Page 61 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Angel sat in the deep windowsill, head bowed and his wavy hair hanging forward and curtaining his face.

When I finished talking, instead of them all bursting into an agitated conversation, they remained a room full of silent statues. Even Sam stopped pacing.

“No one?” I pressed. “No one has any idea who might be behind it?”

Angel lifted his head and exchanged a questioning glance with Sam.

“What?” I asked, clearly they were of one mind.

“It’s just that…the caller said they know what we are,” Angel said from his seat on the sunny windowsill.

“Yes,” I said with more than a little irritation. “I know.”

“And none of us has ever shifted in the area where we found those cameras,” Angel added.

“There could be other cameras we haven’t found yet,” I said. “In other parts of the forest.”

Angel looked at Sam again.

“Or…” Sam said. “There could be another possibility.”

“Get to your point,” I snarled.

Sam took a breath, then let it out. “Mom.”

Mom?I’d been leaning back against the fireplace, but I straightened abruptly at his wild suggestion.

“As far as we know, Mom is the only one who knows what we are,” Sam explained.

I shook my head despite his logic. “If she was behind it, these threats would have come a long time ago. Mom was weak, and she was troubled, but she wasn’t evil.”

Toby pursed his lips and leaned forward, elbows to knees. “We don’t know that, Reese. We don’t know her anymore. What’s to say sheisn’tinvolved in this Lady Luck business, or with any of its shareholders?”

“Maybe she kept the truth of us to herself for a long time, but recently confessed to a friend?” Melanie suggested, twisting the end of her ponytail around her finger.

“Or to a therapist,” Toby added.

“No one would believe her,” I said. “They’d assume she’d hallucinated the whole thing.”

“Maybe she now wants to get control of the lodge,” Sam said. “She never asked Dad for any financial support after she left. Maybe she’s regretting that decision.”

“Should we go find her?” Toby asked. “Seems like the quickest way to get to the bottom of this.”

“Has anyone tried contacting her before?” Angel asked.

Sam and I shook our heads. Toby furrowed his brow and looked at the floor.

“And betray Dad like that?” Melanie asked, sounding scandalized. “Never. But there’s another possibility for how Dad’s killer learned what we are. Factor in what happened to Toby.”

“What are you talking about?” Toby asked.

“That net, of course.” She looked at him like he was being stupid. “The surprise made you shift involuntarily. Dad knew his killer, so it’s likely there was some interaction before he was shot. That would mean he was shot in his human form, but what if the stress of it sent him into a shift right in front of the guy who pulled the trigger?”

I folded my arms. It wasn’t a bad theory, except it didn’t fit the facts. “I found Dad’s body in human form.”

Melanie raised one hand and toggled it with her fingers spread. “Maybe the stress caused, like, a flickering shift—back-and-forth as he died—and the killer witnessed it all.”

“With the timing of all our troubles coming right on the heels of that, Melanie’s theory makes more sense than Mom,” Sam said.

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