Luke stepped onto the deck outside his office and took in the view of Black Robe Lake glittering beneath the mountains. Neither the scenery nor the fresh, cold air did anything to assuage his anxiety. For the last few hours, his wolf had been prowling around in his head, teeth snapping. It wasn’t normal for him to be so close to losing control like this.
“Damn mating dance,” he grumbled under his breath.
He checked his watch. Still time to get in a quick run before Isabelle got back. Unbuttoning his shirt, he went back through the French doors. He slipped the last button free when his computer chimed indicating an incoming video call.
Rubbing a hand along the back of his neck, he soothed his wolf. Soon, he promised him. Soon we can run and hunt.
“Wyland,” he said as soon as the monitor displayed another face.
A young male with bright red hair and strange gold eyes blinked back at him. “Wyland,” he said with a slight nod. “I’m Cameron Beck, Alpha of the Milwaukee River Pack.”
Christ. Luke had heard the new Alpha was young, but this guy looked like he might not be legal to drink. “How old are you?” he said. What he really wanted to ask was if the kid was still in high school.
Beck rolled his eyes. They looked almost orange in the light of the afternoon sun—more tiger than wolf. Maybe it was a problem with the settings on Luke’s computer?
“Old enough, man,” Beck said. “Old enough.”
Whatever. “You’re a hard male to get ahold of.”
“Sorry about that,” Beck said, looking anything but apologetic. “I’m told you’re looking for information on two females who may have come from our territory.”
“Yes. Isabelle and Elizabeth Meyers. Or Izzy and Bess.”
“I’ve got the names. Before I give you any information, tell me—why do you want to know?”
“I explained that before.”
“Humor me,” Beck said, his weird eyes glinting.
Luke swallowed back a growl. “Because Isabelle has turned up here for her foster brother’s wedding to my Luna, and I’m having a hard time understanding why an established pack, especially one as large as Milwaukee River, would allow two female werewolves to grow up in the human foster care system.”
“They’d be adults now. This is old news. I’m still not getting what their upbringing is to you.”
Luke did growl this time. “Listen, you little—” His wolf pulled him back. The beast had heard or seen something that Luke had missed. Cameron Beck watched Luke with seemingly impassionate eyes, but now that Luke was paying attention, he saw the concern and calculation in the other Alpha’s gaze.
“Sorry,” Luke said. “There was a murder here last night. I haven’t gotten much sleep.”
“One of your wolves?”
“No. A human. He wasn’t involved with our pack but—” He shrugged. “It’s a small town.”
Beck studied Luke for a minute, then seemed to come to some conclusion. “All right,” Beck said. “Let’s cut to the chase, ’kay. You want info on a coupla girls from my territory. That makes them mine in my eyes.” He waited out Luke’s growl. “I’ve done my research on you, Wyland, and from everything I’ve heard, you’d do the same if our situations were reversed. I’ve only been Alpha here a short while. Lotsa shit went down before my time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel some responsibility to the Meyers sisters now. You feel me?”
Video chat was a lousy way to get a true read on a man. Better than just his voice, but Luke would give his truck to be able to catch the other male’s scent right now. He studied Beck and took a leap of faith. “Isabelle is my mate.”
“Well,” Beck said in a slow drawl, “mazel tov.” He cocked his head like the wolf he was and the gold of his eyes became liquid, glowing. “You know the sister is dead, right?”
“I heard. Suicide.” Luke’s stomach churned every time he thought of it and the fact Isabelle had watched her sister kill herself on a video call much like this one. “Are you aware that she killed a man the night she died?”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. I’m getting this secondhand from the human brother. She confessed to Isabelle. I don’t know if she named the guy.”
“Shit. Can’t you ask your mate?”
Luke sucked in a frustrated breath and released it. “It’s complicated.”
Beck shook his head, obviously thinking Luke was nuts. He was probably right. “All right. I’ll have to look into that. No one mentioned cleaning up any scenes.” The other Alpha’s eyes narrowed and the wolf peeked out again. If someone had held out on Beck, they were in trouble now. “I’m sure you’ve heard our change in leadership was...less than peaceful.”
“I’ve heard. I also heard the previous leadership transition was a bit rocky, too.”
Beck’s bark of laughter echoed in Luke’s office. “Yeah, you could say that. Anyway, during that time some things were lost—not the least of which was lives and their memories, but records, too.”
The breath Luke had been holding left him in a rush. “Fuck.”
“There’re no records, in the pack’s archives at least, of an Elizabeth or Isabelle Meyers. I did, however, find one half-burned piece of paper stuck underneath the file cabinet that references Isabelle Elise Randolph and Elizabeth Ann Randolph. Twins, I would guess, going by the birthdates listed. And the timing fits.”
Luke barely heard the last thing Beck said because he was still stuck on the females’ last name. “Did you say ‘Randolph’? As in—”
“The name of our old Alpha from back in the day,” Beck supplied. “Yeah. The paper I found, it seems to be a request for registration to the Associated Genealogy charts.”
Luke fell back in his seat. He couldn’t have been more stunned had Beck actually come through the computer and slugged him in the jaw. The last name by itself didn’t necessarily mean that Isabelle and her sister were close relatives of the deceased pack master, but a registration for the genealogy charts...
He dug his fingers into a knot of tension at the back of his skull. Worldwide, lycanthropes maintained a loose association of clans and packs, sometimes coming together in times of great need or to negotiate matters of conflict. In the old days, before the advent of computers made it so dangerous to keep a list of every known shifter, prominent lycanthrope families made sure to register their offspring. Luke had never seen the point. It wasn’t like they had a shifter king or uber-Alpha. It all seemed ridiculous and pretentious to him. But still, lycanthropes from the old families added to the register. If Isabelle’s and Bess’s names were on that registry...
“Do you know? Was Randolph their relative?”
“Grandfather,” Beck said. “Which means their father was our Beta. They both died on the same night, you know. The Beta’s mate, too.”
The torrent of curses that flowed from Luke’s mouth would have shocked a sailor.
Beck simply nodded. “Listen, man, this was all before my time, but I’ve heard stories.” The look of disgust came through just fine on the screen. “There are just a handful of wolves left from that period. I spoke with one of the old grammies. She remembered your girls.
“According to Grams, the new Alpha—my uncle, by the way, vicious piece of shit that he was—wanted the whole Randolph family gone. But after the other murdering bastards took out your mate’s parents, they suddenly developed consciences, and decided killing two little girls might be pushing it with the goddess.
“The few elders left after the coup argued for the girls to be adopted into another family or at least passed on to another pack since their only surviving relative was a human grandmother. But my uncle didn’t want any contact with them. For anyone in the pack. Under pain of death.” Beck’s orange-gold eyes flashed. “It only took one before the rest fell in line.”
“Christ,” Luke said. His wolf paced in frantic circles, worried all over again for their mate.
“May the worms feast on the mean fucker’s rotting corpse,” Beck said. “I don’t know what the hell my uncle was thinking, sending two juvenile shifters off with a half-mad human who’d just lost her mate, but that’s not the worst of his atrocities, so...” The young Alpha shrugged and looked away for a moment.
Too-familiar shadows haunted Cameron Beck’s eyes—familiar because Luke saw their ilk every time he looked in the mirror.