“But is it really possible that she could be that?”Trip posed in response to the proposal, obviously having doubts about whether or not El’s mother was capable of such a thing.
Sure, from the sounds of it, she had never been kind to her daughter.Actually, from what he'd heard from his mate, she had been borderline abusive since the day that they had first met, dismissing her adopted daughter with a little more than a turn-up of her nose and sending her away at every given opportunity.
Aside from that, while she had been a part of upper society and was arguably well connected, so were many other women, and you couldn't exactly pose at every single woman from a murky background in the upper socialites who came from a hunter-family.That just wasn't how it worked.Rich men tended to prefer beautiful women, and beautiful women didn't always have to be rich ones.It was every bit as possible that Annabel had come from a slightly shady, lower upbringing.The kind of place that no one would want to brag about.
Just as it was every bit possible that following the acceptance of her divorce papers, Annabel had decided to hire a Bounty hunter to pursue El but not kill her, just watch any true crime channel, Trip had assured.It was significantly more common than you thought.
When people's marriages were falling apart, and they were desperate to hold on to their partner in some way or another, more often than not, they got other people involved.Sometimes, getting other people involved just so happened to look like staging a kidnapping or something of the sort.Either that or poisoning their lover, forcing them to play into the other one's hands.While it was still awful to think of the possibility that Annabel could have very well hired a Bounty Killer to kill her daughter, only for that Bounty Killer to be a shifter who was aware of shifters and send the kill out to the hunter network, it wasn't impossible.If anything, it was actually more probable than what Shawn was posing.
After all, for Annabel to be the darling daughter of a hunter family would have meant that somewhere in the background, waiting years and years, a hunter family had been keeping an eye on El and, for some reason, decided not to kill her before the prophecy was fulfilled.
And really, how possible was that?Considering the fact that just about every shifter clan around them was nervous at the possible merger between the Pantera and the Pride, it didn’t make sense for the hunters to allow the birth of a chimera to go through.
If they were going to kill El for what possibilities she posed, then it was very clear that they would have had to kill her in childhood, if only to stop her from ever having even the passing possibility of meeting her mates, which would have only led to obvious chaos.
Unless there was some greater plan at play that Trip couldn’t even begin to guess, he doubted that it was possible.
Just as he doubted that the man who had grilled his burger had even so much as glanced at a handwashing poster before shaping it with his hands and slamming it on the grill, he could practically taste the grit from beneath the man’s fingernails, and it churned his stomach.
“Besides, even if Annabel is a hunter, I don't think anyone's going to believe us if we just go storming in and declare so.We need real, rock-solid evidence.The kind that other people can't refute, and in order to get that…” Trip trailed off, purposefully leading Shawn back to his original idea, the one that Shawn had already turned down a few hundred times.
Really, when one thought logically about it, it wasn't that bad of an idea; exploring El’s old family home had the possibility of allowing the pair to come to some sort of conclusion as to who it was who was currently stalking their mate.After all, some of the information that was contained in her file was far older than it should have been if she had just been murdered at the Pride compound.Give and take, it was very obvious that Annabel had added to the amount of information that was currently there.There were also a few smaller details that Trip highly doubted that the woman would have paid attention to regarding her lesser-loved child.
Like food allergies and other medical ailments.Trip didn’t want to be rude to his mate, but he highly doubted that her adoptive mother would have cared to note that she had a slight limp in one leg from an improperly healed ankle fracture years prior, just as he doubted that her mother would have cared to note that El had gotten bronchitis several times over the years when she was a child but had become healthier and capable of moving without the inhaler she had been prescribed as of lately once she began to shift and had explored the benefits of being a shifter.
It just didn’t make sense.
But still, Shawn wasn’t eager to break into the Drew estate.Largely because he insisted security was tight.
“I've told you no less than a dozen times now, Trip,” Shawn lectured with a roll of his eyes.“It's not safe to break into the Drew estate.The amount of security in that place is insane, and with Annabel anticipating her soon-to-be ex-husband’s return to gather many of his things, she's probably got twice as many cameras aimed around as she had before, even if we were to somehow get into the house in one piece, there would be no way that we would be able to completely protect our identities, not unless we were stupidly old enough to walk around wearing black ski masks or something of the sort,” Shawn insisted, forgetting the fact that it was Trip of all people that he was talking to, and if anyone was going to find something appealing in walking around in a black ski mask it was him.
He almost wanted to punch himself in the gut for so much as suggesting it, considering the way that Trip grinned, his straight white teeth showing all in a row as he considered the idea and obviously approved of it.
“We’re going to look like idiots,” Shawn proclaimed, trying his best to completely dismiss the idea before it grew out of hand, but Trip did not relent.“You have no idea how many people I've worked with that still are involved with the security team,” Shawn said, trying to appeal for his dignity at the very least, but he should have known that once Trip was convinced, there was no changing his mind, not when he got that certain gleam in his eyes and stood up, effectively ending the conversation with that one gesture, and forcing his companion to accept the fact that he was currently going down a road that he wasn't all that fond of.
“Goddammit,” Shawn said, swearing as he shook his head and slammed down a cash tip on the table.“You had better hope that nothing goes wrong, asshole,” he warned, very obviously unaware of the fact that things were most definitely going to go wrong.
Especially considering the long-forgotten date on the calendar.
Chapter8
“Mother’s Day,” Luis sighed as he looked across the table at Ryan and his unexpected visitor.“You do this on Mother’s Day.”
Luis said it like he didn’t also have his own uninvited guest as well, though, considering the day in question, he was probably far more forgivable.
The two pack leaders sat across from each other, each with one of the more important women in their lives at their side, the only difference being that Ryan's happened to be in a baby pram, while Luis’s happened to use a walker—well, that and about eighty years, but, Ryan supposed that Considering the holiday and the fact that he had sprung the meeting on his companion at the last moment, all but demanding that he renegotiate that moment so that they could come to a conclusion sooner, he did sort of have to forgive him.
Though, forgiving him didn’t do much to change the sour, far from pleased look that characterized Luis’s expression, making it clear that he wanted the baby at Ryan’s side to remain as far away from him as possible and with good reason—
El’s mother was, after all, supposed to be his mate, not some human man’s.
Ryan had to take a deep breath and remind himself that what he had sitting beside him was another testament to how greatly Luis had lost.There was nothing that a shifter wanted more in their lives than a mate, after all, if not their own children.It was a lonely existence being a shifter, and the beast part of you constantly reached out for companionship.The loss of Persia was a great blow to the leader of the Pantera.Ryan knew that.He couldn't imagine how he would have felt if he had known El prior to their mating and been promised her, only to have her ripped away from him by the mother.
It had to be painful, looking at this reflection of everything that the Panther leader could have had, everything that Ryan currently owned.Money, power, glory, and a beautiful daughter, to boot.The Pantera had long fallen from graces, living in such lowly conditions that many of their members were forced to sleep in tents out on the compound lawn.Ryan imagined that when he looked at him, Luis saw everything that he should have had, had the culture of the Pantera not naturally led the group to slowly tear itself apart.
Instead, Luis was sitting on the opposite side of the table with his mother in tow, and Ryan was the one who had been gifted by the mother with a daughter—the greatest gift that a shift could ask for.Even Luis’s mother seemed green with envy, a glimmer in the old woman’s eyes making it clear that she wanted nothing more than to touch Ryan’s daughter, but he'd sooner be dead than allow his daughter to be passed around like an animal.
She was going to be the heir to the compounded Pride in the end, whether Luis liked it or not.And, with that in mind, it was important to teach others to show her the proper respect.
