Page 30 of Forsaken (The Nightwolf Pack #3)

CHAPTER 30

R onan

She does not remember.

“You have been asleep for days,” I tell her.

Serafina’s eyes go wide. “What did you just say?”

“What is the last thing you remember?” I ask instead of repeating myself.

She looks from Montgomery to Noah and then back at me. “Noah’s office. You were there,” she says.

Noah and I look at one another.

“Baby,” he says. “That was last Friday.”

“Almost a week ago,” she mumbles. “I’ve been asleep since then?” A wrinkle in her forehead appears.

“We brought you home. Spent the night together, and then you got up in the middle of the night. You don’t remember that?”

She shakes her head.

“Wait …” Her eyes squint. “I went to the kitchen … I think.”

I nod, and then explain coming out to find her on the back porch.

“And then you shifted,” Montgomery finally tells her after I recount everything that transpired until that point.

“I what?”

Again, my brothers and I look between one another.

“ How can she not remember?” Noah asks me through our bond. “ Have you ever heard of such a thing? A wolf not remembering their shift?”

I shake my head.

“Your wolf wanted to run,” I explained to her.

Montgomery snorts and laughs. “She likes being chased … by us.” His words tinge the air with sexual tension.

Serafina ducks her head, hiding her grin. “That checks out.”

“How so?” I ask.

Serafina pushes out a breath. “I think I can feel her.” She runs a hand across her chest. “Here. And … she likes being around you three. And your wolves. Probably loves it.” She snickers.

Serafina soon sobers and covers her mouth in a gasp.

“What is it?” Montgomery asks, worriedly.

She slowly lowers her hands. “I have a wolf,” she says in a whisper. “I have one …” There’s awe in her voice. “Like, really.”

She looks between all of us. “But it’s like she and I are disconnected. I sense her inside of me, stronger now, but it still feels … murky. I don’t remember shifting or even being in my wolf form. What’s she like?”

My lips curl into a reminiscent grin. “She is the most exquisite creature I have ever seen,” I answer honestly. My comment is punctuated by my wolf’s howl inside of my chest.

Serafina’s lips fall apart. She opens and closes them a few times before asking, “Did we …” She looks between the three of us, visibly shifting in Noah’s lap.

“Baby, we can’t keep up a discussion if you keep doing that,” he tells her.

“I should sit in my own?—”

“Don’t fucking move,” Noah growls when she tries to shift to the free chair next to them.

My wolf grows restless with the rising sexual tension in the air. But I push him back. We need to talk more about this. Serafina’s confused. And she still does not know everything yet.

“What does she look like?” she finally asks.

“All black,” Montgomery replies. “The most beautiful black coat of fur. It almost sparkles.”

Noah and I nod.

“But your eyes in your wolf …” I trail off, looking between Montgomery and Noah. “They’re fiery red.”

Serafina’s head juts backwards. “Red? Why?”

“There is more,” I say. “Your paw tracks. They’re abnormal.”

“What? How?”

“Instead of typical paw tracks left in the wake of your wolf, yours were charred. As if your mere touch burned the ground.”

“And when Ronan lifted you from the ground, your body temperature was warmer than usual. Even for a wolf,” Montgomery adds.

“Warm?” she mutters to herself.

“You’ve been asleep since we brought you home,” Noah says.

“But it took you two full days of sleeping off and on in your wolf form before you shifted back,” I tell her.

“So, I’ve been asleep in my human form for three days?”

I nod. “We were able to wake you up a few times here and there to feed you and give you water, but I’m assuming you don’t recall those moments either?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

Silence falls around us. It’s been days since any of us has left the house. The three of us were elated at the sudden appearance of Serafina’s wolf. All of our wolves still are.

Mine continues to gripe at me for not believing him when he tried to tell me there was a wolf inside of her.

But I still have not fully processed it. I have never come across a wolf like hers. One who takes years to make its appearance, and does so out of nowhere. Also, a wolf that burns the earth it walks on.

“She’ll destroy you.”

My grandfather’s words from all of those years ago sound off. At first, when Noah and I told him that we had found our mate in Serafina, he became adamant that she would destroy our pack.

Which he used to threaten her life.

Unable to bear the idea of him taking her from us, and knowing that he meant what he said, I made the decision to keep as far away from her as possible. It was only upon our grandfather’s death that the need to be closer to her grew until I could no longer hold back anymore.

None of us could.

Fool!

My wolf does not hesitate to remind me how foolish I was back then, and for years afterward. He is right. I should have found a way to keep her safe. Even while my grandfather was alive.

