Outcast (Supernaturals Book 2) Read online

  “Wait until you absolutely have to. That’s all I’m asking. Tell her when you have no other choice. I would prefer you wait until you can get her home where her family is.”

  “Are you sure your younger children see her as family?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had better be sure. If I bring her there and one person even acts as if they are going to insult her, look at her the wrong way, report her to the Council, I’ll take her so far away from you she’ll be dead a hundred years before you find her, do you understand?”

  “I do. We’ve been talking to the kids. I promise they don’t hate her. They don’t know her, but they don’t hate her. They only acted the way they did because they thought it was how their mother and I wanted them to act.”

  “You had better hope so.”

  “Listen here, boy…”

  “I’m not a boy. And I’m not the one who has treated his eldest daughter like shit most of her adult life. I know you’re sorry for it. I know you want your daughter back. But you need to know that she’s more mine than she’s yours. If you want to be a part of her life, you will help me find out who’s harassing her, and you will help me keep her safe from everyone. For doing that, I will keep your secret safe for as long as I can. Are we in agreement?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, now I need to let you go. My mate’s calling me.”

  I took a few deep breaths to calm my wolf, who was scratching at the surface of my skin, begging me to release him—I needed to go for a run soon to give him some release—before calling Leigh back. She was crying, and I was instantly on alert. “What’s wrong?” I all but growled as I grabbed my wallet and keys and headed toward the door of my apartment.

  “Whe…where…are…yo…you?” Her tears were painful to hear, and I wanted to destroy whatever it was that was making her cry.

  “Leaving my apartment. Where are you?”

  “I’m at home. Please come. I need you.”

  “I’m on my way. Stay on the phone with me.” I switched the call to my earpiece once I was behind the wheel. For the entire drive, all she did was cry in my ear. At the heartbreaking sound, I had to mentally restrain myself from speeding to her house. The last thing I needed was for a cop to pull me over. I could feel my teeth shifting, my eyes shifting, and the hairs on my body elongating. I had to get a grip before I got to her. A cop pulling me over would not help calm my nerves or my wolf.

  Bounding up the steps to her apartment two steps at a time, I ordered her to open the door because I was nearly to her. The second I saw her, I swooped her into my arms, kicked the door closed behind me, and carried her to the sofa where I cradled her in my lap and let her cry. Her never-ending tears worried me, but I let her get it out of her system before carrying her to the bathroom. I sat her on the toilet, wet a washcloth, and cleaned her face.

  She blew her nose, and I was shocked she would do that in front of me. I’d never had any girl do something so personal with me in the room. Yeah, I’d seen them dab their nose or run their knuckle over it if it itched, but she blew, really blew her nose. It made a honking noise and everything.

  “What?” she said when she saw me looking at her in surprise. “I wasn’t going to let it run down my face. I do want you to kiss me sometime in the near future, and you won’t if all you see when you look at me is white snot.”

  She pulled more tissue from the toilet paper roll and blew her nose again.

  “What?” she said for the second time. Looking at me as if I were the one acting strange.

  “Nothing. Are you ready to tell me what happened?”

  She looked at me for a long moment then decided that what I was thinking didn’t matter and said, “Yeah, but I need a drink first.”

  She got up and went into the kitchen for a beer, and I followed her, patiently waiting. I wanted to scream at her to tell me already. I feared someone had hurt her somehow. She hadn’t looked physically hurt, only emotionally, but that could be just as bad.

  After drinking half a bottle of beer, she turned to me and said, “Mrs. Weston is dead.” Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t sob. I tried not to look confused at her words. I didn’t know a Mrs. Weston. She wasn’t any family member I could recall, and I was sure I knew most of the Alexander family. Leigh didn’t know she was adopted, so it couldn’t be anyone from that side of the family.

  I hadn’t been in town long and didn’t know everyone Leigh knew, but if it was someone so close to her that her death could hurt her so much, she should have told me about her. The thought that Leigh had kept someone so important to her a secret from me hurt me.

  Seeing the look of confusion on my face that I hadn’t been able to hide, she said, “Do you remember me telling you about the woman I was ghostwriting a creative non-fiction piece for?”

  “Yeah.” That I did remember. She hadn’t said much about it because it was a huge secret. Mrs. Weston must have been the woman.

  “She’s Mrs. Weston. I had worried that I hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks, so I went over to see her. When I got back from the wedding, Mrs. Weston and I spent about two weeks working on her novel, but then her daughter had come into town. Mrs. Weston said she would call me two weeks ago to resume our meetings, but she never did. At first, I figured her daughter had simply stayed longer than planned, so I waited. Finally, today I decided to go by and see her. She died two days ago. The family hasn’t announced it yet. Why, I don’t know. Her daughter answered the door when I got there and told me.

