Page 61 of Ruined Wolf

I took out my mobile and rang Maverick. The call went straight to voicemail, as did Lucas’s. Weird. I wondered if the storm was having an effect on the signal. There wasn’t much I could do except wait for them to get home. I stripped off my clothes and headed into my bathroom for a long, hot shower and some clean, dry clothes.

I felt much more human when I headed back out into the hallway with the intention of hitting the kitchen to get something cooking. If they were out in that storm, I figured they’d appreciate something hot and filling when they returned, but as I stepped into the hall, my eyes drifted up towards the closed door that stood at the end. I drifted towards it, my hand reaching into my trouser pocket for my keys.

Maverick had kept this door locked for months, but he’d never said why. I guessed it had something to do with his way of dealing with Jaxon’s disappearance.

When my brother hadn’t returned home that night, we hadn’t been worried. A few days later, we’d become concerned, but he’d never once contacted us. As our worries grew, we started looking into the possibility that something had happened to him. The day Maverick locked the bedroom door was the day we discovered he’d left of his own accord, disappearing after he reached the mainland. I’d managed to track his mobile for a while and his credit cards as he made his way south, but then they’d disappeared too. A fake call to the credit card company had determined he’d closed the accounts himself. No foul play, just a man who’d wanted to disappear.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, flicking on the light. A layer of dust covered everything, but other than that, nothing had changed. I sat down on the bed, looking around at his desk and the long stretches of bookcases full of informational hardbacks and battered paperbacks. Jaxon had always preferred a more academic life. As I’d begun to realise he probably didn’t plan on coming back, I’d started to think more about him as a person rather than my brother and future alpha, and I’d realised that maybe Jaxon hadn’t wanted to be alpha.

He’d accepted his duty with honour, but when I’d thought about it, I’d realised how much he’d dreamed of going off to university, travelling, and studying. He’d have been a serious and responsible alpha, there was no doubt of that, but as I sat and considered it, I realised that despite Maverick having his own dreams destroyed by taking the position, he would make a far better alpha than Jaxon ever would have. Maverick was a natural leader, which was fairly odd for a second born child, but it was true. People listened to him, and more than that, he listened to them. He was fair and rarely judgemental. He was a good man, and I knew he’d lead this pack well, even better than Ethan. I just hoped he’d be able to find happiness while he did it, especially now that Nova was probably gone.

Ethan would have shipped her back to High Rocks Pack, I was sure of it. I cringed at the thought, but then I remembered that everything she’d told us had been lies. The tragic past and the abuse she had suffered could have all been faked, playing on our protective natures to get us to take her in. I felt the irritation rise within me as I thought about how easily she’d conned us all, just to get close to the alpha, even as Maverick’s mate. She’d done bloody well, even seducing Jaxon. She’d lived with him in the city, not a day’s journey from here, and yet he’d still never returned. He’d gone south, I knew that from his phone records, but he’d come back north, on his way home. Had she seduced him on purpose, stopped him from coming back, and kept him out of the way while her father planned to take the pack? Ethan was a strong alpha, but leadership was usually taken by force, and Ethan would be easier to defeat in a challenge than Jaxon would have been, young and at the peak of his strength.

When Maverick had stepped up, she needed to weaken him too. My thoughts began to churn in my mind, spinning out of control, each one more ludicrous than the last, but I followed them all, still trying to make sense of everything. If keeping Jaxon out of the way had been her assignment, then maybe Maverick had been her second? And then Lucas too? What if she was more than a spy? What if she’d been sent to weaken my brothers or even... a thought struck me, and I growled loudly. What if Jaxon hadn’t been sick? What if she’d killed him so she could come to Desolation and take care of Maverick too? She had both of my brothers under her thumb, and they were vulnerable. She might not be able to shift, but that would keep them off their guard.

She didn’t seem like a threat, but she could have easily slit their throats in their sleep...

Something snapped inside me. The control I thought I’d manage to wrestle back once my body had been exhausted dissipated, and rage and grief surged through me, filling every vein and cell as it had before.

I snarled, launched myself off the bed, and grabbed the lamp on the bedside table, hurling it at the mirror that hung on the wall by Jaxon’s desk. I didn’t know whether or not I’d thought the sound of smashing glass would have helped me calm down, but it had the opposite effect on me. I lost it completely, my fury taking over. I screamed and lunged forward, grabbing one of the heavy wooden bookcases and dragging it over. It crashed forward, smashing against the wooden chest at the foot of the bed and scattering books all over the floor.

I crossed to the desk. The memory of Jaxon sitting there with his books and his journal filled me with mountains of grief. I never showed any interest in his hobbies, and now, I never could. I grabbed the desk with both hands, feeling the cool wood under my fingertips, and shoved it across the room, tipping it up so the computer crashed to the ground, the screen shattering on impact. The drawers slid straight out, spilling their contents over the floor, and I kicked at the books and papers in sheer fury.

