Rogue. Beta

15. MASON

I called a meeting in the dead of the night and my pack was there. Because we were more than a team. We were family.

Jake’s hand lay heavy on my shoulder as my Alphas tried to come up with a strategy.

“Can we assume she was taken? Her former pack may have come for her,” Clara said, pacing around. Her nervousness was making me more nervous.

“Right from the packhouse? That’s impossible,” Remi replied with a shake of her head.

“Stop pacing, love. C'mere, we’ll find her soon.” Jake pulled his mate into his laps.

“I’m just worried something has happened to her. Weren’t you telling me today about a potential threat from a gang? I’m scared, Jake,” She said, laying her head on his chest.

They were murmuring among my pack but I heard. And it made my heart lurch.

What if we had a spy among us? What if a spy had been living right in our pack house? Just like in Canada? I didn’t know my fists were clenched hard until I registered the sharp pain of my fingernails puncturing the flesh of my palm.

I was in a murderous state. The thought of someone hiding out right here where I lived made my blood boil. The idea that someone would hurt Indigo made me see red. I squeezed the hands of the couch I was sitting in. Hard.

“We’ll have to assume she left. Or walked far enough into the woods to be taken without alerting anyone,” Remi said. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes, yawning as she spoke. It was three in the midnight after all.

“She wouldn’t leave. Why would she?” Clara asked. “She wouldn’t leave her pack.”

“I agree. She didn’t seem unhappy,” Remi added. “Mason, did she seem unhappy? “

Unhappy? No. Never. Why would she feel unhappy?

Then I remembered the hesitation. The pulling back. The snippets of her feelings that had flowed from her to me. She had pulled back. And then she was gone. Was it possible? No. I couldn’t start to think towards that direction.

“You’re quiet. We’ll need you to speak up to help us in finding her, Mase.” Remi urged with a soft voice.

“No, she wasn’t unhappy.” I sighed.

“But?” She probed.

Of course, there was a but. There had to be a but seeing how I slouched into my seat. There had to be as I had left my sentence hanging.

“Do you ever feel someone slipping away from you?” I asked out of the blue.

They all stared at me with blank expressions, Jake gripping his mate tighter. Was it a foreign feeling? Seeing someone slip away from you and watching it happen without an idea as to how to stop it?

“She was slipping away?” Remi finally asked.

“I don’t know,” I muttered. Everyone still stared at me in expectation. “I don’t know.” I got out of my seat to continue Clara’s pacing.

“Nothing was different,” I muttered. “It felt better, really. I thought – I felt we were making progress. I think we were but there was something missing. It started yesterday. She didn’t say anything but I felt her panic, I felt like a wall was coming up between us sometimes.” I sighed, falling back into my seat.

“I don’t know but something was bothering her. I was going to ask her about it after work but... I haven’t seen her.”

“Was... Did you say anything to her? She tries to hide it – I think she’s working on it – but she has a quick temper. Did you say anything that could have been offensive to her?” Remi continued to drill me.

I knew where it was going. All these questions. I understood where she was going with them. The possibility that she had actually left of her own accord. My own mate. No f*****g way. There was no way Indigo would up and leave me for no reason.

“No! Of course not!” I exclaimed. But as I denied, my mind went into overdrive too. What had I said?

I laughed at the bird thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have. I got her pizza toppings mixed up a few days ago. Was that it? Did I push her off the bed while we slept? What could I possibly have done!?

“I don’t think she would have left him. She loves him,” Clara chimed in.

Was that it? Did she leave me because I didn’t say I love her? Or did she leave because she didn’t love me?

Everything made my head hurt so much!

“There’s no sign of struggle in her room. No one could have taken her from the pack house without anyone knowing,” Remi continued to muse.

“Is there anywhere she likes to go? We can start our search from there,” Dylan piped in.

“Uh uh –“ In the few days we had been mated, we had only been out for a grand number of three times. Our first date, a walk through the woods and breakfast outdoors.

Whenever I got back from work, it was to collapse into bed and the next morning, we were too preoccupied with our bodies to go sightseeing. But –

“She likes to go to Becca’s Diner for breakfast. She takes a walk in the woods on afternoons when she isn’t babysitting or hanging out with Clara. She likes coffee ice-cream and Ivy’s Freeze has the best of those. Eh – she smells like the dungeons sometimes.”

Just because we weren’t glued at the hip didn’t mean I hadn’t learned a lot about her. She was a priority. Mate before pack. Selfish, but I would place her before every single person in the pack. She was that important. It was important to know stuff about people important to us. That’s why I spent a lot of time taking a break to call her from work.

“The dungeons?” Dylan asked.

“Yea. She volunteers to clean with whoever is on duty.”

