Stealing the Alpha’s Heart

The school ended up taking far longer than any of us expected. Not because their system was advanced or their security was great, but because the records from the era we were looking for were all filed on paper. Yes, literal physical paper, and filed away in cabinets like we were in another century. So all of us ended up spreading out and manually looking through folders as if that would tell us something.

It all turned out to be a pretty huge waste of time, and I resented that it kept me away from Emma for even longer. Although she’d sounded plenty assured on the phone, I hated that I wasn’t there for her. And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t pleased that she apparently missed me.

I’d long since come to terms with the fact that there would always be a certain inequality to our relationship. After all, I’d been in love with her for nearly twenty years while she’d been pining over someone else. That wasn’t exactly the building blocks for a harmonious union. But when she was talking to me on the phone, it certainly felt more balanced. Especially when I felt the rush of attraction and desire flood through her bond.

God, I’d wanted her so badly. To be home and in her arms. To make love to her again like I had that first time. It killed me that there hadn’t been a repeat performance yet, but my inner wolf was basically throwing himself at the walls, desperate to have another taste.Because Emma had been so gorgeous, so sweet, literal perfection across my tongue and under my body.

But there was so much more I wanted to do with her. Like bend her over every flat surface in her house. To k!ss her l!ps swollen and leave love bites along her neck that her accelerated healing would clear far too soon. I wanted to fill her up over and over again until my scent took to her and no one would ever doubt that we were a mated pair.

So yeah, I wanted a lot of things, and instead, I was waking up in a hotel suite with five other men. Not nearly the same.

“I brewed some coffee,” Parker said, walking in all smiles with a very full ice bucket in his hands.

“How are you up so early?” I grumbled. I liked to think of myself as an early riser, getting up around 6:30 each morning, but the clock beside the bed said it wasn’t even six. Parker was fully dressed and functional.

“Uh, I dunno. Slept well, I guess.”

Sam sat up with a truly egregious nod. “It was probably the cuddles. I don’t think I’ve slept that deep in like a year.”

Parker turned bright red at that and my eyebrows raised. Hmmm, was there romance brewing? Perhaps, but I didn’t really care without getting some caffeine into me. It turned out that my little morning ritual with Emma had created a very specific habit for me. Oh well. At least my inner wolf processed the stuff well.

“I got ice for your coffee,” Parker said, holding the bucket out. “F-for your coffee.”

Okay, even half-awake me could tell that was cute. Well, Sam better be on his best behavior. If he mistreated Parker, not only would he have me to deal with, but Kaleb would probably rip his throat out. Those two had been inseparable since birth, basically. It didn’t matter what kind of magic Sam had, pretty much nothing would stop Kaleb if someone was hurting Parker.

“Awww, aren’t you just a sweetie pie,” Sam cooed, sliding out of bed. None of us had brought a change of clothes, so we were all looking relatively rumpled, but Sam just snapped his fingers twice and his clothes sort of…arranged themselves.

“Handy trick,” I remarked, already on my way over to the coffee pot. It was probably going to taste like sh!t considering Emma wasn’t the one handing it to me, but at least it would remind me of her.

Huh, I was really gone, wasn’t I?

Oh well. I was in love with my mate. I could think of worse things in life. I’d spent years telling myself that we could never be, because she was both my alpha’s and my best friend’s sister, so I figured I was due a little internal celebration. Especially since Emma seemed to be warming up to the idea of our mating, to put it lightly.

“So, what are we doing for breakfast?” Sam asked as he went about preparing his own drink with far too much sugar.

“You don’t eat breakfast,” I pointed out. “You exist on the calories from your caffeine milkshake and other people’s misery.”

“Normally, yes. But this is a road trip! There are certain traditions!”

“This isn’t a road trip,” Mahlan said, sitting up in his bed in the master bedroom. “This is a fact-finding mission to try to save my mate and our pack.”

“Well, if you wanna be literal, sure. But excuse me for wanting to inject a little life into things.”

“We don’t need you to inject life. We need you to keep your magical senses on alert and tell us anything amiss you sense.”

