Page 31 of A Twist of Luck (Shifter City Fated Mates #2)

CHAPTER 31

EMME

I spent most of Saturday with Hunter and Kellan. We swam, ate all the delicious food, watched movies, and existed in a bubble where we dealt with nothing and had no serious conversations. Neither of them asked me what had happened during the bonding, and I got the sense they feared spooking me by demanding answers.

I had no idea how long it would last before they pushed, but I enjoyed the peaceful day.

I stayed in Kellan’s room that night, and he loved every inch of me until I fell into an exhausted sleep in the early hours of Sunday morning. It felt like I’d been asleep for seconds before a roughened hand slid down my spine and I jerked awake. I hadn’t had to use my sleep lightly and come awake at a dime instincts for a while, leaving me at a disadvantage.

“Snow,” Slade rumbled when I managed to focus on his giant form beside the bed. “I need you to look at some security footage for me.”

Blinking to clear my gaze, I whispered, “Is—Is everything okay? Hunter and Finley?”

“Yes, both okay. I found a new piece of history on your mom’s pack, and I need to know if you have any additional information to assist my investigation.”

The mention of Mom’s pack was a shot of adrenaline to my system. I gently dislodged Kellan’s arm and jumped out of bed, forgetting I was butt-ass naked. It was dark, but not dark enough to hide from shifter sight.

Slade’s gaze slowly slid down my body, and by the time he returned to my face, his jaw was tight and I was combusting. I tried not to full-body blush, which would really highlight all the naked parts, but was fairly sure I failed. Shifters . We were shifters. Naked was normal. Naked wasn’t inherently sexual.

Still, the way the dragon stared didn’t feel even remotely platonic.

Blindly, I reached out to grab Kellan’s shirt from the floor, pausing when Slade rumbled. Glancing up, I had no idea what was happening until he palmed the back of his plain black shirt and yanked it over his head. With the soft material in hand, he reached out and draped it over my head, surrounding me in his sweet scent. “Arms up,” he ordered in a low voice, and I obeyed like he had the master controls to my body.

The length fell well past my thighs, and I was so frazzled by my proximity to his unbelievable chest and intriguing tattoo that I blurted out the first words that came to mind. “Next thing you know, you’ll have me tattooed on your body like Hunter.”

I was an idiot . There was literally no other explanation for that comment.

Slade had only just started to tolerate me, and I was well aware that his bursts of possessiveness were a product of him being an alpha and my scent match. We were nowhere near the stage of tattoos or claiming bites. We probably never would be.

In the darkness, I caught a slight twitch of his lips. “How do you know you’re not already marked on my skin?”

Wait. Wait a hot freakin’ minute…

My sight was laser focused on the dueling dragons, but if there was anything new there, I couldn’t see it in the dim light. “Are you serious?”

Slade shrugged. “One day you’ll find out, Snow. But not today.”

I… Oh, yeah , I was definitely in trouble. Now all I could think about was exploring every mark and tattoo on his body.

When he turned to leave, I wasn’t sure if it was relief or disappointment that hit the hardest. With one last glance at Kellan, who remained peacefully sleeping—he’d told me his beast only woke him when danger was present, and clearly he trusted his pack brother with his life—I followed the dragon shifter.

His broad back was as much a piece of art as his chest, and I hurried closer to make out the swirls of his dragons’ bodies that continued over his shoulder blades and down either side of his spine.

“Who does your tattoos?” I asked. “How can you handle being touched for so long?”

Slade glanced over his shoulder, and the shadows playing across his features added to his dark-god vibe. “Finley, and when I’m prepared for it, I can handle touch from our pack.”

I ground to a halt, wondering if I’d misheard him. “Finley?” It was a harsh word of disbelief.

He didn’t stop for me, and eventually I had to move again to catch up. “Finley’s an artist? Does he even have any tattoos?”

Kellan didn’t have any; I’d quite thoroughly checked over the past twenty-four hours. While I’d caught glimpses of Finley’s chest once or twice, I’d never seen any obvious tattoos.

“He has a couple,” Slade said. “Which he doesn’t share with many. They’re not for everyone to experience.”

Considering my relationship with Finley, there was no doubt I fell into the everyone category, which didn’t sate my curiosity one bit. And that was a worry. Finley was heartbreak in six-and-a-half feet of growly goodness, and I couldn’t let myself go there. I had to stop desperately clawing at brief snippets of a connection amongst the carnage of our interactions.

He wasn’t for me.

