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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
     
QUINN
“Who was that?” Rowan asks as he turns away from where he had his head buried in the fridge.
“Emery. He called me an asslicker and hung up on me,” I say before setting my phone on the table.
“Do you blame him?” he asks with a playful grin.
“Nope. But it makes me feel better that there’s a doctor with equipment there to help him. Until we can get Dr. Lambridge the resources he needs, we don’t have much here to help. Emery just needs to have some patience and heal up. I mean it’s a little over twelve hours from now that we’ll be there to pick him up, and he’s acting like I’ve told him we weren’t getting him for at least a month. He’ll survive,” I say.
“But will Graham?” Rowan teases.
I grin at him, realizing that I really don’t know. “I think those two are as thick as thieves now. Of all people that I thought Graham would end up with, I never would’ve guessed Emery.”
“But the moment he met him, he had a thing for him,” Rowan says, which is very true. I’d caught on quite quickly to Graham’s new obsession while dealing with Apollo’s pride. “He could barely look away from him and was so flustered whenever Emery ignored him.”
I grin at the thought. “I know. I’m just wondering how Graham broke down that wall Emery had clearly spent a while building between them.”
Rowan seems to think about it for a moment while nodding. “Very good question. Your brother doesn’t seem to be the most… charismatic.”
I snort. “Not so much.”
“He’s practically evil. He tried running me off when I first started coming around and if he didn’t have his hands full with other stuff, I’m not so sure he wouldn’t try it again.”
I pat his shoulder. “Nah, he likes you now,” I assure him, but Rowan looks less than convinced. “I’m going to go check on the pack, but I’ll be back in half an hour.”
“I’ll make you dinner,” Rowan says. “Unless you want me to go with you?”
“Nope. I’m all good,” I say as I step into him and give him a quick kiss before grabbing my coat.
Outside, I head to the security room first where I find Trenton and Enzo sitting behind the computers that are constantly relaying information from the security cameras. Both of the men are busy talking, even though I thought Enzo’s scheduled time was this evening.
“Things going alright?” I ask, in case that’s why Enzo is there.
Trenton leans back in his chair and stretches. “Yep. Haven’t seen a lick of anything. Even our cameras way out yonder are pulling nothing up. No scouts. Nothing.”
Honestly, I can’t believe how lucky we’ve been. I can only hope we continue to stay as lucky. “Good. Enzo, I thought you didn’t work until tonight?” I say.
Enzo looks over at me with a smile. “I don’t. I just stopped by to see if he needed anything. Then we got to talking about sports.”
“Enzo here used to play football in college,” Trenton says.
“That’s awesome,” I say. I know little about sports, despite Graham’s interest in them, but I clearly don’t need to know much more because Trenton takes over.
I leave them to it, after adding very little to the conversation, and continue on my way to the house that’d been partially converted into an infirmary. Just inside at a desk we’d put in there for him, Dr. Lambridge is taking a nap. He’s tasked himself with watching over Ethan, even though I told him to find some people to rotate with. It’s clear he hasn’t yet if snoozing on the hard desk has anything to say about it.
Trying not to disturb him, I creep past and into the room Ethan is being held in. He has a TV in front of him that he’s staring at. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I enter, but I take a seat anyway.
Overall, he looks fine, he just doesn’t act it.
“How are you doing, Ethan?” I ask and he flinches, which is more reaction than I got out of him when he first showed up, but he still doesn’t bother looking at me. When the door swings open, I’m surprised to see Gina.
“Hey,” she says with a smile as Dr. Lambridge follows her. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
“Just making my rounds while Rowan cooks dinner,” I say. “You?”
“We’re trying to make him feel more comfortable with us in the hopes we can get a bit of blood for some testing,” Gina says. “If I could just get some more information on what was done to him, I might be able to help him, but right now, seeing anyone coming at him with a needle stresses him out and we don’t want him too stressed. So we’ve just been spending time in the room with him.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” I say. “It might help if Addie came in with you two, since she’s closest to him.”
She nods. “Thanks. That would be nice.”
After a few minutes, I continue on my rounds before making it back to my house. I walk inside and am immediately greeted by Talon who seems happy to have me home even though I’d only been gone a few minutes. I rub his ears and head toward the oddly silent kitchen. The chicken is sizzling on the stove to the point where it looks like if it sizzles much longer it’s going to become blackened.
