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Chapter twenty-two

Raider

After the phone call, I didn’t speak; I haven’t spoken since. I need my thoughts all gathered. This asshole has been in our house? He’s tormented her since she was fifteen?

This is unacceptable. I’m not angry at her at all. I thought perhaps I might be, but it’s not true. It’s devastating to realise, but I’m afraid for her. I feel like a storm, ready to unleash on whoever gets in my way.

Someone was so close to us and so close to taking her from us. That terrifies me.

I can’t lose her. That thought is what screamed in my head the whole time at the hotel. I don’t care about this fight with my family. I don’t care about the fact that my feelings got hurt.

I need her to be safe, and I will do whatever it takes. Forgive my family. Unleash hell upon this son of a bitch who thought he could terrorize this beta who has become a dream I never knew I wanted.

I storm into Callan’s office and sit down at the computer and start combing through the hours of footage our cameras have recorded. We don’t have motion detection on inside the house, but we do keep a continuous recording.

It’s in the fifth hour that I finally see something. He comes in during the night through the back door from the woods. I watch on every camera as he explores the house. He’s a dark shape with a balaclava on. No way of knowing who he is.

My heart is in my throat as I watch the audacity of this fucker .

I see the bedroom door open, and I watch as Callan lifts his head sleepily. No! No! No! I curl my fingers, leaning closer to the screen, trying to see if there’s anything I can pick out to give his identity away and also somehow hoping I can protect Callan.

He would have called out to me, thinking it was me. Or Wren. Or her. Callan would have sleepily asked for one of his pack, and no one answered him. I can see the door close gently with this fucker inside the room. Callan rolls over and goes back to sleep.

My panic blinds me to everything but this footage. He stands there for twenty minutes, just watching, and then he just turns and leaves. I trace his steps out of the house, and once he’s gone, something shatters inside of me.

My mind? My control? I let out a roar of rage, unable to hold it in any longer. I burst up from the desk and pace furiously.

He’s been in my house.

The door bursts open. “Raider! What’s wrong? It’s okay, Raider, talk to me!”

Kit grips my upper arms and pulls me into a hug.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I couldn’t protect-” I cut off the words, looking away.

“Is this about Ryann?”

I hesitate, but then shake my head. Kit goes still watching me. “You were one boy against many. What did you think you could do, Raider? You did your best.”

“You’re my pack and-”

“And nothing. Every fist you threw, every rescue you came to, every cut you cleaned, every bruise you kissed, you were the only one on our side. You were not the problem, Raider. It was the rest of the world.”

Callan steals into the room and circles his arms around me from behind. “You saved us.”

“It wasn’t enough!”

“It was everything!” Kit protests. “Everything, Raider. Don’t diminish what you did for us. For me.”

We stay like that, in a huddle, trapped in the nightmares I don’t think any of us have ever really healed from.

“Want to tell us what’s going on?” Callan asks.

I don’t. I really don’t, but I have to.

I open the saved section of recording that triggered me to melt down. “This! This is what’s wrong. It’s all fucking wrong. I’m going to kill this guy, Kit. I really am.”

Kit watches with a face that grows steadily more pale. “Oh, shit.”

Callan is breathing hard and too fast, and I pull him into me. He swallows hard and nods .

“Okay, let’s go through the rest of the footage together.”

We sit down, and it’s with a great deal of reluctance that I press play, but, this time, Kit and Callan stay with me. I find seven more nighttime explorations of our house and five daytime ones.

In each one, there is no possible way to work out his identity. I sit back when we get to the end. He didn’t break into the house while we were gone, which leads weight to the theory that he was there with us. He followed us across the country to taunt her in a hotel room. Waiting for his chance.

This predator is doing this for a fear response and because this is a game.

Kit reaches out and takes my hand. “I’m scared, but I can’t imagine how Ryann feels about all this.”

I stay silent for a long minute. “I can’t imagine it’s good.”

