Chapter 14: The Faintest Clues

Alex's Point of View 

  The adrenaline was wearing off the longer we roared down the highway. I had been sitting in the backseat for nearly half an hour and while at the beginning I had been fidgety and anxious, each mile that passed brought my body down from its high. I had woken up early that morning for a run that had never happened, chased down a scent that led to nowhere, got caught in a fight that left my jaw bruised, and lost my last nerve with worry--it was safe to say my day had been taxing. By the time Tristan had returned from his run and told us about Sam’s link, it had already been nearly midnight.

  Now it was practically four in the morning, and almost twenty-four hours had passed since I had seen the soft side of a pillow. Even with my fury fueling my every move, it had worn off into a dull ache that throbbed the longer I sat still in the backseat of Tristan’s Jeep.

  After I had instilled the passion back into my Beta and Wes, we had called Rayne back downstairs so we could discuss strategy. He had come down with weary eyes, mumbling something about getting his mother to sleep, but immediately perked up when he saw Tristan back into lucidity.

  “We know he wouldn’t be west--that would be like running straight back to you,” I stated towards Tristan. His head had been in his hands, fingers splaying across his temples.

  “No,” he growled, “I knew something was wrong before you called, her presence was stretching even thinner. She was taken east.”

  “I’m not--” I struggled to keep a blush from my cheeks, “None of the rest of us are mated so we don’t know the bond, is there any way you can tell distance? Like mileage?”

  He looked around at the three of us as if realizing for the first time that none of us could feel what he was going through, the thought hardening his eyes. “I guess it can work like that. I never bothered to know exact distance but...but I guess she was around a two hundred miles away from the pack.”

  His gaze snapped back at me. Somehow I had wormed my way into the center of it all and had become the anchor that the three strongest men in the pack latched onto. “There are a ton of different possibilities anywhere east from here, it’s such a broad range that it would be pointless.”

  “No. Not pointless, we have a point, we have to find Ian.”

  He clenched his jaw and lowered his hands, “Fine. Then what are we waiting around here for? We have searching to do and I’m not letting the bastard live another second longer than necessary.”

  The rest of us agreed. Grabbing a couple changes of clothes so that we wouldn’t have to come back until we were finished, we packed the essentials that would be easy to carry around. My mom had been worried sick but fell asleep before I came home, so I was able to slip in to pack and get out without stirring anyone. Guilt filled me about leaving her to wonder so I had made sure to leave a note on the fridge to let her know that this was something I needed to do.

  I had always felt that I wasn’t doing enough by sitting back and watching all the guys do the defending of the pack. The fight was in my blood--my father had been the previous head of defense before he retired, relinquishing the position to Wes. But because I was considered a kid and on the slight side I was never given any benefits for being his daughter; I was a girl who would be better placed mated to a worker. Someone who had a normal job and a normal life, but the thrill I got from chasing and fighting was never normal. If I truly belonged in the domesticated life then I wouldn’t long to endlessly hunt in the forest or be the first to protect those in trouble.

  I was meant to fight and I wasn’t going to go out and tell my mom only for her to demand that I stay back and be a “teenage girl”. So I left the note and told her I would be safe so she didn’t need to worry. Never less I would be getting an earful when I returned, but this was worth it.

  But as the car ride lasted longer into the night the more my energy was sapping away. Wes sat by me, his large frame dwarfing the back seat; legs so long that his knees nearly touched mine in order to not be crowded. Tristan was driving and Rayne sat passenger on our way east. We had a rough estimate of where Sam’s last contact came from so we were going to start there, but there was still hours between us and the destination.

  Not being able to help it I gave into my first yawn, attracting the attention of all three males at my breakage of the silence. “What? We’ve been driving for awhile and it’s nearly dawn--I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to be tired.”

  Wes rolled his eyes, but Rayne cleared his throat. “You’re right, we really need to find somewhere to stop, even if for only a few hours.”

  Tristan shot his brother daggers but the Alpha didn’t back down, “We need all the strength we can get. I can guarantee that Ian didn’t go into this alone, so we can’t go straight into the mess sleep-deprived. Just stop at a motel or something and we’ll catch five hours of sleep and something to eat, then we’ll continue on.”

