Page 38

Grey

“Jase,” I greet before leaving the room, Joel following me. We move down a level to the garage.

“Grey,” he says. “Listen… I think we need to go in.”

“Joel’s here, I’m puttin’ you on speaker. Go in?”

“You’re on speaker, too.” Jase advises. “Got Linc and Jared here. I say we knock a panel of fence down, get in there and see what the fuck is what. Don’t like what we’re smelling, Jared ‘n me. But Linc’s even less happy. Linc got one whiff of this place and started puking his guts up.”

There’s a downside of having the strongest nose in our pack.

“Linc?” I call.

“Hey,” Linc grits out. “There’s death in there. Death, sickness, and fuckin’ despair, brother. I smell dozens of ‘em. Men but mostly women, kids, and old folks. Place reeks and there’s something here I’ve smelled before on a case that might mean this motherfucker is poisoning his people.”

“Fuck,” I snap.

“It’s worse,” Jase puts in. “It’s lookin’ completely locked down from the outside. Brother, they’re all locked in. ”

“Fuck!” I clip louder. “Right. I’m heading that way and we’ll go in together,” I say. “I’ll bring some guys with me. Some resources, maybe.”

“Yeah, bro. Thinkin’ resources will be necessary,” Jase adds.

“I’m texting Cat to tell her what I think this is, so she’ll know what meds they’ll need,” Linc adds.

“I’ll see if I can bring Cat.”

“Do that,” Linc returns.

“Right, so I’ll get organized here and be fast. People might be scared. Bringing Stacy and Luke to soften that.”

“Blakely still there?” Linc asks.

“Dunno,” I respond, but Joel pipes up.

“Saw him at Roxy’s not ten minutes ago and he’d just ordered his breakfast when I was headin’ out.”

“Know he’s pissed us off with what went down with Rye, but I think you’d better bring him,” Linc says.

“Not sure Riley’d be okay with him being further entrenched in pack matters,” Jase weighs in.

“True,” I say, “Though we’re on SCC radar with this already based on what happened last night and if my mate’s brother has more crimes to answer for, best we do things by the book instead of being hauled before a tribunal. Meadows won’t have a leg to stand on based on everything that’s happened so far and if Mitch sees the state of Silver Hills himself that should further be the nail in this clown’s coffin.”

“Good point,” Joel says. “Way he was when I saw him, the doc’s lookin’ to mend fences before he goes. And if these Silver Hills folks are sick, this is who Cat’s gonna confer with.”

“Exactly,” Linc states.

Joel suggests, “I’ll call Riley and patch in Tyson and Mase. We’ll have a quick convo. Yeah?” He pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“Good plan,” I agree as both Jase and Linc chime in with agreement.

“Call you right back to patch you in,” Joel tells them, and I hang up and blow out a long exhale.

***

Taking in the sight and scents in front of me have me wishing we had the whole fuckin’ day to ourselves.

She’s lifting massive, thick cookies off a cookie sheet with a spatula and setting them into a storage container.

Fuck, it smells good in here. My mate. Warm cookies. Chocolate chip. Sure be nice to be here with her today, hanging out, watching movies, fucking, showering together, all that instead of this shit kicking off.

But the sooner this shit gets looked after, the sooner we can move on.

“Babe,” I say.

Stacy looks up at me.

“Hi,” she says with a shaky smile.

“Why is your smile so hesitant?” I ask.

“It feels like something is wrong. In here.” She puts the spatula down and presses her palm to her chest. “In your spot. Bailey told me your two favorite desserts are chocolate chip cookies and cheesecake, and I know cookies won’t help with anything, but I wanted to do something to comfort you, so I whipped up cheesecake stuffed chocolate chip cookies.”

“Come here,” I order gruffly.

She comes to me and I soak in the feel of her as our bodies connect.

I cup her jaw and say, “My favorite things are looking at you and fucking you.”

“Oh,” she whispers and arousal hits my nose.