Slade took the stairs to the third floor, and when he opened the door to his room and entered, leaving me standing on the threshold, I tried not to freak out. Hesitating, I explicitly waited for his invitation, my focus locked on him as he strode toward a bank of computers.

At least six large screens filled a wall in the corner near his windows, which were covered in a heavy curtain of dark-gray material. The desk was clearly custom built to handle all the technology, and fit the expanse of Slade’s room, which was at least four times the size of mine. Despite the vast square meterage, the room itself was sparsely furnished, with a massive bed dressed in gray and white bedding—again, twice the size of my king bed—some shelves with books, a few small plants, and a dresser.

A quick glance didn’t reveal any photos or personal effects, and once again, I had no idea who Slade was from this room.

“Come in, Emmeline,” Slade called impatiently, already seated in front of a screen.

I lifted an eyebrow as he shot a hard stare over his shoulder. “Listen here, Scary Shifter,” I said, stepping onto the same soft carpet of my room, “you’re the one who has everyone pissing themselves when it comes to you. I was warned no less than seventy billion times to never step into your dominion without your express permission.”

His eyes burned into me as I hurried toward him, like his room was boobytrapped and a randomly swinging blade was about to cut me in half. “Good,” he said, a smirk tipping up the corner of his lips.

Good…? Yeah, he more than enjoyed the fear slash respect he commanded in the city, and having met his dragon, I completely understood its origins.

When he returned his focus to the monitor, I was able to breathe more freely. The intensity of his unwavering stare was too much.

“Closer, Emme,” he commanded, and I jerked out of my trance and stepped forward until I felt the heat he exuded. “I’ve been tracing back through the years, and I found an odd image.”

I snapped to attention as I was reminded of the reason he’d gotten me out of bed at the crack of three a.m.

His fingers moved over the keyboard so quickly that whatever he typed into the screen blurred. Not that I could have remotely kept up, even if he didn’t type as fast as a bolt of lightning.

From what I saw, it was computer gibberish—what did they call it… code? Along with other boxes within boxes that had security footage and webpages. Everything moved around his screen until it all stopped on one grainy image of a man. “Do you ever remember seeing this shifter before?”

Leaning forward, I was careful not to touch Slade as I stared at an unfamiliar face. Along with the graininess, it was also in black and white and clearly old footage. Slade pointed toward the date printed in a neon orange on the bottom right side. The image had been taken almost twenty-six years ago on… “That’s the day I was born,” I said softly.

The quality was so bad that I really couldn’t make out the finer details, but I felt no jolt of familiarity as I examined the nondescript face. I’d have guessed he was a shifter, just from the way he stood and his general broad, muscled build. His hair appeared to be blond or light in the image, and there was no way to determine eye color.

He appeared to be a normal male shifter; nothing stood out at all.

“Yes,” Slade confirmed. “He was there the day you were born. This is where your mom gave birth.” He clicked a few more buttons; the image expanded to reveal a small shack in the background. “Just outside of Georgia. This shifter was there, and then two days later…”

He clicked another couple of buttons, and everything changed on his screen again to reveal the same background, but this time four very familiar faces were in the frame.

Confusion had me shaking my head. “But Mom didn’t meet them until I was older. I remember…”

I shifted through every one of my earlier memories, but there was nothing of the Rogers pack until we moved in with them. “Are you sure that’s where I was born?”

Slade responded by speed typing his way to another photo, this one showing my mom in front of the shack, her face drawn, and in her arms a small bundle that clearly looked like a child. “There’s no other footage,” Slade said softly. “I found these by scrolling through security footage from a convenience store across the street, and I had to dig deeper than I ever have before to find the deleted footage from that time.”

He didn’t elaborate on how he knew when and where to search for the footage, but I got the feeling it hadn’t been easy.

“What do you think it means? The guy is my dad, and the pack was in my mom’s life long before I was born? Or… could one of those assholes be my actual father after all?”

Slade let out a frustrated huff, running his hand through his short hair, the thick strands disheveled for him. “I don’t believe any of the Rogers pack is your father, but there’s no evidence to suggest the other male is either. I was hoping you had some insight, or it might have triggered a memory of meeting the other shifter before. I can’t find an identity for him, except for a possible connection to this image from the past...”

He slid his chair a few spots along and typed into one of the other computers. It booted up immediately, displaying dozens of photos scattered across it. He pulled up an image of the first shifter again, clearer this time, dressed in an older fashion style. Including a large top hat and coattails.

“That looks like the same guy,” I noted, feeling stupid as soon as I said it out loud; Slade’s mega brain would easily be able to tell that.