“Rowan?” I ask as I grab the tongs and use them to pick up the chicken to check.
That side is definitely done. I flip them before lowering the heat since I have no idea where Rowan is.
“Rowan?”
Cleo meows from her sunning spot in the window.
“Have you seen Rowan?” I ask, as if she could answer. She stretches in response before closing her eyes. “What about you?” Talon wags his tail, happy to have been included in the animal interrogation.
That’s when I see a sock… weird.
I follow it to the hallway where I see another sock and farther down is a shirt.
Huh…
I head over to the back door that’s wide open, doorknob showing clear signs of having been gnawed on. Outside, I look around as Talon bounces by my side. “Rowan?”
Silence.
“Rowan?”
I hear leaves rustling above me and slowly look up. There, hanging from a branch, is my one true love. The issue is that the snow leopard doesn’t really seem to be hanging on to anything… no… what’s keeping him suspended in the air is the pants he’s wearing, which appear to be hooked on something.
“Rowan, are you stuck?” I ask. It’s now apparent he can’t pretend to be invisible with me staring right at him.
“No.”
“I can clearly see you’re stuck.”
“You clearly can’t see well because I’m perfectly fine,” he says, trying to twist this way and that as I realize it’s his belt that’s hooked over a branch.
“When you shifted did you forget to take your pants off, then climb a tree, and when you went to jump down, your pants got stuck?” I ask, feeling pretty confident that I got the order of events correct.
Rowan is silent for a long moment. “I swear to god, if you laugh.”
I bite my lip as I shake my head as quickly as I can. “Of course not. I could never just laugh while you’re hanging around.”
He hisses at me, clearly not finding my joke hilarious. “I did this on purpose.”
“Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you?”
He swings around a bit before catching a branch with his paw. The issue is that no matter how much he pulls, he’s not getting unhooked.
“Do you need help?”
“Nope. This is all going as planned.”
“What made you climb the tree?”
He seems to be taking a moment to think about this. “I was saving a kitten that got stuck up here.”
“And was that kitten actually a squirrel?”
Silence.
“It was a squirrel, wasn’t it?”
“No, it was a kitten. A defenseless one that I was saving.”
“Did you eat the defenseless kitten, then? Because I don’t see any kittens.”
“It ran away. Its mom retrieved it. Or dad. I’m not sexist.”
“No, no, you’re definitely not. I’m super glad you could save that kitten,” I say.
“Me too,” he says as he looks around uncertainly.
“Alright. So… you need help then?”
“Nope. I’m all good,” he says as he flails this way and that for a bit before hanging defeated.
I jump up and catch the first limb of the tree, not at all as skilled at tree climbing as he is.
“I’m not sure why you’re coming up here. I don’t need any help.”
“Maybe I missed you so much I can’t stand to be apart any longer, and if I have to climb the tree to get close, then so be it?”
He lets out a grumbly noise. “I would shift, but if I did, I probably wouldn’t bounce as well when I hit the ground.”
“Probably not. Just hang tight. Get it? Just hang in there.” I chuckle, pleased with my own jokes as Rowan’s tail flicks.
“I should have just let myself fall.”
“That’s no fun.”
“Anything to get away from these godawful jokes.”
I snicker, rather pleased with myself as I climb up a little higher. “You’re acting like I put you up there,” I say, finally reaching the branch he’s stuck on. I have to shimmy my way down it to reach the spot where he’s trapped.
Not quite sure what I’m doing, I hook under his chest to pull him up. Honestly, I’m not too worried about dropping him—I’ve seen him willingly jump down farther than this before—so as long as I hold his weight up, I can pull the belt off the branch and let him fall. Finally free, he lands on the branch below, flicks the pants the rest of the way off and jumps down to the ground still in his underwear.
I’m far too pleased as I watch him dart into the house. When I drop down to the ground, Talon curiously comes up to me. “Your dad is quite the strange one,” I say.
“Am not,” Rowan yells from inside the house, clearly back in his human form.
When I head in, I find him in the kitchen, fully clothed and working on supper like he’d never had a single distraction and had been there the whole time.
He even smiles at me like I just arrived. “Hey, hon. When’d you get home?” he asks, apparently trying to play this off like none of that tree nonsense happened.
