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“They don’t live in my old cabin.”
“But unless the stalker is Gabriel, they probably live on Sylvan territory. It isn’t the safest place for you to go.” His pacing cat growled, backing him up on that.
“It’s not like I’m suggesting that I go alone. I already said I’d like you and a few others to accompany me, just to be on the safe side. Though I don’t envision being attacked. Our boy operates from the shadows. He wouldn’t launch a full-on attack on a cluster of people in broad daylight. Tell me I’m wrong. You’d be lying if you did. Be honest, you’re simply being your usual overprotective self,” she accused, though there was no judgement in her tone.
“It’s not simply that—”
“Sure it is.” Her chin inched up. “I need to pick up the rest of my stuff, Luke. I don’t trust that someone—whether it be my mother or whoever’s harassing me—won’t spitefully wreck it all. The longer all my things are at the cabin, the more of a chance that could happen to them.”
True enough, but … “The key word is ‘stuff.’ That’s all it is. Things can be replaced. You can’t be.”
“A lot of those things are important to me, including all the gifts you gave me over the years.”
He snapped his mouth shut. His stomach churned at the ideas of said gifts being destroyed. He’d given her so many over the years—spoiling her, taking care of her in whatever ways he could, cheering her up when her mother made things difficult. “I don’t want them to be trashed either, but I’m more concerned about you.”
“Naturally. But I won’t be there long. Kiesha and Mitch have already packed up everything. It’s just a case of me collecting it all.”
“They could drop the boxes here for you.”
“I would have asked them to do exactly that, but …” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the table, careful not to spill her drink. “I think it would be a good thing for you and me to go Sylvan territory.”
He frowned, and his equally frustrated cat stilled in surprise. “I’m not understanding how.” At all.
“Because you’re not bothering to think past your overprotective instincts. It can’t have escaped your notice that our boy has been real quiet. Now, granted, we’ve made it impossible for him to contact me. But he knows where I am, he knows that I now live with you. Yet, there’ve been no more gifts or anything. Maybe he’s decided to lay low. Maybe he’s waiting for me to lower my guard. Whatever the case, his silence doesn’t work for me. I want him identified. I want him gone.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed as he sensed, “You want to provoke him.”
“If he’s part of the pack and we go there, he’ll see you and me together, happy and claimed. It will do him the world of good to be reminded that I don’t belong to him at all. It will also piss him off. And yes, I’m aware he could react seriously badly, but at least he’ll have done something. While he’s lying low, we can’t catch him at anything.”
No, they couldn’t. And taunting the asshole wasn’t a bad idea. But it would be Blair who said asshole would punish, and Luke was not whatsoever good with that.
“Another reason we need to go to the cabin is that we might just find something there that will help us ID him.” She placed down her cup. “Aspen asked me if it ever seemed like anyone had broken into my cabin. It hadn’t. But that didn’t mean they didn’t. And you know exactly what a shifter would do to the home of a person they believed belonged to them.”
Luke nodded as realization settled in. “Mark it.”
“Mark it,” she agreed. “You marked mine in various ways—clawed doorways, left items of clothing behind, touched my things to scent them. Just maybe he did the same. And just maybe we’d be able to tell who exactly did it.”
Blair watched him digest that. A surge of agitation rippled down their bond. An agitation she sensed stemmed from the fact that he knew she was right but wished she wasn’t because to argue would be to lie.
She wasn’t mad at him for so badly wanting to shield her from all harm, sensing it wasn’t that he didn’t believe she couldn’t protect herself. It was that it went against everything in him to place her in a situation that carried even a modicum of danger. “It’s worth checking, Luke. My female is all for being proactive in getting rid of this son of a bitch. Surely you and your cat are, too.”
Glaring down at his mug, Luke ground his teeth.
“We can take some people with us. They can act as an extra set of eyes while we search the cabin, and they’ll be back up should we need it. Come on, Luke, you know I’m talking sense.”
