“Word for word.”
I drop my towel on the bench and head down the corridor, still buttoning my cuffs, the noise of the celebration getting fainter behind me with every step. Coach’s office is at the end of the executive hallway. Through the frosted glass, I can see him sitting behind the desk with the lamp on, even though he should be outside celebrating. He looks up when I push the door open.The expression on his face is one I have seen exactly twice in my life. Once was the night he came to pick me up from the hospital where my parents had been taken. And the second time was the morning he told me Gabriel was dead.
I close the door behind me without being asked.
“What’s happened?”
“Sit down, Wolfe.”
“Coach—”
“Sit.”
I sit.
He pushes a small evidence bag across the desk toward me. Inside, on a clean white card, is a thin necklace, the chain corroded green at the joins, the small pendant warped and stained but still recognizable. I do not pick it up. I look at it through the plastic. It takes a second for my brain to place it. Then it does, and the room slides half a degree to the left.
“That looks like Derek’s mother’s necklace.”
“It is.”
“Why do you have it?”
He does not answer right away. He has both hands splayed on the desk in front of him, and I watch him while the silence pulls out long enough that I have to break it.
“Coach. Why do you have his mother’s necklace?”
“It was recovered from the body we found on your land two weeks ago. The forensics lab finished cleaning the personal effects yesterday. The lab sent the package over this morning. I recognized the pendant the second I opened the envelope.”
My lips part, but no sound comes out.
“You said the body was a human female who died mid-transformation,” I begin slowly. “Mid-mating mark. You said whoever marked her did it alone and whoever buried her did it alone.”
“Yes.”
“You also said,” I continue, my voice scraping low because I cannot let it climb, “that whoever buried her in that location had intimate knowledge of my territory. Because the spot was one a wolf would not stumble across by accident.”
“Yes.”
I look up from the necklace.
“What are you telling me, Coach?”
He holds my eyes. He does not blink, and I plead with him, my heart ripping itself apart, my voice hoarse. “You have to say it out loud, Coach. I won’t—I can’t—”
He closes his eyes briefly before opening them and saying, “I think the girl is Elisabeth Warner, Derek’s fated mate, the one he claimed to have sent away.”
The words sink somewhere below the level of language. I push back from the desk and stand up.
“That is not possible. Derek never had a fated mate. He would have told us. He would have told Gabriel. The two of them did not keep secrets from each other.”
“He kept this one.”
“Coach.”
“Sit down, Grayson, please.”
“No! No. You’re wrong on this. You’re wrong.”
