Page 10 of Bound

Fire seared through my blood, my wolf flexing within my bones. I bared my teeth, a damn stupid thing to do in front of the two highest ranked wolves in the pack. “Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing if it was Ethan or August who was missing.”

But as usual, Cal didn’t take the bait. Instead, he said, “West is concerned.”

And there it was.

“Is he.”

“You’re not controlling your wolf. Not in a healthy way.”

And although his eyes didn’t go to my wrists, the question he wanted to ask weighed down on me like a wall of concrete. I clenched and unclenched my fists, trying to focus on what it was Brody had just said.

“—probation. Restricted duty—”

My mouth went dry, my pulse thrumming so hard I was sure I was going to be sick. “You can’t do this. I won’t abandon my brother.”

“No one’s asking you to. But while we’re still pursuing this, you need to follow safety protocols just like everyone else.”

I made no move to show him out. The front door clicked shut, leaving me and Cal alone.

While we’re still pursuing this…

No one, hell, maybe not even West, believed my brother was still alive. Like it was only a matter of time before the case would be closed.

“Brody ran a background check on Kieran, didn’t he?”

Cal remained silent.

Stupid question. Of course he had. What was unbelievable was that it had taken this long. I tried to think through what that sort of file would contain. Employment history. Rental contracts. Arrest records. Suddenly I felt sick. Brody was a cop. No way had he waited a year to run this sort of information.

“How long has he been sitting on this?” I went over to the window overlooking the balcony. Tonight was the full moon and the nighttime streets of downtown Blood Moon hummed with a wild, restless energy, my wolf desperate to get free. But if I got pissed and threw a coffee table across the room, or worse, shifted and had to be tranq’ed, it would just end up with me in cuffs.

And not the fun kind.

“He noticed Kieran didn’t have the most stable employment history. That there were indications he might have been planning to move on for some time. Emails. Statements he’d made online—”

“This is Fang-head 101.” I flexed my wrists, quickly stilling when Cal’s sharp eyes caught the movement. “You think they didn’t fabricate all that shit when they abducted me? That they aren’t doing the same thing for each and every one of the shapeshifters they’re stealing off the streets to make sure the cops write the cases off as voluntary disappearances?”

“Two of the sources are firefighters from his former crew.” A dull ringing droned in my ears, growing louder as Cal withdrew a printed report. I read the names listed at the top. “Do you know them?”

I ground my teeth. “Yeah. I know them.”

The clouds shifted, washing the living room in moonlight. My wolf clawed inside the cage of my bones, responding to my elevated heartrate. Somewhere across town, I felt West’s wolf stir, the faint fluttering inside my ribcage momentarily causing me to see stars—

And no way in hell was I doing this.

Shutting the blinds, I sank onto the couch.

Cal cleared his throat. “When was the last time you and Kieran spoke?”

The leather cuff clamped around my wrist stared up at me. There was no silver in it. Not anymore. It had taken months, but I’d managed to claw back enough control over my wolf that I no longer needed it. Now it covered the scars left from having been used as a blood source by dozens of vampires. Maybe hundreds. Night after night, they’d violated me, a marker in their blood reacting with mine to scar my veins with more track marks than your local heroin dealer.

“I called him the night I escaped.”

“Take me through that conversation.”

A dull headache gnawed at the back of my skull like the razor-sharp teeth of thousands of tiny ants. Sparkly lights danced at the edges of my visual field. Every time I fought to recall this particular memory, the ants came back with a vengeance. Week after week, Cal and I chipped away at the memory, trying to unearth some new fragment, an insignificant detail that might be the break we needed in the case.

“I told Kieran he had to get out of there. That I’d been kidnapped by vampires.”