Page 56 of Alpha's Forbidden Bond

“Who knows?” Mikeal said with a smirk. “You might get lucky.”

Chapter 28

Diana

Ididn’t go to work for three days in a row.

Georgie came to check on me every day that I didn’t show, and I knew I was slowly chipping away at her patience, but I couldn’t help it. She didn’t care that I was missing shifts—it wasn’t that. Instead, I could tell she was worried about me and very much sick of my one-word answers to most of her questions. She’d managed to piece together some of what Andreas said to me before sending us away, and I didn’t correct her when she made accurate assumptions as to what I was thinking or feeling, but other than that, I gave her little. It was wearing on her, so by the fourth day, I decided to stop being such a crappy friend and actually sit upstairs with her and have a cup of coffee. Maybe it was because I’d finally showered and put on real clothes, but for some reason, I was finally beginning to feel like a person again.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still absolutely devastated. But at least now I smelled a little bit better.

“It’s so good to see you up and out of bed,” Georgie said with a happy smile. “I was one more day away from calling 911 and having them cart you off to the hospital.”

“I don’t think they cart people off to the hospital when they are just feeling a little depressed.”

“I don’t think I would call this ‘a little depressed.’”

I took a sip from the oversized mug and let the warm liquid bring me back to life. “Well, either way, I’m sorry for being such a downer this week. And for worrying you. I just needed some time to myself.”

“I understand. And you have nothing to apologize for. After everything you went through—I mean, god, Di, you saw someone get shot! Plus, you could’ve been killed yourself that night. Of course, it was going to take some time for you to process everything. That’s perfectly reasonable. Do I wish you would’ve talked to me a little more? Sure. But hey, I know better than to think you would suddenly turn into a chatterbox after suffering something so traumatic. I don’t think that’s usually how that works.”

I laughed. “No. Probably not.”

“So, how are you doing? Really?”

I swirled the coffee around in my mug a few times. “I don’t know… I’ve been better.” I laughed, but she didn’t. “I think the hardest part about all of this is not having all the information. Thinking about that poor woman, Sarafina, and having no way of knowing if she’s still alive or not. It’s making it hard for me to really move on.”

Georgie sighed. “I’ve been wondering that as well. I understand that Andreas probably wanted to have, like, a clean break or whatever, but it would’ve been nice of him to at least contact you and let you know what’s going on with Sarafina. It’s not fair to just leave you in the dark when it’s something as serious as this!”

“Maybe he doesn’t think I care? He sees the human and werewolf worlds as being so different, and even though he might not admit it out loud, I can tell he has a real bias against humans. He fears us and assumes the worst in us. The first day we met, he was so suspicious of me, even though I really did just turn up the wrong road by accident.”

“But now he knows you well enough,” Georgie argued. “He should realize that you’re the kind of person that would want to know what’s going on. Who cares if Sarafina is a werewolf? She’s still a person! She’s still someone who got shot and who you want to make sure is okay.” Georgie suddenly took her phone out, her mouth straightening out into a determined line. “I’m going to do some digging. Hang on.”

“Digging?” I frowned. “What kind of digging?”

“See if there are any death reports or anything,” she said. “You don’t happen to know Sarafina’s last name, do you?”

“She’s part of the Morena pack,” I said. “And I think everyone in one pack uses the same last name, but I could be wrong about that. Not that it matters. I would be shocked if you found anything.”

“You never know. These werewolves have social security numbers, right? They have lives outside the compound. Don’t you think they would need to file a death certificate with the county at least?”

“I have no idea, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they had ways around that. Otherwise, how would they stay hidden this long? When you go to request a death certificate, don’t you have to give a cause of death? What would they say happened to an otherwise healthy woman in her twenties? They can’t exactly tell the truth.”

But Georgie didn’t seem to be listening to me. She was scrolling through stuff on her phone. Her brow furrowed with a deep crease bisecting the base of her nose. “Well, this is interesting…”

“What?” I sat up a little more. “You found something?”

“Not about Sarafina,” she said. “But there was a story in the Silverleaf paper yesterday morning about Stanley Kingsley. It seems he left a note at his house before he went out to the compound the other night. He must’ve known there was a chance that he was never going to return.”

I gulped. “What kind of note?”

“The article said that the police refused to release the note in its entirety, but that the contents of what Stanley had written have led them to believe that he might be in some kind of trouble.” She looked at me over the top of her device. “It sounds like he left some breadcrumbs in case he was killed when he attacked the pack.”

“Breadcrumbs that are going to lead the authorities to the compound?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

I stood up. “I have to warn Andreas.”

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