Page 42 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

Between sneaking out, having amazing sex, and then catching the man who had been stalking me in the act, my night had been nothing short of exhilarating. After Stanley Kingsley left the house, I went inside and tried to get some sleep, but my mind would not settle. I laid perfectly still with my eyes closed for about an hour, then gave up. If I was already wide awake, I figured I might as well use these precious hours to do some more research.

I needed to know everything there was to learn about werewolves.

But first—there was someone else I wanted to run a Google search on.

Opening up a new window, I typed Stanley’s name in and hit return. He said he worked for my father and that my dad owed him money, which I assumed was true, but with the fleeting comment about what’s lurking in the woods still rattling around in my head, I no longer felt I could trust much else the man had said to me.

Just his name, however, came up with far too many results, so then I added the name of my dad’s business, and that’s when the Stanley I was looking for popped up. There was a LinkedIn page, a Facebook page, a personal website, and even, shockingly enough, a Wikipedia page.

“He has his own page on wiki?” I clicked the link. “What makes him so special?”

Within the first paragraph, I learned exactly what made Stanley noteworthy enough to have a page dedicated to him.

It was because he was the father of Michael Shawn Kingsley. The boy who went missing in Silverleaf a decade or so earlier. At the time, I was too wrapped up in my own family drama to follow the story that closely, but it was the talk of the town. Stanley and his wife had claimed that Michael was a strange kid with an overactive imagination who might’ve wandered off by accident and gotten hurt. Michael’s friends from school told a different story. They went online and revealed to the world that Michael’s parents were lying and that Michael wasn’t missing—he’d decided to run away because he had such a bad home life.

For months, the media coverage was a bloodbath. Both parties argued their side with little decorum, and the people in town were torn about what they thought actually happened to poor Michael. Now I understood what Stanley meant when he said he understood just how gossipy the people of Silverleaf could be.

The search went on for such a long time that the national news eventually picked up the story. Since Michael was never found, conspiracy theorists emerged and made the whole thing even more intriguing.

According to the Wikipedia page on Michael’s disappearance, the cops gave up the search after four months, and the only clue that was ever found was one of Michael’s Keds, which had been uncovered in the woods on the western side of town.

Over by the compound.

My lungs constricted as I made this connection, but what really took my breath away was the realization I had a second later.

Michael Shawn Kingsley.

M.S. Kingsley.

I quickly exited the Wikipedia page and went to my email, and there the name was. Sitting in my forwarded email from Georgie’s address, with the name M. S. Kingsley listed as the original sender. My stomach dropped, and I dove for my phone on the bedside table, calling Georgie without even taking a moment to think about what time it was. She didn’t answer, but when I called a second time, her voice came through right away—groggy but full of concern.

“Di? What’s going on?”

“Georgie,” I said, breathless, even though I’d been sitting down this whole time. “How did you get in contact with M. S. Kingsley.”

“Who?”

“He sent you an email,” I said. “You had contacted him looking for information about the Vilks, and he got back to you with a bunch of stuff.”

“How did you?—”

“I saw the email in your inbox at work the other day and sent it to myself,” I said. “And you can be mad at me for invading your privacy and keeping secrets later, because right now, I need you to tell me everything you know about this man.”

Georgie was quiet for a few seconds. “I—I don’t know anything. I was doing my own research, just googling stuff and sending inquiry requests to some of the libraries in the area, and he ended up contacting me. He said he works at a public library in Sacramento and that my request had been sent to him by a colleague. Other than what he sent in that email you invaded, that’s all the information I got from him.”

I refrained from commenting on her use of the word ‘invaded,’ seeing as I was still at least a little bit in the wrong, and sighed instead.

“What’s the problem?” she asked. “It’s not like anything he sent me was helpful anyway. You read through it—it was all just a bunch of disconnected news stories and then some insane website about werewolves. I’m pretty sure a kid made that site, by the way. Did you see the color scheme and everything? I honestly don’t know why the guy thought it would be of use to me. I was just trying to figure out if Andreas’ family was involved in, like, something criminal.”

I rubbed my face with my free hand and tried to figure out how much I was going to tell Georgie right then. So much had happened in the last few hours, and the exhaustion was finally starting to catch up with me. But my friend wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. I’d called and woken her up at four in the morning, asking about an email that I shouldn’t have accessed in the first place, and she was going to want answers.

“Okay, look,” I said after a while. “There are some things that I need to talk to you about, and I know it’s totally unfair for me to put them off even for a little while longer, but I swear, when I get into work later today, I will fill you in on everything.”

“What? No way! I won’t be able to go back to sleep now. My curiosity is too high. Just tell me now.”

“I get that, but I’m in the opposite position. I haven’t gone to sleep yet, and I’m seconds away from passing out. I’m sorry I woke you up just for this, but a lot has happened tonight, and I swear, I’m not going to leave any details out when I come into the shop later. Just give me like—six hours. Maybe seven.”

I could tell she was thinking. She was quiet for almost a full ten seconds.

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