Shawn just shrugged.
El started to say something else, but Marcus wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer to his side.
“It’s a worry for another day, El.We had a small victory tonight.The response to you as our mate was for the most part positive.”
“I thought so too.Do you think in time the others will grow to accept me?”
“There are still some that don’t accept Ryan as Alpha, they respect him and his position, but they do not believe he should be there.We will never please everyone.”
El nodded.They walked in the house, and the scent from earlier in the woods hit El like a ton of bricks.
“There’s that scent again,” she whispered as she raised her nose more in the air and inhaled deeply just to be sure.
“The one you tracked with Trip?”Marcus asked, his eyes darting to Shawn.
“Yes.That’s weird.I didn’t smell it here before.”
“Can you track it now?”Marcus asked.
“I mean, I smell it right now.I can follow the smell, but I’m not much of a tracker.I got stuck in a tree earlier doing this,” she giggled as she followed the scent down the hall.
Marcus and Shawn stayed right behind her.El followed it to her bedroom, which sent chills up her back.Once inside her bedroom, the scent headed to the closet where her clothes were hung, and then to the bed.After that, El couldn’t seem to figure out where the scent had gone to.
“I can’t seem to keep tracking this damn scent.It just ends here at my bed,” El told them.
“Do you smell anything?”Shawn asked Marcus.
“No, nothing besides the normal smells.”
“I don’t like that someone with an unfamiliar scent has been in El’s room,” Shawn growled.
“I didn’t say it was unfamiliar.I recognize the scent, but I can’t figure out from where, or whom I should say.”
“Isn’t their security cameras here?”Shawn asked Marcus.
“Yes, let me call Trip.This is really his area of expertise, and he will be able to search the footage faster than me,” Marcus said, pulling up his cell phone.
By the time they got down to the security room, where all ten of the security cameras feed was showing across ten different televisions, Trip was finally replying to Marcus.It didn’t take Trip and Ryan long to make it there.El explained that she had picked up the scent again, and Trip and Ryan looked just as worried as Shawn and Marcus had.
“I’ll rewind the tapes back to just after we left to go to the gathering,” Trip explained.He sat down behind the keyboard and began frantically tapping away out it.The screens all stopped and then began rewinding at warp speed.The clock in the corner of the middle screen ticked backwards as well.Trip stopped the rewind almost right at seven fifty-five, which was only minutes after they had walked out the back door.
The room descended into silence as everyone watched the footage waiting for something to happen.They had been gone around an hour, but Trip was easing through the footage a bit faster, but not so fast they wouldn’t see if someone entered the view.They were all so engrossed in the footage, none of them realized when Trip caught back up to the current time.
“What the hell,” he muttered as he backed it up a little bit and then moved it forward.
“There we are, so we must have missed them,” El said, pointing to the screen where she, Marcus and Shawn entered the back door after the gathering.
“That can’t be.If you’re scenting someone they had to have been in the house while we were gone.One of these cameras would have caught them,” Trip replied.
“Maybe they had been in here earlier, and I just didn’t notice,” El shrugged.
“Scents don’t work like that.You either smell it or you don’t.If you picked it up as soon as you walked in the back door, then the scent was fresh and new,” Trip explained.
“I’m new at this.Maybe I’m not smelling anything new.Maybe it’s a normal scent for you all, and it just seems new to me,” she offered, hoping it would help everyone calm down a bit.
“I don’t think so,” Trip said.
“I agree.Everything so far has meant something, so if you’re smelling something that’s triggering your beasts to hunt, then it’s there,” Ryan agreed.