“Okay. It’s not Becca’s Diner and its not Ivy's Freeze. Those places are closed. We’ll look in the dungeon and woods for –“

The door burst open and my father rushed in.

“Alpha Reno has gotten a whiff of her room. We caught scents of Kieran Witcher,” My father rushed out.

“What the freaking – Where is he!?” I flew out of my chair.

“Calm down, son. Warrior Chan is fetching him right this minute,” Dad placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I paced around some more. Just as I was about to ask where the hell Kieran was, the door to the conference room burst open. Warrior Chan held Kieran by the scruff of his neck, hustling him into the room.

Jake growled, Clara wrung her hands nervously. I flew at the white haired boy.

“Where is she?” I growled, a breath space away from his face.

He looked like a puppy was breathing down his face. The left side of his lip pulled up slightly, his eyes twinkled with something. Something like a dare.

“I don’t know, man.” He said, managing to shrug a shoulder.

“What the f**k do you mean –“ I pulled back to do something crazy but Clara’s voice cut me off.

“Kieran, just tell us. We have to find her. She might be in danger.”

He looked at her and the air of aloofness around him disappeared in a second. It was replaced by blazing hatred.

“I said I don’t f*****g know,” He almost snarled.

“Don’t you speak to her like that!” Jake snarled right back. He tried to stand but Clara held him put.

“You’ve been in her room. What were you doing there?” I demanded

“Why! You jealous?” His eyes twinkled again.

I punched him.

“You motherfucking –“ Dylan held me back.

“Wow, you pack a hard punch, man!” He exclaimed but he didn’t look the least bit bothered.

“I’ll handle this,” Remi cut in front of me.

“Kieran, we need to find her. We need to know where each and every single member of our pack is. That’s the only way we can protect them. Do you care about this pack?” She asked in a soft voice.

“Well, yeah, I mean, I care about the pack. Yeah,” He rubbed his neck while looking at his shoes.

“Then you care about Indie. Where is she, Kieran?” Remi asked again.

“Yeah, I care about my pack. But I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t know where she went,” He muttered.

“But you knew she was leaving?” Remi pressed.

“Yeah.”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

So it was true. Or as true as Kieran made it out to be. My mate actually left me. On purpose. She hadn’t been taken. She wasn’t forced away. She up and left. Left me.

Goddess, I had thought of having a mate. I had dreamed of it for years. I never dreamed my mate would have any reason to leave me.

When my friends rejected their mates, I had chastised them but the thought of getting rejected had become a reality to me. But she hadn’t rejected me. That should have been the end of my worry and my beginning of a happily ever after with the one I was destined for. It wasn’t supposed to be this. Not in any of my dreams.

“So she wasn’t taken then.” My father muttered.

“No,” Kieran affirmed.

“Can you tell us why she left?” Dad added.

“Because of him,” he nodded his head at me.

“Me!?”

So I f****d up after all! The worst part was, I couldn’t think of why she would leave me. What I had done. I had to have done something though. Offended her.

How!? What!? When!? Where!? What happened!? These thoughts danced through my head and made me dizzy.

“Yeah. Apparently, you’re too good for her.”

That was so unexpected, it made me blink like an i***t. Once. Then twice.

“HOW!?’

“ I don’t know. I don’t know her very well but she said something about you being too good for her. She said she felt you deserved better and she couldn’t being to compare to the right person for you. I don’t know her so well but she sounded really insecure,” Kieran said.

That was ridiculous. I would know if my mate was feeling insecure. Or would I? Not for the first time, the reality that we had rushed into mating smacked me in the face. I didn’t know her all that well. I thought I could read her and our communication was strong, Apparently, I had been wrong.

‘We need to find her. It seems we have taken things the wrong way and pushed her away without knowing it,’ My wolf, Darwin, said.

‘Yeah, we need to find her,’ I agreed. Then I paused. ‘Do you really think we gave her any reason to be insecure?’

‘I’m not certain. We didn’t know she had insecurities. We should have. Considering her story.’

Her story. Her story!

If she was gone where else did she have?

“I need to get to Last Days pack,” I said out loud.

Kieran Witcher’s eye sharpened. I didn’t miss it.

“I don’t think she would go back to people who were so horrible to her.” He said with a calmness around him.

“You weren’t friends with her. How would you know what she would do?” I demanded.

“It’s not rocket science, beta. She would not go back to her past. She would move around, wander about. You must have noticed she has a bit of a hard head. She would rather wander alone in the dark and cold woods, shivering and hungry, wishing she never left. She would be back once she realizes she has been foolish. I tried to convince her she was making a mistake but she didn’t listen.”

  Alone in the dark and cold woods, shivering and hungry.

That visual was enough to make me more strained.

“I want every available tracker in this pack on this mission. Find me Indigo Penn,” I said to Warrior Chan, staring him squarely.