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“Let me know if you hear anything,” I told him. Doc nodded, and I gave a small farewell salute as I turned to make my way out of the hospital.
“Anything?” Hunter questioned when I walked out of the building. He didn’t like hospitals. They reminded him of his time with the nutcase elitists. The smell of ammonia and death rung his bell pretty hard, and having him wolf out in the middle of the ICU wasn’t something I wanted to worry about.
“She’s gone.”
His brow furrowed. “Gone? He let her go?”
I smirked. “Vixen checked herself out via the second-floor window.”
Hunter snorted, his leg bouncing anxiously as he leaned against his Harley. He’d been that way since we’d dropped the little no-name off. Anxious and on edge.
“That explains why I thought I caught your scent on the wind,” he admitted. “She must have used the garden path to escape into town.”
“She’s still wearing our clothes.” Why hadn’t I thought about that? Fuck, we could track her using our own scents as the focus.
“I followed the scent while you were inside. Stopped on the edge of town.” He clucked his tongue. “Scent goes cold after that.”
“She must have ducked into one of the shops,” I pondered. “Either way, she couldn’t have gone far. We can start a search for her tomorrow. We’ve got a fucking rat to deal with now.”
“Bruiser, find out who leaked the plan info?”
I nodded. “One of the fucking prospects opened his flap down at the Sly Wolf.”
The Sly Wolf was one of the local bars we owned. Mostly shifters, but a few humans wandered in from time to time. It was considered neutral territory for the most part, but that pretty much only meant that no one was allowed to kill anyone on the property. Rival clubs were going to take advantage of information if someone was drunkenly hollering it for all to hear.
The prospect might not have meant to leak the information, but his carelessness got my cousin’s men killed, and we couldn’t stand for that.
“Let’s go roast a rat, then.” Hunter gritted his teeth.
It wasn’t something we wanted to do or took pleasure in. Especially when it was one of our own who was responsible. The prospect had been drunk and stupid. It happened, but we had laws for a reason. Rules for a reason.
And in the end, blood would have blood. That was our way.
CHAPTER SIX
The café was alive with activity today. No more than it had been since Granny had taken me under her wing, but the charge in the air felt different. A storm was coming, I could feel it. Over the last few weeks Granny and I had fallen into a routine of sorts. She provided me with a roof over my head and clothes on my back, food to eat, and I helped her out as waitress.
There weren’t many people my age wanting to bus tables and hand out coffee for minimum wage in Haven, apparently. I was pretty sure it was because Granny’s mood had the ability to sour so fast that it gave people whiplash. Lucky for her, I was used to wolves with mood swings.
She felt familiar. Granny. As if my mind somehow knew her, trusted her, but there was also a nagging at the back of my brain that warned against it. It was hard to tell who she reminded me of, but the glow of her warm, stormy gray eyes and the unique way she held herself triggered a haze that rolled around in my subconscious.
Did I know her before? Was she one of the shifters who had been banished from the compound? I’d heard whispers about a time the High Council calledthe Great Purge. Alpha Rollins hadtold the tale in one of our classes, telling us it had been a glorious victory among our people to wipe the unclean from our ranks.
Half-breeds is what he meant. Those who held human DNA in their blood. We’d been told that humans were like feral animals. Unrestrained rapists and murderers. That if their blood mixed with ours, it would cause havoc in the shifter community. Humans could not control their urges, and that led to devastation.
I smiled down at the young couple while I handed them their coffees. They beamed back at me, their faces bright and warm. At that moment, I realized it had all been a lie.
Most of it.
If anything, shifters were just as savage and manipulative as the worst of humankind. We just came in different packaging. They were right about one thing, though. We should be set apart, but not because we were superior. Because we held abilities that humans only dreamed of. Using them wrongly in the past had no doubt led to the wolf hunts hundreds of years ago that nearly wiped out the shifter population across the world.
“Need anything else?” I asked. The couple shook their heads and drew back into their conversation. I’d been working for Granny for a few weeks. I was still wary of the older woman, but I couldn’t begrudge her much when she’d freely given me a roof over my head and the clothes on my back.
“You’re doing well, Rey.” She beamed at me with pride. I’d sidled up behind the counter, filling my tray with another set of coffees. Granny had taken to calling me Rey, as I requested. She’d easily agreed to it when I’d voiced my opposition and concern about people knowing my true name. “Might upgrade you to barista next.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I laughed, setting the coffees on my tray and picking it up. “I’ll keep the magic bean potioning to you.” Granny chuckled before going back to makemore coffees. The small café was brimming with activity. The lunch rush was in full swing, but honestly, I didn’t understand why she called it a rush when it had been just as busy this morning.
It helped that she was the only coffee shop in town. Haven didn’t allow chain stores within the town limits, and it was hard for outsiders to acquire any kind of licensing to build or set up shop. Granny had informed me that it was because of how integrated the shifter and human populations were. Newcomers who didn’t know of shifters brought problems. That, and the mayor was big on supporting locals rather than those who sought to spread their sickly greed everywhere.
