Page 28 of The Reluctant Mate (Shifters of the Three Rivers #5)

Chapter twenty-eight

Derek

W e made it back to Three Rivers by early morning, the sky just beginning to bleed from black to gray at the edges. My mind kept running through every possible scenario of what might be happening to Sofia, each worse than the last.

My wolf paced restlessly beneath my skin, growling for action, for violence.

Find her.

We will, I promise.

But we both knew I couldn’t make that promise.

We headed straight to Shaw Investigations, the PI agency my brothers had built from nothing. The sign above the door was simple, understated—just like Sam and Mason themselves. With Mason now Alpha of the Bridgetown Pack and Sam spending most of his time with the Wolf Council, Carlito Mendez was running the day-to-day operations. He’d turned out to be exactly what the business needed—methodical, ruthless when necessary, and completely unbothered by Pack politics.

I gripped the handle of the glass front door, the metal cool against my palm, and pushed it open with more force than necessary. I’d called ahead from the car, first to Ryan, then to Carlito—letting them know we would need Waylen’s tech expertise on this.

Ryan had been waiting for us in the parking garage, leaning against his truck, arms crossed over his broad chest. His face was carved from stone, jaw tight enough to crack walnuts. Seriously fucked off didn’t begin to cover it. I knew the feeling—it was churning in my own gut, threatening to spill over into something dangerous.

He’d taken one look at Sam and me as we climbed out of our cars, then just growled, “Inside.”

Right.

The office was already humming with early morning activity. Dean, the receptionist with the keen eyes that missed nothing, gave us a tight nod as he pressed the button under his desk that unlocked access to the main office. I returned the nod briefly, already moving past the desk, not breaking stride. The lock disengaged with a barely audible click as we pushed through.

Inside, the space opened up, desks arranged in neat rows around the perimeter. Some staff were already glued to their screens, others examining photographs and documents pinned to walls in organized grids. The scent of coffee and paper mingled with the distinct odors of the people themselves—some freshly showered, trailing clouds of citrus shampoo and sandalwood shower gel, while others clearly hadn’t made it home last night, their clothes carrying the stale sweat of overtime and the lingering garlic from someone’s pasta dinner.

You could tell which corner belonged to Waylen from a mile off—a disaster zone of organized chaos that he somehow made function like a well-oiled machine. Energy drink cans formed precarious towers beside his multiple monitors, some with post-it notes stuck to them, his writing a crazy scribble only he could decipher. Tangled charging cables snaked across his desk like electronic spaghetti, connecting at least three phones, two tablets, and what looked like several external hard drives. The wall behind his station had transformed into a maze of sticky notes, printed code snippets, and newspaper clippings connected by red string like something out of a conspiracy theorist’s basement. A half-eaten bag of Cheetos lay open next to a mechanical keyboard that glowed with rainbow backlighting, but there was no Waylen in sight.

The door to the briefing room swung open, and Carlito stepped into the frame, filling it with his presence despite his average height. He was lean and muscular, the kind of build that came from years of constant, hands-on work rather than flashy gym training. His skin was sun-worn and tanned, etched with a few scars that peeked out from beneath his rolled-up shirtsleeves. The inked lines of a tribal tattoo curled around his right forearm—the old Pack symbol from a Los Angeles territory, where he’d grown up. Behind him, I could see Jase pacing back and forth like a caged animal, his agitation a mirror of my own.

“In here,” said Carlito, his voice carrying the subtle accent of his hometown.

We followed him into the room, and I felt Carlito’s eyes tracking us, lingering a moment longer on Sam before cutting to me. His gaze was assessing, missing nothing.

“You look like shit,” he said bluntly.

Carlito had been brought into Shaw Investigations by Mason and Sam. He’d been in the army before that. His superiors had blamed him for an op that went wrong, and he’d been dishonorably discharged from his unit. He’d gone lone wolf after that, taking mercenary jobs that grew increasingly dangerous until Mason and Sam tracked him down. He’d been here a couple of years now, and the Pack and the job seemed to suit him. Waylen liked to joke that Carlito’s supernatural ability wasn’t just his skills in tracking and combat; it was the way he could make anyone in the room feel three inches shorter just by existing.

“Noticed that too, huh?” Sam said as he walked past Carlito and into the room. “I thought maybe his mirror broke.”

“When was the last time you looked in one, Sam? You and your brother both look like you’ve been marching through fields of shit for weeks.”

I’d had enough. Every minute spent on banter was a minute Sofia might be in danger. My patience, already stretched to breaking point, snapped.

“We don’t have time for this. We need to find Sofia, not exchange beauty tips.”

“Where the fuck have you been?” The words exploded from Jase, his voice raw with worry and rage.

“Calm—”

“Calm down?” Jase’s hands fisted in the front of my jacket as he slammed me into the wall hard enough that the edge of a monitor rattled on the adjacent table. His face was inches from mine, but I could feel the tremor in his hands, smell the fear beneath his anger.

