Page 36 of Sweeter Than Honey
Spinning away from her with a growl, he willed his erection to die. The last thing he needed was to brew up some good old family gossip—and his brother’s wrath—by meeting up with Allie with a parking cone in his jeans after appearing out of the bedroom with his BnB guest.
“I’m going to—” she hurried past him and disappeared into her room. The bathroom door slammed behind her.
Jett’s face flushed as he took a breath, then trotted down the stairs. Allie was just knocking on the door when he got there. He opened the door and gestured her inside.
“Hey!” She was way too cheerful for a woman who looked ready to pop. “Your brother sent me.”
Jett’s brows shot up. Then he remembered he hadn’t checked his cell phone since early this morning. Grabbing it from his pocket, he thumbed the screen to life and saw three missed calls from Dax and two from his father.
Alarm ticked in his chest. “Sorry, my ringer was off. What’s happened? Is Dad okay?”
Allie moved past him and took a seat at the kitchen table. “Yeah, yeah, everyone is fine. I came to make sureyou guysare fine since you didn’t answer. I really should get Cara’s number.”
“Right, but what’re all the calls about?”
Allie flipped a hand up and mouthed, “Where’s Cara?”
He pointed to the upstairs. The back of his neck prickled as Allie’s eyes narrowed and she indicated with her head that he should sit close to her. Her voice went low.
“I don’t want to scare her.”
His abdomen squeezed. “What is it?”
Allie took out her cell and scrolled through a social media app. “Damn, the reception sucks here. Whatever, I took some screenshots.”
She pulled up photos and slid her phone to him. Jett had an aversion to social media and pretty much anything to do with computers or cell phones. The format of the photos appeared foreign to him, but it only took a second of studying to get the gist.
“Dax belongs to a few shifter groups on FriendChat and he came across this last night. I poked around and found that the posts are going kind of viral through some of the shittier shifter groups.”
There in black and white were random posts and comments about the human carrying Roan Dixon’s cub and how “seekers” could band together to find her, and then split the inheritance. Some comments went into detail over how they’d decide which male got to mate and imprint her, some in vivid detail.
Jett saw red. “What the fuck is this? You’re telling me that word about Cara and her baby is spreading through social media groups?”
Allie’s frowned sadly. “Yes. There was gossip in the social groups, you know? But then some of the shadier groups started really getting into it, making plans, putting out APB’s, basically trying to find her. I’m so sorry, but her photo has been shared quite a bit. They know what she looks like. Where she’s from. And there’s a ton of speculation about where she went.”
His throat tightened. There was a reason he hated social media. Fuck! “Did anyone guess correctly?”
“There was mention of Colorado, but not specifically here.”
If all this sleuthing had narrowed down the geographical location to a single state in just a few days, it was only a matter of time before the seekers sniffed out Estes Park. He looked at the screenshots again. There were seekers from all over the country on board with flushing Cara out. They’d send scouts. There would be eyes everywhere.
Jett’s jaw clamped so hard he got a twist in his facial muscle. The bear stirred inside him again, but for a different reason this time. Lust turned to protectiveness. How was he going to keep her safe when men from around the country were looking for her?
“It’s just a matter of time before she’s found,” he said angrily.
“Rowan thinks so, too. He said he has a plan. He wants you and Cara to meet him at the Lodge as soon as you can.”
He’d initially thought to keep his dad out of this. His health hadn’t been very good not long ago, and though he recovered nicely, he was aging and struggling a bit with the stamina required in his role as pack leader. Dax would take over soon, so it had made the most sense to speak to his brother first, which he had. If only his other brother Desi and their cousin Fox were home from the military to help stand guard.
Allie reached across the table and cupped her hand over his. Jett met her concerned eyes. The intensity of her attention was a bit unnerving, as if she were rooting around in his head and pulling out what had happened between Cara and him earlier. A small smile crossed her lips. Damn it, she knew. It was those weird female powers. They justknewthings men tried to keep to themselves.
“Dax is just getting done at a job. He said he’d meet us over there. Can you come now?”
Jett nodded even as his gut twisted and sank. His intuition said whatever his father had in mind wasn’t good.
It was going to change the entire fabric of this thing he was weaving with Cara.
Maybe even tear it right down the middle.
