Stealing the Alpha’s Heart

“Thank you for meeting with us,” Mahlan said as we strode into an empty bar with the alpha of Lyssa’s pack. Well, relatively empty. There were maybe ten patrons total and it didn’t take a shifter’s nose to guess that they were all pack members.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have much firsthand information. I’m still catching up after the last alpha died. Never dreamed that I’d end up in a leadership position when I married into this pack.” The newer alpha, Landon, chuckled slightly. “But I try to do my best by her.”

I opened my mouth to ask more questions. Although we’d already been talking for an hour before we’d walked together to the bar, I was still desperate for more information. But I didn’t get so much as a syllable out before the alpha’s phone rang.

“Whoops, sorry, this is my beta. Need to take this.”

With that, Landon stepped out of the bar, leaving Mahlan, Parker, Jacobian, Kaleb, and me. Oh, and Sam, I supposed he was important, too. Kind of. We ordered some drinks while we waited for Landon to return and gathered around one end of the bar.

“I know I’m not a wolfy like the rest of you,” Sam said, taking a sip of his beer. Was it bad that I had assumed he’d have some fruity, overwrought drink? Probably. “But isn’t this pack kinda, ya know, small?”

I nodded, relieved that he had noticed it, too. “According to the file Landon gave me, they only have about fifty registered members and no pups at all.”

Parker let out a whistle. “Not a single little one? That’s really not good.”

“When did you have time to read that?” Mahlan asked curiously, raising his eyebrow at me. “He gave that to us maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“I read it on our walk over here.”

“Oooh, love a man who can multitask,” Sam said, sending me a wink that was less flirting and more teasing. Was he trying to be friends? I supposed I could roll with that.

“I’ve always been a good multitasker,” Parker remarked before taking a gulp of his own beer.

“What was that?”

“Huh? Nothing, I didn’t say anything,” Parker sputtered.

Surprisingly, it was Kaleb who spoke next. Not that the guy was mute, but he was definitely the quietest of our inner circle. “Parker has always been an excellent multitasker and plant dad. You two should talk about it.” He then sort of nudged his friend toward the green witch before excusing himself to the bathroom.

“Anyway,” I continued once that very subtle drama was over with, “while it’s common for packs to lose members due to marriages into other packs, it’s really, really unlikely they went from over three hundred members to barely enough for a track and field team.”

“Ew, sports.”

“Thank you for your input, Sam. But what I’m getting at here is that Lyssa’s case isn’t likely to be the only thing to shake things up around here.”

I knew we were surrounded by shifters, so I didn’t bother to keep my voice down. Even whispering, they would be able to hear me, and it would only come across like I had something to hide.

“Huh,” was Mahlan’s only reply before Landon returned.

“Sorry about that,” he said, an amiable grin on his features. “Important stuff. You know how it is, Alpha Reese.”

Mahlan nodded, but I could tell his tone was measured as he spoke. “Landon”—Huh, no honorific. That was significant—“have there been cases of stolen pack members other than Lyssa and her family?”

The pack’s new alpha paused for a moment, then sighed and took a seat. “I wasn’t there for it, but yeah. A while back, there were. Why? Is this about more than that girl who was kidnapped about thirteen years ago-ish?”

“You could say that,” I answered. “There’s been a rash of shifters disappearing in our parts. And we caught a combative witch who was a part of the thefts of our moonstones, who confessed that it was a pair of brothers who were behind a lot of this.”

“Brothers, huh?” he heaved another sigh. “Yeah, that lines up with rumors and ghost stories I’ve heard.”

“Oh?” Mahlan pressed. I admired his neutral response. I felt like I was about to leap out of my skin with curiosity.

“Yeah. Like I said, I wasn’t a part of the pack then, but ya hear things as an alpha, ya know? These brothers rolled into town, killed your mate’s parents, and rolled out with her in tow. For a while, people thought it was a random tragedy, but then…things started to happen.”

“Things?” I echoed, taking Mahlan’s approach. His posture was still, taut even. I was sure that him hearing about his mate’s family being brutally murdered was not easy for him. He was such a protective soul.

“Don’t get me wrong, I know that we shifters tend to be suspicious types, but this is something different. People started to leave. Sure, some went on to other packs, but most just…disappeared. And the more that disappeared, the more rumors there were that the pack was cursed. And once that became a sort of common knowledge, well, you can guess how that went.”

“But there weren’t any other bodies that showed up?”

“No, just, uh…what was her name?”

“Lyssa.”

“Right, just Lyssa’s parents.”

“Hmm…” Mahlan murmured. “And are there any of Lyssa’s kin left that we can speak to?