Sam’s eyes went narrow, like whenever he was going to be extra sassy, but I shook my head borderline imperceptibly, praying he would notice. Mahlan was a generally good-natured man, but I could tell that his hackles were up. Clearly, the entire situation was getting to him. I didn’t know if it was from our failed school raiding, or the unknown of the brothers, or the reunions Lyssa was due in the future. But I sensed perhaps it wasn’t the time to ask.

Instead, I cleared my throat. “I saw a small diner when we came in. Why don’t we load up there, then set out on the interviews?”

Mahlan nodded. “Let’s. Hopefully they’ll have enough food for us.”

I looked over our group of five shifters and one liberally caffeinated green witch. “Yeah, let’s hope.”

While breakfast wasboth delicious and filling, with buttered grits, lots of extra bacon, fresh waffles, and loaded omelets, the interviews were far less satisfying. We started at the top of the list, calling ahead, and worked our way down, setting up appointment after appointment. Some were in public places, some were in homes, but all and all, their stories were much the same.

Sure, the details of who and how varied ever so slightly, but that was about it. No one had details, no one really saw anything. No one had leads, clues, or anything like that. Just so much sorrow.

Sometimes I felt like we were needlessly opening old wounds, making people figuratively dig up their dead for no results. I learned very quickly that there was an incredibly specific type of pain that came with losing a family member and having no idea what happened to them, and if it was uncomfortable for me to witness it after years and years, I couldn’t imagine how it was to live with that.

Except I could imagine it. My mind went to how I’d almost lost Emmaline that fateful day we’d been mated. What would have happened if I’d just been five minutes later? Would she be dead? Kidnapped? Would I be stuck desperately trying to find her, not knowing her fate? I was pretty sure I would go mad, which made me admire the people we talked to so much more.

Still, by the end of the day, their words, sad eyes, and weary souls echoed throughout my brain.

“It felt like we were being hunted.”

“Nowhere was safe.”

“I miss him. Sometimes I wake up and I think he’s there next to me, but he hasn’t been there in twelve years.”

“I don’t want to talk about that. No, I can’t talk about it.”

“She was so young. She had so much of her life ahead of her.”

“I don’t see why we have to do this.”

“I don’t want to remember.”

“If you find out what happened, will you please tell us? Please?”

By the time we finished and got back into our car, I was worn out. Mahlan seemed even worse, his amiable demeanor completely depleted. He didn’t quite seem defeated, but he was pretty close. We needed to get him back to Lyssa to remind him what he was fighting and investigating for. And I wasn’t saying that just because I was borderline desperate to get to Emma.

“That was less productive than I hoped,” Jacobian said as we piled in, getting behind the wheel. Normally, we’d have John drive for such a trip, but considering the length and how many of us there were to trade, we’d decided to just do it on our own.

“Did we find out anything?” Parker asked.

“We found pain,” Mahlan answered, his voice low. Guttural. “So much pain.”

I reached over from where I was sitting in the middle and squeezed my alpha’s shoulder. “We’re gonna figure this out. I promise.”

“From your mouth to the council’s ears,” he said. And that was that. With a silence coming over the car, we sank into reflection. But as we drove, I couldn’t help but think of Emma’s words.

If it wasn’t the brothers, were we barking up the wrong tree? And if we were, how did we get into the right tree?

I didn’t know, which infuriated me in that cold, inky way I got sometimes. As the likely beta for our whole pack, I was supposed to be the planner. The strategizer. The detail man who supported the alpha with everything he needed. And at the moment, I was failing. The puzzle pieces were slowly piling in front of me, but I was no closer to solving it than I was before our trip.

Which wasn’t the worst thing. I hadn’t gotten home yet, hadn’t had a chance to physically map things out. But as much as the logical part of my brain told me that I just needed to be patient, some part of me, a more emotional half, was concerned with something else entirely.

I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Didn’t want to give it the words so it could actualize itself. But the longer we threw ourselves at the wall of who the brothers were and what was happening, the harder it became to deny it. It sat in the pit of my stomach, lingering in the echoes of my more productive thoughts, whispering its message over and over again in listless sighs.

We’re running out of time.