  “She was so hateful toward me. As if it was my fault. Apparently, Mrs. Weston had a heart attack while writing down some notes for me. Her daughter made it clear that I wasn’t to finish the novel and that all payments to me were to stop. Like I cared about that. I loved that old woman. We would sit for hours talking about her love life, her children, my family. We were friends. I tried numerous times to get Mrs. Weston to stop payments because half of what we did while I was there was gossip and because she was grossly overpaying me for what little progress we were making. I promised I would still come. That I wasn’t coming only for the money, and she said she knew that, but she also knew I needed the money and to shut up and take it.”

  Leigh took a breath, finished her beer, and then continued. “Her daughter told me I had ten days to turn over any files I had and told me that her lawyer would be sending me a notice stating that if anything came out in the future about Mrs. Weston, then she and her family would sue me. The funny thing is that everything is still at Mrs. Weston’s house. I used her computer to type up notes and work on the piece. God love her family, but I can’t see why her daughter is so worried. Mrs. Weston didn’t have any deep dark secrets, or if she did, I didn’t know them. She had two lovers—both relationships read like fairy tales, and that was why she wanted to tell them.”

  After another long pause, Leigh said, “I know she was old, and her death was coming, but it still hurts.”

  “I know, baby,” I said, because there wasn’t anything else I could say and pulled her into my arms.

  Leigh wouldn’t admit it, but I could tell in the month that followed that losing the money she was getting from Mrs. Weston had put her in a financial bind. She worked as many hours as she could at the bookstore and spent a great deal of time looking for another job.

  I offered her the opportunity to move in with me, but she refused. She felt we hadn’t been together long enough to move in together, and we weren’t spending enough time together to truly get to know each other any more than we already did. Nearly every time we planned a date, something went wrong. And we hadn’t had sex since her sister’s wedding. Most days we were too exhausted by the time we saw each other that we ended up passing out, and on the rare occasions we tried, strange things interrupted us which only further convinced us that someone was watching us and had Leigh worried that the fates were warning us to stay away from each other—a fear I was having a hard time squashing.

  The next time I spoke with her fa
ther, Mr. Alexander said he couldn’t find any evidence that anyone in the pack had anything to do with what was happening to us in Washington. He dodged the question of Daniel’s pack when I asked if he had called them, but I knew I would lose my temper if I pushed the issue, so, for the time being, I had let it go.

  The pack I was staying with helped me patrol the city and watch over Leigh, but none of us saw, heard, or smelled anything to hint at who was terrorizing us which told me that a witch was definitely involved. Only witches could mask themselves so easily. On many occasions, a pack member or I would be outside Leigh’s home or work when something happened, and we hadn’t been able to sense a thing. The pack didn’t know of any witches in the area, so we didn’t have any contacts to request help from in that department.

  Once the story—or a version of the story—of what happened to Dimitri with the witch’s curse got out, most shifters were leery about witches and most witches made it a point to stay away from shifters, making it damn near impossible for me to find one. We knew that another witch had aided in helping to find him, but that didn’t ease anyone’s feelings on the matter.

  I had hoped that once Mr. Alexander had talked to Daniel’s pack, we could also request the aid of the witch who had helped Dimitri, but since he hadn’t contacted them, we had no one. I would contact them myself if need be, but considering how low on the totem pole I was with my own pack, my approaching an alpha of a pack that wasn’t my own and requesting a favor probably would not go over well and could possibly start a war between my pack and theirs. I wouldn’t do that, not when all the mystery person or persons were doing were harassing us. If things escalated, I’d have to though.

  On more than one occasion, I thought about telling Leigh the truth about the supernatural world in the hopes that that would change her mind about going home to Tennessee or, at the very least, about moving in with me—both suggestions I made often to her annoyance. As she was my mate, it was my responsibility to take care of her, but I knew she was too independent for me to use that as a persuasion tactic. She would fight me to spite me if I said something like that to her.

  No matter what she said or how much she protested though, I could tell things were getting to her. Our lack of a physical relationship alone was making her grouchy and me testy. The only way I was going to be able to have her was if I found out who was doing this and put a stop to it.

