Lexi's point of view

I was so tired. It was like I had huge cement blocks weighing me down. It was so sudden. I hadn't been tired before finding out that I was having a baby, but now that I did know, I was too tired to do anything.

I should have stayed home. At least there I wouldn't feel like a burden.

A heavy knock at the door made me come out of my nap.

I groaned and pushed myself into a sitting position. I stretched and yawned before getting up and getting my robe.

Whoever it was had heard me moving around, because there were no more knocks.

Lazily, I tied the band around my waist and went to the door, forcing my feet to move.

I swung the door open, and was shocked to see whose shadow darkened my doorway.

Jamison stood in front of my door, alone, without any witnesses.

The sleepiness left my body and I was instantly on high alert. I slammed the door, grabbed my gun and readied it for fire. I wasn't going to take the risk of getting knocked around by him. My body couldn't handle the extra stress.

If I had to choose between Jamison and my unborn child, it was going to be the kid every time. No one was going to mess this up for me… no one.

A lighter knock made me look back at the door. "I need to talk to you. The other guys are all gone; otherwise I wouldn't bother you with this."

His fingers tapped on the door after a few seconds of silence.

"I know Mason doesn't want me around you. You're safe in your room."

I ripped the door open and aimed the gun at his face. The tip of the barrel was no more than five inches from his nose.

"Say what you have to say. If you make one wrong move, I'll pull the trigger," I warned.

He nodded and slowly held up his hands. If he made any quick move, he knew that I would pull the trigger.

"The other guys are on patrol already and my alpha doesn't have a mate that I can relay this information to."

"Well, spit it out," I said impatiently.

I didn't want him this close to me when Mason wasn't around. Jamison wanted revenge on Mason and I was a perfect target for that.

"I think I know where the guy is hiding."

"And why didn't you tell anyone sooner?" It didn't make sense that he would hold out on that kind of information.

"I just got back."

That was a pretty lame excuse. He knew the routes that the wolves took for patrols. How did he just happen to come across the place where Emerson was staying?

But I couldn't just let the chance slip away. There was no telling how long Emerson would stay at this place. If he found Jamison's scent, he wouldn't go back.

I would have to bring my gun to make sure nothing happened to me. If I found Emerson, there would be no time to mess around. I would have to shoot to kill, not that the bastard deserved to live.

I didn't have the chance to think it through all the way. In the blink of an eye, Jamison was ripped away from my doorway and slammed against the wall across from the door.

I recognized Mason's backside and his angry growls immediately. Jamison and I were both surprised to see that Mason wasn't gone. He had left this morning; I watched him leave the room.

"You didn't even look around," he growled. "You're not allowed to come near my woman, especially when she's alone and drowsy."

Mason's forearm crushed into Jamison's throat, preventing him from defending himself. I put my gun on its safe setting and put it on the dresser as Mason continued to growl threats at Jamison.

I sat down on the bed as I waited for Mason. He'd come in here to talk to me, mostly to make sure that I was okay.

Sure enough, not even a full minute later, he walked in looking pissed.

"So what's the verdict?" I leaned back, using my hands to prop myself up.

"You're staying here," he ordered with finality. "You're not going to run out and help with taking Emerson down. I'm going to head out with Jamison."

As if I were going to argue about it… but I would've hated to let him down. I really didn't want him going out alone, but I didn't trust Jamison. Anyone would've been a better choice than him.

"You can't go out alone with Jamison. He might try something. I can't sit back and let you go with him, Mason."

He shook his head and came to the side of the bed. "You're going to stay here and that's final. You're not fit to be getting hurt or putting yourself in a dangerous position. You're going to stay here and stay safe, not just for me or for you."

I huffed. "I'm not lame."

He put his hand over my flat belly. "But you're going to stay here and stay safe." I just sighed in response. He was right. "Say it to me."

"I'll stay here and stay safe," I muttered unhappily. He sensed the truth in my response and through our bond. He knew that I would stay in the alpha's house while he was gone.

"Good girl." He kissed me once. "I'll stay available to you if there's an emergency, but I'm not going to be responding to you."

I nodded. "I wouldn't want to distract you while you're hunting Emerson. We should limit the influence between us. All these hormones might start getting to you."

"That's probably a good idea," he teased with a smile. "I'm not going to shut it down completely and it'll only be for a little while."

I sighed. "And there's nothing I can do to help you?"

He shook his head. "It's not about you helping me, Lex. I need you to be here, keeping healthy. When I'm hunting for a dangerous wolf, I have to be mentally prepared to kill them. I don't want you to see that or feel that from me."

"I saw you when you killed Millender."

He shook his head. "You were under his influence. It didn't count."

He kissed me hard to stop me from speaking then bent down and kissed my stomach. "Stay safe."

I nodded and kissed him once more before he left. I watched him disappear with Jamison. I wasn't happy that he was leaving me to go out hunting, especially when he was just with Jamison.

I tried to keep myself occupied for as long as I could, but knowing he was out there, alone with Jamison, did little to ease my anxiety.

Mason's point of view 

The old abandoned cottage was still abandoned when we got there. Jamison went ahead of me to show me where Emerson's hide out had been located.  

Looking over the place, I knew this was wrong. Emerson needed space to transport the girl and to confine her.  

This wasn't a good place.  

