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Soft chuckles, another tug on the line, it was easy to pass the night this way, in the stillness of their shack, the soft glow of their lantern illuminating the ice, not that they needed any of it to see clearly. The ambiance, however, always had a soothing effect, even when he was down here alone.
When we didn’t get our bondmarks when we were young, I figured okay, that meant the fates didn’t intend for me to be mated because I couldn’t imagine a bondmark without you in it, Roark said.
I was angry, Rusty admitted. It was bullshit. I raged at the fates and the Goddess more than once. I knew we were meant to be together and that whoever our third was, they were going to fit like a missing puzzle piece when they came. Finding Logan, man, I couldn’t have dreamed up a better mate for us.
The sight I walked in on last night will forever be burned in my brain, Roark admitted.
Preserved forever in all the pictures we took, Rusty snickered.
All I could see of him was his snout under all the pups.
He still won’t tell me if he wore the pups out or if the pups wore him out first and they fell asleep on top of him while he was lying there trying to sort himself out.
Did you see the way Clover had his ear hugged between her paws?
She was mirroring the way Wren was holding his tail, Rusty said. Cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
A phrase that will never be overused in our house.
Nope. They are just too precious, even when they are tracking flour-covered paws across the floor, Rusty declared.
I swear to you, I only spilled a half a tablespoon on the floor, max. I could have sworn I got it all.
The specks you missed must have multiplied then, because I cleaned a flour paw print and nose smudge off the bay window just this morning.
It had to have been brownies and kitchen elves.
Don’t they usually sweep up the messes and keep everything organized? Rusty asked.
Ours must be the mischievous kind.
Would we attract anything else?
No chance in hell.
Chapter Sixteen
(Logan)
Son of a…
Logan cocked his head and studied the topographical map he’d pulled up on his screen. Across the room, Sam stood in front of a cork board, arranging materials in the case he was working on, while Logan scratched his head.
Then it hit him.
Fingers flying over the keys, Logan brought up a platform he’d used many times in the past to look at maps of the natural cave and tunnel systems beneath the territories he’d been operating in. Now he used it to survey an area that kept popping up in the files he’d been pouring over. It was the second time he’d used it since coming here.
And there it was. The missing piece of the puzzle. He printed several copies, added screenshots to different files, remembered to tag them with his case numbers, and then used the map to help him follow the tunnels to see where they led.
Each time it crossed a known shifter territory, he marked it on the printout, following each direction the tunnels took. Every last one of them ended near a major highway.
Bingo.
He tested his theory on four other spots on the map, all locations adjacent to areas where disappearances had taken place. Each time the map pulled up a cave system that connected several different shifter territories, and every single one of them met up with or passed beneath a major highway or interstate.
Using the messaging system that Em had shown him on his console, he sent the link to the platform to the rest of the team for them to use, since nothing in the current system they were using provided mapping of tunnel systems. Logan wouldn’t have known about it either, if not for his lone encounter with a snake shifter almost eighteen months before.
He fired off a text to Brooks, recalling something he’d mentioned a few months back about the tunnel systems beneath Comet Lake. The last thing he expected was for the councilman to step through the door to the command center a short time later.
