Page 70 of Dark Dragon’s Mate

“Where the fuck is she?”

She was free.

Trish ran full out, across the open grass and into the woods.

Behind her, she heard the curses of an angry lion.

Chapter 35

Noah stared around the enclosure at the dead sheep. The coppery scent of blood filled the air, like old pennies.

He couldn’t believe Trish had done something like this. But her scent was there, in the center of the enclosure, where Grange said he’d left her.

She’d always been reticent about her wolf, not Changing with the pack, the understanding being that Trish did sometimes have trouble controlling her. She’d had to suppress her for years, after their original pack was killed and Trish was put into the human foster system.

If the Council had known she’d survived the attack, they’d never have let that happen. They were all lucky Trish had never been found out as a shifter.

But for her to do something like this—to tear a couple dozen sheep apart just for fun—he couldn’t see it.

Unfortunately, Trish was not there to ask.

Grange, after a bout of truly inventive cursing when he saw how Trish had tunneled out of the enclosure, had gone quiet and thoughtful, rubbing absently at one of the wounds on his arm.

Probably wondering how pissed off Emon was going to be about him having Trish arrested. Sometimes it sucked working for a psycho dragon.

It did look like Trish had chewed up Grange pretty thoroughly—but Noah couldn’t see Trish doing that either. Not without a good reason.

Abruptly, Grange said, “You have to go after her.”

Noah raised his eyebrows. “Me? Why me? You’re probably faster. Not to mention, if I go after her in wolf form, how am I going to drag her back if she doesn’t want to come?”

“Well, she’s sure as hell not going to let me get near her.” Grange gestured to his still-bleeding wounds.

“We need Tristan,” Noah said. “If she’s out of control, he’s probably the only one she’ll listen to. Or better yet, Emon. He can find her from the air, and he might be dominant enough to control her, especially if she cares about him. Otherwise I’m going to have to drag Jace here from Silverlake—as her alpha, he can make her obey. But I really don’t want to do that except as a last resort. If nothing else, it’s a jurisdictional nightmare.”

Grange was still rubbing his arm, still with that thoughtful, faraway look on his face. “Right,” he said. “Maybe we should just wait until Emon comes back. That’ll be late tonight—tomorrow, at the latest. By that time she might have even calmed down and come back on her own.”

Maybe. Noah wasn’t so sure about that. This was bad trouble, and if Trish was thinking straight, she’d want to wait for Emon too.

This was his territory, and what to do about this mess was ultimately up to him. If he didn’t want to press charges, he could make the whole thing go away. Especially if he was willing to keep Trish here under his protection.

Although Noah was still going to have to report it to Jace. He rubbed his hand through his hair and sighed.

“Yeah,” Grange said, looking relieved. “That’s what we’ll do. Wait.”

Noah gazed at him, his eyes narrowing. There was something off here. At first Grange was all gung-ho to have Trish arrested and taken back to Silverlake immediately, and now suddenly he’d done a complete about-face.

Noah started to get a hot prickling feeling in his stomach—the one he always got on an Enforcer job when something wasn’t right.

He only had Grange’s word that Trish had ever been here. Or that she’d caused the wounds on his body. Those were identifiable as wolf bites, but the damage to the sheep was not. They were so torn apart it was impossible to tell what kind of animal had done the damage.

Had Grange done something to Trish? Attacked her and gotten the worst of it, and then torn apart the sheep and blamed Trish to make her look out of control?

But then why would he suddenly want to wait for Emon to come back?

None of this made any fucking sense.

He followed Grange back to the castle, mind whirring. He didn’t like the smell of this situation at all.