Last Wolf Hunting

by Rhyannon Byrd

  “Jerk,” she muttered under her breath, and he gave another deep, rough laugh that made her shiver with awareness. Wetting her bottom lip with her tongue, Jillian turned her attention back to her plate and picked up a crisp piece of bacon. “So what’s on the agenda today, or did you just come over to make me breakfast because you missed me?”

  “I always miss you,” he said softly, leaning back in his chair again. When she glanced at his expression, all traces of humor and teasing had fled, the look in his eyes one of pure, unadulterated purpose and intent. But instead of pushing, he picked up his coffee cup and said, “I want to take a look at the records room before they open, which means we still have a few hours.”

  Jillian took a bite of the bacon, enjoying the salty burst of flavor. “And how were you planning on doing that? Pack records aren’t available to the public.”

  Jeremy met her stare over the rim of his mug. “I know.”

  “So we’re going to break in, then?”

  “Looks like it.” He grinned before taking another drink. “Nothing like a little B and E to get the day started, eh?”

  “If you want to visit,” she said, after thinking about it for a moment, “you could just ask my mother. She’s friends with Carolyn, the record’s clerk. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could probably get permission for us to look around.”

  He snorted, a half-smile playing at his mouth as he gave a dramatic shiver. “Thanks, but no thanks, sweetheart. Your mother still scares the bejesus out of me.”

  Jillian couldn’t help but laugh at his expression. “You’re a grown man now, Jeremy. Twice her size.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he murmured, his tone wry, cheekbones flushed with a dull shade of embarrassment. “When she looks at me, I feel like she can see straight into me.”

  “Hmm…she probably can,” she teased, enjoying watching him squirm.

  He closed his eyes, holding up one hand. “Oh, god. Don’t tell me that. I’d rather not know.”

  “Don’t worry.” She laughed, taking mercy on him. “I don’t think she can. Not just by passing you on the street. If she touched you—” her shoulders lifted in a shrug “—maybe.”

  He gave another dramatic shiver. “Then remind me never to let her touch me. That woman would kill me for the things I’ve fantasized about doing to her beloved daughter.”

  Snuffling a soft laugh under her breath, Jillian perched her chin on her fist as she studied him. “You really are afraid of her, aren’t you?”

  “Not nearly as afraid as I am of you.” He gave her a slow, sexy wink as he stood up and reached for her plate. “Now, go get ready, and I’ll clean up in here. I want to get an early start, before the town is crawling with people.”

  “I’m still not sure why you need me there,” she said around another yawn.

  “To save my ass in case we do end up getting caught,” he offered with a cocky grin, somehow managing to look ruggedly masculine with a sponge in one hand and bottle of dish soap in the other.

  “I’m not buying it,” she murmured. “I think it has to do with everything that happened yesterday. I think you want to keep an eye on me.”

  “No argument there,” he said lightly, flashing her a killer smile over his broad shoulder. “God knows I like having my eyes on you.”

  With a delicious shiver warming her body from head to toe, Jillian grabbed her coffee and hurried out of the room.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me in to this,” Jillian huffed, twisting her body through the oblong window that sat five inches above street level, opening into the basement storage room of the hall of records. Luckily, the window was located on the backside of the building that faced an alley, so they were relatively hidden from view.

  Her legs cleared the window first, and Jeremy grabbed her waist, helping her to the floor, trailing his hands up her sides until they settled at the outer curves of her breasts. “Give me an inch and I’ll take a mile,” he murmured, pulling her closer to his hard length.

  “I’ll remember the warning,” she muttered, jerking out of his hold.

  “You do that,” he drawled, giving her a slow smile. “’Course, it won’t do you any good,” he added with a lift of one shoulder. “I’m not above taking advantage of the situation whenever I get the chance.”

  Jillian tried to ignore the way he was looking at her, but it wasn’t easy. Since the moment she’d found him in her kitchen, he seemed to be in full seduction mode. His gaze traveled over her with such delicious intensity, it made her feel stripped down to nothing, even though she wore a pair of low-slung jeans, a thick worn leather belt and a thin boat neck sweater in a rich, golden green that reminded her of Jeremy’s eyes when he was turned on. She’d been the recipient of that look too often when she was younger—and finding herself caught in that deliciously smoldering stare again had her feeling restless and on edge.

  Of course, that restless feeling of unease could have been attributed to the fact they’d just broken in to a private building. What the hell was she thinking?

  Shifting her gaze away from him, Jillian took a deep breath and tried to settle her thoughts. “Do you want me to find the lights?” she asked, thinking that the sooner they got what they’d come for, the sooner they could get out.

  “Naw,” he drawled, moving behind her to lift the blinds on the second basement window. “We should have enough sunlight to be able to read.”

  Looking out over the rows and rows of filing cabinets, Jillian shook her head at the daunting task ahead of them. “So where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s see if we can find files for the League members.”

  “Even Dylan?” she asked, sending him a surprised look over her shoulder.