“Where the hell is my sister?”

I kept my gaze steady, accepting his rage. My wolf wanted to fight back, to assert dominance, but I locked it down tight. There was no point in reacting—Jase needed to get this out of his system, and the Goddess herself knew I deserved it.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s enough,” Sam said, yanking Jase back.

“It is not enough!” Jase’s body twisted in place like he was on the verge of taking a swing at me. “She’s out there with who knows who—doing who knows what—because of him.” He jabbed a finger in my direction.

“I fucked up.” There was no use sugarcoating it. Jase deserved the truth, and I wasn’t about to hide behind excuses. “But we’re going to find her. That’s why we’re here.”

Sam nodded, squeezing Jase’s shoulder briefly. “We’ll find her. You know we will.”

“You’d better. You got any ideas why the fuck Lucian Black would take her?”

I shook my head, the name igniting fresh rage in my veins. I’d spent the drive here trying to come up with a reason, but I had no fucking clue, and it was eating away at me. Who the hell was Lucian Black? He was supposed to be a human owner of a coffee shop. How had he managed to slip under every radar? What gave him the right to take her?

My hands curled into fists at my sides. I was going to hunt him down, and if he had touched her, I would kill him. Slowly. The parade of possibilities of what he was doing to her stormed through my mind again. Was she scared? Hurt? In pain and wondering where the fuck I was? That last thought hit me like a sucker punch to the gut, driving the air from my lungs and making me want to double over. It was the worst kind of pain—the kind you know you deserve.

Sam must’ve felt the rage radiating off me. He always could, with our twin bond strung taut between us, no matter how far apart we drifted or how pissed I was at him. His scent shifted subtly—deliberately smoothing out the sharp edges of his own anxiety, releasing calming pheromones that would affect both Jase and me. It was an old trick we’d learned when we were kids—control your own chemosignals first, and the wolves around you will follow suit. Sam had always been good at it, like some damn wolf whisperer.

“Derek.” Sam stepped close, folding his arms but keeping his movements slow, deliberate. Everything about him was now measured, he was a grounding force, dragging me back from the cliff edge. His eyes locked on mine.

“We’ll find her,” he repeated.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of the room, using them to anchor myself in the present. The clean, familiar, steadying scent of my twin. The lingering coffee in the air. Getting my anger under control took effort, but I managed it. I needed a clear head right now. I couldn’t help Sofia if I was blinded by rage and guilt.

The door swung open next to me, and Waylen burst into the room, an open laptop in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other. He was like a caffeine-fueled hurricane, with his lime-green glasses hung crookedly on his nose and his body jittering as it always did when he was riding the high of discovery.

“Got something,” he said, not bothering with hello. “On Lucian Black.”

“Finally,” Sam said as Waylen dumped his laptop and papers on the table, shoving aside two of the work tablets that Carlito kept in here for meetings.

Waylen hit a key and spun the laptop toward us. A shit-eating grin spread across his face. “Lucian Black isn’t Lucian Black.”

I wasn’t in the mood for games. “Translate, wizard boy,” I said, nodding at the screen name he always used— Waylen the Wizard .

Waylen snorted. “Relax, Shaw. I’ll get there.” He jabbed a finger at the screen. “His real name is Lucian Stone.”

The name tickled something in my brain. “Stone? Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Because it should.” Waylen hammered a few more keys, pulling up documents on his screen. “Lucian Stone is the eldest son of the Stone family. East Coast heavyweights who have their fingers dipped in everything: real estate, politics, clubs, and restaurants. You name it, they own it—or crush it.”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “The Bottley Bar was bought five years ago through so many shell companies it’d give the IRS a migraine. This guy created fake businesses to hide other fake businesses that hide his real business. Pro-level coverup.”

Ryan moved closer, arms crossed. “Someone like Stone doesn’t just show up in Three Rivers to sell muffins and coffee.”

“Exactly,” Waylen said, snapping his fingers like someone had finally caught on. “This guy stepped out of some Game of Thrones -style dynasty and decided to…” He waved his hand with mock flair. “Make lattes with little hearts on top. Makes no sense, right?”

“Why, then?” Carlito asked. “What the hell was a guy like that doing here?”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “He smelled human. He and his wife. But no way a human could cut a guy in half. Any records suggest supernatural involvement?”

“Nothing concrete. But if they’re pure human, you can dip me in mayonnaise and serve me for lunch.” He tapped on his laptop again, then pointed at the huge screen on the far wall. “Lucian’s name is on most of the Stone’s major holdings. He’s the CEO, the shot-caller. Which makes it even weirder that he was playing barista in Three Rivers.”

“And why take Sofia? A guy like that doesn’t do anything without a reason for it.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes. “The USB—you think Lucian knows about it? Took Sofia as leverage, maybe?”

I spun round to face my twin. “Sam, just what the fuck is on that drive?”