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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

logan

Tuesday Morning

M y staring out the window of my study didn’t help much, yet no matter what I wanted to do, my gaze was always drawn back to the window that pointed toward the fox territory… and Emma.

She’d been fucking magnificent in the council den, and I scented her desire.

If she’d given me any indication, I’d have scooped her up, brought her home, and taken her to bed.

I’d been sure her thoughts had been running the same direction mine had, and I could almost taste her desire. Then her expression had turned angry.

Surely, she understood that my home was now her home. I’d discovered her at her campsite and been the first witness to her sudden skills, and I had saved her from waking up alone in the woods.

But then she demanded to stay at Red Tail, and Jasper had obnoxiously announced that she would stay in his den. His den. Not here in Six-Mile Manor.

It was Emma I cared about for many more reasons than the multimorph prophecy. I craved her body, her presence, and losing her to the prophecy or to Acheron were heavy weights on my mind, sinking my heart.

Yet I envied Jasper’s access to her, and the thought of him teaching her burned through me like the beginnings of an unending nightmare. What if she found herself in his bed? Would she deny him ? Would she run away? Or would she embrace him?

Olivia stomped into the room. When I turned away from the window, she put her hands on her hips. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Pining after Emma, you mean.”

I snorted. “Hardly.”

“I know you better than you think, Logan Blackwood.” She pulled a cell from her pocket. “We got her phone fixed. You should give it to her next time you see her.”

Answering her accusation was pointless, so I didn’t. Instead, I put the phone in my pocket, crossed my arms and glowered at her.

“Why didn’t you tell her you had the hots for her?” She took a seat in the chair on the other side of my desk.

She wasn’t going to let it go, and pulling alpha rank on her would only add fuel to her ire.

“I was pretty clear at Vixen’s,” I snarled. “She already knows. ”

Olivia’s gaze narrowed. “Vixen’s, huh? I don’t think you ever told me about that. Care to share?”

The snap of my jaws kept anything else from tumbling out. Divulging the details of our failed night of passion didn’t appeal to me, and my study wasn’t a confessional. It was where I kept everything I needed to lead Six-Mile: weapons, go-bags, and books. Olivia could take a flying leap.

Instead, I returned to the business at hand. “Any news on the missing shifters?”

Her mouth puckered. “None. We’ve traced Rachel to the edge of our territory, near one of the crappy parish roads, but there’s been nothing else. More shifters have come up missing since. They’ve all disappeared without a trace.”

“How were the shifters in Willow Creek?” I asked.

“No news is good news,” she answered. “They were all accounted for and surprised to see me. Nothing worth mentioning. Rachel is the latest missing from Six-Mile.”

“Which other clans have lost members?”

“A handful from the ravens, and Marcus sent word about one of his females disappearing. I’m sure there’s more.”

“A handful of ravens?” I took a seat at my desk, sorting through papers until I located the list of the missing and added the others to the list. What was Acheron playing at? “If ravens turned, they’d make easy spies.”

“True, but we have no proof any of the missing are actually working with Acheron now.” Olivia’s phone buzzed, and she glanced down at the notification. “Dr. Wise wants to know if you’ve read any of the new information she put on the server.”

“Haven’t checked on anything yet.” I flipped on my laptop for the first time today, and it searched for the latest program and app updates.

“No, you’ve been pining for Emma,” she said.

I shot her a look. “What’s the job in Willow Creek look like?”

“Fine. On schedule. Nothing looks out of the ordinary or horribly amiss. Like I said, all the shifters assigned to the construction site were accounted for, and none of them reported anything unusual.”

“Very well.”

My screen flicked to the desktop, and I clicked on the email icon. My finger scan and password brought up the inbox. Dr. Wise’s email sat at the top with several bright red exclamation points to indicate the urgent nature of the information.

Olivia grinned at something on her phone screen, but she didn’t make a move to leave. The conversation wasn’t over for her, and more discussion about my attraction to Emma wasn’t on my agenda. At least Olivia’s phone was keeping her entertained and out of my business.

I clicked on the scanned images. They described how shifter energy could be magnified or borrowed and how this fact would play in to the eventual success or demise of the multimorph. As I read, one notation in Dr. Wise’s hard-to-read penmanship made my blood run cold .

Review dark spells related to absorbing shifter energy.

I blinked and read the words twice more.

Absorb shifter energy.

The unaccounted shifters were probably dead, and death was required for dark magic. Could Acheron really have worked out how to absorb shifter energy? What if they’d been consumed into nothing?

It would explain why we couldn’t find any trace of the missing. The mages had been covered in shifter blood when they’d attacked our secret meeting. Maybe that was how they absorbed shifters.

A burst of wind howled around the old manor, pulling my attention away from the computer. Colors danced in the gust. What the f…

The burst of energy slammed into my back, knocking me from the desk chair to my knees on the hardwood floor. The pressure in the room increased, pushing me against the ground.

I took a deep breath. Emma… It was tied to Emma. Twisting my head to the side allowed me to check on Olivia.

She had dropped her phone, and she was slammed back in the chair.

“Fuck…” I groaned. My skin burned from the strength of magic in the air. “It’s Emma.”

The weight in atmosphere lessened.

Olivia clawed her way to her feet and charged toward the window. She clutched to windowsill so hard her knuckles turned white. “What the hell is she doing?”

I grunted. “She must have tapped into the primal layer of her magic.”

The energy still surged through the atmosphere, practically creating a flare to her location.

Every shifter in Louisiana would have been able to feel that, and Acheron wouldn’t wait to make a move for my mate.

If he was trotting all around the clans, soaking up shifter energy, Emma was in extreme danger.

I grabbed my go-bag from the largest drawer in my desk.

“The primal?” Olivia’s voice rose to a screechy octave. “She hasn’t been a shifter for all of three days. What the hell is she learning at Red Tail?”

“What she needs to,” I said. It had been the right place for her, and the revelation tore at my heart as I marched toward the front door. “Let me know if you find Rachel. If you find her, tell her I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m headed to Red Tail.”

My beta caught my arm. “Logan, you have to ask for permission and wait for permission. It’s the only way to keep peace between the clans.”

The energy stopped short, and my heart slammed against my sternum.

“You know I’m not going to wait. Emma needs me, and Flynn, Jasper, and the rest of them can go fuck themselves.”