Page 14 of Winter Unleashed

“Aunt Celeste has been here. She left this morning,” I said, wondering why she was asking me such weird questions.

She gasped again and her hand went to her lips. “Um… I need to use the bathroom.”

I watched as she walked away. She pulled her phone out of her purse before shutting the door behind her. She was in there for a while, so long I thought something might be wrong. Just when I decided I should check on her, she opened the door.

“Sorry about that.” She passed through the living room into the kitchen. “How about some tea?”

“Yeah, sure.” I watched her move around my kitchen as if it were her own. A few minutes later she turned to me with two cups of steaming green tea. “Let’s sit out back.”

We took our mugs out back to enjoy the crisp air of the winter afternoon. She rambled on about unimportant topics for a while before I finally asked her why she’d brought Fraser to my house.

She nodded way too emphatically. “Yeah, sure. Right. Um, well… I, uh… You know Liam is friends with Philip,” she began, studying me again.

“Yeah, I know. So, what? Are you trying to hook me up with him?” I asked and let out a sardonic laugh.

Her responding laugh was stiff and unnatural. “No. No, of course not. He asked to meet you, that’s all.”

My face scrunched up. “Really? I wonder why.”

She shrugged and jumped to her feet. “Oh, look who’s here,” she said, gesturing to two men walking our way.

Isaac and Philip smiled as they approached us. Isaac’s was tight and didn’t reach his eyes, making me instantly worry about him. His curly, light brown hair was mussed, and I knew he’d been running his hands through it. It was something he did when he was upset.

As the Summer pack Alpha and owner of a construction company, I knew he often felt stressed. But he rarely showed it, so when he did, I knew it had to be bad.

I rose from my seat and moved toward him. As I neared him, his bright blue eyes softened, and he opened his arms. I stepped into his embrace, taking in his scent. It always reminded me of the ocean even though we lived smack dab in the center of dense forest lands.

“Are you okay?” I asked without releasing him. “You look tense.”

He smiled down at me. This time it was warm and real. “I’m okay. Philip wanted to see Stella, you know how mates can be,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “I tagged along because I wanted to see you.”

My eyebrows pulled together. “Where’s Ciara?” He mentioned mates wanting to be together, but he’d come to see me without his.

His head twitched back a little and his eyes narrowed. “Uh, she had a meeting.” His tone was gruff, and he dropped his hands to his side and glanced to Stella and Philip.

Everything about his stance, his tone, the way he was looking at the others had alarm bells going off in my head. I studied him then turned to see the couple looking at me with twin looks of concern.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” I shifted my gaze among the three of them. “First Stella brings Fraser here for some lame ass reason. Now you three are acting weird. Tell me what’s going on.”

Stella closed the distance between us, taking my hands in hers. Her expression had my stomach clenching. “Em, do you trust me? Us?” She motioned to the two men.

I thought about it for a second. I’d forgiven her for what she’d done while under Cybil’s control, but I took that moment to make sure I was telling her the truth when I said, “Yes, I trust you. And Isaac. And even Phil.”

The three of them shared looks before Stella turned back to me. “We should sit for this conversation, let’s go inside,” she said with a shiver.

I let her lead me inside to the couch where we sat and waited for Isaac and Philip to join us. “Can you all stop grinning at me like that? You’re really freaking me out.”

“Em,” Stella began, keeping her voice low and steady, “you said your Aunt Celeste was here. What did you guys do?”

There was that niggle in the back of my mind again. I concentrated on it, trying to pull it to the front but it refused to budge. “Okay, so here’s the thing. I know she was here. I just can’t remember when she got here, how long she was here, or what we did. Except I now know how to control my power and there are leftover cinnamon buns in a container on the stove.”

Stella stared at me with eyes bright with tears. “Are you sure you can’t remember anything else? It’s been three weeks since we’ve been able to get to you.”

“What? What do you mean?” I asked looking around at the three concerned faces staring back at me.

“For three weeks,” Isaac said, clenching and unclenching his hands, “we couldn’t even set foot on your driveway. The street was as far as we could get. Today was the first time we could come onto your property.”

“It may help us figure out what happened, if you could try to remember anything else,” Philip added.