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There wasn’t time to mourn. Once we found out who was behind his death, I could take a few deep breaths. Until then, I was the Lost Pack’s alpha and nothing more.
I stepped outside the office into the well-worn living room. The leather couch was piled with quilts made by my grandmother. The wood-burning fireplace was still full of the remains of last night’s fire. I shifted my steps, so I wasn’t walking on the rug in my shoes. It was a long engrained habit taught by my mother. That stupid rug was worth more than this whole house. It had been a wedding present from her parents who were from one of the oldest packs. They valued wealth in a way like nobody I’d ever met before. How my mother kept the secrets of the buried wealth this pack hid from them, I’ll never know.
That side of the family never once reached out to check on me or my dad after my mom’s death. It was probably better that way. Our pack was used to sustaining ourselves. The biggest problem was that we were dwindling in size. Staying secret meant it was difficult to find your mate or even a partner you’d be willing to settle on. Which meant fewer and fewer younglings. Too many of our members left and never returned.
I walked past the unused dining room and the closed door of my mother’s library. So many memories that I’d rather forget. I hated this house but as alpha, this was where I had to live.
Bright, late summer sunlight greeted me and I breathed in the fresh scent of pine and the crisp hint of autumn in the breeze. We only had a month or so before we’d see the first snow. Winters here were the worst. We were often isolated for weeks. Which meant, I had to figure out who was responsible for my father’s death before the whole pack was dependent on one another. There was too much distrust circulating already. While I’d prefer that the killer not be one of our own, there were so few who knew of our existence that it was less likely to be a stranger.
Footsteps sounded, and I turned to see Blake huffing and puffing up the steep driveway. He paused, leaning over to rest his forearms on his knees while he sucked in deep breaths.
I shook my head. Blake’s stout figure wasn’t brute strength like most shifters of his build. He’d had it easy as my dad’s right hand and it made him soft.
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t hide my annoyance. A beta should be able to handle basic shit on his own. I didn’t want to kill him, but if his incompetence continued, it might be my only recourse.
“The humans,” he took a gasping breath as he righted himself, “they knew all about us. They knew everything. Zoe thought you should know.”
“Where are they?” I asked.
“With Zoe at the holding cell, like you asked,” he said.
I climbed into my truck, not bothering to invite Blake to join me. He could take his own car that was parked at the bottom of the long driveway. Our town was small, but we had everything you needed. Including a jail of sorts. Mostly it was used as a place for the occasional cooling off period after a shifter lost his shit. Sometimes it was for other things. Like this.
Zoe was waiting outside the weathered brick building. She took a pull from her cigarette before dropping it to the ground. She crushed it with her black combat boot.
“What’s the issue?” I asked.
She locked her blue eyes on me. “They were sent here. It was a decent cover up, they were good liars, but the whole thing was an act.”
My brow furrowed. “They purposely stayed in the woods near our border without food for days?”
She lifted a dark brow. “I’ve seen humans do worse for less.”
“Who hired them?” I asked.
“That’s the part I can’t get out of them. The memory is just not there,” she said.
“Tampered?” I asked.
She nodded.
There were very few witches who had the gift of altering minds. Zoe was one of them, which was why most of the pack kept their distance from her.
You’d never know it by looking at her, but Zoe was probably the most powerful force we had in this entire town. Despite her five-foot frame and huge blue eyes, she was ferocious. If I asked her to, she’d turn these humans’ brains to mush without laying a hand on them.
She pressed her lips together and bounced a little on her toes. The same action she’d done since we were kids when she was bursting to say something but knew better.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
“You sure want to know this?”
“Did you already kill them?” I asked.
“Where would the fun be in that?” She pulled her dark hair into a bun on the top of her head, her version of rolling up her sleeves in preparation to get messy.
“One of them had a letter in their pocket. It was an apology for not making it back alive,” she said.
“So?”
