. Wolf. Not someone Sloane or I recognized, so not Sartori.”
Beneath every packmate’s personal scent lingered proof of the bond to their alpha, and this wolf had none of the markers I had come to associate with Carmichael or the others.
“Sloane told us. We cleared the plumber, who is an ocelot as it happens. Our best tracker filed the scent and is hunting the wolf as we speak.”
A soft yawn at the foot of the bed had me zipping my lips and lying down, but I couldn’t turn off my brain for the longest time. Too many dots were connecting in my head. Carmichael going into hiding, location unknown. Mindy tying up loose ends then becoming one herself.
Lowering my lashes, I stared at the backs of my eyelids until the void sucked me under again.
