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Maia’s reasonable, and I know she will understand the lengths I’m going to.
She has to.
He nods, gesturing with his head to a box in the doorway that I missed.
I really am distracted.
Fuck.
“But we’ve got a problem,” Alex says, and I whirl around to face him. I furrow my brow, and he rubs the back of his neck. “She lied to me earlier.”
“About?”
“Someone was there, Toph. I was out front taking the box to the car and handling a call from Tate, and when I went back to her, she was standing in the garden with Phoebe. I could smell faint traces of an unfamiliar wolf on Phoebe’s dress, but nothing else. There was no trail, nothing to track. Just that one small scent.”
“Find mate! Go to mate! Protect mate and pup!” Orion roars in my head. “Someone touched our pup. She is unclaimed, Christopher. Our mate needs to bear our mark. She needs protecting.”
“What do you mean you scented nothing else? You couldn’t smell a trail at all?” I hiss, stepping closer to him. Alex rests back into a defensive position, crossing his arms over his chest as his eyes flicker between silver and hazel.
His wolf is feeling the danger of an angry Alpha and is both determined not to lose this fight and knows I’m angry with him.
“Danger, danger. Mate and child around a dangerous wolf.” Orion is losing control, and I can feel him pushing to try and take over. I can’t trust him right now, not when he’s this irrational. If we storm upstairs like he wants, we’ll scare Maia and Phoebe.
Maia won’t be impressed, and it’ll only make her more resentful towards us.
Alex shakes his head. “No. There was nothing. If there wasn’t that faint trace of it on Phoebe, I’d not have even realised someone was there. I got Phoebe and Maia out of there, despite her hesitance, and?—”
“You should have called Seb. He’s the best fucking tracker we have,” I snarl, unable to control the bite in my tone. “Your nose is fucking defective. Scents don’t just disappear, Alexander..”
“He should have called us,” Orion roars.
“I did call Seb,” Alex says, not rising to the heat of the argument. “He was there seconds after we left, and he found nothing, either. No scent, no track marks. Nothing. If it wasn’t for the fact that we could both smell the lingering scent on Phoebe, I’d have truly believed I made it up.”
“Seb! We need you downstairs. Without Phoebe or Maia.” I connect with my brother and call into his mind, bypassing the usual barrier he has in place. I can feel his frustration before he cuts the connection off, but he doesn’t argue.
He rarely does.
“Neither of you could find anything?” I ask, and Alex shakes his head. “Holy fucking Artemis. And she lied about it to you?”
“She told me she was there alone, despite me clearly knowing that it was a lie,” Alex says, shaking his head in annoyance. “But when I tried to push, she shut it down. What else was I meant to do?”
“Find mate. Ask mate. She won’t lie to us,” Orion says firmly. “We’ll protect her. We’ll keep her safe. Won’t let anyone touch her until she’s marked. Won’t let anyone see her until the world can recognise our claim.”
“No. She will lie to us, and unless I take the choice away from her and force an answer from her, then she’s going to stick with it,” I say, shaking my head. Seb comes storming down the stairs with Ben hot on his heels.
“What did you find at her house?” I demand the moment Seb is in my view. He’s got a pale green T-shirt on, that definitely belongs to Ben, and his usual tracksuit pants. There’s a faint scent of mud and wet clinging to his usual earthy vetiver and cedarwood.
There’s a scowl on his face, which is probably because I tore him away from Maia and the baby.
“Nothing.”
“Could you elaborate more?” I’m trying to not snap at him, since that makes him close off more, but, fuck me, this is one of the times I need my brother to use his words and actually communicate in an effective way.
“How can he elaborate on nothing?” Ben asks, grabbing my bowl of popcorn from the coffee table and plonking his ass down in the arm chair. He stuffs his mouth with a handful, thankfully, so I don’t need to stuff it with anything else.
“I think the best person to give us answers on who was there is Maia,” Alex says. “I didn’t push, but I think we need to.”
“Showering,” Seb says.