“Actually, yeah. That’s what my beta was calling about actually. Her grandparents are still kicking, I believe.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah, actually. I can’t say how they’ll receive you, though. From what I’ve been told, they don’t exactly enjoy talking about how they lost their kids. They had plenty of that right after it happened. Especially since the murders were grisly enough to spread to the human police.”

I let out a low whistle. While it wasn’t completely unheard of for police to occasionally get dragged into shifter affairs, we did our best to avoid that. That was half the reason we and a few other packs had men on the inside of our city’s police department.

“Sounds like a mess.”

“It really was. I mean, if I heard about it after becoming their alpha about a decade later, then you know that it left an impression on the pack.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I cut in, “why did her grandparents stick around when so many others left? I figure that they would be the first ones to forge a new crossroads with a new pack.” I knew I probably shouldn’t be so skeptical, but we were in unprecedented times after all.

“I can’t speak for certain to their reasoning, but if I had to guess, I would say they were probably holding on to the hope that one day, maybe they’d have their granddaughter back. After all, her body was never found.”

“And now we’re bringing her right to their doorstep,” Kaleb said with a hushed sort of reverence to his voice. The guy didn’t speak a lot, but his voice was packed with emotion.

For a moment, I was surprised, but then I remembered his mother had gone missing when Kaleb was very young. No one had known what had happened to her for a solid week before her body was found along with her goodbye note.

Our entire friend group had been there for him in the difficult months following. Unfortunately, while our shifter nature allowed for enhanced healing, it couldn’t affect mental illness with the same sort of miraculousness. That was probably right about when Kaleb stopped talking so much, Parker becoming enough of a voice box for both of them.

“Wait, she’s with you?”

“I think he means metaphorically,” Parker interjected from where he was still sitting with Sam. “Like, we could get her literally, but she’s sort of somewhere safe now.”

“That’s good, if half of what you’re telling me is true,” Landon said. “Although I do really hope that y’all are exaggerating the situation.”

“I wish we were,” Mahlan said with plenty of wistfulness. “That would be quite the relief.”

“I’d imagine. But yeah, I’ll give you the grandparents’ info, but don’t be shocked if they don’t want to talk to you and only want their grandkid.”

“Good to know.”

I was ready to launch myself out the window and literally roll there, but apparently Mahlan wanted to be a real Nancy Drew because he kept on asking questions.

“So, these disappearances, was there anything the victims had in common?”

“I wouldn’t know about that. Like I said—”

“You weren’t here at the time. Yes, we know.”

I felt like I was vibrating in my own skin, my impatience fueled by two different things. The first being the sense that we were so close to discovering something that would crack our mystery right open. The second being wondering how Emma was. If she was safe. What she was doing and…and if she missed me.

It was stupid, I knew that. I hadn’t even been gone more than twenty-four hours—how could I miss her? And yet, I did. Somehow, in barely any time together, I’d grown used to the cup of coffee she gave me every morning. And the soft smile she’d give me whenever she thought I was being silly in her eyes. Already, I was missing the dinners she would make, or the tantalizing scents that would drift out of her shower whenever she washed the stress of her day off.

Huh. I wasn’t sure if I liked that or not. I’d always been a little gone on Emma, and by gone, I meant hopelessly in love with her, but this seemed like something else entirely.

It was domestic.

That was a word I never would have used to describe myself, but maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was a way I could be comfortable with describing myself.

“What about your moonstone?” Mahlan asked.

What? Oh, right. We were in the middle of a fact-finding trip. I needed to get my head in the game.

“What about what?” Landon repeated.

“Your moonstone. Surely I don’t have to explain what that is to you.”

“I know you city shifters are all high-ranking and that, but I could do without the condescension,” Landon replied tritely. “I was attempting humor. But to answer your question, we ain’t had a moonstone since before I married into this place. It’s another reason people left. You know how it is; without that rock to swear on, people just don’t feel as protected by their pack or obligated to help it out.”

“I understand that exactly,” Mahlan said. “The same happened right when I was taking over as alpha.”

“What did you do?”

“We took a b***d oath instead,” I answered. “Quite effective in a pinch.”

“A b***d oath, huh?”

Landon looked rightly curious, but before any of us could say anything, Sam popped off his stool.

“Hey, so, um, what if I had your moonstone?”

Landon’s face went through an interesting procession of emotions. From irritation, to surprise, to suspicion, to shock. It was funnier than it should have been, but I swallowed my mirth down as best I could. Landon was a friendly guy, and seemed pretty set on helping us, and I didn’t want to piss him off any more than we had to. Last thing we needed was for him to ice us out.

