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“MROW!”
Buttface wakes me up in a manner befitting his name. He is agitated, tail swishing against my nose. It would appear he has not had his breakfast.
“Ava,” I mumble. “Feed the cat before I make a meal of it.”
I reach over to wake her, not knowing how she has slept through this feline cacophony, but my paw finds bare, cool sheets. She is not here. And she has not been here for some time.
There is a scrap of paper on her side of the bed. I pick it up and begin to read, astonished at what I see.
“I’m sorry, Azlan. I know you won’t forgive me, but I have to do this. I love you.”
P.S. Look after Buttface.
“SKOL! NYAN!”
I call my brothers with a resounding roar as I start a futile search for my mate. She is not in the ship. She is not with the cubs. She is not anywhere to be found. I note someone else missing in my inquiries. Kain is also gone. It takes me around five minutes to form a full understanding of what must have happened here.
By this time, Skol and Nyan have made an appearance. There is a stench of guilt about them.
“What has happened to Ava? What do you know?”
There’s been something more than a little sharp and dubious about them since we landed. I put it down to the attack, but I am starting to think that there’s more going on.
“Why would we know anything about that?” Nyan says quickly. Too quickly.
“Because you were on guard last night.”
“Actually, Kain took my shift,” Nyan says.
“That’s interesting, because Kain is gone too.”
I am beginning to remember a very simple but highly significant conversation I had with Ava when we arrived. How did Leonidas know to come and take the females while my brothers and I were gone? Who alerted him to the opportunity? I thought perhaps one of the lower status males might have bargained for his favor, but I am now beginning to think something else entirely.
My brothers know better than to lie to me, or they should. I am an even tempered alpha, but waking up to discover my mate missing, one of my brothers gone, and the other two pretending not to know anything about it while clearly knowing all about it, is as close to uncontrollable rage as I have felt in a long time.
“She would not have left the cubs of her own accord. Where is she?”
Skol and Nyan give each other an uncomfortable look before lying to my face.
“We haven’t seen either of them,” Nyan says.
“Then Kain has taken her and must be hunted down. Where would you suggest we start the search?”
I do not really have time for these games. I am not stupid. I can tell when I am twisted up in a plot, and these two should know better than to imagine I can be so easily fooled.
“I don’t know where…”
Skol puts a hand on Nyan’s shoulder and shakes his head. “He knows,” he says. “It’s time to speak plainly.”
“Yes,” I say. “Please do speak plainly. Keeping in mind that my mate’s life is on the line, and if so much as a hair on her head is harmed, I will exact painful revenge on those who conspired.”
“You would not take a mate. You would not bear a cub…”
At first I have no idea what Skol is talking about, but then I understand he is doing what every coward does when faced with his own treachery. He is constructing a justification for his betrayal.
“Kain gave us a choice, band behind him and betray you, or suffer the same consequences as our father. When we learned you were on a distant asteroid, consorting with a human female, it was not difficult to come to a decision.” Skol speaks logically and without overt emotion. He is trying to make me calm by pretending to be calm himself, but I can see the preemptive bristling of his tail and the involuntary arching of his back. He is afraid, as well he should be.
“The same consequences as our father?”
