“Shitty odds though,” Luis retorted.“Five to eighty?They’ll all come at my howl.”
“Yeah?What if El howls, too?That will confuse them for a while, no?”Ryan sneered.“Less of the posturing.We want to be in your hair as little as you want us in it.We won’t even tell the Pantera about who we are or what El is to you… because we both know where she should be.
“So, just give us some answers and we’ll be on our way.”
Luis studied them both, and as he did, his top lip curled up in a smile.His body language said one thing, however, and his tone of voice another.
It was like the two sides of him were at war over this, and because El knew how that felt—what with having three goddamn sides—she understood the discordance inside him.
Though Luis was telling a tale all of his own without uttering a word, she knew she’d have plenty of questions to ask Ryan later.
What the hell did he mean when he’d said both men ‘knew El’s rightful place’ in the Pantera?
She frowned, not particularly liking where that train of thought led her.
“There isn’t much to tell,” Luis was saying now, bludgeoning his way into her thoughts.“About three decades ago, the bitch took off.Around about the same time, her father was challenged, but he won.For a time, Enrique thought she’d been kidnapped, but she’d disappeared too thoroughly for that.No one knew where she’d gone at her job, and she’d clawed her way into that position—it was something that went against the Pantera’s ways, and her father only allowed it because he was weak and wanted her to be happy.”
That was a sign of being a weak father?
Huh, talk about different strokes for different folks.
“There was no communication from any potential kidnappers, either.And trust me, the Pantera Council would have heard about it as Enrique would have skinned the Pantera to pay for it.That challenge, he was particularly brutal too.But there’s no way of knowing why that is.”
“She can’t just have disappeared for no reason at all,” Trip stated bluntly, stacking his hands on his trim hips.
It was an odd time to notice how damn delicious he was, but she was realizing that though the other sides to her nature were fully mature thanks to her age, mentally?Yeah, that was a whole other ball of wax.
They were like horny teenagers, and when one of her mates did something sexy, like fucking breathe, it tended to grab her attention.
Even at times like these when it was important she focus, it made her pity fourteen-year-old boys.
Seriously.
Girl random boners were a bitch to deal with.
“…she had no reason to leave, and yet she did anyway.”
“What about not being wanted to be mated to you?”El lobbed out with all the precision of a Wimbledon champ’s serve.
Though Luis glowered at her, he merely said, “We got on.It wouldn’t have been a bad mating.”
“Yeah, maybe before, dipshit.But she’d met her mate.Her one.That changes things, doesn’t it?”
He frowned.“She had?”
“Yeah.I’m the product of that relationship.”
Luis rubbed his chin.“We heard nothing of this; and she and her father loved one another.They had a close relationship.If that was the case, she would have twisted Enrique’s arm and he would have accepted her mate.”
Though she knew Luis believed what he was saying, she could also see that from her mother’s point of view, no paternal acceptance would ease the fact that her mate was a Forsythe-Drew.
That changed things.
It always did.
Her mother hadn’t been able to handle her father’s heritage, for whatever reason that may be, but the answers didn’t lie here as they’d initially thought.
They were, she was irritated to realize, back at square one.
