The Nerdy Prince and His Nemesis.

Chapter Six. The Blame Game.

Chapter Six. The Blame Game.

Hamish took a seat, surrounded by his childhood friends. His fingers gliding over the keys, he noted everything the group was telling him as deftly as any court reporter. He wanted a full transcript so that he could read through everything later when attempting to piece the whole mystery together.

“It is my fault,” Venus, the Alpha’s daughter said, snuggled up onto Lucas her mate and Ronnie’s eldest brother’s lap. Her face was pale as a single tear escaped her red-rimmed eyes.

“No, it’s not,” Siobhan, Ronnie’s mother said, shaking her head at her daughter-in-law. Hell, she had loved this girl like she was her own child from the day she was born.

“How?” Hamish asked, again not wanting to leave any stone unturned. Not that he thought Venus was at all to blame for the situation they all currently found themselves in.

“She had been accepted for The Massachusetts Institute of Technology a full ride scholarship. Not that the pack couldn’t pay for her tuition, but Ronnie being, well, Ronnie, she wanted to do it on her own. However, I wanted to travel, so we came up with a plan for us both to defer a year before going to university. She was going to America; I would remain here and do my Alpha training courses. We were so happy when M.I.T agreed to defer her for a year and had planned so many different places to visit. We were going to travel Europe, staying in hostels, have experiences that we never normally would have the opportunity to enjoy. A last hurrah before embracing adulting for real,” Venus gave a far away smile, ending her sentence with a small sniff of emotion.

“Then I came home from the Academy,” Lucas smiled. Hamish nodded, he knew his friend had stayed on past the normal leaving age, doing further studies, whilst Max and Millie travelled together, enjoying their life after they found out they were mates, before they would need to head home, ready to take over Harvest Moon when Alpha Mars and Luna Davina moved into retirement. “Yes, Lucas came home, for my 18th birthday party. He, obviously, already knew we were mates. I just thought I had a stupid crush on my best friend’s older brother. He had stayed away, because the temptation I brought him when he was home, was proving difficult to keep control of,” Venus smiled up at Lucas, who looked down at her, with such love in his eyes, it made Hamish smile.

The young prince was very experienced when it came to the intensity of the mate bond. His own family were happily mated, each of their relationships as intense as the last. But, to see both Lucas and Max so happy, made his heart glad.

Hamish had never given much thought to what his own life would be like. He understood that he had many idiosyncrasies which would be difficult for a mate to navigate. He was not, what some might call ‘normal’. However, that did not bother the prince. As far as he was concerned nobody in his family were ‘Normal’’. In Hamish’s mind, if everyone was within ‘Normal’ range of personalities, then the world would be a very boring place to be.

However, because of his hyperfocus where nothing and nobody mattered, his nerdy love for sci-fi, ability to narrate Star Wars word for word, all nine of the movies, at the drop of a hat, he had presumed for the longest time that he would remain unmated. Hamish had, in the past, when visiting royal packs received female attention. Many a Luna would parade their daughters in front of them hoping that they would be his mate. Or that he would choose one of them, so that they could be connected to the royal family. It was a source of annoyance for Hamish. Even Asher had struggled with visiting packs before meeting Alisha, for the same reason, and he was by far the most outgoing of the Colton boy’s. However, seeing the love between his childhood friends made Hamish’s heart twinge a little. Something he had never experienced before, despite always being surrounded by a group of very intense and loved up mates.

Hamish underlined M.I.T and then highlighted it. Yes it could be a clue, but he would be a liar if he didn’t admit that it was more because he was immensely proud of Ronnie, and felt he may have had a small part to play in her success. After all, he would take her with him when she was a tiny pup, showing her how to do various things on a computer, to keep her entertained and stop her beating up her twin brother.

“the upshot was. I didn’t want to leave Lucas, not when we had just found out we were mates. Ronnie, being the independent person she is, decided to still do the year long trip. I should have gone with her,” Venus let out a low sob.

“Sorry Sis. But if you had of gone with her, who knows if you would have gone missing as well,” Max said shaking his head at his younger sibling.

Lucas let out a low growl, holding his mate closer to him, the idea of Venus being missing along with his sister making his stomach churn and his wolf to become slightly crazed at the thought.

“In the beginning, she would call in every week. For the first couple of month’s she sounded happy, recounting tales of where she had been, what she had seen, who she had met. Then the calls became less frequent. However, there was nothing really to alert us to anything being wrong at that time. Other than Reggie,” Siobhan sighed.

“Where is Reggie?” Hamish asked, looking for Ronnie’s twin brother.

“He is living on the outskirts of the pack. Has been for nearly two years. Rarely comes to the pack house,” Alpha Mars sighed.

“So, what happened with Reggie?” Hamish asked.

