Page 8 of Claiming Lyla

Lyla directed them to a diner an hour south, away from the territory. She headed inside to get a table while Duncan and Ryan made a call to the Council. They followed shortly after, not happy with their orders.

Lyla looked up expectantly. “So, are you going to rescue the girls?”

Duncan exchanged a glance with Ryan. “The Council wants to investigate further. Now that we’ve mated, they believe I’m compromised and they want to restart the investigation with untainted observers.”

Her jaw dropped. “But he’s going to sell those girls tonight. We have to stop him.”

Ryan leaned forward. “Lyla, we haven’t been able to learn just what he does with the women. Do you know?”

She bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. “I know he sells them. The buyers vary depending on the girls. He has had some shifters here for some girls he believes can be turned. And he’s sold some to the vampires for blood dens.”

Duncan leaned forward also, a pulse of excitement beneath his skin. This is what they had been looking for but could never find. “Did you see him do this? See him sell any of the girls?”

She let out a long breath. “Not exactly. I saw some of the alphas from other packs come here then leave overnight. Not typical alpha behavior. Usually they stay, have a pack hunt, negotiate treaties or something. But these stayed a day or two and always came and left secretly via a private airport buried in pack lands. I did see vamps on the border of our lands, and saw them take a couple of girls, and they were pissed. They said they didn’t think the girls would make it after thefunScott’s enforcers had had with them. Scott forbade anyone from touching the girls after that, since the vamps refused to pay and killed one of the enforcers for theinsult.”

“You saw this? This whole transaction?” Duncan asked, his heart seizing in terror for the danger she had placed herself in.

She nodded. “I took pictures, which may have given me away. I sent all of this to the Council. Four months ago. I didn’t think they cared. Now I’m not sure if they’re going to do nothing.”

Her tone had turned bitter and sad, as if all of the fight had gone out of her. Duncan wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, trying to comfort her as best he could. He looked at Ryan who stared back just as helplessly. They had both seen bodies of people from vampire’s illegal blood dens. It was a brutal, awful place with no controls in place. There were legal blood dens where the donors were there voluntarily and the vampires monitored closely for how they fed and how much they took. The human donors were taken care of and protected, but in illegal dens, which the Council tried to police and shut down as much as possible, life was short and agonizing for donors.

As an alpha, well, an heir to the alpha position, it was in his DNA to protect the people in his pack, and to protect those around him. True, not all alphas felt the same way. Considering what was going on in Lyla’s pack made Duncan sick, but he’d like to think that was the exception not the rule. Either way, he couldn’t walk away and leave those women to torment, even if the Council would eventually get around to saving them. It could be too late and, if he could save them, he had to try.

Judging by the resolute look in Ryan’s eyes, another alpha, he had already come to the same conclusion.

They both looked at Lyla. “Where are the women being kept?”

Chapter Six

“Ican’t believe you brought your mate. She should be back at the hotel or anywhere but here, safe,” Ryan muttered under his breath to Duncan.

Lyla, on Duncan’s other side, cast him a sideways glance but said nothing. She refocused on the clearing down the hill, scanning the woods periodically for signs of their guests.

“She’s an alpha female and has a right to be here. Besides, this is her former pack and she wants to defend it one last time.”

This time, Lyla did turn and scowl at him. “What do you mean, one last time?”

“You’re my mate, which means moving to my pack, the Dirigo Pack in Maine. But we couldn’t leave your pack like this.”

She sniffed. “So what will happen to them? We can’t leave them with Scott as alpha.”

“That’s not for us to decide, Lyla. The Council is the only one who can remove an Alpha,” Ryan said quietly.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Yeah, you all stick together. They’re probably tell him to stop and then walk away, turning a blind eye. We’re just females anyway, and they’re human, so they don’t count, not to the Council.”

Duncan laid a hand on her shoulder, gripping it tightly. “We’re here, Lyla, and we’ll make sure he’s held accountable. Trust us.”

She mustered up a small smile but it didn’t reach her eyes, and that fucking gutted him. His own mate didn’t have any faith in him, or in the Council he served. She was right about the Council. More often than not, they ignored things that happened to the races, specifically humans because it didn’t concern them. The Council needed a shakeup in leadership but he didn’t see that happening, with the heirs being just as bad as their fathers, with a few notable exceptions. It was going to take heroic efforts on the part of some alphas and their females to show them the way, or they would devolve into a group of petty dictators with no morals. That couldn’t be allowed. A line needed to be drawn. But the right way, and right now, he and Ryan were in a difficult position, caught between their duty as alphas and Council members and their moral duty.

“Something is happening. To the north,” Ryan whispered.

A group of men, dragging clearly drugged women entered the clearing. The women were dropped on the group, six of them, and they landed like rag dolls, not able to fight back, or even walk. Duncan cursed under his breath. He had hoped they would at least be mobile. This was going to be a cluster. It wasn’t going to be easy to rescue these women if they couldn’t help themselves.

As if out of the fog, three vampires appeared, tall, thin and pale, a male leading the pack, his eyes tinged with red. Blood lust. Great. A vampire with poor control. Six women who couldn’t help themselves. And several wolves who wouldn’t go against their alpha. And a Council support who they had no idea when it would come or what kind of support it would entail. Yeah, the odds looked bleak.

Duncan let out a long breath. “Plans?”

Ryan grinned next to him, his eyes gleaming gold. “When have any of our plans worked? We go in, fuck shit up, and hope it works.”

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