Page 47 of Mated in Darkness

It surprised me that it was Kaylee, but she just shrugged. “Sorry, I’m angry.”

“Never be sorry for growling in front of wolves,” Riaz said with a smile, and I frowned at the other man, wondering if he was flirting with my mate.

Riaz met my gaze for an instant, held up his hands. “Okay, enough of that while we have two newly mated wolves in the room.”

Reed and Parker just shook their heads, their lips twitching, but my wolf wasn’t done yet.

“We also need to find out why Spencer was here in the first place,” I said, reminding myself that we had a job to do.

“I can help with that,” Parker added. “Our wolf came back from the Pittsburgh area, and even though Spencer was supposed to be out there for a work meeting, he never came. But he got a phone call from someone that we don’t know to tell him to come out here. It has to be connected to one of those men in the black garb.”

“Because if it was one of us, a traitor, they’re already dead,” Riaz growled.

I frowned, but Kaylee spoke. “I don’t think it would be. It doesn’t feel right. It feels as if somebody is trying to destabilize us or change the way that we’re feeling about rogues. There’s already an increased rogue presence around the world, and that could be due to the shift in power from the Supreme Alphas coming and the Moon Goddess and the wars that we’ve had.” She let out a breath. “But this seems like an additional thing. As if something that is trying to take advantage of the already tumultuous presence we have with the additional rogues.”

“I agree,” Riaz said. And then he looked at me. “We need to find out if these bite marks are contagious, if it can spread if the wolf or human or witch doesn’t die from the bite itself. And we need to find out exactly who’s doing this.”

“They have to be close. After all, they were close enough to get me.”

“And that means they’re watching you. They knew you were getting close to something,” Kaylee whispered. She squeezed my hand.

“So we’ll have to fight back, get close enough so that they think they have the upper hand, and then we take them down,” Reed growled.

I met their gazes and nodded. “Then we hunt, we make a plan, and we use science and whatever else we can to take them down.”

“You sound like a wolf,” Kaylee said softly. “And I like it.”

I met her gaze, then the others, and the bond flared between Kaylee and me.

We would find out who had done this to Spencer and who was going to try to do this to the others.

I couldn’t let any of my Pack die; I couldn’t let them get hurt.

We needed to find out who was doing this and stop them. I had to be the last casualty in this war because something else was coming, we all knew it, but first we needed to find out who was taking out our wolves and why.

Chapter 18

Jason

The full moonhit the next day. There would be a hunt with the Starlights for some, with Reed and Parker joining them. I would be with Kaylee, near the edge of the run in case we needed help, but honestly, I didn’t want everyone to see me shift for the first time. I would need the strength of an Alpha, and Riaz would be close by, but here I was, my wolf prowling inside, pushing at me, and the tension so thick I could barely breathe.

“We’ve been searching along this grid and have come up with nothing, but there has to be someone. We have to find where these people are coming from and what these bites are from.” Riaz pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke and paced. His wolf had to be riding him as well on night of the full moon right before we shifted.

It wasn’t that shifters needed the full moon to shift. They could do it at any time. Sometimes, depending on their strength, they could only do it once a day and would remain in either wolf or human form, depending on what they had shifted into. However, the dominant wolves around me could shift a few times a day as long as they kept their food intake up.

For the first shift, for my first shift, I needed the strength of the Moon Goddess. That meant I would need that strength from the brightest night of connection to her—the night of the full moon.

I could feel it beckoning me, waiting for me to go outside and do whatever I needed to do.

I wasn’t scared. I would be with Kaylee and the others around me. This was natural for them, and soon it would be natural for me. First, however, I needed to learn to breathe again.

“While we’re on the hunt, we’ll be looking at this next grid,” Brendan added, as Parker and Reed looked down at the man, nodding.

“It’s a good plan.” Parker frowned. “They’re hiding somewhere, and it has to be in plain sight. You guys aren’t slouches when it comes to the hunt.”

Riaz snorted. “Glad you think so, Voice of the Wolves.”

Reed just rolled his eyes. “I swear Parker was like this when he was a little boy and came to live with us, too.”

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