The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

  As if sensing him, Gemma looked up at that moment and as soon as her eyes connected with his, they went wide, her body going even more rigid. She must have tensed enough, because Karl moved too. He lifted his head, opened his eyes and saw where Gemma was looking … right at Cade.

  “I just want to ask him about the calls,” Cade said, tearing his gaze away from Gemma. “Maybe there is a logical reason. But as DSA, I need to ask him. If you don’t like it, maybe you need to assign this case to someone else.”

  If Cade’s tone bothered Malcolm, he didn’t let on. He didn’t even flinch. Cade wouldn’t have spoken to him that way, out of respect, but seeing Gemma, seeing the signs was enough to fuel his wolf. Before Malcolm could give an answer, Gemma and Karl came in. He kept a hand on Gemma’s shoulder. It made Cade want to move it. To tell him not to touch what was his.

  “What are you doing here?” Gemma asked. She put enough distance between them, but not so much that her scent didn’t go to him. He caught it like a starving man catching a raindrop.

  “I need to speak with Karl. Official business.”

  “Oh?” she cocked her head to one side.

  Cade nodded at her, but threw himself straight into business. It was impossible to stand with her so close and not to feel the depth of his loss. “It seems you knew Jessica Cooke,” Cade said, addressing Karl and cutting any conversation with Gemma. “She had quite a few missed calls from you. I need to know why?”

  All eyes were on Karl right then, even Gemma, who, to Cade’s happiness, had moved a little, breaking contact with him. “You knew Jessica?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “But you called her,” Cade added, pulling out his own copy. “More than once.”

  Karl nodded. “Yes. She owed me money.” When Cade raised a brow for him to continue, he said, “I buy old cars, fix them up, sell them on. She bought one from me and she owed me the balance. I called her to ask when she would clear her debt.”

  “You called her a lot more than someone after money.”

  Karl’s lip twitched, and Cade could feel a tick inside him … a niggling in his wolf. “Is there a set number of times a person can call another? She was avoiding me. She was meant to pay the car off in instalments, but she stopped. Then she wouldn’t answer her phone.”

  Cade wrote it down, tapped his pen and then looked back to Karl. “But her car is in your garage.”

  Karl’s back stiffened, and the air went noticeably thick. “You went to my house? Inside my garage?”

  “I went to speak to you, found you weren’t home—”

  “And snooped around?”

  Cade didn’t care for Karl’s tone, but it sparked his wolf and made him rear. “I am DSA. It is my job to snoop.”

  Malcolm raised his hand to silence them, then he nodded to Karl. “Why do you have Jessica’s car?”

  Karl’s gaze jumped from Cade to Malcolm, to Gemma. He folded his arms over his chest, then shrugged. “She gave it back. The day she died, she brought it in and I gave her what she had paid, less interest.”

  “Which was?”

  “Five hundred.”

  When Cade finished writing it in the notes and looked up again, both Malcolm and Karl were glaring at him. Cade’s mind tried to latch onto something … anything. It didn’t matter, though. What mattered was that Karl’s hand was back on Gemma and he had lost her … Karl had explained and the Davies family accepted it at face value. All Cade wanted to do was snap his fucking wrist off.

  “You have your answers,” Malcolm said. He stepped forward, as if trying to make Cade step back, but he didn’t.

  “I just—”

  “You just need to be going now.” Malcolm put his hand on Cade’s arm. Not a firm hand, but a clear message that Malcolm was removing him from the house … from Gemma. Cade turned and pulled himself away, walking faster. He didn’t say goodbye to them, but he gave Evie a slight smile. He wasn’t going to stay there.

  He walked along the hallway. It was suddenly longer than it had been in all the years he had walked along it before … all the times he had run along it … shit, him and Stephen had even fought along it. But now it was like somewhere he didn’t remember being and he couldn't walk fast enough.

  He didn't look back as he reached the front door. He didn’t say a word as he stepped out into the garden, but as he came away from the house, Gemma’s voice sounded behind him.

