Page 18 of Wolf's Claimed Mate
“You neveronceheard anything that might seem… I don’t know, psychopathic criminal?”
“He wasn’t a criminal—” I cut myself off at Conall’s flat expression. Okay, maybe he was. He’d tried to overtake the town from the Randons, whom he’d never had any respect for, and he’d trapped Thalia in an assassination contract, taking advantage of her vulnerability and heartbreak.
But he’d never done anything tome.
But that didn’t excuse him for anything else he’d done, either.
“I’ll look in the office,” I muttered. I was doing this because, as terrifying as it was to head right into the wolves’ den, it was still easier than messaging Jackson.
“I’ll check out the basement and a few other rooms,” Conall said. “If I’m not back here in an hour, meet me at the car.”
I laughed. “What do you think you’ll find in here that’ll take you more than an hour?”
He shrugged. “Who knows?”
Chapter 8 - Conall
The old warehouse smelled of mold and was damp. The walls were blackened at the tops, where the ceiling joined the wall, and the damp had soaked into the carpet beneath my feet. The last time I’d been here, I’d been blazing through, ready to flay Fenrys alive for risking his life for a woman who had betrayed him. A woman who’d become his mate and my Luna, now.
But he’d thrown himself headfirst into a dangerous situation for his mate and unborn child at the time, forgoing the strength and support of his pack.
I inched down the hallway, listening to Sasha’s careful sifting of papers in the office behind me. Being here made me feel on edge and anxious, not able to repress the memories of that night.
I looked in the hallway, spotting the stains nobody had cleaned up. That was where I’d broken the neck of one of Kato’s pack members. There was where I’d knocked another out. I hadn’t been able to kill that one; his eyes had reminded me of Declan’s, weakening me, even back then. I should have killed them all, one by one. Piled them up, set this place on fire, to save any further threats.
That’s what a good beta would have done.
Aidan would have done that for Dakota, Fenrys would have done it for Thalia. What would I do for—
I didn’t let that thought finish.
The red carpet was darkened by old blood stains, and the walls were streaked with dirt and more red splashes from the spray. It smelt so bad, like the entire building had gone off. Ididn’t know what I expected to find. Not one of Kato’s pack, they would all be long gone. But maybe a trace of their whereabouts. If the rest of his pack had scrambled apart so quickly after Kato’s death that they’d left all this blood everywhere, then they had to have leftsomeother clues. They hadn’t been careful, and I was banking on that helping me out.
Finally, I came to the industrial door. I placed my hand on it, pushing it open. It swung easily on broken hinges. The stairs were bent and dented, evidence of wolves pounding up the steel frame. I inhaled sharply, looking at the swinging lightbulb, smashed, leaving the room in relative darkness.
Again, the basement hadn’t been cleaned up, only Kato’s body had been taken, but not the blood stains or even the bullet casings cleaned up. I supposed a pack as powerful as Kato’s could buy their way out of anything with expensive lawyers. They’d only needed to escape before Fenrys’s pack killed them all.
That was the first time I’d properly realized I owed Fenrys my life and loyalty. It was the first time I’d been tested to risk my life truly for him, to fight with him, and for him. After coming so close to losing my best friend at the hands of Kato and his pack, I’d been glad for his brief recovery time away. He hadn’t had a chance to see my nightmares, how I’d dreamed about his blood on my hands, the wet and sticky feeling of it, of hoisting him up onto the stretcher when the paramedics came.
How I’d still felt blood and smelt it weeks later, waking up to wash my hands ten times at least to convince myself.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered. “You would have leftsomething.”
Sasha was likely having better luck upstairs with documents or plans they may have put down on paper, but Ichecked out the basement further, kicking the bullet casings to one side. There were blood stains where Fenrys had been shot, and the darkness that got deeper the more I wandered made me see all too clearly the events of that night behind my eyes.
Thalia’s bound hands, Fenrys and the gun, Kato aiming at them both, the confessions and betrayals, thecrackof the gun, me screaming for Fenrys as if that would save him.
I needed to apologize to him for yesterday. I needed to make amends and fix the mess I’d caused with my careless, angry words. The anger came and went, but Fenrys had always picked me up off the ground. High school, college, our football team, every win and loss, every high and low. My pride kept me from doing that, and I needed to find a way to fight it.
A flash of a keyring caught my eye, nestled among rubble in the far right corner. Fayetteville. That was a city just over an hour away. I wondered if one of the pack had lived there, the keyring dropped in their haste to scatter. Had they already regrouped, or were they slowly pairing back up over time, growing in threat and size?
I grabbed hold of the keyring just as I heard a crash from upstairs. I jerked upright, immediately launching myself up the steel steps, crying out when the staircase swung off its hinges at the top, forcing me to leap across to the doorway. Shuddering at the place, I sprinted down the hallway to where I’d left Sasha outside Kato’s office.
The place was a mess. Every desk drawer had been yanked out, the sofa had massive slashes through, causing the stuffing inside to poke out. The desk itself was overturned, and the chair had been rammed into the wall. Papers were scattered everywhere, stationary littering the carpet, and spilled ink filling crevices and staining white pages.
At first, I panicked, looking for the person who had broken in, trying to find Sasha. At first, I couldn’t see her head of curls that she’d pinned back today, letting a few stray curls drape loosely around her face, but then I spotted her, crouched behind the overturned desk. I rushed to her side.
“Where’s the…” I trailed off ondanger,realizing she wasn’t cowering but rummaging. It was Sasha who’d trashed the office. On her face was something I recognized: anger. Shiny tear tracks smeared her makeup, and I resisted the urge to gently wipe them away.
