Page 129 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
Fury flared within me, not easily tamped down when the man who put those marks on Rory sat within reach of me.
“Did I really try to strangle you?” Dev whispered. “And you… bit me?”
Rory nodded. “You did. And I did.”
Dev’s eyes suddenly slid to me. “Maxwell, right? I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you hated Rory. You’re a telepath? Are you… reading my thoughts?”
“Not currently, but I certainly will be,” I said pleasantly, dripping steel into my voice. “So don’t hold anything back from us.”
“I just told you, I’m avictim,” Dev snapped, wrenching his arm away from the banister. I suspected if he wished to, he could snap the wood and free himself. Especially after the strength he demonstrated yesterday.
“We found your phone,” said Rory. “In the middle of nowhere. Not close to where you were yesterday.”
“I dropped it when they grabbed me.”
“Who? Who grabbed you?”
Dev sighed, his free hand rubbing his temple. “My memories… they’re like sifting through mud. Everything feels like a dream. Especially being here with you now.”
“So you came up here, to the Highlands, of your own free will?” I asked. “We weren’t sure if Meridian snatched you in London, and brought you, or what. We’ve been through the messages on your phone. We know you were talking to a shifter called Carrie MacGregor, from Glasgow.”
The name made Dev inhale sharply. “Carrie! They… they have her too. I think. I… remember her face, shaking me awake at one point. And then…” He pressed against his head. “At least, I think I saw her…”
“When we rang her alpha, he said she disappeared around the same time as you,” Rory said quietly.
“I wasn’t with Carrie when I got snatched. But a couple of hours before, she’d rung me from Glasgow, saying that she thought she was being watched. She sounded spooked. I was looking up buses on my phone, to head back there to be with her.”
“So ‘they’ grabbed you while you were out in the Highlands?” I pressed.
“Carrie managed to obtain information about where they might be keeping the missing shifters. There was this map of an old building complex. Listed online as the Highland Heritage Foundation. So I set out to go look at it in person, for us.”
Rory frowned. “We saw that map. Your phone was found nowhere near that.”
Dev snapped, “Well I didn’t get very far, did I? I got a bus up here from Glasgow. I decided to drop into Glenmoriston to poke around a bit, see if I happened to bump into any shifters.”
Rory’s eyes blazed with anger. “So you couldn’t be bothered to text me to update Killigrew Street with all this new information you kept to yourself, but thought snooping around my old pack was a good idea?”
Dev hung his head. “I fucked up, Ror. I’m so sorry. I promise I was so close to ringing Killigrew Street. I just wanted proper, concrete evidence, you know? They all know me as the guy you got arrested with. I wanted to bring you something solid. Plus, I only have your number. I wasn’t sure you’d pick up. Wasn’t sure how you’d feel about Carrie being determined your family is involved somehow. Even though you hate them.”
I eyed Rory, thinking this half-arsed list of excuses wouldn’t be enough to cool him.
But… I was wrong.
The forgiveness washing through Rory was instant and complete, tinged with an old, familiar warmth. “It’s okay,” he said softly.
I wanted to snap at Rory that it wasn’t really “okay”—that this woman Carrie was still kidnapped, along with god knew how many others, all because Dev decided he could do it all alone.
Dev looked up and caught Rory’s gaze, holding it with a fierce intensity that had my teeth grinding together, irritation flaring hot and immediate. That kilowatt smile spread across Dev’s face—the kind that suggested the rest of the world had ceased to exist. I could see exactly what had made Rory fall for him: the way Dev made it seem like Rory was the only person worth looking at in any room.
I felt Rory’s heart skip—a flutter of old affection, muscle memory responding to a smile he’d once woken up to every morning.
Two hearts remembering their old song,
while I sit watching from the shadows,
learning the bitter taste of wanting
what was never mine to claim.
