Page 18 of Glitched Fates & Stolen Mates

Rory twisted his lips. “I spoke to Uncle Alex the other day.”

My stomach dropped. “Still no news?”

Rory shook his head. “Still no sign of Isla.”

Our old pack had been searching for our cousin Isla since she’d run off after Rory discovered her involvement in Greywatch. Four months now since she’d vanished without a trace. Alex was beside himself with worry—his only daughter gone, and him not knowing if she was safe, or if she was still working with her mother who’d destroyed so many lives.

“She’s probably with Moira, hiding out in another country,” I said.

Rory frowned. “I just can’t forget how she was in Scotland. She seemed so… I don’t know, conflicted? Like she didn’t really want any part of it. We need to find her. I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“You have to,” I said, even though the words tasted like ash. “Even though it’s hard. We have to trust—”

“Trust who?” Rory’s voice cracked. “White? Some random woman who most of us have never met? Seb, who’s clearly hiding something from us?” His hands clenched into fists. “What if while we’re sitting here ‘trusting,’ Da’s out there killing more people? What if—”

I gripped his face between my hands, the way I used to when he was small and scared, usually after our father had been cruel, or after the kids at our school had bullied him. Before I fucked up our relationship.

“Rory,” I said. “I know. You know I know. But we have to hang tight for a moment. Greywatch isn’t some ragtag operation we can bulldoze through. They’re backed by various governments’ money, military resources, decades of research and development. They’ve got safe houses across multiple countries, connections in law enforcement, politicians in their pockets. This was never going to be easy.”

Rory’s shoulders sagged slightly, some of the fight bleeding out of him. He nodded once, reluctantly.

“We’ll find another way,” I promised. “We always do.”

Another nod, this one more convinced. The desperate edge in his eyes dulled to something more manageable—still angry, still frustrated, but no longer on the verge of doing something spectacularly reckless.

I hoped I’d temporarily solved that problem, at least. Bought us some breathing room before he decided to go off half-cocked and do something that would get him killed.

Which was good, because I had too many problems already.

Most of them Felix-shaped.

The bloodied shirt he’d carried away replayed in my mind on an endless loop. The way he’d clutched it to his chest, his mortified expression. With the feel of his skin still fresh in my memory, my wolf was restless. It wanted more. Demanded more. Whispered seductive lies about how Felix had liked my touch, how he hadn’t pulled away, how his breathing had changed when I’d traced his cheekbone.

But those were just fantasies. Felix was with Wren. Sweet, uncomplicated Wren who drew cats on coffee cups and made Felix smile. Who was everything I wasn’t—fun, innocent, untainted by violence and trauma.

“Kit?”

I blinked. Rory was staring at me.

“You’ve gone all weird again.”

“I’m not weird.”

“You are. You’ve been acting weirder and weirder lately. You zone out all the time. Are you having bad nightmares again?”

My throat tightened. “No.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. My near-constant insomnia helped with that particular problem.

“Then what’s wrong with you?”

Everything. Absolutely everything was wrong with me.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Rory’s expression shifted to one I recognised all too well—the look he got when he was about to start digging. Like a terrier with a bone, exactly like his codename suggested.

“Is it about—”