  “Everyone,” he said in a low voice, his attention already on his task as he pulled open the nearest cabinet to see how the files were organized. “Looks as if everything is in alphabetical order according to last names, so we should be able to move pretty quickly. You start with Graham and Clausen on the far side of the room, and I’ll pull Dylan’s, Pippa’s and old Summers’s.”

  “What about Drake and the others?” she asked, moving two rows over, before opening a drawer to see where she was in the alphabet.

  “We’ll work our way through all of them, but I’m saving ol’ Drake for last,” he grunted.

  Forty minutes later, they’d been through the files of every member on the League, save Drake, and had nothing. “One more to go,” she said, watching as Jeremy pulled the last file from its drawer. Since it also contained documents dealing with his wife and children, Drake’s file was the thickest of all, a musty smell rising up from its yellowed pages as Jeremy dropped it on top of the filing cabinet. “What are you hoping to find here?” she asked, when he started thumbing through the thick stack of pages.

  His eyes narrowed, and he pressed the file flat, his focus on a pale blue page that sat about halfway through the hefty volume. “I’m looking for motive,” he answered in a low voice.

  “Motive?” she echoed. “But we already know how he feels about humans. Rogues hunt humans, and the traitor you’re trying to find has been enabling the rogues to grow in number, even encouraging wolves to turn. What better motive do we need than that?”

  “But we don’t know why,” he responded, turning another page. “And that could be the key to all of it. We know he hates humans. And if he is the Elder behind this surge in rogue wolves, if he’s the one who’s teaching them how to dayshift, then we can assume that he hates humans enough to want them dead. But why? That’s the part of the puzzle that still needs to be solved.”

  “So you want the motive for his motives?”

  “Exactly.” He lifted his head and sent her a flash of a smile, before turning his attention back to the file. “If we can get to the bottom of his hatred, maybe we can understand where he’s coming from. Maybe we can…” His voice trailed off, and he quickly turned the page he’d been reading, then flipped back a few page
s before it. “Son of a bitch,” he rasped under his breath. “Could it really be that simple?”

  “What?” she asked, trying to see what had caught his interest. “What’d you find?”

  “It’s not what I found,” he drawled, shaking his head while a slow grin spread across the sensual line of his mouth, “but what I didn’t find.”

  “Which would be?” she growled, glaring when he arched one brow at her disgruntled tone.

  “There’s no death certificate for his wife,” he told her, his grin melting into a smile at the look of surprise on her face.

  “That’s impossible,” she whispered, grabbing the file and turning it toward her. “There has to be one in here. Helen Drake died in some kind of accident when the kids were still little.”

  “Not according to the file, she didn’t. You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, reaching out to tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear as she flipped through the pages of the file, backward and forward. But sure enough, it wasn’t there.

  “No death certificate could mean she isn’t dead,” Jillian whispered, lifting her gaze to his, “but if that’s the case, then where is she? What happened to her?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  She watched him return the file to its proper place in the drawer, while a cold knot of dread settled into her stomach. She didn’t know what would come of everything, but whatever it was, Jillian had no doubt that it was going to be bad. They needed answers, and she knew the best place to find them. “I think we should talk to Pippa.”

  His eyes went wide. “Pippa Stanton? The Elder?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. Pippa and Drake have been going head-to-head lately. And she’s one of the oldest members of the pack. If anyone around here knows what really happened to Helen, Pippa will.”

  Jeremy held her stare for a long, hard moment, then finally said, “Not that I think there’s a chance in hell she’ll talk to us, but do you trust her?”

  “As much as I trust any of them. But Pippa’s the only one who didn’t support Graham when he first threatened me with a Mate Hunt.” Jillian shivered at the memory, remembering her horror when she’d been called before the League and told they were growing impatient with her, reminding her that it was her duty to provide the pack with their future Spirit Walker. If a Mate Hunt were voted into action, the unwed male wolves would be given the chance to hunt her down, and she would be wed and bonded to whomever caught her first.

  “What do you mean, she was the only one?” Jeremy demanded, his brows pulled together in a deep V over the golden-green of his eyes. “There’s no way in hell Dylan would’ve agreed to something like that.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think so, either, but Pippa was the only one who made an argument that the Mate Hunt was an arcane tradition that should be abolished.”

  He started to respond, when a sudden noise had them both freezing, breaths held tight in their lungs.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jeremy rasped, lifting the window.

  “Good idea,” she whispered, and he hoisted her up to the street.

  * * *

  The quiet house was as quaint as the woman who lived within its antique white walls. Pippa Stanton took the chair across from the love seat where Jillian and Jeremy sat, her long, signature silver plait of hair coiled around the top of her head like a crown, her posture equally regal as she made herself comfortable. After making it out of the records room undetected, they’d headed straight to her house on the outskirts of town, careful to make sure they weren’t seen walking to her door.

  To Jillian’s infinite relief, the Elder had been more than happy to invite them in. “Tell me,” Pippa said in a soft, husky voice that had ripened like a fine wine, “what did you think of Drake’s rally, Mr. Burns?”

