Page 39 of Talk Howly to Me

Tasha nodded slowly, wincing at the movement. When she spoke, her voice was rough. "I was kidnapped by those two men—the ones from the other night. They took me to meet their employer." She paused, her dark eyes finding Sloane's. "Some guy named Darius Kade."

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet. Sloane felt Ronan and Kozue go rigid behind her, their sharp intakes of breath audible in the suddenly charged silence.

"He told me if I didn't tell him exactly where you were, he would kill me," Tasha continued, her matter-of-fact tone belying the tremor in her hands. "So I had to tell him. But they still beat the crap out of me and left me for dead in an alley. I came here as soon as I could to warn you."

Sloane's world tilted. She turned to look at Ronan, whose face had gone pale beneath his tan. "Who is Darius Kade?"

Ronan's blue eyes were hard as ice when they met hers. "The Alpha who I'm pretty sure murdered my family twelve years ago. He's the leader of the Kade pack—our enemy."

Her stomach clenched with a sick realization that made her want to vomit. She hadn't just brought random danger to Hale Lodge. She'd led their greatest enemy directly to their door. The safety she'd finally begun to believe in, the future she'd dared to imagine—it was all crumbling around her, and it was entirely her fault.

Ronan's voice cut through the tension. "Emerson."

The front desk manager materialized with the swift efficiency that made her indispensable, but her usual cheerful demeanor shifted to focused concern the moment she took in Tasha's battered appearance.

"Get her to our healer Augustine," Ronan commanded, his Alpha authority leaving no room for discussion. "Tell him it's urgent."

Sloane's mind reeled as the pieces clicked into place. The pack community. Of course there would be other wolves living nearby, probably in those cozy homes she'd glimpsed scattered through the forest.

"Can you walk?" Emerson asked Tasha gently, her voice carrying the kind of practiced calm that suggested she'd handled injured people before.

Tasha nodded, though she winced as she pushed herself up from the leather chair. "I've had worse."

"I'm going with you," Sloane said immediately, stepping forward to support her friend's other arm.

But Tasha shook her head with stubborn determination. "No. You need to stay here and figure out what to do." Her dark eyes found Sloane's with fierce intensity. "I'll be fine."

"Well, you're staying in my suite tonight," Sloane said firmly. "I can stay with Ronan or Kozue."

The words left her mouth before she'd thought them through, and she felt heat creep up her neck as both men's gazes sharpened on her. Ronan and Kozue exchanged a loaded look that spoke of complicated territory she wasn't sure she was ready to navigate.

Tasha just nodded, too exhausted to argue. "Thanks."

Emerson slipped her arm around Tasha's waist with practiced gentleness. "Come on, honey. Let's get you patched up."

Sloane watched them disappear through the lodge's front doors, Emerson's steady chatter already working to distract Tasha from her pain. The silence that followed felt heavy with unspoken tensions—the shower she and Ronan just shared, Kozue's hurt at being excluded, and now the very real threat bearing down on them.

She turned back to face Ronan, her stomach churning with guilt and fear. "So this Darius Kade—this Alpha wolf killed your family?"

Kozue stepped closer, his green eyes serious. "We don't know that for a fact, but there's enough speculation and evidence that suggests he did. But Ronan hasn't acted on it because he didn't want to start a pack war without absolute proof."

The weight of what she'd brought to their doorstep crashed over her like a tidal wave. She'd just put every person in this lodge and the surrounding community at risk.

"What are we going to do to protect Hale Lodge?" she asked, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the panic clawing at her. "He's going to send his men looking for me here, and I don't want to bring any more danger to this place or your pack."

Ronan's expression shifted into the commanding Alpha mode she'd glimpsed during the rogue attack. "We can't stop running our business. I won't give Darius that satisfaction. And we can't afford to spook our guests. So we have to pretend that everything's fine. But I'll have all our pack enforcers running constant patrols—day and night, triple duty. Two enforcers stationed at our front entrance, probably one at all critical entry points just to be safe."

The action plan should have reassured her, but instead it only amplified her crushing sense of responsibility. "This is all my fault," she said, the words scraping her throat raw. "I never should have had Gerri bring me here. I put you all in danger."

Before she could retreat into the self-blame spiraling through her mind, both men moved simultaneously. Kozue stepped forward from her left while Ronan approached from her right, and suddenly they were each taking one of her hands.

The moment their skin connected, that intense electrical awareness flooded her body again—the triad mate bond singing with recognition and completion. Her pulse hammered as warmth spread from their joined hands up her arms and straight to her core, temporarily drowning out her guilt in pure sensation.

"Gerri was right to bring you here. She knew what she was doing," Kozue said, his voice firm with conviction. "We will protect you with our lives."

Ronan's blue eyes blazed with fierce determination. "Yes. And our pack is well aware of the dangers of our world and of Darius Kade. We're no strangers to his threats. But now he has an incentive to push at us harder."

The reality of their situation crystallized in her mind. She wasn't just some helpless human they needed to shelter—she was going to be a liability unless she could defend herself in their world.