“Oh, a few minutes ago. The funniest thing happened on my way home, though. There was a cat in the tree wearing pants. I saw it and I was like, ‘You gotta be kitten me right meow.’”
Rowan doesn’t even spare a sliver of his attention to look at me. It’s like I don’t even exist as he dishes up one plate and heads over to the table to eat alone. I have been mercilessly forgotten. “Yum. I sure love eating alone.”
I laugh as I fill my plate and hurry over. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop laughing at you. It was just pretty cute, and I’m disappointed I didn’t get a picture.”
“I would have torn the tree down if you had whipped out that camera,” he says, rather confident when he couldn’t even unhook his pants.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” I say as if my camera roll isn’t full of all the ridiculous things he does.
Knowing me far too well, he shakes his head as he grins. “I just can’t win. But it makes you happy, so I’m fine dealing with the torture.”
“Good. I like torturing you. This is very good. Thanks for making supper.”
“Thanks for flipping it before it burnt to a crisp.”
I point my fork at him. “Teamwork. You do all the cooking, I flip it once, and suddenly it looks like I had a role in supper.”
He smiles at me and I love that the smile reaches his whole face. “Yes, teamwork. You know my love for you is strong when I make it through all of your harassment and still can only think how much I love you.”
I smile back at him. “I love you too. And it is massively strong, just like that branch you were stuck on.”
While the rest of the dinner is uneventful, I love every moment of the normalcy of it. Lately everything has been so chaotic, and I’ve had to fixate so much on my pack as a whole, that it’s nice just having a night for us. A night where I can be with my mate and do something so fully domestic that it makes me finally feel like things are going to be alright.
When the night winds down and we end up in bed together, I roll onto my side. We’d talked a little about his father, but he still hasn’t fully opened up to me, so I hold my hand out to him. Rowan slides his fingers between mine and smiles. “Yeah?”
“How are you doing?” I ask, honestly concerned.
“I am… humiliated… embarrassed… horrified.”
Now I’m confused. “By… what?”
“That I didn’t catch that squirrel for you,” he says. “It was going to be dessert.”
“You ass,” I say with a grin. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I do,” he says, clearly proud of himself. “Honestly… I mean it was tough finding out. But more than anything… I feel awful for the shifters who suffered by my father’s hand. That people like Emery had to go through the things they did. I feel awful that Brennan was tortured the way he was and deceived because his own father passed him off to Mercer. But… I think I’ve detached myself so much from my father that this tiny, awful part of me feels relief. Like… don’t… don’t judge me, but a part of me was still slightly hung up on him being my father. So then knowing this, it’s almost like I now have the biggest excuse to hate him. Which is ridiculous, right? I had plenty of excuses before. I don’t know. That’s stupid, right?”
I run my free hand up his arm. I can only imagine all the emotions he’s going through. “No, it’s not stupid. Rowan, you have a lot of shit you have to deal with, and no part of it is stupid. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this.”
“Thanks,” he says as he leans forward and gives me a kiss. “I don’t know if you understand how much you’ve done to help me get through this.”
“Same,” I say.
As we lie in each other’s arms, I feel like I’m at ease for once. Like things might be turning around for the better. Graham and Emery are back and safe. Rowan is by my side. Deke is going to help us. Things will be good.
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER NINETEEN 
     
EMERY
I’m up again.
It’s not rare for me to be unable to sleep, but I know it’s made worse by being in this place. Careful not to wake Graham, I slip out of the bed and creep over to the door. I’m still wearing Graham’s hat, honestly surprised he hasn’t made me take it off even though it’s clear it’s now mine.
I slip on some shoes that were given to us earlier, then step into the hall. When I hear no one, I hurry past the corner to Brennan’s door and hammer on it again.
“Brennan, you fucking asshole, open the door,” I growl as I beat against it some more.
The thing is… I hear nothing inside. I never do. So is he not even here? And if he isn’t, where is he? Did he already run? Did he go back to Stone?
Why the hell would he just run off?
I turn around and step past the corner when I hear someone in the hallway I was headed toward. Before they can see me, I slip back. Just peeking, I see there are three people standing outside the door of the room I was supposed to be staying in before I claimed Graham’s room as my own.
What the fuck do they want with me? And why at this time of the morning?