  “Cade …” she called out. “Wait.” She hurried over. The door to the house was open. Cade couldn't see anyone, but he was fairly sure Karl would be there, waiting. “I’m sorry,” she said, hovering at a distance from him. So close … close enough to scent, to tease, to put herself just there where she was out of reach but close enough that she could send his heart into spasm.

  “Me too,” he said. Of all the words he wanted to say to her. All the things he wanted to do … seeing her there. She smelt like Karl. She was thick with his scent … all over her. She hadn’t just done the mating ceremony with him. No. She had mated fully, completely. She had accepted him into her life … her body. “It’s official then?” he said. Although it wasn’t so much a question. It just came out that way.

  “It’s how it has to be.”

  “Right.” He nodded and turned … turned from them all and walked away.

  Chapter 34

  Gemma

  Gemma watched as Cade walked away … as he took a step and then another and another until she could no longer feel him. Her heart curled in her chest, bereft, pining, pushing against her with the tiger’s urge to call him back. He was leaving, and she was letting him go, again. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep doing this. How long they could meet and wish, only to have it all snatched away again? She fisted her hands by her sides and dug her nails into her palms hard enough that pain shot through her arms. Fury burnt hot in her veins. Not at Cade. No. But the man she could feel watching her. The man who was meant to protect her.

  Her father.

  He was at the window to his office, a silent shadow in the dim light cast by his dark room. She didn’t need to see him totally to know what he was thinking. He’d won. He’d put his pawn into place and strengthened his position even more as alpha and Council leader. Just the thought of it grated against her skin, knowing one day, she would inherit the very thing she’d been sacrificed for. She didn't want it. She didn’t want that kind of power if it meant one day, she’d have to hurt her own child.

  She pictured Connor. It wasn’t hard to do since she’d already imagined him a hundred times in her dreams. What he would look like, who he would be. He always looked like his father in her imagination. Strong, beautiful … perfect. She tried to imagine what it would take for her to ever do this to him. How could her father stand so coldly and watch her fall apart in front of him?

  Cade would never have done this to his child. No. He would give up everything for their son. Even his life.

  She wanted to ask her father if it felt like victory. If he was happy that what he wanted … what he had fought for, was only held into place because he sold out one of his children. She bit back the insults and accusations that wanted to boil with anger inside her. Her mind wanted to go over and over everything with agonising repetition, but what did it matter? It wasn’t like she would change his mind.

  Pulling her gaze away, she bit back her own despair. Cade’s car was gone now. He had driven away … was driving back to her, to Natalie. To his own mate. The day was already heavy, stifling, like she was losing purpose in everything she needed to do. Karl was at the doorway now. He was watching her. Those cool green eyes stared at her, but the way he had his head angled, brought panic to her throat. The look on his face was one she was sure she could never return like he would want.

  “Everything okay?” he asked, when she got closer. He held his hand out to her. A strong, firm hand, extended by a beautiful man—a predator, dangerous and sexy the way he stood … any other tiger would have been pleased to be mated with him. Any
other tiger would slide her body up against his just to feel the firmness of it and to nestle in that protective hold, but not her. She couldn’t do it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe on a day when she hadn’t seen Cade. When she hadn’t had him close enough she just had to reach out to touch him.

  Inside, her tiger wailed and paced. She raked down flesh and blood with angry frustration. It was done. It was over.

  “Yeah,” Gemma said. She didn’t take his hand, though. Instead, she put her own hands in the pockets of her shorts, then she rested the tip of one toe on the step and hesitated before entering the house. “We saw you the day after Jessica died. At Shelley and Tom’s.”

  “Yes?” Karl took his offered hand back and gave her a questioning expression. There was no flicker of guilt there. No sign he had done anything untoward, but … she wasn't sure what it was. Maybe her own need to not be there, but something was off, strange about it. The answers too easy, too simple it could just be that.

