Reborn (Shadow Beast Shifter, #3)(14)

Torin had said on more than one occasion that we were lucky to have the Lewison family defending ours, and despite my personal feelings toward them, I hadn’t disagreed because they were great at what they did.

The door jerked open before I could decide if now was a bad time to be here, and I found myself face to face with Mika. Her elfin features, which had been scrunched in anger, smoothed into a look of surprise as she ground to a halt. The very dark, blue-black hair she had passed onto her daughter flew around her face as she stared at me.

“Mera,” she choked out, blinking a few times before she pulled herself together.

In an instant, every ounce of her fear, surprise, and fury was buried deep beneath a calm sheen of serenity. Her dark brown eyes, also like her daughter’s, were now regarding me with a look of respect.

This fake alpha bullshit was annoying.

“What are you doing here?” she pushed. “Is there an issue at the pack house? Why didn’t Torin just alert us through the two-way radio?”

I waved her off, shaking my head at the same time. “Oh, no. Everything is okay at the pack house.” Or I assumed so since I hadn’t bothered to answer any of Torin’s messages to actually check in. “Sorry to just drop by, but I’ve been worrying about Simone. She still hasn’t returned any of my calls or texts, and I wanted to find out if you’ve heard anything new.”

Mika swallowed hard, and I could have sworn her lips trembled before she pulled herself together again. “Yeah, she’s still doing so well,” she said stiffly. “Totally fine and busy with her—”

“Stop fucking lying to me.”

My patience ran out the second she gave me the same tired line. Simone was not fine. We all knew it, and I was done allowing my friend to suffer because these bastards wanted to lie to me.

A tear spilled down Mika’s cheek, tracing the smooth, brown skin. That was when the panic burst to life in my chest.

“If Simone’s in trouble, you have to let me know,” I said with force. “How long has she really been gone? Where is she?”

Mika didn’t want to answer me, I could tell that, but maybe today she knew I wasn’t leaving without a real response. “I don’t know where she is, Mera.” Her entire body deflated, like that secret had been bursting at the seams of her being, desperate to get loose.

“She ran away just after the stasis was lifted.” That part of the story came from Gerad, who appeared behind his mate. “She was here when we went to sleep, and the next morning when we woke, her bed was empty.”

Gerad, six-feet-seven and built like a brickhouse, actually took a step back when Mika whipped her head around and glared at him. “You’ve been forcing me to remain quiet while you investigated her disappearance, and yet you have no issue telling Mera all the details?”

Gerad sighed before shaking his head. As he moved back into the light, I was surprised at how wrecked he looked. Tired and broken, the fine lines around his face aging him ten years. His dirty blond hair stood up in sections, as if he’d run his hands through it a dozen times today, and his shirt was most definitely buttoned up mismatched. He hadn’t looked like this the last time I’d checked in, but today he clearly had zero fucks to give.

“I’ve searched everywhere,” he said quietly. “We haven’t slept. We hardly eat. We need help…”

It was clear that the argument I’d heard through the door had been about Simone. Simone, who had been missing for two fucking months with only these two fucking idiots unsuccessfully looking for her.

I clutched a hand to my chest. “Please tell me you have at least heard something from her in the past two months? How could you keep this a secret? What if she’s dead? That would be on both of you.”

With each accusation, my words got louder and sharper as my panic attack grew.

My best friend was missing and had been for months.

And I had done nothing to help her.





8





Simone and I were best friends. True best friends.

We had grown up together, and she was literally the only one in this pack to never turn her back on me. That meant it was my duty to ensure she wasn’t being held in some creepy fuck’s basement, having her toes licked.

Toe fetish was only cool when you were into it, not when it was being forced upon you.

And as the alpha-mate of Torma, it was even more important that we ensured the safety of one of our pack. Torin was going to be furious when he found out about this, and I sure as fuck wasn’t about to keep it from him when he had a ton more resources to help track her down.

“We had to protect her place in the pack,” Mika said, still making excuses as tears trailed down her cheeks. “I never thought she would leave the pack without permission, but she did. We played it off as a vacation so that she wouldn’t be punished upon return. Thankfully, Torin is much more accepting than Victor, and he’s just allowed us to update him without pushing to speak with her himself.”

Accepting or lazy. The jury was still out on that fuckhea… alpha whose help I needed. “We have to tell him now.” My tone made it clear that if they argued with me about this, I was going to bring the full force of Torma down on them. “She’s been missing for too long. If anything has happened to her…”