AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I snatched them from him and opened the folder. “What page?”
“Last one.”
I ignored the other ten pages and started flipping until I found the dried, scrawled, bloody sentence Elias had been talking about. And when I read it with my own eyes, my still-life heart dropped into my stomach.
“What?” I asked breathlessly.
Elias clasped his hands behind his back. “Before you ask, I don’t know. I don’t know what the threat is and I don’t know where it’s coming from. But, your father’s dying wish was not just for you to step up as alpha, but for you to be safe here.”
I read the sentence, over and over, committing the whole of it to memory.
“I, Colin—Alpha of the Ironcrest Pack—being of sound mind and body, do hereby request that my last dying wish be that my daughter, Raven—entertainment reporter in L.A.—be brought back home for the sake of the safety of her life.
“My life,” I whispered to myself.
“Raven?”
I registered Elias’s voice, but I didn’t look up at him. “Hmm?”
“If there’s one thing I did with the utmost pride, it was trusting your father.”
That picked my head up and I studied his face. “Yeah?”
He nodded. “Without a shadow of a doubt. I trusted him with many things, both personal and professional. He wasn’t just my client, but he was my friend. And I’m telling you, I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but you’re in trouble, and I know it’s got something to do with him leaving Bend.”
“Do you know why he left in the first place when he knew it would be such a risk?”
He shook his head and the sadness that registered behind his eyes matched my own. “No. No clue.”
I closed the folder and handed it back to him. “Why not just tell me this? When we first met. When I first flew in. Why not just tell me if you knew?”
He snickered. “Were you really in a position to receive something like that?”
I groaned as I lifted my head toward the sky. “Why does everyone use my feelings as a reason for withholding information about my own fucking life?”
“Because you’re this pack’s only hope right now, and they’re probably trying to preserve it.”
My gaze snapped back to his. “And what about me? What about trying to preserve me?”
He held up the folder. “I’m assuming that’s why your father wanted you back in Bend. To make sure you were safe, or preserved, if that’s the word you so choose to use.”
I wanted to slap him. I wanted to wring his fucking neck for being yet another person that had withheld something from me. But, I didn’t have the energy. As I flopped down into a chair at the kitchen table, I tried to wrap my mind around everything. I was in trouble? That’s why Dad wanted me back in Bend?
“Was the alpha thing a trap to--?”
Elias cut me off. “No. They are two separate things. Though, having you as alpha gets you back here where you’re safe, according to your father. However, those two items aren’t related.”
“At least, they weren’t when they were written down.”
“Raven…”
I stood to my feet. “Thank you for your time, but I need you to leave.”
“We have much to go over, though. Much to sign, if you’ve chosen--.”
I shot him a look. “Get the hell out of my house before I have someone drag you out by their fucking teeth.”
And he sure as hell didn’t have to be told twice.
As I listened to Elias backtrack out of my house—well, my father’s house—I sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window. Birds chirped in the distance. The sun shone brightly through the closed windows of the house. I sat there, my mind spinning and my head reeling with everything that lawyer had just told me. I was only safe in Bend? Why? And what the hell was so important about me being back in Bend with the pack that my father had to scrawl that in blood as well?
Despite the informative session with the very annoying lawyer, I had nothing but more questions. More questions without answers that required answers, if nothing but for my own piece of mind. But, there was another glaring issue. A problem I couldn’t stop staring at now that I had more of the pieces at my disposal. Dad, struck down in Portland. His body, never recovered. His wolf healing powers, never kicking in.
Someone had murdered my father.
And I wasn’t going back to Los Angeles until the person involved paid with their own life.