  “You said nothing to us.” She stared right at him, waiting, keeping a slight distance between them. “You could have told us you had her car, and that you had seen her.”

  He met Gemma’s gaze dead on. “I didn’t think it would matter so much. It was before she died.”

  “How soon?”

  He cocked a brow.

  “She died in the evening, was found at ten. Died around seven, we think. What time did you see her?”

  He gave a shrug, innocent enough, but it set Gemma’s tiger off, nudging at her.

  “Around two, maybe.”

  Gemma narrowed her eyes at him. Her gut twisted. She had never really been a believer in gut instinct. That had been Stephen’s forte and probably why he was a better beta. She stared at Karl, as if whatever was bugging her, would leap right from him and grab her attention. “She gave you the car back at two?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you gave her the money then?”

  “Yes,” he said again. This time he slumped a little, as if he was relaxing into what she was asking him. She tossed around his answers in her head. What he said added up. He had given her five hundred, the exact amount they had found in her case with her things to leave.

  “How did she leave your place? Did she walk?”

  He shook his head. “She had me call a taxi for her. You can check with them if you like. They picked her up from the end of my lane.”

  Maybe she would. She wasn’t so stupid she would believe someone just because they said, check if you want, like that showed they had no fear. She had seen her brother do it so many times to their mother. No Mum. I was home all night, ask Gemma. Or yes, I did go to school, call if you like. Of course, their mother had never gone for the proof, believing Stephen wouldn’t offer evidence if he had done something wrong. That had been the start of his problems. Sometime around puberty, his ability to read people had heightened. Almost like the hormones of a changing teenager had fuelled his condition and sent him along a path to madness. She wished he was here now. He’d have been able to read Karl like a book. He’d have picked up on the scents and the odd change in heartbeat Gemma had detected. He would know what they meant.

  Karl folded his arms across his chest, his hand gripped his own arm, and it was hard not to notice the whites of his knuckles that seemed an obscure shade against his otherwise, tanned skin. “Should we go back inside?” He stepped back, sure the answer she would give. Inside was the last place she wanted to be. No. She wanted to be away from there. Away from Karl and whatever he was hiding, because he was hiding something …

  Biting down on the inside of her lip, Gemma moved back to put a little distance between them. He had fooled her about his mother. It had been her own fault. She had taken faith in the answers he had given, and he’d used them as cues to lead her to the conclusion that his mother was dead. This was like that. Not that he was lying, but that he was obscuring the truth. “I still don’t understand why you said nothing. If it’s all so innocent, why not say it when you saw us? You knew about the case.”

  A millisecond of a pause and the grip on his own arms tightened. “I didn’t want to be involved in it. I knew I hadn’t done anything. I knew it was her who brought back the car, and she had been alive when she left. I don’t know where she went after, and I didn’t care. There was nothing I could tell you that would be of any use to your investigation.”

  “But that was for us to decide, not you. You withheld information. Important information.”

  He gave a shrug. “You know now.” He didn't wait for her to respond. Instead, he turned from her and went back into the house. He went to the stairs and then up them, comfortable. Like he was used to the house already even though he had only been part of the family a day. Gemma ground her teeth and inhaled. She was aiming anger at him when she shouldn’t. She was resenting him for things when it wasn’t his fault. Maybe her mind was just looking for something bad, so she would have a reason to get out of the mating.

  “He killed a man,” Evie said from the doorway of the lounge. “That’s why he probably didn’t tell you. Probably didn’t want you to find out.”

  “He killed a man?” Gemma stepped inside the house, but she didn’t close the front door. To do so felt like being trapt, … even though she was, having the door open gave her an escape … somewhere to go.

  Evie nodded.

  “How do you—”

  “His stepmother told me.” She leant against the wall, and for a moment, the kid sister she was used to seeing had matured in her years. She’d missed it. “He was twelve,” she continued. “The man was Human.” Gemma must have given an odd expression, because Evie added. “The files in Dad’s closed records. I found it after she told me. Read it. See for yourself.”

