Page 33 of A Wolf’s Wound

Ryder

“Bringing a girl home, Ry?” Evan asks teasingly. “Introducing her to the parents? Must be serious!”

“Yeah, really,” Thomas adds with a grin. “Unless she takes one look at your pit of a place and runs for the hills.”

“Can we focus, please?” I ask, embarrassed by their teasing. I look across the room at my oldest brother. “Gavin, I really do think this is the safest place for Hannah.”

He nods but still looks concerned. What I’m asking him to do—allow Hannah to stay in the packlands—isn’t a request any of us would make lightly. Gavin would be well within his rights as alpha to tell me she can’t stay out here, regardless of the risk I believe she faces back in the city.

Laughter wafts through the windows of this room where my brothers and I have gathered for this impromptu meeting. I glance out of the one closest to me, wishing we could all be out there, relaxing and enjoying the evening.

Hannah’s still talking to my parents. I wonder what they’re telling her and what she’s telling them. What she’s thinking about, and if she still regrets coming here.

“I agree,” Gavin finally says. “Although I have to admit that I have some reservations about having her stay indefinitely.”

“That’s okay, so does she,” I admit, and Gavin chuckles.

“So what exactly happened at her place?” Thomas asks.

I open my mouth, but Michael, who’s in charge of all of the enforcers, answers instead.

“Some sort of wolf-human hybrid broke into Hannah’s apartment,” he explains in his calm, serious manner.

“We think it would have attacked both Hannah and her roommate, but one of our team was nearby. He and Ryder subdued the creature.”

“Did you guys recognize him?” Jackson asks. Michael shakes his head.

“So how many attacks are we up to now?” Evan asks nervously.

Gavin sighs. “I’m honestly not sure. It depends on if you count what happened to the animals.”

“Man,” Evan says, shaking his head. “This is freaky.”

“It’s actually worse,” I say, and they all look at me. I sigh and look back out the window, wishing even more fiercely that I was out there, not in here. “I found another body.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Michael asks.

“I’m telling you now,” I reply.

“You know what I mean,” he growls.

“I’m sorry I didn’t. But I’ve been trying to figure out what it means,” I say.

Michael just shakes his head.

“Why not tell all of us?” Gavin asks.

“Because I think—look, there was a note addressed to me.” I swallow and decide to come clean. “There have actually been two notes addressed to me. I think they’re from whoever is doing this.”

I catch my brothers up on the events of the last few days. When I finish, the room is completely silent.

To my surprise, Jackson finally speaks. “You should have told us,” he says to me.

“I know. I’m sorry,” I say again. “I didn’t want to drag more of you into this mess.”

“We’re already in it,” Jackson points out. “This is happening to Stonehaven, Ryder. That means all of us. We can’t help you or anyone else if we don’t have all of the information.”

“Jack’s right,” Michael agrees. “I’m glad you’re telling us now, at least. Do you still have the notes?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I’d like to look at them and have a couple of my guys take a look too. Is that okay?” But he’s asking Gavin, not me. Gavin nods, of course, and Michael looks a little mollified.

Then Gavin looks at me. I stand up straighter and directly meet his stare. I’m not proud of myself for keeping this information from my brothers, but I’m also not going to apologize again.

“This is our jurisdiction,” Gavin says. “From here on out, we all work together.”

“Is it, though?” I ask. “The councilman’s death… I agree that that’s our jurisdiction. But I’m honestly not sure the rest of it is something the pack should be dealing with. Especially if this is one guy with a vendetta against me specifically.”

“We all need to find out who’s doing this, what caused this,” Gavin says forcefully. “Jackson’s right. This is affecting all of Stonehaven. And you’ve seen bites,” he adds. “That all makes it our jurisdiction.”

“Okay.” I nod, knowing that arguing won’t accomplish anything. And I’m not even sure I disagree with what my brothers are saying. I just feel uneasy that they might be getting dragged into something that feels so personal to me.

“So what do we do now?” Thomas asks.

“Kick some creature ass!” Evan says.

Michael snorts. “You feel that amped up, bro, come do a shift with an enforcer team.”

“Sure!”

“Great, I’ll put you on the two a.m. downtown watch.” Michael smirks. “You’ll have to patrol all of the drunks leaving the bars at closing time and make sure none of them cause any trouble.”

“Wait, tonight? I was kind of planning on being one of the bar drunks tonight,” Evan says, his face falling. “Me and some of the guys were going to go out when this winds down.”

“In that case, put him on the eight a.m. shift,” Thomas suggests with an evil grin. “Send his hungover ass out into the streets.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,” Michael tells him.

“I can do that,” Evan protests. “Seriously, Michael, let me go out then.”

“Sure.” He shrugs.

“While I’m glad you’re stepping up,” Gavin tells Evan, “I’m not sure that beefing up the patrols is the way to go here.”

“Because we’ve already had patrols, and this shit keeps happening,” I say, and Gavin nods. “So maybe we need a new approach.”

“Exactly,” Gavin says.

“We know Hannah’s apartment building and the forest are the two locations where the most bodies have been found and the most attacks have happened,” I continue.

“And all of the bodies, aside from the councilman’s, have been human,” Thomas adds.

“Right. We also know that the forest animals have been threatened twice—once in the large attack that sent so many of them to Hannah’s clinic and then the deer that also ended up in the clinic a couple of days ago,” I add.

We’re all quiet, thinking about the different pieces of this puzzle. I close my eyes, imagining all of this as an actual puzzle. I move the pieces around in my mind, trying to find any connections.

To me, everything comes back to Hannah, starting with the attacks themselves. But if whoever’s behind this is targeting me in some way, why involve Hannah from the beginning? I hadn’t even met Hannah when she was attacked the first time.

But I still knew that she was in trouble, I realize. I knew I needed to go to her. What if whoever’s behind this knew I would do that?

Except that’s impossible. How could someone predict my behavior like that? And if I still don’t know what made me leave the date with April to save Hannah, how is it possible that someone else would know that?

“I don’t know what all this means,” Thomas says. “Except that the patrols should focus on Hannah and the forest.”

“We already have round-the-clock protection at her apartment,” Gavin says.

“We’ll add a team to the clinic,” Michael decides. “And double the number of patrols in the forest.”

“What do you think?” Gavin asks me.

I open my mouth to respond, when suddenly I hear a voice.

It’s not one of my brothers; it’s not my parents or Hannah or anyone from the pack.

It’s a voice I don’t know but still recognize immediately.

I feel another memory rise to the surface of my subconscious.

But the second I reach for it, it’s gone.

I spin around, searching for it. If I just heard the voice, if I’m remembering something, that means the speaker must be close.

Right?