“You what now?”

“I uh, may or may not have two moonstones that clearly belonged to a pack but we haven’t been able to find out who.”

“You brought those here?” Mahlan asked. “I did not give you permission for that. It’s not safe to just go traipsing around with those!”

“First of all, I do not traipse,” Sam shot right back. “I sashay. And secondly, I don’t just take these beauties to the mall and get my rocks off—hah, pun fully intended.”

Maybe we weren’t friends. Maybe I most definitely still wanted to strangle him.

“But I brought them because I thought it might actually be useful. And here we are, with them being useful. I know I shouldn’t say I told you so, but I totally told you so.”

At least he didn’t stick out his tongue as he grabbed them from his messenger bag. A sort of hush fell over us as we watched Landon approach him, holding a hand over each.

Could it be? Was Lyssa’s pack the owners of the last stone? That seemed so significant in a way that I couldn’t quite say how.

But after a few minutes passed, the man let out a melancholy sort of sigh. “I’m not feeling any allegiance to either of these.”

“Really?” Sam said, sounding more put out than I expected him to be.

“Not a drop.”

“But that doesn’t mean that it’s not yours, though,” Kaleb said, a real chatterbox lately.

“Yeah, I know. When evil is done upon a moonstone, it can possibly turn itself away from its pack to try to save them. So our stone could have done the same. By abandoning us, it couldn’t be used to track us down or hurt the members who swore fealty to it.”

“I didn’t know that could happen,” Mahlan mumbled, rubbing his chin. “How did you, Kaleb?”

“Read it once. Don’t remember where.”

“Huh.”

Sam put the stones back into his bag before chipping in his opinion. “But it makes sense, though. There’s some complicated magic in these, magic way older than anything I’ve ever studied, so I would totally believe there was some sort of…uh, I dunno, awareness to it whose whole purpose is to protect the members devoted to it.”

He paused for another moment and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Sam, what aren’t you telling us?”

He shot me a look. “You’re learning way too much about me without taking me to dinner.”

“Could you be serious for once?”

“I’m always serious when it comes to getting a richy-rich bags to buy me food.”

“Sam.”

“Fiiiiine.” Despite his acquiescence, he still hesitated. “Okay, so maybe the pack ties in these stones were stronger before Savannah and I began using them to heal some hurt shifters, and help seal the bond between Mahlan and Lyssa.”

To his credit, Landon seemed to take that fairly well, only one of his eyebrows raising. “What happened there?”

“It was a complicated situation, but Lyssa and I are fated mates.”

Naturally, Sam needed to add his two cents. For being so broke, he seemed to do that a lot. “And by complicated, he means betrayal, witches, curses, and Lyssa’s inner wolf being magically trapped within her. You know, a usual Tuesday night.”

“You’re fated mates?” Landon said, gaze locked onto Mahlan.

“Yes, we believe so.”

“Why didn’t you mention it earlier?”

“I did.”

“No, you said you were mates, not fated mates. That’s a significant difference.”

But why? I didn’t see how it was relevant to our situation.

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to withhold important information. I didn’t know it would affect the situation.” At least Mahlan knew how to roll with the punches. Some alphas were so hotheaded that they ended up bringing misery on their pack.

“Yeah, I get that. But it does change things. Given this new information, I’m going to call the grandparents and summon them here. That way, they will be disinclined to refuse.”

Wait, did that just make our situation better? It was certainly unpredicted.

“While I’m not unappreciative, I’m not sure why you’re doing that.”

“Because fated mates are not something to trifle with. And the fact that a group of witches and a pair of vengeful brothers want her makes me all the more suspicious of the coincidence. The sooner you get to the bottom of this, well, maybe the sooner our pack can heal itself.”

“Well, it is appreciated, thank you. Your help will not be forgotten by our pack.”

Landon gave a nod before stepping out to make some calls. The casual merriment from before was gone, leaving the entire bar feeling somewhat tense. By the time Landon returned, it seemed like every person was staring at the door, waiting for whatever he said.

“The grandparents and one aunt are on their way.”

Wow. It was actually happening.

When I’d first met Lyssa, I’d been happy for Mahlan, who hadn’t had a single mating interest since college, but I’d also been suspicious of her. The fact that she didn’t know so much about shifter culture had been alarming, but even after I’d learned of her history, I couldn’t help but feel like it was a bit too convenient.

However, in the months since, I’d discovered what a loyal and impressive woman she was. She loved Mahlan fiercely and feared almost nothing. She was kind and sweet, plus Emma liked her.

