Chapter 101: Inseparable

Nash

It’s good to have friends in high places. Josiah wasn’t able to get me an audience with the redhawk brothers, but he did work his alpha magic to get me a meeting with the pack leader of the Black Crow pack. I set out the very next day for the long drive deep into the Adirondack mountains.

I wouldn’t have found the place if Olivia hadn’t pinned it on my map application on my phone. I drove through miles and miles of woods before I came upon a gate in the middle of no-where, manned by four big, brawny men, and one equally muscular woman.

I rolled down my window, and the woman came and leaned inside. She was tall, almost as tall as me, and she had a wild mop of red curls on top of her head. “Hi.” She said, giving me a once over. I didn’t miss the flare of her nostrils as she gave a sniff to assess my creature status.

“Human,” I said casually, and pulled out my driver’s license. “I’m Nash Turner, I have an appointment to speak with Alpha Carrole.”

The woman took my license, peered at it closely, and then held it next to my head to compare the ugly mugshot on the license to my actual face. “Okay Mr. Turner. Do you have any firearms or other weapons in your vehicle or on your person?”

Olivia had warned me, multiple times, not to try to pull any s.hit with the Black Crow pack, so I reached under the seat to pull out my sidearm and removed the knife from my belt, and held them out to the red-headed woman. “Um, what’s your name.”

She collected my weapons, checked the chamber on my handgun, then gave a small smile. “I’m Jasmin, chief of security. We will keep your weapons in the guard house here at the gate. You can collect them when you leave.” She disappeared, carrying the items over to the small building that was located at the side of the gate. She came back a moment later with a receipt. “Just show this to the guard when you leave.”

I tucked the slip of paper under the sun visor and waited for the gate to roll open. I drove for another quarter mile before I pulled up in front of an unlikely-looking building. It kind of reminded me of my old high school. Brick walls, industrial windows, a flat roof. Ugly, institutional, uninviting. Unlike my school, however, gardens seemed to be erupting everywhere, including the rooftop. Young trees were growing all around the exterior of the building, and some murals had been painted over the ugly bricks.

“Okaaay,” I blew out a breath before I jumped out of the jeep, tucked a file folder under my arm, and half-jogged up to the double front doors. They opened soundlessly, and a smartly dressed young man stood, holding it open. “Welcome, Mr. Turner. I’m Glenn. The Alpha is expecting you.”

The young man was a head shorter than I was, and as he led me through a maze of hallways, I couldn’t help but notice the way his hair swirled in a cowlick on the back of his head. He finally stopped in the hallway, and knocked lightly on the door. A soft feminine voice directed him to come in, and he turned the handle and stepped aside so that I could enter.

First impression, I felt that the room was not an office, but a green house. It seemed like every spare inch was stuffed with plant life. They crowded the windows and the sunlight filtering through the leaves gave the whole room a sort of green haze. Among the pots and foliage, there were two desks, at angles so they faced each other, and the door.

A small woman sat behind one of the desks. Her dark brown hair had been separated into two thick braids that hung over her shoulders, and her dark eyes studied me as I entered. “Hello Mr. Turner,” she spoke so softly, I had to strain my ears to hear her. “Please, sit down.”

I moved to the chair in front of her desk, and a man, who had been concealed behind the massive monstera deliciosa plant, stepped over to stand behind the petite woman. He was tall, broad, jacked, with steely grey eyes that stared at me with a vaguely threatening vibe.

I assumed this was her mate. It was easy to see why some people might believe that he was a cold-blooded killer. The woman, who looked younger even than Daphne, lifted a hand by her shoulder, and immediately the man slipped his fingers around hers.

The touch seemed to relax him, but I still had the sense that if I made one wrong move, he’d have my ass nailed to the wall before I could blink.

“I’m Eudora, this is my mate, Jericho,” she blinked at me with those dark eyes, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not just looking at me, but looking into me. “We don’t normally meet with humans, but Alpha Josiah spoke very highly of you. He’s a good man.”

“Yes he is.” I agreed.

“Rutberg is near the town where I grew up,” Eudora said. The way she said it, and the solemn expression she wore sort of told me she didn’t have very good memories of the place. “You’ve driven a long way to see us, so, how can we assist you?”

I shifted uncomfortably in the chair. I thought I would have an audience with Eudora alone, so that I could pick her brain about her mate and the King’s Assassins. I couldn’t exactly do that with the man hovering over her shoulder. I clasped my hands together between my knees. “Well, it’s a bit of a long story. I was on an undercover assignment, investigating the murder of some university students. The killer was a young woman, a bear-shifter. I was told that she was in the employ of the Kings Assassins.”

I watched the man closely, noticed an almost imperceptible tightening of his shoulder muscles at the mention of the name of the organization. “I’ve been trying to piece together why the bear started killing innocents. And I was wondering if you, the two of you, that is, might have any information that would be useful.”

“Is the bear still on the loose?” The man spoke. I got the feeling that he was a man of few words.

“No. Some other bears came in, tracked her down and captured her. They have her now.”

“If the problem has already been neutralized, why are you so interested?” Eudora asked, releasing her mate’s hand so that she could lean forward over the desk.

“I… I met another woman while I was at the university,” I blurted out the words, “A werewolf. I think… I think she may be my mate. And I feel like there is some connection between the bear, and my mate, and her family.”

I stopped speaking abruptly, at a loss for words. How did I explain to this dark-eyed woman that I couldn’t track down the whereabouts of my mate, so I had decided to unravel the mystery of the bear instead. I wasn’t a man who believed in the mystical, or who even used words like fate and destiny, and yet, this rogue bear assassin had connected me to Daphne.

“When I spoke to the bear shifter, she said that King's had taken her mate, a man named Bruce.” I opened my file folder and set it on the desk. On top of the pile of documents was that one, grainy photo of Bruce Ledbetter with his arm around the mysterious Kodi Wetmoore.

Eudora didn’t touch the file, but Jericho leaned over from behind her and plucked up the photograph. “I don’t know her,” he said, after studying it. “But there were always new faces, new recruits.” He set the photo back down. “She could have joined after I left.”

“What about her mate? Why would they take him? Where would they have taken him?”

“They probably killed him,” Jericho said, his voice flat and emotionless.

“Why?”

He lifted one shoulder. “Punishment, probably.”

“Punishment for what?” I asked. I don’t know why it surprised me that an organization that trained killers-for-hire would take out the partner of one of their own.

“She probably botched a job. King’s doesn’t tolerate mistakes. Their contracts go for hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars. And along with that price tag comes a certain guarantee. A clean job, no evidence. If she failed…”

“Why kill her mate? Why not kill her?” It was Eudora who asked the obvious question.

Jericho gave her a long look, and then stroked her cheek with one hand, like he just couldn’t stop himself from touching her. “Because they wanted her to suffer. And if she’s a bear…”

Eudora closed her eyes, and a pained expression rippled across her features, as though she could feel Kodi Wetmore’s pain. “It wouldn’t just cause her pain,” Eudora said, in that whisper-soft voice, “It would drive her insane.”