"Are you two getting settled?"
"We are," Noah said with a smile. "Thank you."
"So. Tell me about what happened to bring you here."
"To make a long story short, we were attacked by a rival pack. It's possible that members of our pack were involved."
"What part of Colorado are you from?" Nikolas' voice was tight and gruff.
"South central, near."
"No," Nikolas whispered. "No, no, no."
His tone was almost desperate and I stood, knowing there was something really, really wrong here. Nikolas stood facing the window, head clutched between his hands. I started toward him, but he turned suddenly, his eyes full of rage and confusion. His wolf was about two seconds from bursting free.
"Hey, hey, hey. What's going on, babe?"
"Where?" Nikolas demanded of Ethan. "Exactly."
Ethan rose to his feet and began backing his way toward the door. Noah just stood and looked back at Nikolas, unconcerned with the raging wolf, but clearly confused. "A short way south of Pagosa Springs," Noah finally answered.
Nikolas stumbled back as if he'd been hit by a truck. "Mack?"
"How do you--?"
"Is Mack dead?" Nikolas demanded.
"Yes," Noah said simply. "I don't understand."
"That makes two of us," I said, reaching for Nikolas. "What's going on?"
"I'm fucking fine." He jerked away from me and turned toward the window, bracing both hands on the sill. "Long version, Noah. Now."
"I&Ethan and I had been doing some repairs around the property. We'd had some play time after dinner and fell asleep in one of the outbuildings we'd been working on. Something woke me up; I'm not sure what, exactly. I listened for a little while, thinking it was just local wildlife, but then everything went silent and I realized we weren't out there alone. The house was surrounded."
"It wasn't just a rival pack," Ethan said, coming back into the room a little. "At least one of Noah's pack mates was in the woods with them. Noah recognized him."
"When we got to Mack, he was hurt." Noah scrubbed his face with his hands. "He'd been stabbed and the silver content was so high that everywhere it'd touched he'd been burnt. He couldn't shift to heal though and removing the blade would have killed him instantly. Mack&He made us pull it out and made us run."
"Who is the alpha of this rival pack?" Nikolas asked.
"His name is Jake," Ethan said. He walked over and wrapped his arms around Noah to comfort him. "How do you know Mack?"
Nikolas turned, then, leveling his gaze on Ethan and Noah, both.
"He was the closest thing I ever had to a father."
Chapter Four
"Whoa now, hold up. I thought." He cut me off instantly.
"If you finish that thought out loud, you and me are gonna have real problems."
"Hey, you brought it up."
"Let's just say we lived in that area for a while when we were younger. Mack? He didn't like where I was headed and beat some sense into me. Best fucking thing anyone ever did for me and I respected the hell out of him for it."
Nikolas never used "we" about anything in his past unless it related in some way to his sister. This was a bad, bad direction for this conversation to head in . especially with anyone else in the room. Before I managed to change the subject, Nikolas did.
"Tell me about this fuckhead Jake."
Ethan and Noah exchanged glances, but Noah was the one who spoke up. "Power hungry, sadistic, lives to torture his victims."
"Is he the sort to tie you up and then go to dinner? Or tie you up and cut off a piece of you and eat you for dinner?"
"Oh, definitely the second," Ethan said.
I shook my head in disgust. "Oh, that's lovely."
Noah chewed his lip as he stared at Nikolas, as if trying to decide whether to speak again. Finally, he cleared his throat. "I had a run-in with him a couple of years ago and he shot me in the face. Ethan? His experience with Jake was more traumatic. Jake tortured him, raped him and turned him, and he's been fucking with his head ever since."
Nikolas crossed his arms over his chest, nodding. "So what you're really saying is that he needs to be taken out. Correct?"
"Well, yes, but."
"No buts, Noah. He's a threat to our kind, and if he's that careless, then he needs to be taken out before he exposes us all."
"What makes you say he's careless?" I asked.
"Ethan? After Jake turned you, did he show you how to hunt? How to deal with the changes you were going through?"