Page 74 of Escalating Alpha

But the team was going to stay for an extended period in Indiana to right the ship and then they were all moving here.Yeah, they were all joining the pack and had been working with Simone on their housing. I was happy to have them even for the headaches it would cause me.

Demi found out who was lying to Dain in Ohio and pretended to be the Alpha Mate. It was so disgustingly cliché that my eye started twitching.

It was the Alpha’s side piece.

Yeah, like… Seriously?

And she was totally in love with him, jealous of the mate who gave him kids and had the “respect” of the pack and blah, blah,blah. The hesitation and upset he’d sensed was her really worried that the Alpha was going to kill his mate or the kids and she didn’t want to be involved with that. But she also really didn’t want us to come and save them.

Because her lover would be super dead then. So that was the conflicting issue. Dain was upset because of how similar they had sounded and he’d been fooled.

No one could blame him. It shouldn’t have been onusto handle it. The council should have. They were so worried about when they overstepped after too much overstepping that they were still fucking useless most days.

But all of the updates were good and things were going way better than I could have realistically hoped for given the crazy.

How jaded was I that I braced for what was going to explode soon because things weren’t already blowing up?

18

The “blowups” came over the next few days… But they weren’t really blowups. Not really?

The panther who tried to invade Simone—that situation was going to be a headache. Apparently, her family was playing dumb and wouldn’t comment on anything, still pissed Simone didn’t say under their thumb and be mated off like a good breeder and property of the family.

Lovely.

And the guy’s family was pissed I didn’t kill him instead of embarrassing them by now having a criminal in the family with the council. So… Crimes didn’t count if they died?

Did I hear that crazy right?

The big one was that we had no idea what had happened to the four dead shifters. We had no leads. Nothing was weird with their blood. The ME couldn’t really tell us much because their bodies were half and half. Was the liver messed up because of a drug or because it was now mostly a panther liver?

Or other animals.

Same with other organs. Hethoughtthe hearts might seem bigger, but… He couldn’t tell us anything. The case and situation had been that messed up.

So all we could do was wait for it to happen again.

I was livid. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one.

And the AG of Missouri wasn’t fighting the FBI to prosecute the St. Louis cops involved. This wasn’t just neglect or a mistake. This was—the line was clear. They went off the reservation and it had to stop. So they were actually all in jail and being prosecuted.

Finally.

I was so glad it was Friday and ready to put the FBI to the side as much as I could for the weekend. Brian was tagging in and helping with some things, the two of us maybe finding a balance on how he could now that the office was all updated and it was clear it went well because of me. All eyes weren’t on the Chicago offices anymore.

And Perez was on to the next one with our vampires, swearing up and down that he would protect them. He was all hearts and rainbows after his wife hit it off with Queen Laila and got her dream job with us. So they were going to make Chicago their home and she wouldn’t divorce him for this crazy shit with the FBI Galvin was putting him through.

I was glad but mostly just thrilled because she was awesome and would be a big help for us.

“No one has seen Dain,” Sander told me with a frown as we headed out to the vehicles to finish the day. “Like no one has seen him all day and he’s not answering his phone. It’s turned off. He even ditched meetings. Seriously, was he abducted?”

“No, I would know through the bond, right?” I mumbled. “Who saw him last?”

“Maya saw him this morning according to Hagan,” he answered.

My phone was in my hand and connecting to her seconds later. “Maya, what did Dain—”

“No one told you until now?” she asked, her tone tight.

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