Slade nodded as he leaned back in his chair to meet my gaze. “Yes, but this is Valdor Breinstine, born 1802.”

Which explained the outfit. “Eighteen hundreds… So, an ancestor? Or I guess that first photo is grainy, so maybe they’re not even that similar looking.”

Slade didn’t appear convinced as his brow furrowed. “By my calculations, based on height and facial features, these two are genetically identical. I just don’t know how or why. It is at least giving me a place to start searching as I trace through this family line. I’m not sure why they’re shrouded in secrecy, but I will find out.”

There was a spark of excitement in his tone that I rarely heard, but I wasn’t surprised that Slade enjoyed this sort of deep diving investigation when unravelling a mystery. “I wish I was more help,” I told him. “I don’t remember ever seeing him before, but then again, I don’t remember the Rogers pack being around in my younger years. Why were they there when I was born?”

I shook my head, frustration rearing its head. I’d ignored a lot of shit in my life in the hopes of living past my twenty-sixth birthday, but to know they’d been in the background, manipulating Mom long before we lived with them, really scared me. “Has there been any follow-up by the Alpha Council yet? Shouldn’t they have done something about their attack on us by now? Why aren’t those assholes in jail or dead?” I wasn’t familiar with the punishments doled out by the councils and cities, but considering rogues were generally killed, why shouldn’t evil, kidnapping murderers get the same fate?

The mouse cracked under Slade’s hand, loud enough to indicate it was more than superficial damage. “The Silver City council is insisting we provide evidence before they allow us to take any further actions. Our word isn’t enough, and even though I’ve pulled up all the security footage from when they entered Golden Claw, there’s nothing that shows the Roger pack’s faces. The shifters we do have footage of are mostly dead now, thanks to me and Hunter, so the council is calling it a settled matter.”

My heart sank, and I reached out to clutch the back of a chair, knuckles tightening until my fingers ached. Slade noticed. Of course he noticed. “It’s not over, Snow,” he said, in a quietly dangerous tone. “We’re making our own plans, which do not involve the council’s approval or knowledge. Hunter will give final instructions, as he has a more level head to maneuver through the politics involved.”

“You have a very level head, Slade,” I told him, voice strained. “I don’t know where you got the idea that you’re a raging beast without reason or control. If anything, you’re so contained at times that I want to shake you a little and wiggle parts of you loose.”

A strange, broken sound echoed from his chest, and I jumped back as he stood. “It’s control or destroy. There’s no in-between for me.”

With that blunt statement, he left his desk and headed for the door. At first, I thought our meeting was done until he called back, “Wait here while I grab a new mouse from the storage cupboard. I’ll be a few minutes.”

When his overwhelming presence was gone from the room, I sank into the chair he’d just vacated, my heart slamming in my chest. Fuck . That was intense, and I wasn’t even sure why it was. Slumping forward, I lay my head on the desk and sucked in more calming breaths.

Which did fuck-all to help.

Jumping to my feet, I paced back and forth, my wolf rising to check in and see if I needed her. She’d shift and run if that was what it took to calm me down.

I don’t even know if it’s Slade, or the photos, or the weird guy who looks like the weirder older guy. But all of it is fucked up . She howled in response, agreeing with my assessment. What Slade had uncovered here had a deep-seated unease rising, and if I’d been in my beast form, all my fur would be standing on end.

I almost wished Mom was here to ask, but even if she had been, she’d be no help. She’d die again before revealing any secrets to me. She had died due to those secrets, I was certain.

I’d thought I understood exactly what contributed to her death, but maybe I’d been the one fooled. She knew the Rogers pack before I was born. Otherwise, why would they have been there? Had they truly been scent matched but let her have a child to another shifter? It made no sense.

As I paced, a sliver of light caught my attention between the joins of two of the gray curtains. Wondering if the sun was finally starting to rise, I decided that a glimpse of nature would help calm the panic racing through me.

When I slid the heavy gray curtain, with its intricate gold stitching aside, I expected to find a bank of windows like mine, only… it was another wall of screens. He had windows as well, but the first sheath of curtain concealed eight wall-mounted screens.

It took a few seconds for me to understand what I’d uncovered, but eventually I recognized the scenes playing across the screens—it was our pack house and yard. One of the screens near the middle repeated footage from earlier today when I’d been in the kitchen with Kassidy and Hunter; another was me in the pool this morning; a third was Hunter kissing me before bed tonight.

Oh fuck . I knew exactly what this was: security footage. But not just any old footage.

This was Slade’s stalker wall, and I was on every single screen.

I was his prey.