I’m setting us on the wrong course here, so I immediately say, “Blossom, we need to go to Silver Hills.”

Her body locks tight as her pretty brandy eyes widen with alarm. “Y-you and some more of the guys?”

“Also you. When Jase called an hour ago?”

She waits, braced for more information.

I stroke her hair as I speak, hoping to soften the blow.

“Been organizing some shit since then. Jared’s updates said he’s been doing surveillance and no movement in or out since he got there but he never got too close to the gates to get a good look or a good whiff. Linc’s got the strongest nose in the council, and he was alarmed when he got there. Says it smells like death. Like sickness. Jase walked the perimeter, and it’s all locked from the outside. Padlocks at every junction. Linc couldn’t even get as close as Jase with the smell. Said he smells mostly women, kids, and old folks. Was it like that before you left? Was it bad like this sounds when you left?”

“It was bad, but this makes it sound like it’s worse. Locked from the outside? Wyatt must have locked everything down before they came here. People have been leaving, running away. Maybe he’s trying to stop whoever is left?”

“People sick when you left?”

“I mean… sort of.”

“Wanna help me make sense of what you’re sayin’, sweetheart?” I ask.

“We’d been losing our elderly,” she whispers. “Losing them faster than we should. They seem to take a turn and go downhill fast. It wasn’t like… a lot at once but it was more than seemed normal.”

“No pack healer?” I ask.

She scoffs.

“I take that as a no . I don’t know exactly what Linc’s catching with his nose, but he says it smells like something he came across once where a pack was being poisoned.”

She stares at me with pain in her eyes.

“Talk to me.”

“Like I said, the water… it’s bad. He’s got so much junk and nobody’s ever taken care to protect the soil. He says he can’t afford to dig another well. Not that there’s likely anywhere left on that land that’s not affected. We’re on our third in ten years. He sold part of the land to developers with windmills or something and they didn’t put anything in yet, but it felt like our territory has shrunk to the size of the junkyard, but it’s more like our whole village has become the junkyard.” She shrugs. “I haven’t been gone that long, so I don’t know if it’s worse than it was. If more people ran off. And… I might be desensitized to that smell.”

“Need to throw a bag together with a couple days’ worth of clothes and get down there quickly. Do you think you can do that for us?”

She nods, but she looks utterly broken. And I hate it.

“We’ll help,” I tell her.

“What could you do, though?” she asks, looking perplexed and also hopeful.

“We’ll see what we’re lookin’ at when we get there and make a plan from there. I promise, I’ll do whatever I can do to help.”

“I know,” she says softly, like I’ve said the right answer, given her what she was hoping for. “And I’m so, so grateful for that, Greyson.” She loses it and starts to cry.

I kiss her while holding tight, adding, “We’ve got Dr. Blakely from the SCC coming with us and Catrina Savage, Ty’s mom, pack healer. They’re rounding up first aid supplies, bringing jugs of water and food since we don’t know what we’re looking at. Let’s get there as soon as we can, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna go talk to Luke. Get him to answer some questions, see if he’s got any info about the state of things when he left that’d help us know what we’re lookin’ at. If you can throw that bag together for us, that’d be good.”

My phone pings with a text and it’s Riley.

Brody called. He wants to help out. He’ll meet you there.

Brody, Riley’s brother, is a year younger than we are. He hasn’t been home in months. He’s alpha, used to work with us at Savage Construction, but has been away a lot the last ten years. He tends to come back three or four times a year.

I reply with:

Perfect.

Turning to Stacy, I say, “It’ll be me, Riley’s brother Brody, a couple guys from the pack, the doc, Cat, you and Luke. We’ve got Jase, Linc, and Jared already there. Joel, Mase, Ty, and Rye will hang back and look after things here.”

“Wow,” she says, pulling away, drying her tears on her sleeves. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you.”

I quickly pull her back to me and kiss her head.

“I hate my brother,” she mutters into my chest.

I kiss her head again and give her a squeeze, feeling the same.