  He got two grunts of surrender from the men and a sigh of content from me. As much as I wanted to be out there hunting Ian down, I had to admit to myself that I wouldn’t be able to do so properly if I was falling asleep while standing. The mere thought of sleep had my eyes drooping and I could feel myself nodding off several times before we got to the motel, snapping awake when my head started tilting to the side.

  We stopped at a cheap place and Rayne walked in to book the rooms, coming out with two keys. One was handed to me and I gratefully dragged my bag into the single bedded suite, hitting the mattress without even bothering to change.

  It was lighter out when I woke up, not because I was well rested but I had heard something. My eyes flashed open and I looked around the room from my vantage point, seeing nothing but the bland decorations of a cheap motel. There was a deep breath and I silently sat up.

  My heart jumped a bit when I saw the man-sized body laid out on the floor, a bag used as a pillow. Wes wasn’t asleep, just staring at the ceiling as if in contemplation.

  “Sorry,” he grunted, indicating towards waking me up. He was still in the same clothes from the night and looked extremely uncomfortable being on the floor.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked sleepily, glancing at the clock which only said six-thirty. We’d only been here for two hours.

  His silver eyes flickered towards me, their depths giving nothing away in terms of his thoughts. “I’ve lost track of one girl, there’s no way I was going to let you stay in a room alone and let another pack member get kidnapped.”

  I sighed, still feeling extremely worn out, with any luck we could get a few more hours but there was no way I was going to let him stay on the floor. “Get up.”

  He scoffed, “I don’t care if you are all tough and mighty, I’m not allowing you to be alone--”

  “Fine, whatever,” I waved away his macho approach to protecting me, “But I really meant is get up because there’s no way you’re going to get any rest done on the ground. Get in bed.”

  I almost giggled at the way he couldn’t find words to say, but instead of indulging myself I just lay back down, snuggling into my pillow. Even with my eyes closed I could tell every step he took to go around to the other side of the bed and felt the mattress dip at his weight. Thankfully my hair covered my face or else he would get a perfect view of the red tinge my neck was sporting. My heart stuttered when he sighed and got comfortable, but even if I was unusual to having a guy in my bed, I couldn’t help but feel safer with his presence so close.

  The next time I awoke, it was to knocking on the room door. I was so comfortable that I didn’t want to open my eyes, the pillow was too warm and I had never felt so completely relaxed in all my life. Instead of replying to the incessant noise I mumbled a “go away” while wrapping my arms tighter around the body pillow beside me.

  Most hotels didn’t have nice smelling stuff, but the pillow I clutched to was scented to perfection--evergreens and night air. The warmth radiating off it should’ve been uncomfortable because of the body heat I emitted myself, but instead it only complimented my own temperature. It wasn’t until I noticed the way it moved steadily up and down that I realized there was the gentle beating of a heart beneath my ear.

  Finally opening my eyes, I stopped breathing. My face was resting on the t-shirt covered chest of Wes, arms wrapped tightly around his trimmed waist. Now that I thought about it, he wasn’t pillow soft; the hard planes of his stomach muscles were anything but soft.

  Not only was I clinging to him like a koala but his arm was wrapped protectively around me, tucking me neatly into his side. At some point when we were sleeping we must have naturally sought each other out and snuggled close. There was no denying that it was the best sleep I had gotten in a long time, but I wished it could have been with anyone besides the emotionless warrior that I desperately wanted to teach me how to fight.

  The knocking stopped for a brief moment before I heard Rayne’s voice bark through the door. “Ten minutes and then we’re leaving.”

  The gentle heartbeat that had been rhythmically thumping beneath my ear picked up pace and I knew that Wes had woken up. I should’ve jumped away the minute I woke up but I couldn’t seem to extract myself away from him.

