Page 40 of Wolf Found

Ash spun and headed for the house once more. “Dez and Sawyer should be back from the movies soon,” he told Hannah as he walked. “Gavin might be out late—he’s with Miles.”

“Shouldn’t we call them?” she asked, hurrying after him. Paige had gone quiet, as though she knew her mother needed to be paying attention to something else just now.

“If you want,” he told her. “They need to know it.”

“Let’s sit down and—”

He turned to face her when they got back inside. “I’m going.”

“You should wait. Show the Martingales a united front.”

She wasn’t wrong, but the thought of waiting was impossible to stomach. Ash couldn’t sit at the counter and wait for the others to arrive. Waiting let Joey and his father take Graham farther and farther away from him.

There was no way to know what they’d done to him. To know if they’d hurt him. Ash couldn’t sit on his hands and do nothing, not even for an hour.

Hannah seemed to understand, because instead of trying to argue her point, she leaned in and gave him a tight one-armed hug, still holding Paige between them in the other.

“I’ll get them home and send them after you,” she whispered in his ear, and then pulled away to look him in the eye. “You be careful, you hear me? Gavin might be your alpha, but you’re mine, and me and Paige, we need you to be okay. Graham too. Bring him back home safe.”

Ash kissed her on the cheek, then did the same to Paige, and nodded as he pulled back. “I’ll be back when Graham is safe. If... if he actually wants to be there, to stay with—”

“You know as well as I do that he doesn’t, so stop that. Graham has been in love with you since he realized you’re exactly who he thought you were when he was twelve. He half expected you to be a disappointment like everyone else, and instead here you are, actually the guy you act like.” She petted his face like he was a puppy, then bopped him on the nose with her index finger. “So stop being all self-effacing and go bring our boy home. I have phone calls to make.”

She was already pulling out her phone as she walked away, so Ash headed for his car.

When his phone rang ten minutes later, he answered, “I’m not coming back.”

“I wasn’t about to ask you to,” Gavin answered, not sounding the least bit surprised. “I just want you to know we’re coming. We’re going to be a ways behind you, but you’re not alone.”

“Never doubted you for a second,” Ash agreed.

Gavin paused a moment, then added, “I still need you to be careful, though. They might think he’s a fragile flower because of some sexist bullshit, but you’re the enemy. Maybe you grew up with them, but they’re not those people today any more than you’re the same guy who walked away from them.”

It was true, as much as part of him struggled to acknowledge it. There was a decent chance that the people he’d grown up with would just as soon attack him now, and he needed to remember that. At the very least, he needed to not walk into the enclave expecting the same reaction he’d always gotten as a kid.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised Gavin. “But I’m not letting them do this to him.”

“I know.”

“I—I love him.”

Gavin snorted. “Save it and tell someone who doesn’t already know that. Him, for instance.” And he hung up.

23

Love Song

He woke, tied up, in the back of a van.

His head felt like it was floating on something warm and heavy, and it was making his stomach roll. For a moment, he was worried he would throw up, but he closed his eyes and the feeling abated some.

Amos and Joseph were talking in the front seat, but they didn’t pay any attention to him. They’d just tossed him on the floor of the van; they were pretending he didn’t exist.

He was nothing to them, after all.

An omega.

So why bother with him? Why not just tell the pack he’d been banished and let him be gone like they had Hannah? Coming after him at all was strange, but the amount of effort that had gone into it made no sense at all.

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