When they pulled up in front of the library, as they walked up the steps, an older woman rushed out and attempted to lock the door. “We’re closing early today!” she said, looking panicked.
Barron grabbed the door and yanked it roughly out of her grasp. Not exactly a gentlemanly thing to do, but Mackenzie’s life was at stake, and he had just about had it with the residents of Mountaintop.
“Call up your local Alphas. Tell them I issue a death challenge,” he snapped. “I’ve had two so far. In both cases, I separated the other Alpha’s heads from their body. Look it up online if you don’t believe me. I’ll be here at the library waiting for them, but I doubt they’ll show.”
Her eyes were round as pennies. “The Thorbergs are a very powerful family in town. I don’t want to get on their bad side,” she whined.
“You don’t want to get on my bad side either,” he growled, and he and Karlie stomped inside.
Chapter Ten
Karlie and Barron quickly found the microfiche files that contained back issues of the Morning News. One of the librarians who was working in the back section of the library, a silver-haired woman with cat eye glasses, frowned at them but silently pointed to the years they were looking for. Not knowing where to start, they began with the year before Ajax and Barron were born.
“This is going to take forever,” Barron groaned. “We’ll literally be here past closing time.”
The librarian walked over to them and said in a loud voice. “I need you keep your voice down. This is a library, you know.” Then, in a lower voice, she whispered “Start with the Claiming Festival thirty years ago. Look for the paper the week after the festival was over. Then look at the paper the following day.”
And she turned and walked away. As she did, she dropped a piece of paper in front of Karlie.
Barron glanced at Karlie, then quickly turned his attention to the microfiche in front of him. His heart was pounding. Would he finally have answers?
“Holy…I don’t believe it,” he said a minute later. Karlie scooted her chair over to him.
“There’s an announcement in the newspaper saying that the town was going to have a new Alphas’ Mate, and it was Elizabeth Thorberg,” he said. “And then the next day, there’s a retraction.”
“Whoa,” Karlie said. “The librarian gave me a date for four years after that, and I looked it up, and we’ve got the announcement that Jake and Joseph Magnussen were announcing the birth of their baby daughter, born to Elizabeth Magnussen. But the next day, the newspaper published a disclaimer saying that the announcement had been in error, and that the baby had been born to Elizabeth Thorberg. And no father was named. And by the way, the newspaper wasn’t owned by the Thorbergs back then.”
A crumpled up ball of paper rolled along the floor and stopped at Barron’s feet. He picked it up and uncrumpled it. It said “Meet me by the bathrooms in two minutes.”
The bathrooms were located down a small dingy corridor. Barron and Karlie found the librarian there, waiting for them. She glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, and then spoke in a lowered voice.
“Your pack was very well liked around here, once upon a time,” she said. “I knew your fathers. Lovely men, both of them. A shame what happened to them.”
“What did happen?” Barron demanded.
She looked around and spoke in a lowered voice. “Elizabeth Thorberg happened. She was obsessed with those boys all through high school and college. She was dying to bethe Alphas’ mate, always chasing after them, telling them they didn’t need to bother to go to the Festival when she was obviously the one for them. She was shameless, that’s what she was.” She let out a self righteous sniff.. “They weren’t interested,” she contineued“They liked a girl from the next town over – your mother. She was only twenty, not old enough to go to the festival, so they went off without her,, but they were planning on claiming her as soon as they came back. They told everyone.”
“Why didn’t they?” Barron asked.
“They came back from the festival and they were bonded with Elizabeth. They were so mad. They said they’d been tricked in to it. She went ahead and called in that announcement to the paper, saying she was the Alpha’ Mate – you know how usually the pack does that? She did it herself. Then she was mortified when they called the paper and demanded a retraction. Her family was furious; they were all completely humiliated. Your fathers told everyone in town that they had never planned to claim her, and they were sure that they’d been drugged.”
Barron drew in a sharp breath and he and Karlie exchanged startled glances.
At least this time, they’d bonded with the right woman. But still…who kept drugging the Magnussen men?
“But she was bonded with them, so they were stuck with her, right?” Karlie said.
“Well, she thought they would have to give in eventually and announce that she was the Alphas’ Mate, but they never did. They told her she could live on pack property, because of course otherwise she’d die – but that was it. She had to live in a separate house. Then, your fathers started openly dating your mother, and Elizabeth was furious. Your mother moved on to pack property. She got pregnant with you two, and died in childbirth.”
“But Elizabeth had a baby.”
“Yep. She was running around town having sex with anyone who’d even look her way, trying to make your fathers jealous, but they didn’t care. She got pregnant with Caroline, and tried to pretend she was theirs – even though they’d never been with her that way, from what the word around town was, anyway. It was a horrible situation all around. Your fathers finally decided to choose another mate, because they wanted you to have a mother figure – and they brought in yet another woman who wasn’t Elizabeth. That was the last straw for her.”
She hesitated, looking around to make sure that nobody was listening.
.
“Please,” Barron said urgently. “I need to know.”
