“Are you sure?” Bryn presses.
“I’m a reporter. It’s my job to be sure.” She snorts. “I’ve been tracking this for quite a while now, but there isn’t any evidence. All I have is my gut feeling.”
“What else have you learned?” I ask her. I never thought she would know more than we do, but Sawyer continues to surprise me.
“Aside from missing omegas, the stories coming out of this forest are probably true. I think something is happening here that, while others say it’s unexplainable, may be very explainable.”
“I need to put a pin in this conversation.” Sin pushes past me and pauses. “Death.”
If he can smell the dead, he should have been able to sense his dead omega, but he didn’t say that, which means…
Bryn steps up beside me, his eyes finding mine and full of the same conclusion I’ve come to—she might still be alive, and if she is, then everything Sawyer fears is true.
“Over here.” Sin pushes through the dense foliage and pauses.
There, on the forest floor, lies the skeletal remains of a body.
“Fuck.” I crouch down and look at the hips, which are wider than a beta female’s. “Omega or gamma.” Damn. What the hell did we stumble across?
“Guys.” Sawyer’s voice shakes, drawing our attention.
I whirl around to find her wide-eyed and crouching down over a log. I step over to her carefully and kneel.
Below us sits a ravine that tumbles over a mile down, and at the bottom, water rushes past.
“Did we take the wrong path?” Sin questions, peering over Sawyer’s shoulder. “How did we miss this?”
“The dead haunt these woods. They lead us where we are needed, not where we want to go,” Sawyer says while pointing to a ledge. “More bones.”
“Just what the heck happened out here?” There’s an edge to Bryn’s voice. His good ole boy persona falls to the wayside, revealing the alpha that lurks under his skin.
“I don’t know.” Sawyer pulls back. “But I have this odd feeling that these women were trying to escape.”
“From what?” Sin grips Sawyer’s shoulders and pulls her away from the ledge.
“How soon can we get back out here?” she asks instead, letting Sin drag her back toward the path.
“We need to prepare for that,” Bryn replies. “A couple days max.”
“We can say we will go on a honeymoon. No one will question it.” Sin continues to move back until he and Sawyer are a dozen feet away from the ledge.
“All right.” Sawyer turns around and goes to head back out of the forest.
I hop over a log and grab her shoulders, yanking her to a stop. “Let me go first.”
“Go.” She doesn’t even argue.
“Shouldn’t we look at the other bones?” Bryn questions, falling back into place.
“No.” I sigh, not liking this any more than him. “We should get back. We can’t move them now that the dean ordered us off his lands.”
“I love trespassing,” Sawyer says with excitement. It should disturb me, but somehow, I find it endearing. “Two days, boys. We have a lot to prepare for.”
“What exactly are you hoping to find on this excursion?” Bryn asks.
“I’m going to figure out what’s happening here once and for all and put every single ghost story to bed,” she answers with confidence. “And I’m going to record it every step of the way. The world needs to know what’s happening. So are you with me or not, boys?”
“I’m no boy, princess,” Sin replies. “I’m in.” He’s an endless, obnoxious flirt, but unfortunately, it works for him if her blush is anything to go by. Jealousy zings through me that he can make her blush so easily.