Page 35 of Lost Mate

“You were exhausted, but not skinny and malnourished like Owen,” Ross said.

Niles nodded. “Which means wherever you were, you were being looked after.”

“Someone could have been taking care of you,” Ross agreed. He held out his hand, relieved as Dylan left the doorway, willing to be taken into his arms.

“If the hunters or whoever had known I was a shifter and a spy, they would have killed me.”

“Yeah, they killed Jake without hesitation,” Niles said.

There was silence for a moment. None of them had been there when Jake was killed, but Owen had, and his description of Jake’s death was the stuff of nightmares.

Ross coughed. “So whoever was taking care of you didn’t want to kill you.”

“Why didn’t they report me as a missing person?” Dylan asked.

Another silence. So many questions, no fucking answers.

“You mentioned breakfast?” Niles asked hopefully. “Because I missed out on Cal’s cooking.”

Ross chuckled and headed into the kitchen. His cooking skills were limited but one thing he could put together was a breakfast for two hungry humans and an even hungrier wolf.

Over steak and eggs, Niles laid out as much as he could of the operation Dylan had been involved in. Which turned out to be a “sweet heap of nothing,” as Dylan grumbled.

“Why can’t you tell us?” Ross demanded.

“Because they’re about to do something very stupid and we have to wait for them to do it.”

“And you don’t want to risk me telling anyone,” Dylan said. “But you put in a new operative when I went missing.”

“We already had another operative in there. You were both working independently of each other.”

This was way above Ross’s paygrade. He had a feeling he was going to be thinking that a lot. He glanced at Dylan who seemed to be deep in thought.

“Was he a shifter too?” he asked.

“No, a human. This was a human firm.”

“And he wasn’t targeted.”

“No. He’s still there and his cover is working.”

Ross furrowed his brows. “Isn’t that suspicious?”

“We thought so at the time, but we couldn’t pin it down to Anderson’s cover being blown.”

“Despite the fact I went missing,” Dylan said pointedly.

Niles grunted.

“Do you trust the other operative?” Ross asked.

“We checked him out. He’s clean.”

“So was Jake.”

Niles scowled at him. “We’ve changed since then.”

Ross returned his scowl with interest.

---