I kept my nose to the ground, using the wolf's senses to pick up any scents. Jamison's scent was the only recent one I could find, until I got closer to the cabin. I couldn't hear anything around the cabin either.  

Emerson's scent was all around the cabin, as if he had ran around, trying to get his scent in the area. That was a rookie mistake to make for someone so old. There were many scents around the cabin, from lost hikers or hunters, most likely. I could tell that Emerson had been here recently, but there weren't any scents that suggested that he had stayed here for very long. 

He had probably just been passing through.

It felt more like a trap than anything else.  

Jamison had been leading Lex into a trap. He should have known about it. It was obvious that Emerson wasn't here. If Lex had come, she might not have seen the signs and had been killed.  

I felt the rage start to simmer within me. No one set up Lex.  

Jamison was inside the cabin, snooping around.  

When I growled, he whirled around. "So, what do you think? He's been here recently." 

I huffed and shook my head. I hadn't had the time to have Casey set up a link between Jamison and me, so my only means of communication was body language.  

We had to go. If it was a set up, we could be in for some trouble with Emerson.  

As soon as Jamison stepped into the doorway, the distinctive pop of an air powered gun sounded.

Jamison was stuck with a tranquilizer that took effect very quickly. Jamison only had time to take the dart out of his chest before he stumbled to the ground and passing out.  

The pack would be on high alert now. He would have reached for his pack in panic. That was the gut reaction of a pack wolf.

I readied myself to run out. As long as I was quick and agile enough, he wouldn't get a fix on me.

I had a good idea of where he was at. I knew I could get to him without much of an issue.  

I took a deep breath then bolted out of the door.  

The first shot told me exactly where he was.  

The second shot had been meant to kill me instead of subdue me. The bullet grazed my flank before his truck kicked up mud as it took off.  

He didn't wait for me to get close. I sprinted as hard as I could after the truck, but I wasn't a machine.

I chased him for a good three miles before he hit real road and used the car's engine against me and floored it.  

I was breathing heavily as I watched him get away... again. I committed as many details to memory as I could. Now that I knew what he was driving, I could find him.

I went back to Jamison to see him unconscious and snoring.  

With an empathetic pull from my wolf, I changed back into a human. Neither of us liked Jamison, but we were responsible for getting him back to his pack.  

--- 

I dropped Jamison off at the infirmary, where his blood was quickly taken to analyze what Emerson had used against us.  

The drug was very fast acting, which meant that it shouldn't last very long. We needed to know what he had access to. There weren't very many drugs that could affect werewolves like whatever was inside that dart.

I grabbed sweats out of one of the cabinets before going into the house, still bothered by what had happened.  

There weren't very many drugs the he could use that would affect us. If I knew what he used, I could have Jack back at home track it for me.  

Jack Maelstrom was one of the pack wolves I had been with the longest. He was trusted with vital pack information and scanning the internet for anything that could become a potential threat to us.

Lex was nervously chewing on her fingers when I found her watching TV with one of the human girls.  

She sprang off of the couch and jumped into my arms. "Something happened," she whispered in my ear. Immediately I thought she meant something happened to her or to the baby, so I felt immediate panic. "I felt your anger through the bond." 

I nodded and kissed her neck, carrying her up to our room for some privacy from the human ears. 

I kicked the door shut behind me, keeping an ear out for the latch.  

"Emerson shot a tranq at Jamison. It was a set up." 

She gasped. "Was Jamison leading me to Emerson?" 

I shrugged. "I'm not sure, baby. If he did, he's going to pay for it. Either way I have some info I need tracked." 

She nodded and handed me my cell phone.

"Maelstrom," Jack answered. Even though I called his personal line, he was in the habit of answering in his businesslike manner.

"You at home?" I asked. He'd know it was me immediately.

He huffed. "Where else would I be? We've all been waiting for you guys to call us. Just because you're off doing something for Finn doesn't mean you can abandon your family."

Lex was smiling widely at me. We both missed our family very much.

"I've been a little busy."

"I know. Casey has to check up on you ever so often to make sure you're not lying in a ditch dying."

Lex let out a laugh, blowing her chance at getting away without a lecture. "And just because you're in the background doesn't mean that you're getting away with not calling us either. Mason probably has you wrapped up nice and safe. You could've called us too."

She huffed. "Do you know how messed up this pack is? We've been very busy, Jack."

"Yeah, right," he said in disbelief. "We all know what you've been doing that keeps you very busy."

"Not the point," I said in my serious voice. Play time was over. "I need you to look something up and I need it immediately."

We could hear him moving around, most likely reaching for his laptop. It was always around him and always on. "Tell me."

"I need locations on houses that are currently uninhabited or abandoned." The sound of Jack's fingers going over the keyboard sounded through the phone. "They don't have to be huge, but they need to have basements."

"What else? You've got about fifty houses."

"They need to be out of pack territory."

"Twenty left."

I cursed. We couldn't split up the pack to look through twenty houses. That would take too much time and would end up costing lives. "That's too many. Can you get satellite feed?"

Some more tapping on the keyboard was heard before Jack's voice. "I need a half an hour. I've gotta hack. What am I looking for?"

"An old red pickup."

"Does it have any markings?"

I shook my head thinking it over. "It's just old. The paints faded and there's some rust. There's a bed cover."

"Alright, I'm busy. Call you back." Then the line was dead.

Lex smiled at me. "I miss home."

I smiled and pulled her close. "We'll be home before you know it."