Quickly, I pull my head back and listen, but they just knock again. “Is he even in there?”
“I’m not sure. Let me unlock the door.”
I didn’t lock it, so I’m sure they’ll see that when they go to open it. But it just goes to show that there was no sense in even locking the doors when it’s clear they can just unlock them.
The only way back to Graham is past them, so I decide that if I can slip out the window of one of the rooms, I can creep around to his window and let myself in. Quickly, I start backing toward Brennan’s room when I hear one of them say, “He’s not in here—where the hell did he go?”
“We might have the wrong room. I’ll search the others,” someone says as I hear them heading toward me. I start looking for an open door, then I realize I never checked Brennan’s. Quickly, I turn the handle, surprised to see it’s unlocked since it was locked when Rowan had tried getting in. I shut the door behind me and lock it, even though it’s clear they have keys to the room.
“Brennan?” I whisper as I look around the room. There’s enough light from the moon creeping in to see that this room isn’t as tidy as mine had been. The bed has been shoved at an angle and the lamp is lying on the ground in multiple pieces. Either Brennan had a temper tantrum and started breaking shit or there was some kind of scuffle in here.
I rush over to the window and push up on it, only to realize that it won’t budge. The locks are set to open, but it still won’t move no matter how much I tug on it.
My anxiety hits me hard as I realize I’m stuck in this tiny room without Graham. How fucking stupid was it of me to leave without him? I just wanted to talk to Brennan. I just… thought I could get answers about Stone or why this happened. I don’t know why I even bothered. It wouldn’t change the past. How stupid can I be?
Footsteps heading down the hall hit me as I rush for the bathroom, the only place I can think to go. I climb into the bathtub because there’s absolutely nowhere else to flee to. It’s not like there are any places to hide in this hell.
When I hear the doorknob jiggle, my blood runs cold. I could shift and attack them but there’s a huge part of me trying to remind myself that I don’t know if they’re actually doing something wrong. They honestly could be looking for me for some other reason, but I just can’t bring myself to trust them. Once I get back to Graham, he’s going to tell me I’m being foolish.
Yes, that’s what he’s going to say.
This room seems so ridiculously small without him in there and being tucked back in the darkness doesn’t help. I step up onto the edge of the tub and press myself against the curtain while using the wall to steady me. If he looks into the tub, it’s not going to be difficult to find me.
The door creaks open and I hold my breath as I cling desperately onto the side, willing my body to stay as still as it possibly can.
It’s hard when the room is closing in on me and I feel like I can’t breathe.
No, no. I need to stay focused. I need to keep calm.
Thoughts of Graham fill my mind. He generally calms me down, even if I’d never admit it to him. Light spills in from the main room before I see a beam from a flashlight flicker into the tub as the person walks in. I keep myself as still as I can, knowing that even the slightest movement will make the curtain flutter.
I see his hand grab onto the edge of the curtain as I prepare myself for what I’ll do. Attack? Or give in?
“Got anything, Rob?” someone farther back says.
“Nothing,” the man replies as he lets go of the curtain and turns around. I listen to him walk from the room, but still, I don’t move. I can hear them moving around as they continue down the hall, checking rooms. Are the other shifters already gone? Is that why there are so many empty rooms? If they were already allowed to leave then why the hell are we still here?
After what feels like an hour, I slip out of the room, listening carefully before hurrying down the hallway to Graham’s room. I yank open the door and rush for his bed…
Only to find it empty.
“Graham?” I ask in a panic.
I turn around and run for the bathroom. “Graham?”
Silence.
Did he leave me?
Did he wake to find me gone and leave to search for me? Did they take him?
Panic fills me as I rush for the window and quickly tug on it, but it won’t open. I need out. I have to get out. I need to get away.
I grab the metal rod of the lamp and swing it hard at the window, but the lamp immediately bounces off. Quickly, I climb onto the bed and knock on the window, listening to it as I realize it’s not glass at all. No… it’s reinforced, like the ones Stone used to use. Do they have a way to remotely lock them? Or is this window stuck closed? That seems unlikely since I just went through it not long ago.
There’s no fucking way out of this room beyond the door and who knows what lies out there. Could Graham be out there? Could he be wandering around looking for me only to tell me my worries are childish?
No…
Something’s not right. And I’m all alone.
Again.