“What did you ask your family to handle?”

“I gave my dad the list of places where she has lived. They’re looking at anyone who moved there, checking security footage of different places she’s been, seeing if they can cross reference and discover his identity. I also sent them the photo Wren sent me of the boy on the team. His name is Eli Thompson.”

I bring up his information in the file that Zaden Mirakill sent me. It’s got photos of him as a boy, his date of birth, family history, but it’s not much. He disappeared off the face of the planet when her parents died.

“He was eighteen when she was fifteen. I wonder what triggered it?”

“It could have been anything, the way she looked, something she said, a perceived rejection. Maybe she smiled at him. Who fucking knows, and, to be honest, I don’t really care. He’s a threat to her. That’s enough for me to want him gone.”

Kit stands up, but he still looks pale and unhappy. “What do we tell them?”

I close my eyes. “Based on how well we’re all doing at communicating, I think we should probably go out there and tell the truth.”

“Even if it upsets or hurts her?”

“I think so. We need to start with a clean slate. If we start hiding information, then we might miss the clue that solves this.”

“You’re being remarkably calm,” Callan says cautiously.

My alpha is pale and shaky. He’s not taking this well.

I rub the stubble on my jaw and stand up, grabbing the door and holding it for them. “I’ve had a lot of time to think while I’ve been watching the feed. If we’d have talked to each other, we would have known all this beforehand.”

Kit shrugs and follows me into the lounge. Wren and Ryann look up, and though they smile, it doesn’t reach their eyes. The morning light shines through the windows, and I wonder if any of us will ever sleep here comfortably again.

I walk over and sit on the coffee table, reaching out to take her hand while Kit sits on the other side of her. Callan sits beside Wren, who takes one look at him and pulls him into a hug.

Yeah, this is pack. This is our future, and I’m not letting some piece of shit take it from us.

I gently break it to her, hating the fear and pain in her eyes. The panic is worse.

“That many times? How is he getting around without us scenting him?”

“Scent blockers,” Wren mutters furiously. “They’re available everywhere. He must put them on and come do his snooping and leave. Did he take her camera?”

I nod. “He also took some things out of your room.”

She licks her lips. “Yes, my jacket. I noticed.”

I sigh and scrub my hand over my face. “I’m not mad, not anymore, but can you please explain your thought processes behind why you kept this all secret?”

She shifts uneasily, only to still when Callan puts a hand on her thigh.

She huffs and looks up at the ceiling. I tense, wondering how bad this is going to be.

“No one believed me.”

The world shrinks down to a tiny point. It’s like I’m hearing Kit all over again. The echo from the past. Am I doomed to keep living this cycle over and over? How can I protect them when the whole world is against us?

“What?” I whisper through numb lips. My gaze shifts to Kit and back to her.

“No one believed me. They thought I was trying to get attention. The police, the neighbours, anyone I spoke to about it, they just didn’t believe me. I even had a boyfriend for a while, but when his stuff went missing, he assumed I’d pawned it. He went crazy, shouting at me, trying to get me to tell him the truth, and, in the end, he broke up with me because I wouldn’t say what he wanted to hear.”

I close my eyes and try like hell to calm the raging storm of my emotions because I don’t want her to feel alone. I don’t want her to think I’ve rejected her.

My parents always said that I react first and that reaction isolates people. I think they underestimate my control, but, in this, I will not waver.

Ryann has been through enough.

I puff my cheeks and blow out my breath as I stand up and start pacing.

“We saw a man standing in the middle of the road, right?”

“Yes!” Kit says. “And the letters with no letter inside.”

“The flowers,” Wren says .

“All the empty boxes addressed to Kit on the porch.”

I glance over my shoulder and can see them rapidly adding up clues and coming to four.

“So, you want to fight him, Ryann? Is this your battlefield? Is this your ice? Are you sure?”