“He became very depressed. At first, we put it down to missing his sister. For all they fought constantly, they loved each other, and never spent a day apart, from being inside the womb. But he kept saying something wasn’t right with Ronnie. We asked her multiple times if she was okay, when she did call, and she always reassured us she was. Then came the call, that she had decided not to return to Harvest Moon, but head straight to M.I.T from her travels. We were heartbroken, I am not going to lie. Reggie took it the hardest, however, his melancholy turned to anger, as he blamed his sister for not coming home. He moved out, wanting his own space, as nobody was listening to him. His words. We thought he just needed time to adjust to life without his twin beating the crap out of him,” Ronan, Ronnie’s father sighed, running his hand through his auburn hair.

“It was after Reggie had screamed at us one night that something was seriously wrong with Orla, Ronnie’s wolf, Oscar, his wolf was certain of it, and the calls becoming less frequent, that we decided to head to America and give our girl a surprise visit. Reggie was chomping at the bit to see her. Promising to kick her arse for making him worry when he saw her. Not that he ever could beat her in a fight,” Siobhan gave a sad smile, her eyes staring off into space as she remembered her twins always fighting together.

“We went over, Me, my mate and Reggie. However, when we got there. The university informed us that Ronnie had never arrived,” Siobhan said, the closed her eyes as if to block out the pain.

“It was then I begun to trace Ronnie’s steps. Visiting all the places she had told us about. I got as far as Barcelona, to a bar some of the werewolf students said she may have visited. It was a disgusting place. I shudder to think of my daughter in that bar. However, when I asked the barmen, and the, how should I put this, ‘ladies’ who worked there about her, nobody remembered seeing her,” Ronan sighed.

“The Shifter Bar?” Hamish asked, knowing the place very well. It was a family favourite, when they needed to let off some steam. Ronan was right, it was a den of iniquity, and fights would break out at the drop of a hat, but the Colton Clan loved the place, when life was getting to hot to handle. Even Hamish himself enjoyed a night at the bar, and engaging in a good old fashioned bar brawl.

“Do you know it?” Ronan asked, his eyebrows raised in shock that the young prince would know of such a place.

Hamish nodded his head.

“Yeah, it is not far from Phoenix and Teo’s pack. We visit when we need to kick some ass to get rid of stress,” the prince added, as the rest of the room, looked at him shocked with wide eyes.

Ronan shook his head in dismay at Hamish.

“I cannot imagine you in a place like that. Your mam, yes, but not you or Zander. I remember the little boy obsessed with puzzles and computers, who had a very large collection of lightsabres, and comics,” The pack Beta who had formerly been an Omega smiled at the Nerdy Prince.

“After visiting that place the trail ran dry. We did however have the name of a girl Ronnie had met on her travels, before heading to Spain. Liza, but I don’t have her surname,” Ronan continued, before letting out a long, deep puff of breath.

“When Ronan returned home, I set up the phones to record any conversations, at the press of a button. We have been recording her weekly calls for around three months or so. When we listened back to the recordings, we realised that they were not live conversations. They are recordings of old conversations pieced together. You can listen and hear the cracks in the tapes and certain sounds behind certain words every time they are spoken,” Siobhan added.

“It was then I realised we needed help to find her, and I called your Mam and Dad,” Alpha Mars said.

“Do you think you can find her?” Luna Davina asked, worrying her hands together.

“Of course he can. He is Hamish. He always solves his puzzles,” Max said with an emphatic nod, not a doubt in his head about his old friends abilities.

“Yes, and I always would have you and Lucas to help, if I was running late to get out of Class,” Hamish gave his oldest friends a soft smile, remembering how much they would accept his obsessive personality, and even help him with it much like his brother and sisters had, unlike some of the other pups in their classes. Even as a werewolf prince, being different did not protect him from bullies. Pups could be cruel at times.

“Venus, do you have the itinerary list of the places you wanted to visit still?” Hamish asked.

“Yes, I do, along with a scrap book we kept, and my old Pinterest page. I cannot get into Ronnie’s, because she password protected it,” Venus nodded her head, then jumped of Lucas’s lap, running out of the room, happy to be able to do something to help Hamish find her best friend.

“Also, I will need the latest picture you have of her,” Hamish shouted after her.

“We have her old laptop; I am not sure if that will help. Although I couldn’t hack the password,” Siobhan said, reaching down the side of the sofa and passing the silver machine to the prince.

Hamish took it, and nodded his head, before opening it up. If Ronnie was intelligent enough to get a full ride scholarship to M.I.T, then he knew that he would never be able to guess the password. He would need to put his machine on the computer to force it.

He looked at the stars, and realised the password was 19 characters long. He felt a mixture of pride and annoyance, because this girl had done exactly what he had with his computers. Made a random password that would mean nothing to anybody, just a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols.

“Can you hack it?” Millie asked, as Hamish shook his head.

“Nope, Ronnie is a clever girl. It will take a decoding machine at least 19 years to c***k this password” the prince sighed.

Venus ran back into the room, and handed Hamish a scrap book, along with a picture from her 18th party of Ronnie standing on the staircase. Her face was stoic, annoyed that her parents had wanted to take so many pictures of her.

Hamish took the picture, and as he looked at it, his heart thundered in his chest, never had he seen any body as beautiful as the goddess in the picture, as Kylo his wolf let out a small whimper, and the nerdy prince could not help but wonder why.