Gatehouse Motel was an American roadside classic. It had two stories and parking stalls right in front of the first storey windows. Logo-stamped pickup trucks occupied some of them. Another row of stalls for the upstairs rooms circled the building. Laminated do-not-disturb cards flapped on the doors in a light breeze. A staircase led to the second-floor gallery, with a room-service cart lingering next to it. Over it all reigned a neon sign, spelling 'vacancy' in green letters. Red 'no' in front of the 'vacancy' seemed burned-out rather than turned off on purpose. The whole place reeked of bleakness, low effort and cheap cleaning solution.

In short, it was the last place in Seattle for Dad to select as his residence. He should be in a downtown high-rise, full of luxury and anonymity he would somehow avoid paying for.

I double checked my phone. Steinar, indeed, scribbled Gatehouse as his contact for Mie. Go figure...unless he lied.

When Blake put a hundred-dollar bill on the counter in the lobby, a formerly sleepy woman behind it woke up, swept the money extra-quick and clicked her keyboard. "Room two-fourteen, round the back."

There was no mistake or deception then. Steinar was here, and it would be like him to pick a room out of the view from the lobby.

Another thing worried me, a silly pang of jealousy. "She smiled at you. Enticingly." I pouted at Blake, as we circled the building. "Should I be worried?"

"She liked my money. Humans are like that," he replied, unsmiling. His shoulders were taut, head on a swivel, sniffing the air.

The smell was mostly cigarette smoke, laundry and burnt dust in the heaters. Various body odors also oozed through the doors we passed. When we stopped in front of 214, I caught a whiff of someone familiar, and troubling. I glanced at Blake.

"Yes, I sense it too." He pushed the door handle. Locked. "Steinar? Open up."

Nothing.

"Do you want me to break down his door?" Blake asked, too eager for my liking.

"Give me a sec, I have an idea that wouldn't land you in trouble."

I picked a 'don't disturb' sign from two doors down, flipped it to the opposite side that read 'please, clean my room' and put it on the doorknob of the 214.

Then I crooked my finger at my mate. "Come along, I'll show you how humans do things."

Blake obediently followed me to the parked cleaning cart, though a certain gravity in his steps showed that he'd rather blast the door.

I snuggled my prickly mate to me and popped my head into the room that had its door propped by the cleaning cart. A guy with giant headphones, baggy jeans and a flannel shirt, pushed vacuum around the carpet.

Pulling Blake along, I stepped in front of the brush. "Hi there."

The guy startled. "Woah, where did you—"

I beamed at him. "We're from 214. I'm afraid we made a bit of a mess." Infusing my smile with a suggestive energy wasn't difficult with Blake standing right next to me. "Could you ah...expedite the cleanup?"

Just in case he needed an incentive, I copied Blake's earlier bribing and stuffed a twenty between the tiny soaps on the cart.

"Okay," the guy said.

Blake and I left hand in hand, and hid around the corner.

"Do you think it would work?" Blake asked after a few minutes. "He isn't in any hurry."

"You just want to kick down Steinar's door," I muttered. "Have patience."

Like on a cue, the cleaner rattled his cart past a few doors and straight into 214.

"Bingo!" I giggled to cover a sigh of relief. "Integrity is alive and well!"

"Or curiosity," Blake said and dashed. It was well short of his top speed as a werewolf, but he caught the door before it closed, holding it for me. I skidded right through it.

"We...we forgot something," I announced to the cleaner who watched me with his jaw hanging.

"Ah, it's not that large, it's—" I frantically scanned the room.

It was messy, alright, but it was hard to say if my dad was a slob or if there was a struggle. We needed more time to go through his possessions and with no one watching.

Blake wrapped his arms around my waist and nuzzled my ear. "I'm offended by that description, babe."

Catching onto his extension of my plan, I ground into him—and almost forgot why and where I was. The pleasure of being with my mate canceled out pretty much everything else. I gave myself a shake to clear my head, but it created more intense body contact. A coherent, if guttural 'C-convince me, big guy!' slipped through my lips.

Blake's hand snaked under my t-shirt to caress my belly button. My eyes closed on their own when I should have had them peeled in search of evidence. The last thing I registered was Blake tossing a crumpled bill to the cleaner.

"Clean later," he barked. "Leave now."