She stares at me with wide violet eyes. Her auburn hair is loose, and, to me, she looks so very alive. I want her to fight. I want her to say the words that she’s done with him.

“I’m ready to end this, Raider. I’m sure.”

Her eyes well with tears.

“You believe me?”

Her damn voice is so tiny and scared.

“Of course, we believe you!” I growl at her.

“I’m so tired,” she admits.

That’s all I can take. I pull her into my arms and sit in her spot with Wren and Callan on one side, and Kit on the other.

“We’re going to help you. We’re going to be with you every step of the way. It’s going to be okay,” I murmur and swallow the emotion that’s sitting thick in my throat.

She curls up against me. We sit like that for a long time. Kit orders pizza from the 24-hour pizza place and lays it on the coffee table. Although we eat, no one really has an appetite, but Ryann refuses.

Callan pulls her out of my arms and coaxes her to eat more, teasing her until she cracks a smile.

Wren keeps a hand on my thigh, a steady support.

“You’re a good alpha, Raider Raines.”

I close my eyes and tilt my head toward him. “So are you.”

He brushes his fingertips along my jaw before urging me to turn towards him. I love this alpha, and I have since the moment I met him all those years ago, playing for a rival team.

I remember the flirtatious rage and excitement that would race through my bloodstream at the thought of seeing him.

I remember being slammed into the boards by him and wishing everyone and everything would disappear and leave us alone.

I remember touching his hand to congratulate him on his win and feeling an electric zing that wrecked me as I watched him skate out of my life.

I lived for our games.

Where we’d meet on the ice as enemies .

And then he walked into my clubroom, my team, my life. He put on the Greene Demon jumper, and I knew without a doubt I wasn’t going to let him leave. I wrangled it to have him sent to live with us, and I made sure that the team knew he was off limits.

I staked my claim, but I was getting nowhere until she came along and tipped our world upside down.

“You’re really going to retire?” I whisper.

Wren nods, those steel-grey eyes seeing too much. He always has. “Yeah, it’s time, and I don’t want to be apart from you, Kit, and Callan, and Ryann, if she stays.”

I press my lips to his jaw and lift a hand to his shoulder, pulling him into me.

“This is us, forever,” I whisper. “I’m not going to let anyone fuck it up.”

Wren chuckles. “Let's eat, then, and plan.”

I don’t know what it is about food, but it has a way of turning everything on its head.

Ryann sits back, full, her eyes distant, and purses her lips.

“What?” Kit asks and nudges her. The two of them are sitting side-by-side on the floor. Kit is sipping at his soda and watching her.

“If I refuse to go anywhere, he’s going to get frustrated and make a mistake. He likes the chase, the game, right?”

While this was my train of thought, hearing her say it makes me feel gross.

“I want you to do one thing for me, no, two,” Ryann says, looking at each of us in turn.

“What?” Callan asks before one of us can promise her the world.

“I want you to promise that if something should happen, something bad, I want you to remember the good times and not dwell. Don’t linger in regrets and what ifs. Just remember the good times we had.”

I swallow hard and put down my last half-eaten piece of pizza.

“That’s not going to happen.”

She flashes me a smile. “I know, but just in case.”

“And what is the other thing?” Callan asks quickly.

“I want you to get a tracker, and either put it on me or hide it on my person.”

I blink several times, but it’s a good idea. It’s a great idea. But then the fear slams into me, making it hard to breathe. The thought of her being in a position where we need to find her scares the shit out of me.

“We can do that!” Kit promises for us.

“Yes, we can,” Wren agrees.

I want to howl that it won’t come to that. That we’ll stop him beforehand, but I can’t open my mouth. I’m stuck, cold as ice, staring at her.

The lights make her auburn hair shine with the shimmer of rubies. The scent of brownies is in the air .

I think of her gone, and I know that we can’t fulfill that promise. There’s no way I can remember the happy times and not be completely shattered by her loss.

Because I’m in love with her.