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Germin clapped his hand before he whistled. “Athence clan, reset!”

It was hard but Carver kept his attention on the gnomes while ignoring the ball of loss in the pit of his stomach. He needed to get away from Dante. Away from this clan house where nothing made sense.

Dante

Hanging up the phone, Dante rubbed his palms roughly over his face. Ben Foreman had actually called to accuse him on spying on them. Like Dante had the time or attention to care what the damn dogs were doing.

Dante looked up at Yulian when his head of security cleared his throat. Since Dante hadn’t really given a fuck what the wolf alpha had to say, he’d allowed Yulian to remain in the room during the call.

“Just spit it out,” Dante growled.

“First you feel that you’re being watched and now Foreman. That is suspicious,” Yulian replied.

“You think everything is suspicious,” Dante teased.

“I’m usually right.” Yulian stood in front of Dante’s desk with his hands clasped behind his back. Formal. Ready. Like he knew what he was going to say might piss Dante off.

“And?” Dante asked, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m not saying that your boy is involved⁠—”

Dante growled again. This time low and from his very soul.

“I’m not saying he is,” Yulian repeated. “The timing is suspicious.”

He was already aware of that. And with the scents that Dante picked up on from his boy, there were big secrets that Carver was hiding.

“You need to be careful,” Yulian said.

“Have you found anything out?” Dante demanded. While he might question Carver’s intentions, it wasn’t something that he’d allow from anyone else in the clan. Not Yulian. Not Nicholas. No one. Carver was his.

“No one has been looking for a missing young vampire,” Yulian shared. “There has been no sighting of any vampire outside of a clan member.”

Could a member of his clan have turned Carver? If that was so, Dante would make them suffer ten-fold of what he’d already been planning.

“He could have run away,” Dante stated. Possible yet the both it very rarely happened. A fledgling vampire needed their sire to survive especially in the first decade.

“Difficult to do.” Yulian would know. It had taken a long time for him to break the bond with his own sire. “Especially as starved and weak as he is.”

“Still,” Dante said, “we won’t know until he tells us. And he is not going to tell us anything until he trusts us.”

“That puts you at risk, sir,” Yulian argued. “Let me talk to him.”

“No!” Leaning forward, Dante slammed his hand on the desk in front of him. “No one goes near my boy.”

Yulian shook his head.

Dante rose. “I understand the risk. I know you are just trying to look out for me and our people. Carver is mine. I don’t care what brought him to me. He. Is. Mine.”

“Understood, sir.” Yulian frowned as his phone chimed.

“Go ahead,” Dante told him. Security would know that Yulian was with Dante and shouldn’t interrupt for anything less than life and death.

Yulian read the message with a grimace before he typed back quickly. When he looked up, Dante’s blood went cold.

“Tell me,” Dante demanded.

“Your boy is demanding to be let out of the front gate,” Yulian said. “Threatening to climb it if the guards won’t open it for him.”