"Jeez." The cart rattled, and the guy chuckled all the way to the exit.

We can't investigate anyway until he leaves. I relaxed into Blake's embrace and gave myself to the sensations of being with him. His mating mark throbbed on my back. My lower body gyrated in time with the pulse he created in the core of my being, as his fingers found their way below the waistband of my jeans. It was no longer the belly button he was caressing.

I held back the moan of arousal until the door of the motel room closed with a click. Silly, since the walls were no thicker than cardboard, but still... Once it shut, I let my voice spill out of my throat. The button of my jeans popped open, and the zipper hissed down from the tugging of Blake's urgent hands.

"Blake, we shouldn't," I moaned, holding on to why we came here, albeit barely. "We should look for clues."

"Sweetie." While Blake's hands stopped their progress inside my underwear, his breath blasted my ear with hot waves. "Sweetie, didn't you already smell what happened here? By the door?"

"All I can smell is you." Desire pooled between my legs, heavy and wet. "Your musk, your sweat, your need..."

Blake whirled us around, so my back would be proper against the wall. His mouth hovered above mine. "I like what I'm hearing."

I caught his lips between mine, pressing my canine into his lip. It wasn't as sharp as his, but he did not free his mouth, letting me drive the kiss to a point of no return. His hands worked my jeans down and found the soaking crotch of my panties. If I was suppressing one little moan before, a dozen of them escaped into his mouth when he moved the silk aside and sunk in. I rocked against the wall, wanting far more than his finger inside me, but if we went any further...

"What...what if they have some sort of system to know who is staying in which room?" I whispered between kisses. "What if someone walks in on us? Steinar? Or they call the cops on us for trespassing?"

These considerations should have put a damper on what we were doing, but the thrill only made me wetter and hotter for him. My knees trembled, falling wider for him. The jeans slipped down and bunched around my ankles.

"You like it, don't you?" Blake murmured. "After a year, I'm excited to discover all these curious things about you."

I wrapped my arms around his neck and gazed into his fern-green eyes. "What should we do, Blake? Whatever should we do?"

His pupils dilated. "Mmgh." He moved one of my hands toward his midsection. "This. I think we should keep doing what we're doing. Maybe a bit of extra-excitement is what we're missing for you to go into heat."

I giggled, leaning to kiss him, "If that's the Goddess' will, no wonder we missed it. Get it on in a motel, while searching for Dad—that's not the first thing I'd go for."

"Perhaps...but perhaps it's not that strange. Maybe it's a sign." Blake cupped my cheek. A rare emotion flickered through his eyes behind the tenderness: uncertainty. "Think of it this way. If you go into heat, and we have a child, when you think of your family you will think of the future, not search the past for it. We won't need to seek Steinar and dabble in his dirty games."

"Wait..." My body, softened and super-heated by our flirting, stiffened. "Do you really think I'd give up searching for the truth about my mother and my pack if we have a baby?"

Blake said nothing, but his expression was transparent.

"I can't believe it!" I shrieked, wiggling back into my jeans. "You're unbelievable! If we have a child, it's even more important for me to find my home pack."

"I can't believe it!" I shrieked, wiggling back into my jeans. "You're unbelievable! If we have a child it's even more important for me to find my home pack."

"We are your pack," Blake said quietly and strode across the room.

"Where are you—"

"Shower. Search the room to your delight, but you won't find anything we don't already know."

When Blake came out of the shower, his smokey-gray hair curling from moisture, his body taut from frigid water, and his green eyes less turbulent, I sat on the dresser with my chin in my hand.

"I take it you caught the scent I was talking about?" he asked.

Maybe he sounded grumpy, but his usual stoic demeanor was almost back. Dammit, but he was just too loveable in his certainty that he could rearrange the world for my convenience; and that the world was contained in the borders of the pack's territory. How could I be angry, when all this emanated from him? "I think the scent belongs to the Brute. Right?"

"It is him. I'd recognize the bastard out of a thousand," Blake said. "I should have chased him down and killed him that night."

I had no reason to doubt any of it. Blake and the Brute locked into mortal combat during the scariest hour of my life. The Brute was the only one out of a group of rogues that attacked me who walked away. Or, rather, he ran with the tail tucked between his legs. Blake would pick out his scent out of a thousand, and he would kill anyone who hurt me.

