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I’d recognize her face anywhere.
Davis:
Or that ass.
Ford:
Who’s the fucking guy?
Me:
I have no clue. She ran into me on the street…
Literally ran into me. It was definitely an accident.
Asher:
Come home. We need a pack meeting. Now.
My brows arch at Ash’s demand. Of all my packmates, he’s by far the least aggressive. The least demanding. Even Topher, our beta, snaps out commands more often than he does. So I know his alpha must be riding him hard, awake and snarling that she’s so close, in the city, but not with us.
I don’t argue and neither does anyone else. Instead, I call my assistant and tell her I’ll be out for the rest of the day. She splutters a little at that, but doesn’t argue. Which is good for her, because if she had, I’d probably fire her.
An asshole move, I know, but my alpha doesn’t give a fuck. Not now. Not when Vee is here and everything in me is focused on that, on her. Mine. Fucking Mine.
I take twenty minutes to make it to our pack house. My office isn’t quite downtown, but it’s not in the suburbs where we live. The midway point between the two. Traffic is a nightmare, and I find my fingers tapping on the steering wheel with the need to do something, go faster, hunt down our girl, fuck her and bite her.
I force that instinct away. We can’t go that route. Even if biting her would tie us together, even if she wouldn’t be able to run from us again. She already hates us. Forcing a bond would be unforgivable.
My heart clenches when I pass by Vee’s grandmother’s house, empty now for three months. We’d hoped that she would come for the funeral, hoped that we’d get the chance to see her. The entire pack had shown up graveside for a woman we hated, just on the off chance that Vee would be there. She didn’t come, obviously. That was when reality sank in.
We’d really lost her.
Gone forever.
Only not gone forever. Because she’s here now. Three months after the fact.
As soon as I pull up in front of our house, Topher comes bounding out the front door. I catch him as he throws his arms around me, hugging him close and breathing in his lemon and mint scent. “You really saw her?” He asks against my neck.
I cup the back of his head, loving the feel of his soft hair in my fingers, holding him to me as I nod. “I did.”
My beta pulls back to peer up at me with milk chocolate brown eyes. “You’re sure it was her?”
I just barely keep from rolling my eyes at my beta. He’s anxious, just like the rest of us, afraid to hope that our torment might be coming to an end. He loved Vee just as much as we all did, even if he doesn’t feel the drive to claim her, mark her, bite her like the alphas in the pack do. “You saw the picture. It was her.”
He nods, looking relieved at my reassurance, and loops his arm around my waist, urging me inside. “Everyone else is here already.” He sounds breathless, worried, and excited all at the same time.
I can feel all of that too. Topher keeps his bond with me open. I’m constantly aware of him, of how he’s feeling. He knows it helps my alpha nature to sense my mate—one of them, at least. The other members of my pack… they don’t always keep our connection open. Ford, least of all of us. Almost never. The few times he has let me in—us in—he’s been a swirling ball of guilt, anger, sadness and a fair amount of self-disgust. I don’t know if he keeps the bond shut down because he doesn’t want to burden us with all he’s feeling or if he doesn’t trust us—me—enough to be vulnerable.
I hope it’s the first, though I suspect it’s the second.
When I enter the house, I wrinkle my nose at the overwhelming cocktail of alpha pheromones in the air. It’s enough to make a growl rise in my chest, needing to assert my dominance, but I push it back, swallow it down. Not one of these men is trying to challenge me.
Topher guides me to the living room where the three other alphas of our pack are waiting, all of them vibrating with energy ranging from anxious to downright feral. Ford looks up at me from where he’s sitting in a chair, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together so tight his knuckles are white. The chain that he’s had around his neck for the last seven years draws my attention, though I can’t see the ring strung through it. He never takes it off. Not while showering, not while working out, not while fucking. “Where did you see her?”
I head to the bar and pour myself a shot as I answer. “On Hughes. She was outside a tattoo parlor.”
Davis frowns. “That doesn’t make any sense. If she’s only visiting, then why would she go to a tattoo shop?”