“Why didn’t my wolf wait until the supermoon to come out?” Serafina asks. “Or, I mean, why didn’t she emerge during any of the other, what, tens of supermoons I’ve lived through? Where was she all of this time?”

She shakes her head, trying to make sense of it all. I reach across the table, taking her hand.

“She’s here now,” I tell her.

Serafina smiles at me but it fails to reach her eyes.

“That doesn’t explain all of this. I mean, the burn marks in the ground? All of the times I feel hot and …” She trails off.

“And what?” I ask.

“There’s something I?—”

Serafina startles, and all three of our wolves growl at the sudden knock on the door.

“Who is it?” I demand to know, from across the room. I reach the door in less than three strides.

“Alpha Ronan, it’s Johnson.”

Johnson is the beta who has been assigned to keep an eye on Peter since he left the pack. The last we heard of Peter, he was headed up north toward colder territory.

“What is it?” I ask, yanking the door open.

Johnson is not alone.

From behind me, I hear Serafina tell Noah that she should go and change. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as she practically sprints down the hallway.

I dislike having her out of my sight for a second, but at the same time, I loathe the idea of her standing in the living room in just a T-shirt while two of our male betas stand at the door.

“Is there trouble on the perimeter?” Noah questions, moving to stand next to me. His voice is just as agitated as mine. I know it’s because he doesn’t like having our time with our mate interrupted either.

“No, Alpha. The perimeter is clear,” Johnson answers.

“Then?” Montgomery questions, also impatient.

“This is about, uh …” Johnson hesitates.

“Your mate,” Casey, the second beta with Johnson, answers.

“You mean your Alpha Queen,” Noah corrects, his voice growing low.

Casey nods.

“Tell them,” Johnson urges.

“We received an anonymous email.”

“About what?” Noah questions.

“The Alpha Queen.”

“What did it say?” I ask, my neck already growing hot with tension. It cannot be anything good if they are here this early in the morning to discuss the issue.

“The email claimed that she’s a threat to our pack.”

Three pairs of eyes look at Montgomery, who immediately starts growling. His wolf might not be feral, but he will go berserk if there is any sort of threat toward our mate. That much I know for sure.

“Calm down.” Instinctively, I say this through our bond, forgetting that he cannot hear or speak to us in this way.

Yet, Montgomery cuts his gaze to me. His shoulders relax, slightly. As if he did hear me.

Johnson continues, “The email claimed that our Alpha Queen posed a threat to our pack because of the type of wolf she is. It told us that if she remains with us for much longer, that will be the end of the Blackclaw pack.”

“Who the fuck sent the email?” Noah demands. I do not bother telling him to calm down because hearing those words from our beta damn near sends my wolf into a rage.

“It was anonymous,” Casey answers.

“Email can be traced. Aren’t you a fucking tech wiz?” Noah throws back at him. “Isn’t that why we have you on the pack’s security team in the first place?”

While physical security is paramount with the advent and wild growth of technology and the threats it poses to our kind, we always keep a tech expert on our security team. His job is to scour the internet for any possible leaks or stories that could lead humans to us, and to get rid of them.

Casey also often works with tech whizzes from other packs to ensure the safety and anonymity of all shifters.

“Obviously, the claim is bullshit,” Noah spits out. “Why are you even bringing this nonsense to us? Has our mate ever given any indication that she’s a threat?”

Johnson shakes his head, but then replies, “I would’ve dismissed it but there’s more.” He looks between the three of us. “There was a riddle.”

Noah tuts. “A fucking riddle.”

“It said: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I know who your red hot new alpha queen really is. Do you?’ And this picture was attached to the email.”

He takes the printout from Casey and hands it to me.

I clench my jaw so tight that my teeth ache when I immediately recognize the picture. In the image are sets of charred paw marks. The same marks that Serafina’s wolf left in the trail days ago.

I hand the picture to Noah who then passes it to Montgomery.

“Run a trace on that fucking email,” I demand.

Both of our betas’ eyes widen. They have never heard me curse. I do not care about their sensibilities right now.

“I tried as soon as I read the contents of the email,” he replies. “I knew you would want to know that information. Whoever sent the email used a special browser in conjunction with a VPN and, what’s likely a burner email account. The signal’s not impossible to trace but very difficult and it’ll take some time to track down, if possible.”

“How long will it take?” Montgomery questions.

All three shake their heads.

“It’s hard to tell,” Sean replies. “Our tech is good but what we can do is limited and?—”

“Get on it,” I instruct, cutting him off. “In the meantime, I want to know who the hell was on our territory.” I hold up the picture of Serafina’s paw prints.