  Chapter 17 ~ Explosion

  ~~~~Ryan~~~

  A month almost to the day that I received a phone call from Leigh about the death of her elderly friend, I received another call from my mate. This time when she called she wasn’t crying out of sorrow but out of anger. Somehow, someone had stolen her purse and emptied her bank account all while she was at work. She was in the back room of the bookstore going through surveillance footage and cursing like a teenager while she told me what happened.

  The footage showed her locking her bag away in one of the filing cabinet drawers designated for personal belongings. The cameras didn’t show anyone else approaching the cabinet until she did eight hours later at the end of her shift. There didn’t seem to be any evidence that someone had tampered with the footage or the drawer in which she had stowed her purse. The bank showed that all of her money, which wasn’t much at that time, was withdrawn from two separate locations, but none of those cameras caught anything either.

  I met her at the store and helped her deal with the police and the bank. They changed all of her PINs and blocked anyone from using her card and checks, and I transferred money into her account for her. She complained, but having no other choice, she took the money. I didn’t tell her most of it was from her father.

  That night I convinced her to pack some of her stuff and come stay with me for a while. Within a week, I had talked her into moving in with me permanently. Her landlord wasn’t happy about it at first but took the money I offered her to let Leigh out of her lease.

  We still weren’t sleeping together, but at that moment it was because it was that time of the month for her and a particularly bad one which she assumed was due to stress, but I worried was due to magic. Either way, she was an emotional basket case with all that had been going on, and I could do nothing to help her aside from hold her every night.

  There wasn’t time to get comfortable in our new life together in my apartment, though, because not long after someone emptied her bank account, someone burned down the bookstore she worked at, and Leigh decided she wasn’t safe in Washington anymore. Finally, she agreed to my subtle hints that we should go back to Tennessee.

  The fire happened on a Tuesday night. Leigh and two other employees had worked the afternoon shift that day. The store closed at nine, and it usually took them between fifteen and thirty minutes to leave, depending on the condition of the store. She had gotten about two blocks from the store when one of the employees that had been with her that night sent her a text asking if she would come back to the store because the employee had left something in the office and really needed it. Leigh had graciously turned around and gone back.

  “No one’s here,” she said into her Bluetooth. I had called her just as she was pulling back into the parking lot to see how much longer she would be and what she wanted for supper.

  “Give her a minute. She might be further away than you were or got caught up in traffic,” I said offhandedly.

  “I don’t know. Something feels off,” she said, and the tone of her voice had me up and pacing the room.

  “What do you mean, ‘something feels off’? Is there someone there? Does it look like someone has broken into the building?” I asked, putting on my shoes, readying myself to leave if I needed to do so quickly.

  “I don’t know. Let me text her back and see how much longer she’s going to be.”

  “I’m coming to get you.”

  “Wait. It might be nothing, but...”

  “Leigh, what’s wrong?”

  “Ryan, where are you?”

  “I’m at the apartment. Do you need me to come there?”

  “No. I don’t know. I’m coming…” For a second, everything was quiet, then a loud boom burst through the phone. I was out of the house and in my vehicle in no time, all the while screaming her name into the phone. When she didn’t answer after the third scream, I hung up and called the police.

  The cops and a few members of the local pack showed up at the scene just as I did. The pack members discretely searched the area in animal form while I rushed to Leigh, who was leaning against the side of her car looking at the blazing building.

  “Ms. Ms. Are you all right?” a female paramedic was asking her when I reached the two.

  “Is she hurt?” I asked, kneeling down beside Leigh.

  “I’m not sure yet,” the woman said. “Ms.?” the woman said again.

  “Leigh, honey, are you hurt?” I asked her, lightly touching her forearm, the only spot I could see that wasn’t covered in ash or blood.

  “Do you know what happened here, sir,” a police officer who had come up behind us asked me.

  “No, not really,” I said, not looking up at him. “I was on the phone with her. She said she received a text from a coworker stating that she’d left something in the store and wanted to know if Leigh could come back to the store and let her in to get it. When Leigh got here, she said the girl wasn’t here. She was texting the girl to see how long she would be when I heard the explosion. I called for Leigh. She didn’t answer. I hung up and called you guys.”

  “I should have known you two would be involved,” another cop, who I hadn’t heard approach, said. I turned to glare at Officer Dawson, then turned back to Leigh, who looked as if she was snapping out of her daze. Officer Dawson wasn’t the person I wanted to see right then as he was starting to treat Leigh and I as if we were the bad guys in all of this.

  “Ryan?” she asked, scanning the faces of those of us who were surrounding her.

  “I’m here, baby. Are you hurt?” I asked, moving in closer to her.

&n
bsp; “I hit my head,” she said, touching the bleeding spot. “I think I fell.”

  “Does anything else hurt?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Two more paramedics came over, lifted her onto a gurney, and loaded her into an ambulance. I started towards my vehicle.

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Hart. I have questions,” the unwanted police officer said.

  “So do I,” I said. He glared at me. “Look, I told the other officer all I know. I’m meeting Leigh at the hospital. You can come there and ask more questions, if you like, when Leigh is able to talk.”

  He started to protest, but I got in and cranked the engine. Before I was out of the parking lot, I was on the phone with Dave and Danielle. I had wanted to keep them out of things, but since Mr. Alexander wasn’t much more than financial help, I would have to burden them. Perhaps Dave would call Daniel Sullivan for me. It was one thing if I called to ask to join the pack; it was another for me to ask for assistance with that situation. Daniel wasn’t my alpha and would probably be a bit leery about helping me without the Council’s consent. Dave could be convincing when he chose. I hoped he could press upon the man the importance of finding out who was doing this to us.

  The pack I was staying with was doing what they could, but they were small—about thirty total—and didn’t have the magical connection Daniel would have to be of any real benefit, not that I didn’t appreciate what they were doing for me, but I knew they were ready for me to go, so they could have their peaceful lives back, and I didn’t blame them.

  Danielle cried as I gave them a shortened version of what was going on and asked them to contact the Sullivan pack. I needed their witch’s help, and I needed a safe place to take Leigh if I couldn’t figure out who was behind all of this.

  “I’ll make the call,” Dave said without hesitation.

  “Bring my sister home,” Danielle said at the same time.