She let out a heavy sigh.“She left her little girl with her parents, drove off, and died. Your fathers said that they didn’t even know that she was missing, they thought she was still in the house on their property, but she left behind a note that said they’d ordered her to leave and threatened to kill her and her infant daughter if she didn’t. She said she was leaving her baby with her parents, and would sacrifice her life for her child. There was a legal inquiry, and your fathers were found liable and lost their land to Elizabeth’s family.”
She glanced around again. “I need to get back to work. I’m sorry about what happened to your family. It wasn’t right.” And she hurried off without a backward glance.
Barron clenched his fists, glowering. His wolf reared up within him, and he forced it back down. Shifting wouldn’t help him now. His fathers had been unfairly cursed by that vindictive woman – he knew that. His fathers, his mother – they’d all died because of jealousy and greed. He wanted to shift, to tear out of there, run over to the Thorbergs house – the house that should have belonged to his pack—and rip them to shreds – but he had no legal right to do so. Not yet, anyway.
“I don’t understand why your fathers’ former pack wouldn’t just tell you all that,” Karlie said.
“My fathers were accused of the worst crime that one can commit,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “The pack was dishonored just by being associated with them.”
They left the library in somber silence. They still needed to be able to prove that his parents had been tricked in to bonding with Elizabeth Thorberg, and that they hadn’t ordered her to leave their property, but she was long dead and gone.
“There’s something that’s been bothering me since we got here,” Barron said, as they headed out of town You know how the townspeople greeted us?”
Karlie looked puzzled. “Uh, with hatred and contempt? And a shotgun? And threats of arrest?”
“But not surprise,” Barron said. “It was like they knew we were coming. Which means that somebody must have called up and told them
. Who could that have been?”
“Well…I mean, nobody knew, except for your brother and Vita. And they wouldn’t have said anything.”
“Cornelius knew we were looking into the origins of the curse,” Barron said. “This would be the logical place for us to go.”
Karlie let out a gasp of indignation.
“Oh, that son of a bitch,” Karlie said. “Of course. He was the one who cursed your fathers way back then. No wonder none of the curse mages would talk to you.”
“One of the many things that we still need to prove.”
“Let’s call Fabian and ask him for a meeting with the guy who owns the Lookback mirror,” Karlie suggested.
Barron reached for his phone, which was sitting on the center console, but as he did, the phone rang.
It was Mackenzie, and she sounded frantic. “Look, your family emergency is going to have to wait,” she said. “Ajax has just been taken in for questioning by the Sentinels. A bartender was murdered, and they’re saying that he did it.”
Chapter Eleven
“He’s in there,” Mackenzie said, pointing at the concrete building with a shaking finger. The detention center was usually used to house people who’d committed minor infractions during the festival – drunken bar fights, mostly. As a rule, Alphas were an honorable bunch; there was very little trouble with them.
Barron and Karlie were still breathless, having run all the way there after sneaking back through the dimensional portal in the woods.
“How is Ajax? You look beautiful. I missed you,” Barron said, throwing his arms around her and giving her a big hug.
“Oof. I missed you too.” She had missed him badly. Now that the bonding process had begun, having him travel so far away from her was like a dull ache that never went away. Because Ajax had stayed behind, she didn’t get physically ill when he left, but it didn’t feel right. She felt incomplete with him gone. “We’ll celebrate your return when we’ve got this all resolved,” she added. She could feel Barron’s emotions roiling through her. Anger, fear, worry. They mirrored her own. She took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. “So here’s what happened. Apparently the bartender from the Tavern On The Hill was found murdered. He’s been dead for at least a couple of days now. His body was in a wooded area, throat cut. Ajax’s scent was on him. The Sentinels came to our cabin and brought Ajax in a couple of hours ago.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Barron said angrily. “Aside from the complete lack of motive, a wolf would never cut someone’s throat. We’d rip it out with our teeth. The Sentinels are wolves, they freaking know that. They also know that there’s plenty of ways to get his scent on someone – like rub an item of his clothing on the body. And nobody here locks their doors, so it would be easy for someone to snag his clothing.”
“I know.” Mackenzie nodded, hugging herself. “Here’s the thing. First of all, a Mage said that you thought that our drinks had been drugged the night that we all bonded, so that is supposedly his motive. And then, the Sentinel said something about an anonymous phone call, but they wouldn’t give me any more details. I already called your aunt and uncle, and your pack has an attorney on the way here.”
“What kind of phone call? That’s insane. Ajax would not do that. All they have to do is get a Truth Mage here to verify it.”
Karlie had been standing there quietly, but she brightened at that. “So he’s in the clear!” she said.
“He should be. They shouldn’t even still be holding him,” Barron grumbled.
“Does this somehow have anything to do with the curse?” Mackenzie asked, and Barron’s face drained of color.
“What curse? There is no curse.”
“Barron, for heaven’s sake, I’m bonding with you. When you have really strong emotions, I literally cannot help but pick up on them,” she said impatiently. “Why wouldn’t you have told me about this? That’s why you left, wasn’t it? I got vague inklings of that, but when I tried to ask Ajax about it this morning, he looked just like you do right now, like he’d seen a ghost, and then he denied it. And then the Sentinels came for him.”
