Page 16 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

“Reese found her,” Toby said, and he turned to scan the woods.

“Looks that way.” I searched for more prints, but they were lost in the pine needle carpet that covered most of the forest floor.

“Should we be worried about that?” Toby asked.

I thought it through for a few seconds. No doubt Reese would be irritated to find his would-be mate alone in the woods, in the rain and freezing. But I didn’t think my alpha would take that irritation out on Sarah.

“No,” I said with a fair amount of confidence. “She’s in good hands.”

Toby scanned the woods, looking undecided.

“It’s Reese,” I said. “He’s been an idiot about her, for sure, but he’s not an idiotoverall. He’s probably brought her back to the lodge already.”

Toby pressed his lips together, then nodded slowly. “Okay. Let’s get out of the rain. We’ll have to go grab the extra set of keys to unlock Sarah’s Jeep anyway. If she and Reese aren’t at the lodge when we get back...”

“If they’re not there, we can give the woods another search once the rain stops.”

Toby agreed and we returned to our vehicle, pulling it into a U-turn and heading for home.

After driving for several minutes we re-entered the boundaries of our land and were just one mile from the lodge when I spotted a flash of an unnaturally vibrant color. I pointed at the tree line on the left side of the road. “What’s that?”

The rain had lightened by then, and our visibility had greatly increased. If it hadn’t, I would have never seen it. “Stop the Jeep.”

“Nowwhat?” Toby pulled over and set the brake.

I leaned toward Toby and got low enough to have the proper vantage point through the driver-side window. “Do you see that? That flash of pink in the trees?”

Toby rolled down his window to have a clearer view. “Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “I see it.”

“What do you think it is?” I didn’t like the looks of it, whatever it was. No one in our family would have put it there.

“Some kind of marker, maybe?”

I sat up and unbuckled my seatbelt. “Let’s check it out.”

We got out and entered the woods again. When we were just a few feet in, I put my hand to the tree I’d spotted. A one-inch thick, fluorescent pink, vinyl ribbon was tied around the trunk.

“There’s another pink one over there,” Toby said. “And...white ribbons there.”

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“Someone is definitely flagging our land. This is the kind of tape surveyors use.”

“Yeah. But has Reese ever mentioned anyone doing a survey?”

“No,” Toby admitted grimly. “And if he was planning some kind of excavation for the resort, he would have told us.”

I agreed. “Cut the flags off the trees. All of them.” It was the least we could do until we better understood what, or who was behind it.

“Okay, but Angel...” Toby’s head was tipped back, and he was looking into the branches.

“What?”

“Is that…acamera?”

I followed the trajectory of Toby’s gaze and spotted it for myself—a small black box mounted in the trees with a tiny green light. Someone was monitoring the land.Ourland.

I made a hand gesture to suggest we keep our voices down; the cameras might be able to pick up audio.

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