Filed to story: The Alphas Contract Novel by Taylor West
“And you’ve held off for all this time?”
“Yes.”
“Because she is a Lycan?”
“Yes and because I would be replacing my dead mate.”
“So you think that’s it? That you are never allowed to have someone love you again?”
“It’s more than that.”
“It really isn’t.” She mutters
“It’s complicated.”
She chuckles and then scrunches her body up as the pain ripples through her. “I told you not to make me laugh!”
“I wasn’t trying too.”
“You think this is complicated?! This is the simplest problem you could have. At least she isn’t human, could you imagine having to explain all of it then?”
Maybe she was the better person to speak to, Neah would have me questioning more than helping me find answers. Or I would get lost watching her soul.
“There is only so much I can say.” Mallory smiles at me. “At the end of the day, you have to make the decision, not me, but if you can’t handle it, let her go. It isn’t fair, not after all the crap she has been dragged through.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
She cocks a brow at me.
“I can’t let her go either.”
“Or maybe you don’t really want to.” She shrugs her shoulders at me.
“Annoyingly, I think you are right.”
“I generally am.” She continues to beam at me with the ‘I told you so’ look
I look around, the hospital is dead, not a single soul other than us. “Where is everyone?”
“Eric went with Klaus to pick up supplies.”
“He left you alone.”
She bobs her head and the smile has gone. “I told him too because everytime I look at him, I want to cry.”
“He doesn’t blame….”
“I know he doesn’t. It’s like your problem, it’s complicated. I know he can feel what I’m feeling and that somehow makes it a hundred times worse, when it should help. Does that make sense?”
“If I couldn’t see your soul, I would say no, but you have a tiny hole in a place that was once complete. A hole that Eric doesn’t have. He feels the loss, it’s a little different for you, but he still feels it, don’t push him out, he lost it too.”
“At least you didn’t tell me I would get over it.”
I frown at her. “Who would say something like that?”
“When I was human, my father said it to my mother right after he beat the shit out of her. She lost a baby because of what he did to her.”
“Then it was a good thing you killed him.”
She nods and looks past me, I could smell Eric heading this way and prepare to leave.
“Thanks for coming.” She smiles at me
“I will see you later, I need to go and find my mate.”
I head back into the forest where I
had left Madison. Her jasmine scent dison. still lingered in the air, I follow it until I reach the back of Mallory’s burnt out house. But oddly, her scent. changes direction and heads south back into the forest. She’s accompanied with the scent of a Lycan, a scent that belongs to the dickhead that was trying to get information from her.
I follow the scents and the tracks deeper and deeper until they stop. Her scent comes to a clear stop too.
“MADISON!”
She doesn’t answer, but one of Dane’s Wolf’s appears. “Is there a problem?”
“How far south am I?” I demand
“You are almost at the border.”
“No one has passed you?”
“I would have seen them if they had. Is someone missing?”
“To be determined.”
I squat down, running my fingers over the last of the tracks. My eyes automatically go up into the trees, but I see nothing. Wolves can’t smell Lycans in Lycan form, but I could and someone had shifted here.
The fucker had taken Madison!
Neah
“There are three Ash’s here, but none by the name of Ash Thomas.” Damien tells me as he tosses the clipboard onto the desk in front of me. He turns to Brax “Whoever gave you that name is lying!”
“Or the name he gave you and Neah was a lie.” Brax retorts, “And that is his real name.”
I look at the names highlighted on the clipboard and search my mind for the connections to them, while trying to ignore Damien and Brax as they argue. They were worse than kids.
Finding the link to each one, I summon them and request that they come to the office immediately. Maybe one of them had given us a different surname out of fear.
Three men appear within minutes and Brax shakes his head. “It’s not any of them.”
The men look at one another, confused by why they had been called here.
“Do you know Ash Thomas?” I ask
Two of them shake their heads and tell me no. The third one nods. “He came yesterday. He asks a lot of questions too.”
“About what?” Brax demands
“Anything and everything. I just put it down to him being new here.”
‘Samara said that Cooper guy would come here. What if she was right? What if he is already here, using a different name?’
‘Brax would know.’ I murmur. ‘The guy wouldn’t get past us. Could he?’
‘It’s just what that woman said. That this guy comes to places where he thinks his prisoners may be hiding. All the questions he is asking, it sounds like he is looking for someone but trying to be tactical.’
‘If he was trying to find Blair, why would he take Maddie? What if this is Blair’s idea? What if this is another scheme of hers?’ I challenge
She doesn’t answer, because she knew as well as I did, there were too many ‘what ifs’ surrounding the situation.
“What does he look like?” I ask Brax, so many people had arrived recently, I couldn’t remember everyone’s names, but I could remember faces. He gives me a description as soon as he mentions the green eyes with flecks of blue, I know who he is speaking of.
“You let him live.” I frown. The guy he was talking about had been in the office with me and Dorothy. Dorothy had stopped drawing the moment he walked through the office door and just spent the entire time staring at him without saying a word as I asked him questions. When he left, she wouldn’t even tell me what she saw or what she felt and had asked to leave moments later.
Brax frowns, “He had one of my daughters stickers on. I didn’t like the guy, his soul is more than questionable but I have to trust my daughter’s awareness.”
Damien shakes his head and folds his arms across his chest. “She is seven years old. Seven, Brax. She shouldn’t even be doing this shit anyway. Kids make mistakes.”
“She didn’t give him one.” I declare
“What?” Brax mutters
“She didn’t give him a sticker.” I confirm. “He must have seen someone else with one and taken it, knowing that it would keep him alive.”
“Fucking idiot!” Damien mutters at
Brax. “Of all the ones you have killed because you’ve seen something bad, you let this one live. And in less than twenty four hours of being here, he has kidnapped a Lycan.”
“Why Maddie though? She can’t even shift, why bother taking her?” I ask