So naturally, with her turning out to be such an excellent mate to Mahlan, I’d become invested in her finding the answers to where she came from and what happened to her. It didn’t hurt that the disappearances plaguing shifters in our city seemed intricately tied to her origins.

The idea that we were about to talk to people who could possibly unravel everything, well…whew, it was intense.

It seemed like a few eons passed before they finally arrived, two old, wrinkled shifters and a middle-aged one. But as I stared at them, it was easy to pick out the features they all shared. Lyssa definitely had her grandfather’s eyes, but her grandmother’s frame. She and her aunt shared a nose, that was for certain, and their hair was quite similar.

Yeah, without a doubt, these shifters were Lyssa’s family.

“You have our granddaughter?” the elderly woman said the moment she stepped into the door. “Is it true? She’s alive?”

“Alive and well,” Mahlan answered, his voice much sweeter and softer than it normally was.

The amount of emotion on the woman’s face made my own heart squeeze in my ch3st. Goodness, the amount of pain and loss they must have experienced in the last fourteen years or so…

“How can we trust you? We don’t know you from Adam and I don’t see her here!” That was the aunt, who was eying us with plenty of suspicion. Not that I could blame her. After so many years and, no doubt, so many false hopes, it was fair for her to not just trust any Tom, D**k, or Harry that rolled through.

“We’re keeping her safe at home as long as there’s a threat to her safety,” Mahlan replied again, as kind as ever. “But I assure you, she is happy and flourishing.”

“Danger? Our granddaughter is in danger? What’s wrong? Is it the same people who took her?” And that was the grandfather, who was looking very alarmed. Maybe we could work on how we presented news to family who had just learned their dead granddaughter was actually alive and kicking.

“We believe it might be,” I answered, pulling up a couple of chairs so that the older couple could sit. They were going through enough without having to worry about their legs going out from under them.

“We have no reason to trust you,” the aunt snapped, clearly still quite unconvinced.

“Actually, you do,” Landon said, the first he’d spoken since his call. “Check his neck. That’s her fated mate right there.”

“Her…” The grandmother let out a half sob, and for a moment, I thought she was going to have a breakdown, but when she turned to her husband, a watery smile spread across her wrinkled features. “Our grandbaby is mated! She’s alive, and with an alpha, and we could have great-grandpups!”

Oh.

I also hadn’t thought about it that way, either. What it would mean to them that their granddaughter was happily mated, with someone who could provide whatever she wanted. Talk about a dream compared to all the horrible things their minds might have conjured. Perhaps I needed to work a bit on my empathy and putting myself into other people’s shoes.

“If that’s true, why is he here?”

The aunt jabbed her thumb towards Sam, who held up his hands in a shocked expression. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re upset that I’m a witch or that I’m black.”

“W-w-what?” the woman sputtered, and I had to admit, the look of shock on her face was quite amusing. “It’s because you’re a witch, obviously! I’m not racist.”

“Nope, just xenophobic, gotcha.”

“I’m not—pfft, I, uh…” The woman looked at Landon. “Surely it’s not safe having him here!”

“Not every witch is out to get us, Lilibet. If he’s screened by Alpha Reese, we can trust him.”

The woman didn’t say anything for a long moment, seeming to compose herself and try to come to terms with exactly what was happening. And honestly, good on her. I liked to think that I was pretty capable when it came to adapting to different situations, but there was no preparing for what the woman was going through.

“I… alright. This is just a lot.”

“I understand,” Landon said, with the same genuine tone that Mahlan used when he was comforting one of the pack. Huh, maybe that was an alpha thing more than just my best friend thing. It made sense; as our leader, Mahlan needed to be able to soothe us and assure us of safety just as much as he needed to command us. “Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll have Dickie bring you a brew? You like those German lagers, right?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And for you two? Glass of moscato wine and, hmmm…”

Lyssa’s grandfather chuckled. “I don’t drink, lad. But I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”

“On it.”

Okay, I had to admit, I was impressed that Landon knew what two random members of his pack liked to drink. It really spoke of their close connection. If I became Mahlan’s beta, as was the plan, I wanted to strive to be like that.

Then again, it probably was a lot easier for Landon to do considering he had about fifty pack members as opposed to our several hundred.

“First of all,” Mahlan started once everyone was settled with their beverage of choice in front of them. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

“Of course. We couldn’t believe it when we first got the call,” the grandmother said, tears making soft rivulets down her face. “I suppose we’re still in a bit of shock.”

“I understand that. And please, if any of our questions are too much, or if you need time, just let me know, alright?”

