“Helena, come in. Your Aleksei is indeed in trouble, but he's alive and we will do everything we can to get him back.” Selena waved her into the house as calm as can be, but Helena heard the worry in her voice.
“What do you mean get him back? You know something, spill. He's important to me.” More than that, but she had to keep her emotions in check, because her imagination was already spiraling down, down, down into the depths, wondering what would she do without him.
“I know he is. Well, I mean I knew he would be. You're true mates. I wasn't sure either of you would allow the connection to happen, especially not this fast. I'm glad you have. It may be what saves him.” She led Helena through a formal living room. The deep male voices of her boss, and his brothers came from nearby.
There were far too many questions and not enough time. Helena wanted to ask Selena about the knowing they were true mates thing, but finding out what she knew about Aleksei had to take priority. “What's going on in there? Do they know what's happened to Aleksei? Can they help?”
Selena stopped in front of a bathroom with a hot shower already running, a stack of clothes on the counter, and every beauty product she might ever need, including some healing balm for her feet. She took Helena by the shoulders and squeezed. “Take a minute to take care of yourself. We can't do anything for Aleksei running around like chickens with our heads flapping around and bloody. Once you’re cleaned up, we'll figure out how to rescue your mate. Okay?”
Her mate. She didn't entirely understand what that meant, but she knew it felt right. “Okay. I won’t be more than a few minutes. Tell those boys of yours to be ready to kick some ass.”
When Helena was showered and dressed in the clothes that somehow fit perfectly, were functional and flattering all at the same time, she hurried to the dining room. Heli jumped up out of her chair and grabbed her in a long, hard bear hug. “We're here for you, okay?”
The second Heli let go, she picked up a plate full of cookies and shoved them toward Helena.
Uh-oh. This was bad. If Heli was stress baking, some serious shit was going down. Helena took a cookie and used it as her weapon of choice. “You tell me everything I need to know right now, or I will dunk this cookie in orange juice and put it down the garbage disposal.”
“Huaah.” Heli gasped and was strangled by the threat at the same time, so it came out all garbled. Kosta came to her rescue and snatched the cookie from Helena's hand, shoving it into his mouth.
He made mean squinty eyes at Helena, but she gave them right back. “Look. I know I'm not up to speed on this whole wolf pack war thing, or the details of being a mate, or whatever. But Aleksei is mine now, and if you don't tell me what's going on, what the plan is to fix it, and like a dozen other things, I'm marching right out the door, calling every single one of the girls at the club, and we are going to solve this problem ourselves. Don't you dare tell me a band of exotic dancers can't, because we deal with sleazeballs and dumbasses every day, and there isn't a woman among us that won't cut a bitch if we have to.”
Kosta looked at Max and Niko, smirked, and said, “Told ya.”
Niko shook his head. “We are not ready to reveal ourselves to the whole damn world yet. I will not put every wolf at risk because someone wants to usurp my title. Fuck it. Let them. See if they can do better.”
Zara rubbed her hand up and down Niko's arm. “No one is a better man to lead the wolves than you are, sweetheart.”
Niko looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Uneasy is the head that wears a crown. Helena wanted to feel for Niko, but it wasn't getting her the answers she needed or the actions to help Aleksei. “So...am I walking out of here to get my girl gang, or are you puppy dogs going to do something besides sit around and sniff each other's butts?”
Galyna raised her hand. “I volunteer to be on the girl gang. I've been trying to tell these guys for months that the people of Rogue can handle this, but somebody had to go and have visions of dragons coming to town or some such ridiculous thing and now we're sitting on our bums. I say, girl power for the win.”
Dragons? Was that a thing? Like, for real, like werewolves? And that was not something she was ever going to say out loud. She blurted out, “Hey, I had a vision too and mine said let's quit yapping and get to saving the world.”
The whole room looked at her like she'd said boo to a baby. Selena grinned with an I-told-you-so gleam, but everyone else was clearly shocked. “You can all close your jaws and tell me what me having a vision means later. Let's. Go.”
She waved them toward the back door, but instead of them going out, a pack of wolves came bounding in. But none of them was Aleksei.
Harley shifted into his naked self again right in front of the whole room. One would think with her job she wouldn't care who was naked and who wasn't, but she did. Maybe because while Harley had the goods to make some woman very, very happy, he was still no Aleksei.
“Sir,” he addressed Max who nodded that he should continue. “We lost the grey wolf. He's like a fucking ghost or something. Just disappeared. No trail. not even a fucking scent to follow.”
They all looked at Helena. “What? It's not like I'm friends with any other wolves besides you guys. That's about all the supernatural friends I can handle at the moment. He helped me and Aleksei, and he was in my vision. I'm pretty sure he's one of the good guys, but you all are so damn secretive, what do I know?”
Zara studied her for a moment longer than everyone else. “We should talk about your vision later. I'd like to know the interval between when Aleksei marked you and they started.”
“I don't know what marked me means.” While they were fooling around Aleksei had said something about wanting to mark her, but then they'd gotten to the good parts and she'd forgotten all about it. Must be some wolf thing. She hoped it didn't mean he had to pee on her or something. Like marking his territory. Gross.
“You know, when he bit you and you got your—” Heli pulled the collar of her t-shirt aside. A tattoo of a purple full moon with a howling wolf in the center practically glowed on her collarbone.
Lots of women in her profession were covered in tattoos. Helena had never found a design she wanted to have on her skin for the rest of her life. But holy wow, a butterfly or a heart or even a skull and crossbones had nothing on the beauty of the wolf on Heli. Helena was a bit jealous. “I don't have anything like that.”
Heli frowned. “Are you sure?”
“I'm ninety percent naked for the majority of my days. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if someone had painted a glowing tattoo on me.”
Selena poured herself a cup of tea and held it up to Helena in cheers sort of gesture. “Sometimes the soul marks its mate before the body has a chance to. I know of one other wolftress who developed powers after meeting her true mate, even though she was never marked by him. That's the power of love.”
The rest of the room sat stunned by what Selena said, but Helena felt buoyed by her words. She did love Aleksei, and he loved her. And now she was done talking and was going to go save her mate.
Helena nodded toward Gal, indicating she could come along, and walked toward the front door of the house this time. Screw walking through the woods. She was borrowing aka stealing someone's car, going to the club to get her girls, and going on the hunt.