Barron glanced at Karlie, who shrugged helplessly.
“You know about it?” Mackenzie demanded, shocked. Did everyone know but her? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Karlie looked at Barron, who grimaced and hesitated a moment, but finally answered.
“The curse killed our mother,” Barron said. “She died in childbirth. Whoever we bond with will die when they have cubs.”
“Oh.” She felt as if a lightning bolt had struck her. No cubs? That was why Ajax and Barron had both changed the subject when she talked about having cubs.
“There’s more,” Barron said grimly. “If it were that simple, we’d have time to work around it. Part of the curse prevents us from warning you – or you’ll be dead within a day or two. Our fathers started to suspect that there was a curse, they warned our stepmother, and all three of them died in a car accident a couple of days later.”
“I see.” She didn’t know what to say. Everything was piling up on her at once. She was already completely freaking out about Ajax being arrested, and now this?
“We may have a person who can help us,” Karlie said, her tone hopeful. Then her face fell. “Although this really accelerates our timetable considerably.”
Barron quickly explained what they’d been doing for the past couple of days. “Karlie and I can go back to San Francisco know, track down the guy with the Lookback Mirror, and get him to verify that our fathers were drugged,” he said. “I need to talk to the Sentinels who are holding Ajax, and then I’ll head out immediately. We will fix this, I swear.”
“But he said that using the Lookback Mirror would cost a million dollars. Or at least a huge fortune,” Mackenzie protested.
“I have an idea,” Karlie said. “I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, but I’m going to suggest something to this Tristan guy when we meet him.”
“Sexual favors?” Mackenzie raised an eyebrow.
“Hush your mouth!” Karlie smacked her arm. “I haven’t even seen him yet. He could be hideous. Oh, and I’m a born-again virgin. No, it’s something that I think he’ll want even more than my tender flesh.”
“I’ll be right back,” Barron said. He glanced around. “Okay, no trees overhead, nothing could fall on you…Sky looks clear, no clouds, no sign of lightning…”
“Go. You’re freaking me out. Just go.” Mackenzie waved him inside.
Barron hurried inside, and she and Karlie waited. And waited.
Sentinel Pinroy, who’d been the one to arrest Ajax earlier, came out, and the expression on his face told Mackenzie that he was about to deliver bad news.
“We have just taken Barron in to custody,” he said.
Mackenzie thought she might faint. Or scream. Or cry. “What the hell are you talking about?” she yelled, her face flushing with anger.
“Barron’s scent was also on the victim, and we have an eyewitness who states that they heard them threatening the bartender, accusing him of drugging their drink.”
“You only said that Ajax’s scent was on the victim.” She glared at him accusingly.
“It was. I scented it myself. I did not mention that Barron’s scent was also on the victim, because we needed him to come back here so we could take him into custody.”
“You asshole!” Mackenzie swung and punched him, striking him so hard that she broke his nose with a crunch and sent blood spraying everywhere.
He let out a growl of anger and took a step back, but didn’t make a move towards her. A werewolf would never hit a woman, and he understood that she’d be furious at anyone posing a threat to her mates.
His nose reset itself and the blood stopped flowing right away, and Mackenzie couldn’t help but notice Karlie’s look of mingled horror and fascination. Humans from Karlie’s world weren’t used to the sight of a werewolf healing from what would be fatal wounds for a human.
She skewered Pinroy
with a look of pure rage. “When is your truth Mage getting here?” she demanded angrily.
“Probably not until morning.” The sun was already sinking in the horizon.
She wanted more than anything to hit him again, but there was no point. He was an officer doing his job. From his perspective, they had probable cause, Ajax and Barron would be fine overnight, and everything would be sorted out first thing in the morning. He knew nothing about mysterious curses and her ticking timeline.
“What’s going to happen when the Truth Mage determined that the witness was lying?” she asked, her fists clenched and angry gleam in her eyes.
“If the Truth Mage determines that the witness lied, they will be incarcerated for a lengthy period of time, and Ajax and Barron will be released immediately.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his nose.
“You know that a wolf would never cut someone’s throat.” She met his gaze challengingly.
“We have never seen that happen before, but their scent was on him, and we have the witness statement. This will all be cleared up by tomorrow. In the meantime, you may go in and speak to them.”
Mackenzie thought a minute, then shook her head. “No.”
“No?” Sentinel Pinroy looked shocked. “You’re not mated with them?” He glanced at the still visible marks on her arm.
“Yes, I am. I have an emergency matter to attend to. Karlie, let’s go.”
Karlie, looking baffled, followed her back.
“What are we doing?”
“We’re going to get my car, then we’re going to drive to San Francisco to talk to that person with the Lookback Mirror.”
“But – wait. If you leave Ajax and Barron...”
“I’ll be okay for a day or two.” Mackenzie broke into a jog. Karlie ran to keep up with her. “And if this curse prediction is true, I’ll be dead within a day or two either way. We don’t have time to waste. I want to get this curse lifted off them. I might die, but that will give them a chance to have a happy life even after I’m gone.”
Twin Alphas: Desired (A BBW Paranormal Romance) Page 7