“Sure, sure, but we’ll do whatever we can to help you. We…we can’t believe it. Our grandbaby is alive and thriving! We understand you need to protect her right now, so any way we help will get us closer to actually seeing her again.”

“Exactly,” Mahlan agreed. “So, I know this may be difficult, but I need you to tell me anything you know about the attack on your family.”

Lyssa’s grandmother drew in a shuddering breath. “It was very evident to us that there was magic involved in our children’s deaths. And—something that was not in the police reports—was that their b***d was entirely drained.”

“They were completely exsanguinated?” I cut in, concern lancing through me. “That is…” There were a lot of words I could use, but none of them quite seemed to convey the importance. Ritualistic b***d sacrifice or draining was almost always the sign of an incredibly powerful spell that probably shouldn’t happen, and certainly not on unwilling victims. “Why didn’t you inform the council?”

“What a strange thing to assume, lad,” the grandfather said. “We did. And multiple times at first.”

That didn’t sit right with me, and I locked it away into another part of my brain to evaluate later. Like if I just asked enough questions and collected enough tidbits, I would be able to put it all together as a puzzle.

“And their response?”

“They said it was most likely an isolated incident driven by revenge specific to our children, so there was no cause for concern of it being a widespread issue. But they also assigned one of their high priestesses to solve it so we could get justice.”

“The killings did stop,” the grandmother picked up. “But we don’t think that she really did anything to cause that. We think that somehow, our stolen moonstone just stopped finding them vulnerable members of our pack to pick off.”

“That aligns with what we’ve learned,” Mahlan said as I put yet another little puzzle piece away. When I got home, I was certainly going to physically map things out with Emma. I had no doubt her keen eye would help.

“Your granddaughter, Lyssa, was being surveilled by a witch for several years. And once she disappeared into our pack’s protection, that witch was used to try to hunt her down. It wasn’t until we found where the witch was hidden away that we were informed the same brothers who feuded with your children were also the brothers plaguing us.”

“Those bastards,” Lilibet spat. “They’re mad. Complete lunatics! They killed my brothers and sister in cold b***d! Wasn’t that enough!?”

“I wish it was,” I said, gesturing for the bartender to get her another lager. She shot me a grateful expression, her walls lowering little by little.

“I don’t understand how a set of humans have so many powerful, magical people at their beck and call,” Landon added, a stormy expression on his face. I had seen similar ones when Mahlan was particularly troubled. “Because they are just humans, right?”

It was the grandfather who answered that, his voice grave. “If there is one thing I’ve learned in my life, is that there’s no such thing as just humans. Think about it—they have no claws, no nails, no fire magic, or green magic. They cannot raise the dead, or summon spirits. And yet…they hold the power to destroy the world. They’ve developed weapons that can hurt pretty much any fae. They rule this world while we content ourselves with sticking to the shadows because we know that the fight isn’t worth it.”

I hadn’t thought about any of that, but what he said rang true. Sure, if every fae everywhere united, we could definitely take humans out. But the chances of that happening were less likely than the western pixies from releasing Elvis from their faerie realm. Fae had too many rivalries, enemies, and drama of their own.

Besides, worldwide politics were their own minefield that I certainly had no interest in, and I was sure that most shifters felt the same. Sometimes even interpack politics were too much for me and I just wanted to run with my inner wolf, grass beneath our paws and the cool night sky above our heads.

“I appreciate your wisdom,” Mahlan said. “And these brothers have proven to be quite the adversary. We are working to make sure they will never bother Lyssa or any other packs again. Please, continue your story. Every detail helps.”

And they did, with even the disgruntled aunt chiming in. The whole tale was heartbreaking, really, and while nothing else they said was as valuable as the bloodletting and the council information, it did help me begin to form a more complete picture in my head.

In the end, we were all exhausted, especially the grandparents, but Mahlan ended the session brilliantly. In a stroke of genius, he handed over his phone so they could look at pictures and videos of Lyssa. I assumed he must have a SFW folder if he was so comfortable with them thumbing through it at their own pace, especially considering that they burst into happy tears and not offended shouts.

Naturally, that cued a whole new round of crying, even from the aunt, and I might have gotten a little misty-eyed too. I was well-aware how people thought I was an ice king, but I was just a mortal man. Seeing three lonely souls who had lost pretty much their entire family be digitally reunited with the last of their kin was powerful stuff.

Thankfully, we all managed to get it together, then eventually see the trio to the aunt’s car. After that, there was a bit more talking with Landon before we decided to head out.

I, for one, was plenty relieved. I’d never been one for a hasty retreat before, but I finally had someone to go home to.

And boy, was I anxious to see her.