  I could feel the heat of his gaze down at the top of my head, and I forced myself to face the music as tilt my face up to see his sheepishly. His mouth was slightly parted in surprise, giving me a rather nice view of his pink lips that were sure to be perfect at kissing. As I’m sure mine was, his hair was disheveled from deep sleep, arrayed in a messy design. But even if I had made sure to give every single portion of his face equal time of scrutinization, the look in his eyes would do me in every time.

  Never had someone looked at me the way he did at that moment. My heart instantly knew and I could see the wolf in his irises coming to the same realization.

  Mate.

  We unravelled ourselves from each other in record time, fleeing to the separate sides of the bed. This couldn’t be happening--I didn’t want him to be mine. He was too hard-headed and unreasonable. I had had to resort to childish methods to get him to agree in me coming along on this trip, and even though I was ashamed of having had to through a temper tantrum, it had worked because he was easily annoyed. Even if I had wanted a real relationship that wasn’t all smiles and rainbows, I needed someone who could feel emotions other than anger and irritation.

  I needed anyone but Wes.

  He seemed to have come to an equal stance in his head because his scrutinizing eyes hardened. Stiffly we gathered our stuff and took turns in the bathroom to take a shower and change; the air suffocating the whole time we did so. I refused to meet his eye contact when he held the door open for me to leave, ducking under his arm to the freedom of fresh air so I wouldn’t drown in my own misery.

  If the brothers noticed anything off in the way me and Wes avoided each other at breakfast, they didn’t comment on it.

  I picked at my eggs as Tristan ranted, “The place I last sensed her was only a few hours away from here, so it shouldn’t be long before we find something to go by. I just don’t understand how they managed to drag her off without the tiniest hint of a scent--not even the most talented hunter would be able to go undetected.”

  Rayne sat beside me, chowing down on his omelette like it was a last meal. Growing up with sisters and a diet obsessed mother, I had never seen so much food consumed in one sitting as I did eating breakfast with three men. One of them easily ate triple of my plateful, coming back from the endless buffet with mountains that could only be addressed as the Mount Everest of food. And they ate it all like it was a snack. I could only imagine the bill and thanked the lord I wasn’t the one that was paying for it.

  “The masking agent they used was really strong, probably infused with some wolfsbane so that it inhibited the wild quality of their scent. Whatever it was, I have no idea how they got ahold of something so strong and illegal, but at this point we can’t underestimate the lengths Ian would go to to get what he wants,” Rayne supplied after he had swallowed his mouthful.

  “There is still the absence of scent that creates a trail...” I mumbled, a stray thought that slipped through my lips. They stopped chewing and stared. It frustrated me that they automatically dismissed me from most discussions and became flabbergasted when I actually had an intellectual thing to say. Idiots.

  Setting my fork down, I elaborated, “Everything has a scent, but when you take away your own you can’t exactly mask the fact that you were there. There is an absence of smell that disturbs the area and you are left with no smell at all, kind of like water with no taste--even if you swallow it with no flavoring, you still know it was there.”

  “So you’re saying we could find traces of... emptiness?”

  “Kind of. There might not be a definite trail that leads you straight to them, but it’s something you can sense if you’re where they were. At least that’s how it felt when I smelled it back at home...”

  They processed the information and I excused myself to go use the restroom. It wasn’t a huge restaurant so the bathrooms were small one persons, perfect to lock myself in. My brain was still trying to process yesterday and adding on this morning was making it a another level of difficulty. I shouldn’t have told Wes he could sleep on the bed--he was a trained to be in less than perfect conditions, he could’ve handled a dirty floor. But thinking that way had guilt inching its way into my head. No, even if I hated his guts, I still would’ve wanted him to get as much rest as possible so he’d be in peak condition to hunt.

  But now I’m sure we were both completely flustered.

  Looking into the mirror I expected myself to look different; to have an ethereal glow or something with pure happiness shining in my eyes. But the same old plain brunette stared back at me, the reddish tinge to my locks the only attractive quality. Of course Wes would be as disappointed as me to have found a mate in each other, he had been probably holding out for a goddess to step into his life.

  Growling I dragged my hands down my face. I needed to focus. This wasn’t about me, and it most definitely wasn’t about Wes. It was about finding Ian and giving him what he deserved, a painful ending.