  With his hands clasped between his knees, Jeremy sent her a charming, lopsided grin. “I thought it was the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

  Jillian poked him in the ribs, glaring, but the Elder threw back her head and chuckled. “And if you don’t agree with Drake,” she said a moment later, when her laughter had died down, “then what’s your answer to the tensions rising within the Silvercrest?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t claim to have the answers. I only know what I see. The pack’s insistence on defining itself by what it is and what it isn’t gives power to those who seek their own personal ambition. Is there an easy answer? An easy solution? Of course not,” he rumbled. “But focusing on the differences between your race and the humans will never lead to either. It will only bring bloodshed and destruction to this town and to the pack itself.”

  “I agree, Mr. Burns. We are not human, and yet, we are not monsters. We are, in fact, charged with a greater purpose. If we chose, we could do wonderful things. Instead, we focus on bitterness and differences…when in fact, we are more alike than different. We want to be safe. We want love, protection and happiness for our families. Things that hate will never produce.”

  Jillian was aware of Jeremy’s expression mirroring her own surprise at the Elder’s words. She had expected Pippa to be civil, but she’d never dreamed that the woman would actually share such opinions with them. “But that’s a discussion for another day,” the elderly Lycan murmured, inclining her head in a graceful gesture. “I assume you’ve come for information.”

  “You’re right,” Jeremy told her. “It’s about Helen Drake. We’ve seen the family’s file in the hall of records and there’s no death certificate for Stefan’s wife.”

  Slim gray brows lifted over piercingly sharp eyes the color of a mountain lake. “Uncovered that particular little tidbit, did you?” she remarked. “It’s one thing to see something that’s there—and quite another to see something that isn’t. I’m impressed.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?”

  Pippa leaned back in her chair. “Oh, there’s not much to tell. Helen fell in love with another man and left Drake and the children, which was bad enough in Drake’s opinion. But the fact she abandoned them all for a man who was human was intolerable. That was the beginning of the end for Drake. The Lycan he was has been lost to hatred as virulent as a disease.”

  Jeremy’s golden brows drew together in a deep ridge. “What happened to Helen?”

  “I don’t know, but I imagine she got as far from here as possible. Drake asked us for permission to have her assassinated, but the League refused.” She paused, the corners of her mouth turning in a thoughtful frown. “You know, he’s never forgiven us for what he called our ‘desertion in his quest for justice.’ He was furious, accusing us of turning our backs on him in his time of need.”

  “How is it that nobody knows the truth?” Jillian asked, hyperaware of Jeremy pressed against her side on the small love seat—of his heat and hardness and the heady scent of his skin filling her head.

  “Oh, there are those who know, but they’re forbidden to tell. Drake refused to let the children even speak her name, but they know what really happened. As for the League, we supported his story that she’d been killed in an accident because it served our purpose to do so. We wanted the whole sordid affair forgotten, though Drake has never been able to get past it.” She rose out of the floral-printed chair, an unspoken signal that the visit had come to an end. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m expected at Graham’s in fifteen minutes, and he’s a crotchety ol’ bastard when forced to wait.”

  Rolling to his feet, Jeremy gave a quiet laugh. “We understand, and we appreciate your talking to us.”

  “You’ve been more than helpful,” Jillian added. “Thank you.”

  The Elder gave them a wondering smile, looking from one to the other. “You know, I always thought it was a shame you two couldn’t see past the nonsense that tore you apart.”

  Jillian blinked in surprise, aware of her face going hot. She’d always assumed that Pippa supported the League’s ultimatum that she break things off with Jeremy, that the decisi
on had been unanimous. Had she been wrong? If she’d spoken up and fought for the right to make her own choices, for what she’d wanted, would she have had an ally in this woman?

  And not for the first time since Jeremy had returned, she questioned her decision ten years ago. Had she grabbed at the ready answer, at the easy way out, allowing fear to rule her actions? Is that why she’d let rumors and the League’s disapproval tear them apart?

  Rumors? Her own thoughts surprised her. Was that what she now believed? That his cheating with Danna had been a lie? And if so, why? To keep them apart?

  Regret twisted her insides and Jillian tore her gaze away from Pippa’s knowing stare. “Again,” she said quietly, “thank you for talking to us.”

  “If Drake learns what I’ve told you,” Pippa drawled airily, moving toward the door, “he’ll have my head.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jeremy assured her. “We have no intention of involving you.”

  “Oh, that’s a thin promise, Mr. Burns,” the Elder commented with a wry smile. “We’re all involved, are we not? At any rate, my soul is at peace with my choice. I’ve done the right thing today, and at this point in my years, that’s all that matters.”

  She opened the door, giving an uncharacteristic wave goodbye, and Jillian shook her head in wonder as she and Jeremy headed down the sidewalk. “I can hardly believe she was so willing to talk to us,” she whispered, when the Elder had closed her front door.

  Pushing his hands into his pockets, Jeremy rolled one shoulder, his tone thoughtful, as if the wheels in his brain were going at full speed. “You know, I used to think she was a scary old crone, but she’s really not so bad. And I think she talked because her conscience was weighing on her. She knows Drake’s rotten, and she knows the League has let him get away with murder lately. Hell, he’s been wreaking havoc in Shadow Peak for years.”