It was bothersome but low on my list of things I worried about.
We needed a lake. I’d written about one. Hadn’t I? What did it mean that I couldn’t really remember? They were my books. Shouldn’t I have known them inside and out? And yet there had always been a distance I’d felt in regards to them. As though someone else had written them.
Now I sort of understood why. Maybe I wasn’t talented. Maybe I was just some kind of conduit.
Questions for another time.
I wasn’t finding anything I needed here.
Rainer leaned against the doorway, watching me. Jarret was upstairs with our mate, where I’d like to be if I had a choice, but I didn’t. Preston had become mister organizer. Who would have thought it? And my big brother was back.
I’d scented his arrival, heard him come in, and hadn’t blamed him in the least when he’d headed straight upstairs to our mate.
“Seems you saved the day.” Rainer strode toward me. “Thank you.”
I nodded. Even if I could speak, there wouldn’t be more to say than that. Yes, I’d come up with the idea about the Loups being spotted. But Preston had taken it to a whole other level. We were a team, and I was grateful we were all in this together.
“Need help? I can’t get near a computer to help any of them. Besides, I think my role in this is going to somehow be to Alpha challenge the Loup when we find him.”
I jolted. Was that a thing? Was Morgan an Alpha? That meant there was an explanation for how he controlled us. All the years running amok in my head was because he’d been…what…my Alpha? I hadn’t consented to that. There was a give and take between the Alphas and everyone else. We had to want to be with them. Their dominance made that happen, but still, I’d been a baby way too young to agree to anything. Fuck. It was like a mind rape.
Rainer placed his hand on my shoulder, and I jumped.
“You okay? Where’d you go? Nowhere good.”
I hugged him. We weren’t really huggy people, but I was so glad he was here, so glad he was Alpha, so glad to share MacKenzie with him. If anyone could save her, could save all of us, it was Rainer. He just didn’t know it. The Accords and council had broken him. What was worse was I was pretty sure the council had done it on purpose. Break the strong, make them weak, knock them down.
But she was bringing him back. She was doing that for all of us.
He patted my back. “It’s been a lot. And we’ve had no time to deal with any of it, little brother. You keep coming through. You always do.”
I hoped I could continue to do so. I waved my hand over the mess on my desk. So far, I was getting nowhere.
He looked over it. “Do you make notes anywhere, or do you just write directly on the page?”
I jolted. Fuck. Yes, I made notes. I used to do it more than I did lately, but when I first started writing, I saw so many scenes in my head I could barely contain myself. There had been notebooks. But I didn’t have them here. I grabbed the tablet.
“Back at the house in New Orleans.” The computer spoke for me.
He winced. “Just got back from there. We need those notebooks. Can you take the car and go back and get them?”
I nodded. That I could do. No problem. Without conscious thought as to why I looked up at the ceiling. She was right upstairs, right above our heads. My love. My heart. My everything.
Rainer sat down in the chair. “She’ll be okay. I won’t settle for less.”
How did he not know he was Alpha? I shook my head. It didn’t matter. He would be when it counted.
Where were my keys? He held them up, and I grinned. Yeah, he knew me.
Stepping out of the quiet of the office to the chaos of the living room, I knew why Rainer had sought me out. Preston was in the center, barking orders. He took a long pull of a bottle of water. They were going to solve this, and I was going to help them. I just had to get to New Orleans and back with nothing going wrong.
Chapter 3
Preston
I had a list of five places. That was so much better than where we’d started. I sat back in my chair. Fuck. I really wasn’t cut out for this. I was a wolf. Give me something to hunt and kill, I’d get that done. These incremental movements were killing me. Let the cats stalk, I wanted to attack. I sat back in my chair. Maybe I was just a lousy wolf.
Rainer’s scent hit me, and I spun around to see him. I knew he’d gotten back, smelled and heard it, but he hadn’t come to see me yet.
My older brother was all Alpha in that moment. I wasn’t sure I could explain the difference, how and when it worked. Sometimes, Rainer didn’t come across like we all needed to follow him, like he was always in charge. He’d been born for it and seemed on track to take the position for years. Then prison happened, and it changed him, broke him.
But like everything else our Omega did, she’d gotten him back to the place where I could see him again. And yeah…I wanted to follow him right now.
The room quieted. Everyone’s gazes moved from what they were doing to stare at Rainer. That was saying a lot, considering Miranda was here and she gave off the same look at me vibes. But right now, Rainer’s were stronger.
Interesting.
I got to my feet. “Brother.”
He put his arm on mine. “Thanks for keeping things under control here. I’m going to go see her in a second. Wanted to tell you Anton had a thought and I sent him to go collect notebooks from New Orleans.”
I nodded. There was a time I would have worried about Anton doing that alone, but these days, I understood that Anton might actually be the strongest out of all of us. He could do pretty much anything. “Jarret is proving to have some pretty incredible psychic wolf talents.”
“Not surprising. He’s always been untapped in his abilities.” Rainer rubbed his eyes. “This was smart thinking, trying to look at the reports. Good work with this.”
I shrugged. “Anton, too.”
“Rainer, can I see you please?” Miranda wanted his attention, and I stepped back to get onto my computer. There were a few more things to check, and if the Alpha wanted to talk, then I’d let them do it.
My brother’s eyes turned wolf for a second, and he took a long breath. “Later.”
He turned his back on Miranda and headed upstairs, leaving her standing there. What was that about? I went back to my seat. I didn’t need to be in the middle of that mess. Miranda waited a second before she took off toward the kitchen. I quickly glanced between them before I went back to ignoring what had happened. I had enough things to concern myself with without getting into some Alpha thing with them.
Who was going to talk to who on whose terms? It was going to turn out to be some shit like that.
I cracked my neck and looked over the computer again. What had I been doing?
All around me, the sounds of typing and clicking filled the air. When had we gotten so many chairs? With the amount of people we had around here, it had become a place I hardly recognized. Not like the swamp outside. Houses became homes in no time flat, they changed to fit the people in them. Packs were like that, too. Add a member, and the way it felt to be in them could be entirely different.
I understood the ins and outs of it. I just hated having to focus on the details. I lifted my hands from the keys. The details.