  Getting my inner beast to agree with me, I stalked out of the bathroom, only to find the table empty. They were all waiting outside and I clambered back into the car, ready to get back on the road.

  “This is it,” Tristan muttered as we pulled in front of another dingy motel. I was so glad that we had stopped the night before and hadn’t made our way here to find a clue and be forced to sleep in such an awful place.

  Wes had sat in front with him instead of back with me, an action I had full-heartedly agreed on until Rayne had sat beside me. Normally he was a perfectly funny and easy-going guy to talk to; a great Alpha in comparison to other packs that I had visited. But when he got serious he was a scary guy. Extremely tall with shoulders that looked like they could carry the weight of the world, he was a force to be reckoned with and I never wanted to find myself in his crosshairs. If he was the first one to get his hands on a member of Redwood, they wouldn’t have any mercy.

  Because the boys sat frozen, unsure of how to proceed and stubborn enough to not bother to collaborate, I sucked it up and got out first. They followed, making sure to seem like it had been their idea, leading the way towards the motel. It wasn’t hard to find a discrepancy that was odd. Even if the place looked two shakes away from collapsing, a man fixing a door that was hanging off the hinges was an unusual sight.

  “What happened?” Tristan asked gruffly, trying to seem less intimidating than he knew he could be. There was no sense in scaring the pants off of innocent humans.

  The man fixing the frame looked at us with annoyance, “What does it look like happened? Some idiot decided it would be fun to wrestle a door...”

  My jaw clenched but I stayed calm. Some people were determined to make things difficult. It wasn’t like he looked like a respectable member of society, his clothes were greasy and his hair/beard didn’t look like it had been trimmed in months, leaving him to look homeless and sickly. His smell probably wouldn’t have been detected by humans, but my heightened senses picked up the stench and I had to fight to not wrinkle my nose in disgust.

  “I’m pretty sure I asked a simple question. What. Happened.” The boys were losing patience quickly.

  The man grunted, looking back to the door, “I have no idea. The asshole rented the room for the night, stayed for an hour or two, and left the place in shambles. I would track him down and make him pay for it if he had left me with some sort of ID but he payed in cash.”

  Without asking, Tristan stepped past the man and into the room. Skirting as far away as possible from the greasy repairman, I slipped in after the Beta.

  Ian had been here. That was certain; the room had the poignant smell of his scent mixed with cologne. There was no trace of Sam, but I was sure that the masking agent wouldn’t have worn off in the short amount of time between her kidnapping and the point where Tristan lost track of her. Like the man had said, the whole place was trashed, even for a crappy excuse of a room.

  There was glass all over the floor from something being smashed into the mirror, leaving shards crunching underneath our shoes. I stepped closer to inspect the damage as Tristan moved to the bathroom to search more and the other two went to the bedside. Traces of blood were left on the reflective surface and I wiped a small portion away with my finger. Bringing it to my lips, I tasted the liquid to search for a clue as to who they were. It wasn’t human, but it wasn’t shifter either--suggesting that it could very well have been the other person who used the masking agent. The kidnapper.

  “Tristan...” Rayne called from by the bed. We all looked over to see him holding a chain in the air, a shining circle hanging in the middle. Tristan strode over and snatched it from his brother before I could get a real good look but recalling it from memory I remembered Sam wearing it around her neck. She hadn’t wanted to ruin the ring in training so she put it on a necklace to always have her engagement ring at heart.

  Tristan held it up to the light, his eyes filled with torment once again as he realized the implications of it being here. The bed was rumpled from someone having been on it and my stomach churned in horror. I didn’t know the extent as to what Ian wanted Sam for, but my soul burned at what he might’ve done to her here.

  “Since something of yours is here, does that mean you’re going to pay for the damages?” the man from the door asked with annoyance.

  Tristan only snarled an answer as he stormed out of the room, roughly shoving the man out of the way as he passed. My eyes met Rayne’s from across the room, and his thoughts were just as grim as mine.

  Our findings might not have been good, but it was something more than we had had before coming here.