Adrenaline coursed through me, and all my control was long gone. I moved around the room, ripping books from the shelves and hurling them at the walls. The desk chair met a similar fate, leaving huge dents in the wall and smashing to pieces as it hit the floor with force. My anger seemed to come from somewhere both deep down inside me, a darkness I didn’t know I possessed, but also from somewhere else, like a primal, external source was taking over my body, and all I could do was watch helplessly as I smashed everything I could get my hands on.

When the frenzy finally faded, I stood alone in the middle of my brother’s room, staring at the devastation I had wrought in my temper. My chest rose and fell rapidly, and my pulse raced as my body finally began to calm, and then a wave of grief swept over me. It was over. Jaxon was gone, and I would never see him again. I choked as a sob rose in my throat, and there, in the darkness and chaos, I sank down onto the floor, my head in my hands.

My whole body shook with sorrow, and I finally wept for my family, for Jaxon, and for Nova.

Night had well and truly fallen when my sobs finally faded, and exhaustion swept through me. I was calm again, save for the regret at what I’d done.

I wiped my face and got to my feet. I took a shaky breath, steadying myself, and then began to try and put things to right, lifting the bookcases back into place and then tipping the desk up onto its legs. One of the drawers had been hanging out, and when I stood the desk back up, it slipped out the rest of the way and crashed to the ground with a splintering sound. I leaned down to pick it up, and then hesitated.

The contents had more or less spilled out, leaving only a few pens and paper clips, but the front of the drawer had been damaged and was hanging off, revealing something strange. I picked the drawer up off the floor and set in on the bed. Sitting down next to it, I pried the front of the drawer away to reveal a secondary compartment in the bottom. I tipped the drawer up, and a couple of manila files slipped out from inside. I picked one up and opened it, then started to flip through it. There were dozens of printouts of bank statements, small business accounts, and emails between Ethan and a sales manager discussing the sales negotiations for a serious chunk of land on Desolation. Notes in Jaxon’s handwriting described how the pack land had originally been held in trust, but had gradually been transferred into Ethan’s name several years ago. Plus, there were also copies of the land deeds both before and after the transfer had taken place. My heart thudded in my chest.

“Fuck... She was right.” I flipped through the rest of the papers, finding more and more evidence that all pointed to the fact that Ethan was planning to sell the majority of the pack lands out from under us, all save the actual villages and towns. Not only that, but he was planning to sell to a fucking logging company who made it very clear that they intended to strip the land of whatever resources they could.

I laid the file on the bed, my heart racing as I was hardly able to catch my breath. “Shit,” I breathed. “He knew. Jaxon knew... and Nova was right all along.”

Hope flared in my chest despite the shocking discovery. She hadn’t lied about this. What she had told us about Ethan being up to something had been true. So what else had been? I knew my heart was clutching at straws, but I didn’t care. Nova had said she was convinced Jaxon had been trying to protect us, so it followed that he’d must have had a plan. I just had to figure out what it was so we could stop Ethan, and for that, I needed help.

I picked up the drawer once again, tipping it back and forth to make sure there was nothing else left, but there was. A sealed white envelope slid out, sticking a little and needing to be shaken loose. It fell into my hand, and my brother’s writing practically shined at me from the paper.

Maverick, Lucas, and Asher.

I went to slide my finger under the flap then stopped. It was addressed to all of us. I needed to find my brothers before I opened it. If Jaxon had something to say to us, then we needed to hear it together, and then the three of us needed to get Nova back and discover what the hell was really going on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

NOVA

I didn’t know how long we’d slept. It must have at least been a couple of hours, because there was a faint grey light shining down the Devil’s Chimney when I finally awoke, stiff and cold. Lucas was still asleep, wearing a peaceful expression on his face that seemed strange on him, but it warmed my heart to see it. I might have discovered that my treasure hunt was over, and had all been for nothing, but if being down here had brought Lucas some inner peace after all these years, then I would do it all over again if given the choice.

I blinked sleepily, needing to move, and more importantly, really needing to pee. Gingerly, I extracted myself from Lucas’s arms without waking him. I was surprised when he slept on, his head tilted to one side, but I guessed the emotional strain of the last twenty-four hours would exhaust even him. I stood up and stretched, smiling as the little one inside me wriggled. He was always awake this time in the morning. I figured he was practising for early morning wake ups when he was finally here. It was sweet for about thirty seconds, until a foot or something hard pressed against my bladder, and I grimaced.

Stumbling as quietly as I could to the edge of the water, I managed to relieve myself into the sea water, sighing in relief as I straightened up. I had to use the wall to steady myself, and it occurred to me that whatever I did next, anything physical was going to get progressively harder as time went on.

A rattling noise startled me out of my thoughts, and I looked up as a small stone clattered down through the chimney, bouncing over the rocks below before finally landing in the shallow water with a small splash.