Page 31 of Reject Him

“No, I hadn’t bought much.”

Logan feels relief. He steps forward so that he’s closer to the boy. “Who sold it to you?”

Clark frowns. “I don’t know.”

“Was it a shifter?”

Clark nods. “Yeah, he smelled like one.”

Thank god for shifter senses, Logan thinks to himself. Without them, a stranger would seem like a normal human being. “This is important: Was he a rogue?”

Lifting his hand, Clark scratches at his jaw. “I don’t know. He could have been. Or he could have been from another pack. I don’t know.”

“Did you get a name?”

Clark shakes his head. “No. It all happened pretty fast.”

Logan tries to hide the disappointment on his face. He reaches out and touches Clark’s shoulder. “Get some rest, kid. I’ll check on you in the morning.”

Logan leads Eme and Wayne back out into the lobby before Logan turns to Wayne.

“What do you want to do?” Wayne asks.

“Our hands are still tied. The only way to know is to take the boy back down to the city and try to find the seller.” Logan rakes a hand down his face, knowing that’s not an option.

“We can’t do that,” Wayne says, voicing Logan’s thoughts aloud. “It’s too dangerous to put a kid at risk like that. He’s lucky he isn’t dead, and not from the drugs. All those kids are.”

“If they had run into a rogue wolf on wolfcalm . . . they truly are lucky,” Eme adds.

“So,” Wayne draws out. “We send an adult.”

“We have no description,” Logan points out.

“We don’t need one.” Wayne shrugs.

Eme pitches forward. “You want an adult to go down to the city and buy drugs off the street just to see if the ones selling it are actually from the rogues?”

“Well, yeah.”

Eme looks at Logan. “Is that doable?”

Logan sighs. So many things could go wrong with this, but he has no other choice. “Let’s wait. Give it a few days. Let the boy recover.”

“We don’t have time for you to think on it, man,” Wayne gripes.

“We will wait,” Logan says more sternly.

Eme follows Logan through the Alpha cabin’s main door. She watches him slide off his coat before she removes her own then hangs it on a hook next to his.

They say nothing as they walk through the house to the kitchen where Logan slumps down in a chair and sighs deeply.

She sits next to him, staring at him and the stress lining his face. What a toll this must take on him, she thinks to herself. Her father never had this kind of stress, had never had to deal with wolfcalm in his pack. The fact that it’s gotten to her new pack is a little concerning. A lot concerning if she’s being honest with herself.

But she doesn’t know Clark as Logan does. She’s only just met the lovely family. Logan has known him since he was born.

She’d give anything to know what he’s thinking, to know what he’s feeling. But how does she approach the subject?

Tentatively, she extends her hand and touches the side of his head, stroking her fingers through the soft hair just above his ear. “Talk to me,” she whispers.