Page 59 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

“Sorry,” Toby said, not meeting my eyes.

“It’s not your fault.” I made another quick scan of the area.

“I should have been on the lookout for something like this.” Toby’s cheeks flushed.

“I had you searching the trees, not the ground,” I reminded him. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“It’s neither of yours,” Sam clipped, “so knock it off with the self-flagellation. Put the blame where it belongs: on whoever set this fucking trap.”

“It’s the same people,” Toby said.

“Who’s the same people?” Angel asked.

“The scent. It’s here. In the ropes. It’s the same scent I picked up before on the broken board. Whoever sabotaged the ropes course also set this trap. Someone definitely wants us off our land.”

* * *

When we got backto the lodge, I found Sarah standing by the back door, her expression anxious. I squeezed her hand as I passed, but my first priority was Toby. I led him upstairs and got him settled in his room before returning to the lobby.

Sarah was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. “Is he okay?”

“He will be. Come with me.” I grabbed her hand and dragged her into my room, needing to decompress and knowing she was the only one who could help me do it.

I climbed onto my bed and sat against the headboard. Sarah crawled into my lap and rested her head against my shoulder. Then she soothed the angry beast by stroking her fingers down my sternum and letting me play with her hair.

“You should have seen it,” I murmured, still shocked by the image of Toby in that net. I twisted the silky strands of her hair around my finger, then let them spiral free before starting the calming exercise again.

“I’m glad I didn’t see it,” she said, and I nodded trying to swallow. My throat was thick with anticipation. Something big was happening. Something that needed to be stopped.

“It wasn’t the kind of trap someone would set for a human.”

“Do people set traps for other humans?” she asked.

Under any other circumstances, her rhetorical question might have made me laugh at the ridiculousness of my comment. But after today, there was nothing funny about it.

“And the size of it…” I continued, the image frozen in my mind. “It was overkill if they were looking to trap an animal, even something as big as a normal-sized mountain lion.”

Sarah stopped stroking my chest, and she tipped her head back to look at my face. “So you’re saying…they meant to trap somethingnotnormal?”

I clenched my teeth, then admitted the ugly truth. “Looked that way.”

My phone rang, and I rolled onto my hip to pull it out of my back pocket. It said Unknown Caller. Normally I would have ignored it, but I was too distracted to process anything normally.

“Hello?”

“Reese Fitzpatrick?” asked the male voice on the other end. It wasn’t a voice I knew.

“Yes?”

There was a long pause, then the caller said, “We know what you are.”

What. Not who. It took a second for the meaning to settle in. When it did, a low growl rumbled out of me, too instinctive to be contained.

Sarah sat up with alarm. “What is it?”

I put the caller on speaker so Sarah could hear. I didn’t want to scare her, but maybe she’d recognize the voice.

“Who is this?” I asked.

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