“What’s going on?”

We all turn to face Serafina, who is now dressed in a long-sleeve button-down shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans.

My chest constricts at the sight of confusion on her beautiful face. I take a step in her direction, the urge to pull her into me, to protect her, overcoming me.

“What are you doing?” she asks when I press her head against my chest. My actions do not even occur to me. All I know is that my wolf suddenly goes into protective mode.

As well as my human.

“Something’s definitely wrong,” she says, pulling back to look up at me. She grins, as if telling a joke, but her eyes always give her away.

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

“You’re lying.” She stares me directly in the eyes as she says this, reading me the same way I read her.

“There’s a picture,” Noah says.

I glare at my brother.

“She should know,” he says.

“What picture?”

I reluctantly release Serafina when she pulls away. “What picture? I want to see it.”

“It’s not impor?—”

“I want to see it,” she insists, cutting Montgomery off.

My brother looks at me.

I hold out the image for her to see. “Someone caught images of your paw prints from that night.”

She inspects the pictures before worried eyes move to me. I hate the fear and vulnerability in them.

On instinct, I sniff the air, my wolf’s reminder that there are other men present. Wolves who are not her mates. I almost forgot about our two betas, awaiting instructions at the door.

“Get on with what we talked about,” I tell them.

“There’s one more issue,” Casey adds, shifting from one foot to the other.

“What is it?” Montgomery growls, instinctively knowing, just like me, that whatever he’s about to say is not going to be good.

“We’re not the only ones that email was sent to.”

Serafina gasps. “Who?—”

I push her behind me, holding her to my body with one arm before asking Sean, “Who else knows?”

Another uncomfortable look between the three of them.

“Who?” Montgomery demands.

“The entire pack. They’re calling for a pack meeting.”

I grind my teeth so hard that I come dangerously close to cracking a tooth.

“We will contact you in an hour,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “Look deeper into who sent this email.”

I wait until they have given their words to get to work tracking down whoever sent this picture and email, before slamming the door.

The three of us turn to Serafina who has gone completely still in the middle of the living room.

“Baby.” Noah is the first to try to approach her, but she holds up a hand, stopping him.

“No.”

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Montgomery says. “This doesn’t change anything.”

Serafina lets out a scoffing laugh. “Isn’t that the problem?”

I tilt my head to the side. Her eyes land on me.

“You’ve known all along, right?”

I narrow my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“This is why you rejected me in the first place, correct? Because I was … am a threat to everything I touch. Anything I get close to …” She trails off, wagging her head. “I bring more harm than good and it’s coming true.”

She juts out a hand toward the email and photo printout in Noah’s hand.

“There’s the proof. What type of wolf first can’t shift for years? Then when I do shift, I burn the fucking ground just by walking on it? What does that even mean? And now your pack is probably in an uproar.”

“Our pack,” I say in a low but rock-hard tone.

Her eyes go wide.

“The Blackclaw pack is not just ours.” I look at my brothers and then back to our mate. “You are one of us because you’re ours.”

Serafina’s bottom lip quivers before she tucks it in between her teeth.

A hiss comes from Montgomery. Every single one of us has an overtly physical reaction to her.

“No,” Serafina contends. “I’m … I’m not good for … anyone.”

She gasps in surprise when I eliminate the space between us, taking her face in my hands.

“Do not ever say that nonsense again.”

“Why not?” she counters. “Isn’t that what you said to me? Isn’t that why?—”

“I was a fool.” I look at Noah, who comes up beside us.

“We both were,” he says.

“If I could go back in time and erase that entire memory from all three of our minds, I would,” I tell her. “It was bullshit then and it is bullshit now. You belong to us and anyone … anyone who tries to get in the way of that will pay severe consequences.”

I pull her into my chest, squeezing her to me because I need her closeness to control my own raging emotions. My wolf paces inside of my chest, both anger and comfort warring within him as well.

We both know someone or something intends to do us harm. My wolf’s nerves are comforted by his mate’s closeness. Serafina’s wolf is odd, though. She is there but also feels far off. Like there’s some unseeable distance between us and her.

Noah pulls Serafina from my arms. Though I hate it, I know aside from my own arms there is no safer place for her to be than in the arms of either one of my brothers. The three of us will protect her from whatever is coming.

“Everything he said,” Noah tells her before cupping her face and kissing her.

Montgomery follows Noah in making the same vow.

Though Serafina gives into the kiss and allows the three of us to comfort her, I sense her continued unease. We all do.

“Ours to protect,” I tell Noah who nods.

Strange enough, though, Montgomery nods as well as if he heard what I just said.