Page 45 of Tangled Fates

So many things swirled through my head as I looked upon the chaos of my cousin’s place. That off feeling I had gotten from him when I first got here, I simply chalked up to him being overly ambitious to take over as Alpha of the pack. But as I stood within the chaos of his broken home, guilt flooded my gut.

How in the world could I have thought my own cousin wanted power, when all this time he was being hunted by bears?

“Dean?” I asked as I poked at a broken mug on the floor with my foot.

“Yeah?” he called out from the loft.

“Was there anything distinctive in your vision? Anything that might point us to where Brody is being held?”

“No,” he said as he jumped over the banister and landed in front of me. “I’ve thought about it over and over, conjuring it in my mind. But outside of his voice, his tired face, and a metal cage in a dark room, there was nothing to tell me where they’ve got him.”

Hudson shook his head. “So, all we can hope for is that he reaches out again? Seriously?”

Dean shrugged. “It’s the best I’ve got right now. Levi?”

He walked out of the bathroom with glass in his hands. “This entire place is demolished. It’s like a tornado just ripped through the damn place.”

I didn’t know why that seemed odd to me, but it did. “Well, since his stuff is strewn everywhere, let’s go through it. Maybe there’s a journal, a diary, or something that might point us in the right direction.”

Levi quirked an eyebrow. “You think this has been going on for a while?”

I shrugged. “All we’ve got is a weak voice, a daft vision, and a destroyed chalet. You got any better ideas?”

Levi puffed his cheeks out with a heavy sigh. “Then, I’ll take the upstairs.”

“Me, too,” Hudson said.

I looked over at Dean. “You start in the bathroom and work your way out. I’ll start in the kitchen, and we’ll meet in the living room.”

Dean nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

Frustration mounted with each piece of broken artifact I picked up. No matter what drawers I pulled open and no matter how many questions I called upstairs to the guys, there was nothing. Just a destroyed chalet, an absent Brody, and more questions than answers.

“Anything?” Hudson asked as he hopped over the railing.

He crashed down in front of me so hard that a picture slid off the wall and crashed to the floor.

“Seriously?” I asked.

He shrugged. “What? It’s not like everything else isn’t broken to hell in this place.”

“Hudson, come on,” Dean said as he migrated toward us.

Levi popped up with bottles of water. “Here, these were in Brody’s fridge.”

I shook my head. “For all we know, they’re drugged and that’s how they got him out of his place.”

Hudson paused. “Does this home look like the home of someone who was drugged and dragged out?”

I closed my eyes. “Good point.”

“So,” Dean said as he cracked his open, “what now?”

Levi sighed. “All we do is wait, I guess.”

I couldn’t keep my tongue silent on it any longer. “I saw my father in the woods.”

That silenced them completely, and when I opened my eyes, I found them staring intently at me.

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