  Closed files. The secrets. The cases that got dealt with away from Human contact because they hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard. If Humans got themselves involved, it wouldn't matter what it was, the Other would be dead.

  “I don’t understand,” Gemma said after a few seconds to process what her baby sister was telling her.

  “He had a sister. She was six when she was killed. Karl found her at the back of the house in the river … naked. He found the Human who did it.”

  Pain lashed in her gut, pain and sadness, and guilt and sorrow, and a swirl of emotions she wasn’t even sure how to describe. Shit. She cast a glance up the stairs to where Karl was and hoped that he could feel her offer of condolence. “But his mother married a Human … She went and became one, too.”

  Evie’s eyes were wide when she nodded, like Gemma had just hit the jackpot, only she didn’t know what Evie was trying to say. She didn’t get a chance to ask either, because their father appeared at the door to his office. “You need to get ready for the meeting. You need to get Karl ready.” Before she could ask about Karl, he said, “He’s coming too. If he’s going to be by your side when you take over the pack, he needs to see how we do things.”

  Karl … Karl was going with them to the MacDonald house.

  Chapter 35

  Gemma

  Gemma’s heart thundered so wildly in her chest she feared she might just pass out from it. Karl, as if sensing her unease, he squeezed his fingers around hers and brought her closer. “You’re nervous,” he whispered, more of a statement than a question. They were sitting in the back of her father’s car, heading to the MacDonald residence for whatever the meeting was that Trevor needed. Karl wouldn’t come to all of these events, and Gemma wished he wasn’t coming to this one. It would be hard enough to keep her emotions in check in Cade’s family home, adding Cade and Karl to it, she was surely heading for some emotional disaster.

  “I’m okay,” she said, and she was, oddly so. She searched her mind for thoughts, feelings, anything on the same level of devastation she was used to carrying around with her like a permanent weight on her shoulders, but what she found was quiet, emptiness, the peace one might find in a graveyard. It was like her tiger had given up and lay down. She kept herself in the dark, ready for wh
atever the next emotional beating was going to be. They were separating. Placing her other hand over her chest, Gemma took in a deep breath. Mentally she was fine, but physiologically, her body was going into panic mode.

  “Do we know who the wolf is?” she asked her father after some calming minutes of silence. She glanced at him through the car’s rear-view mirror and was met with cool, steel green eyes. Her mother was in the passenger seat, Council bag on her lap. Evie, was sitting the other side of Gemma, trapping her.

  “No.” And that was all he said—all he needed to say.

  “Do we know what they have done?”

  “That is a matter for the Council,” her father said, his message clear … he would not tell her, and it wasn’t her business.

  Pushing herself back against the seat, the coolness of the leather seeped in through her clothes. She was hot—hotter than normal. She was no stranger to swallowing down her feelings, hiding her emotions. They always came out like this, with physical violations of her body. Everything she felt needed to get an escape. But it was the first time her tiger had been so dormant. Even when she’d mourned for her brother, the tiger had raged, roared and growled to whoever was listening at the injustice of everything she had lost. That was better than this silence.

  Her heart sank a little further as the MacDonald house came into view. Cade’s car was there, and she frowned to herself. Cade wasn’t heir to his father’s pack. He wasn’t next in line, and even if Aaron was missing, his father had made it quite clear that the crown would pass him by and go straight to Danny. If it wouldn't have put Trevor in poor light, or knocked a dent in his pride, he would have shunned Cade from the family and pack years ago. Even before Phoenix came into the equation.

  Gemma always wished he would. Not because Cade would be free of Society, but because it would free him from the burden. Free him from the laws, but mostly, it would get him out of his father’s clutches. Trevor was a mean man—too mean. Why he hated Cade, no one could figure out. Kathleen took the brunt of it. Gemma never said anything when they were children, but sometimes, Cade would wince or avoid touch, keeping his and Stephen’s games to those less physical.