Page 102 of Scapegoat

Tearing our clothes off felt like we were doing something for once and the wolf came gladly, almost shoving me out of the way in his eagerness. He understood the assignment and took off down a side track the loggers had used to fell trees. The car had gone that way.

This was when we ran for several hours, found where they were hidden and then kicked the doors in and rescued our mate, right? This was when we saved Kai. But the trail ended as soon as we got to the road. There was some dust on the road, indicating they’d probably gone east, but… My brothers’ wolves came to stand beside me, whining.

The wolves knew. Their animal brains saw things much more clearly. We needed to find Kai, to protect Kai and they didn’t care about what was said or done before that. Every second that ticked by while she was in danger was unacceptable, and that was all that mattered. We took a few steps up the road, but there were no scents to detect, no track to follow, so the wolf turned around, trotting back to the clearing. I came back into skin, pulling on my clothes silently as my brothers did the same.

“We have to find her,” I said.

“How? I’m open to any ideas right now.” Xavier shook his head.

“Maybe we could go and see Kai’s dad. Abigail is his true mate, so he might have some clues,” I said, but I felt no hope at that. Daryl was always weak.

“Or ours.”

We all stared at Atlas and then realised he didn’t mean Jackson. Greg had fallen under Abigail’s spell. Greg was Anna’s father and he was living in some shit-hole place on the edge of town. I shook my head slowly. If my fucking father had something to do with this, Mum’s rage would be nothing compared to mine. I grabbed my phone and rang Mum.

“What’s happened?” she said instead of hello. “Did you find Kai?”

“Where’s Dad… Greg living now?” I asked in response.

“Greg…? You think he’s involved in this?” she said.

“Address, Mum, and I don’t know. We’re ruling this out first. We have to find her.”

For once Mum was silent. I could hear the sound of her swallowing, her breathing noisy.

“Of course. God, you need to get her the hell away from that woman. Abigail’s mad, fucking mad.”

Mum didn’t swear too often, so I blinked at that, but then she rattled off Greg’s address. We ran back to the truck stop and then got in the car, speeding back to Stanthorpe before pulling up outside the house Mum had said was Greg’s.

“Fuck, Mum wouldn’t have put up with this…” I hissed as we got out. The place was rundown as hell and the garden was more weeds and vines than grass. Our feet crunched on the gravel driveway as we walked closer. Our noses worked, and we all got the scent of Dad clearly, but… Anna was here too, and Abigail.

Every wolf shifter experienced another person’s scent differently, but to me, Abigail smelled bad, kinda like petrol. Something harsh and chemical that assaulted your nose, but for some reason you breathed it in deeper. It was harsh, driving out everything else as we got closer, like she’d taken fur and pissed all over the driveway, marking her turf.

Like an alpha wolf might.

“Abigail—” I started to say.

“I know,” Xavier replied. “I can smell her.”

“Not that, dipshit,” I said, knowing we wouldn’t find them here. The house was quiet, still, in the way empty houses were, as if passively awaiting a new tenant. “The way she acts. The shit she got away with. Like when the alphas went ham on the arse of that guy… Ken’s dad.”

“The one who was beating up his mate?” Atlas said. “Yeah, I remember.”

“They stepped in then. And when Mrs Harris was getting too heavy-handed with her kids and…?” I stopped short of the house. “Do you think…?”

“Do I think what, Jay?” Xavier snapped. “We’re going into Dad’s house to see if we can find evidence he’s helping our mate’s mother kidnap her, steal her from us.”

“Is Abigail an alpha?”

While it wasn’t widely known, we couldn’t just psychically control every fucker in the town if we’d decided to take the role of alpha. Betas, humans, had told me we gave off bad motherfucker vibes, which made some blokes want to fight us, while most just gave us a wide berth. We couldn’t afford, in skin or in fur, to be fighting dominance fights the whole damn time. Actual wolves didn’t. Fighting, exerting your dominance, took energy that could be best suited to surviving. It happened sometimes, to maintain order, to calm down those unruly pack members or give the strongest of the new blood a chance to take control of the pack, but mostly people just accepted the alpha’s rule, if he was doing things right. Abigail had always maintained a sweet, soccer mum exterior, but…

“What does that matter?” Xavier asked, but Atlas went still.

“It does is if that’s why this happened,” my brother said. “If that’s how she thought this would work. Tricking us at first, rubbing Kai’s scent on Anna, because she was still trying to play by pack rules. If she wasn’t strong enough to dominate all three of the alphas, she’d have to, if she wanted to stay in Stanthorpe.”

“But when they exiled her…” I said.

“Is that how she seduced Greg?” Xavier asked, then glanced at the house before stepping forward, as if he could demand answers from it. We all spilled inside once he kicked the door open, breaking the lock. “She… what? Coerced him?”

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