"Then...did the rogues kidnap my dad?" I surveyed the room again and found no obvious confirmation. Again. Steinar might have left in a hurry, leaving his extravagant hat and the scarf strewn on the bed, books and notebooks spilled on the table. I flipped through those already, and they were astrological charts that had nothing to do with my mother. "Or was the Brute his contact?"

"Try his ally." Blake shrugged. "Don't think with your heart, think with your head. Steinar is a rogue and a schemer, and you are now a rich mark. This is a trap, Este, and the only surprise is that it's just the Brute we smell in here. I expected Scarlett's toxic scent all over it."

A frown creased my brows. "You expected it? But Scarlett is in California."

A vein in Blake's temple twitched.

"She is not?"

"No. She went home after being marked as Epsilon, but she's not Louis' only child. Once she was back to her old tricks, sowing discord in his pack and shaming his family, he paid her off to leave. She came back to Seattle."

There was only one person who could get this very personal intel from California and divulge it to Blake. "Did she approach Harold?"

"Yes. He was eager to prove his loyalty by reporting it."

Harold also had an intense hatred of Scarlett, the woman who betrayed the only genuine affection he developed in his life. Only someone as self-absorbed as Scarlett couldn't have predicted it. "When did it happen?"

"Last fall."

An exhale filtered through my teeth. Last fall, Blake and I frolicked through the woods, enjoying the beauty of the forest turning color and one another. Last fall, when I had finally enrolled at the University. Last fall when I was so blissfully oblivious. "You should have told me."

"No. You were safe and sound in Grauberg. You were happy. As you will continue to be after we return to the pack. From there, we can laugh and trash the escalating requests for ransom until the rogues give up."

I chewed my lip. "So you think Steinar is on it? In cahoots with Scarlett and the Brute, my bitterest enemies, to shake me down for money?"

"Steinar is a rogue; they are all rogues. And he seems to me just the type who'd sell his own mother...or a daughter. Do the math."

I thought about it for a while, knitting my fingers. "On the surface, this makes sense. But..." I shook my head. "I just don't think it's like that."

"Because he cared for your mother long enough to knock her up?" Blake ran his hand through his hair. "Believe what you wish, so long as you return home and let me protect you from—"

"From my dad? Really?"

"If I have to."

Blake looked so solid, so tall standing in front of me, he really looked like a wall to stay safely behind. For a second, I was tempted to jump into his arms and let him carry me off to his layer. But safe walls can be so tall, one can't see above them into the rest of the world.

I heaved in an enormous sigh. "I can't give up on my family. I'm staying in Seattle to look for Steinar."

"Este," Blake growled and stepped forward. "Este!"

His hands clenched and unclenched, then he closed his eyes. I could almost hear him counting to ten in his thoughts, calling on the inner calm that helped him rule the pack without turning into a tyrant.

"Este, both Alpha and Luna can't abandon the pack for a personal task for an undetermined period."

"Agreed!" I planted my hands on my hips. "So, stay in Grauberg, lead the pack. My dad is my personal task, and I'll attend to it."

"No," he said flatly.

"You have no right to forbid anything to me!" Heat rushed into my cheeks from boiling blood. Steinar's words blazed in my mind. "We are not even married! Who do you think you are to lord over me?"

If he'd said 'your Alpha,' I'd have burst out. But Blake waited out my outburst. Once my breathing calmed down, he said so quietly, I had to listen. "I promise to apply every effort to find Steinar, if you stay put in Grauberg under additional security. This Steinar business is a threat to the pack; I feel it in my bones."

And he was the Alpha. He would sense a threat to his wolves. "Oh. But why don't you let me investigate? It makes more sense if it's me, Blake."

His eyes opened, vulnerable. "I...I have a bad feeling that they'll try to steal you, and I can't function with this looming over me. You're stronger."

He was magnetic, absolutely magnetic. I enveloped him into my arms. Kissing him, so big and strong, I couldn't even begin imagining any obstacle he couldn't overcome for me, any danger which could thwart him, any foe of mine he wouldn't crush.

"Okay," I whispered into his lips. "Okay...but who in Goddess' name would you entrust with protecting me in your absence? Who is better than me to protect me?"