Page 42 of Hunted

Aerin is frowning.

“Aerin, what is it?” I ask her.

“There seem to be problems everywhere,” she says softly. “It could just be coincidence, but I feel…” Her voice trails off.

Her unease fills the room.

Omegas are all about feelings. Her slight frown tells me she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence at all.

“It could not be a coincidence at all, but something else. Trouble,” I finish.

She nods.

“We live in the middle of nowhere,” Chris says from his seat beside his mate, Zoe.

“That never stopped anyone from finding us when they wanted to bring their brand of trouble here,” Bennett says.

Helena slowly nods. “And everyone knows Aerin is a powerful omega. I’ll bet that idiot Shane spread the news far and wide.”

Aerin smiles faintly. “Idiot?”

“Idiot!” everyone in the room loudly agrees, making her smile grow.

“I love you guys,” she says, her smile turning watery.

I mock-glare at everyone. “Stop making my mate so happy. That’s my job.”

Everyone grins, but when I clear my throat, their smiles fade and we return to the reason for this meeting. “Something is happening. I don’t know what it is, but I feel in my bones that something is.”

“To do with Aerin?” Warren wraps his arm around Tina and tucks her closer to his side of the couch.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I’m going to pretend that it is. Aerin saw something before her fall. She doesn’t think she did, but I do.”

Aerin scrunches her nose and her cheeks turn pink, looking embarrassed. “I was running from a bear—or fast walking—and I didn’t look to see where I was going. That’s why I fell.”

After her fall, my phone blew up with messages from the pack, wanting to know if they should come over. But Aerin was fine, and I wanted her to myself, so I told them not to.

“But you fell for a reason,” I tell her. “And you’re not in the habit of seeing things that aren’t there. What do your instincts tell you?”

She studies me for several seconds, her nose wrinkled. “That someonewasthere.”

Bennett sits up in his seat. “Did you?—”

I shake my head, cutting off his expected question. “Nothing. I spent a couple of hours this morning looking. But it stormed, so if there had been tracks there, the rain washed it away.”

I’d made a quick breakfast for Aerin and taken it up to her in bed, not knowing how long I’d be. And I’d looped around the house, exploring the forest, but never straying too far away from Aerin. The rain had been torrential when I’d headed out and Aerin, still half-asleep, had told me not to go out in the rain. Some things are more important than getting your fur wet. This was one of them.

“The cabin was a bust,” Colton says. “But there are other places a person could stay in Winter Lake if they wanted to stay hidden.”

“Not with a local,” Chris says. “We’d see them, or someone would want to tell someone else about their newly arrived relative and it would be all around town by the end of the day.”

True.

“They could park up in their car deep in the forest or just outside town,” Warren suggests. “But even then, what do they want? If someone wanted Aerin, they’d have tried to grab her by now. Right?”

Everyone nods.

“What exactly did Moses say was going on with the Dacres?” Bennett asks, scratching his nose. “Cause I’d put money on Shane being the person Aerin might have seen here.”

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