Home > Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(13)

Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic #4)(13)
Author: Melissa F. Olson

I paused for a moment in the entrance to the living room, looking at the werewolf on my couch. Mary was sprawled out on the center cushion, with one long leg draped up over the back of the couch, and the other flopping over the armrest. She was wearing only a cropped T-shirt and bikini-style black underpants. It seemed like a strange wardrobe choice for a near-stranger’s house, but that was the least of my concerns.

I wanted to let her keep sleeping—hell, I wanted to crawl into my own bed—but I had already put off breaking the news for way too long.

She didn’t stir as I came into the living room and sat down on the coffee table in front of her. Dopey lifted her head to look at me, yawned, and settled back onto her front paws, the tip of her pink tongue sticking out from between her teeth. She gazed at me with perfect contentment from on top of the werewolf, and I wondered for the millionth time how the little dog had gone this long without being picked off by natural selection.

“Mary,” I said softly. Neither of them moved.

I tried sitting on the empty corner of the couch next to Mary’s head, resting a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Mary,” I said again, and this time her eyes opened.

She craned her head back to look at me and said bleakly, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

I didn’t ask how she had known. It was probably all over my body language or my scent or something. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”

Mary curled her legs in and sat up, displacing an unoffended Dopey, who hopped down to the floor and trotted off to sniff the bookshelf with great interest. “How?” Mary asked.

I told her about the bridge, and the damage to the Forester’s locking mechanisms. Although I didn’t say the words he was murdered, I could see the understanding break across her face. It was painful to watch.

Given what Maven had told us about werewolves, I sort of expected her to lash out physically, and I tensed my body, ready to spring away. To my utter astonishment, though, Mary collapsed across my lap, curled into herself even tighter, and began to cry.

I patted her shoulder awkwardly, feeling a little ashamed of myself. There was also a part of my brain that thought, Huh. Dogs huddled for comfort, and sought touch as a way of communicating. This was probably a werewolf thing. God, there was still so much I didn’t know about them.

I had no idea what I could say that might help, so I just let her cry for a long time. Eventually, she seemed to be winding down, and I said—partly to break her out of it, and partly because . . . well, I really wanted to know—“Hey, Mary? Why aren’t you wearing pants?”

She sniffed and sat up, pulling up the neck of her T-shirt to wipe her face, exposing a flat, muscled stomach. “I don’t like having anything on my legs if I can help it. It feels too restrictive.” She said it with the practiced tone of someone who’s had to repeat an explanation many times.

“Oh.” When I thought about it, I realized that I’d never seen her wear pants. “Uh, okay.”

“What’s going to happen now?” she asked me.

I didn’t know if she meant with the werewolf pack, or with the overall situation in the Old World, but the answer was the same either way. “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “Can you think of anyone who would want Dunn dead?”

She arched a single eyebrow, as though I was being annoyingly coy. “The witches, of course. They’re still pissed about Trask.”

I blinked. I hadn’t actually gotten that far in my own reasoning. “Was Dunn on Trask’s side during the war?” As far as I knew, Maven had killed Trask and all his lieutenants, but his pack had been enormous. She probably wouldn’t have been able to dispatch every single one of them.

Mary shook her head. “Dunn lived in Oregon until . . . six or eight years ago? Most of the Cheyenne pack is new.”

Which was probably why Maven had wanted to work with them. “What about the Ventimiglias?”

“They moved to Cheyenne after Dunn did.”

Well, there went the witch theory. “I can’t see the Colorado witches coming up with this elaborate murder plot just to get revenge on a werewolf who wasn’t even involved in the previous war,” I pointed out.

Mary scowled at me. “Who else could it be?” she snapped.

Without waiting for an answer, she jumped off the couch, impossibly fluid and graceful, and began pacing back and forth in front of me.

It wasn’t like a human pacing. Earlier, when I’d practically walked a hole in the floor at the coffee shop, I had been moving to get rid of angry energy. Mary’s pacing, on the other hand, was a controlled, anticipatory lope, like a caged predator eager to get out and tear into something. “I thought it might have been Maven,” she said, “but if anything, this makes her look bad, like she’s either incompetent or intentionally deceiving the witches. It could be someone wanting to make Maven look bad, but that leads me back to the witches too.” She stopped and turned to face me, jabbing a finger. “It has to be one of the clans.”

Her reasoning made sense . . . but she was leaving out an entire species of suspects. Very carefully, I said, “I’d be curious to see which of your pack members becomes alpha now.”

Mary actually bared her teeth, and to my surprise, Dopey let out a whimper and scuttled out of the room. Apparently even she had some survival instinct. “Don’t even think about it,” Mary snarled. “A werewolf would never do this.”

“Why not?” I argued. “Someone wanting to be alpha, wanting control of the pack—”

“Would either challenge Dunn or leave the area to start their own pack,” she snapped. Her feet were planted, her hands balled into fists. “Despite what you might think, we’re not savages. There are peaceful ways of gaining power.”

That hadn’t really been my experience, but there was no need to get into that. Before I could answer, I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out, glanced at the screen. Quinn.

When I looked up at Mary, she had crossed her arms over her chest, obviously not going anywhere. And, of course, she had super werewolf hearing. I sighed and answered the phone. “Hi, Quinn. I’m here with Mary.”

A two-second pause, then he said, “Okay. I’m in Cheyenne, and the werewolves are gone.”

Chapter 12

Mary’s eyes widened. “Gone?” I said, confused. “You mean they’re missing?”

“Not exactly. I took a quick look at a couple of their places, and their toiletries are missing, drawers left open. They must have seen the news and decided to make themselves scarce.”

I was watching Mary as Quinn spoke, and I saw a slight relaxing of her shoulders when he mentioned the missing items, like now everything made sense to her. “Let me call you back,” I said to Quinn.

When I put the phone back in my pocket, Mary’s expression was defiant. “Where did they go?” I demanded.

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. That’s the whole point.”

“The whole point of what?”

“The . . . oh, what’s the word?” She stared at the ceiling for a moment, then snapped her fingers. “Protocol. Dunn set up a protocol years ago, when he first became alpha. If the pack as a whole is threatened by an enemy we can’t see or overpower, we’re supposed to disappear for a few days to give him a chance to either work it out or find us a new territory. It’s like a, what do you call it, a doomsday protocol. One of the other pack members must have activated it.”

“Was it you?”

She shook her head. “I checked in briefly on the phone on the drive back, but only to warn them that Dunn was missing. Someone else must have decided the protocol was necessary.”

“Who?” I asked. “Which pack member has the power to make that call?”

She shrugged. “If you asked me yesterday, I would have said only Ryan or Matt. But now they’re dead, and someone decided that was enough of a threat to warrant the quick disappearance.”

She might have been lying to protect the other werewolves, but I couldn’t tell. And either way, this was getting us nowhere.

I flopped back down onto the couch, and Mary perched on the edge of the chair. We sat there regarding each other for a long moment, until finally I scrubbed my face with my hands and said, “Okay, look. Someone found out about Matt and Cammie’s trip to the Dunes. They used that knowledge to set up a way to kill Ryan Dunn in Maven’s territory. We need to know exactly who knew about the trip.”

“Which of the witches, you mean,” she retorted.

I threw up my hands. “Goddammit, Mary, I’m trying to help you here!”

“Really?” she said sarcastically. “Because you care so much about me and the other werewolves?” She tapped her nose. “I can smell the silver in that gun, you know. I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Crap. The revolver was in a pancake holster at the small of my back. I was so used to having a weapon that I had genuinely forgotten about it, but Mary probably wouldn’t believe that. I sure wouldn’t if I were her.

I made myself pause for a slow, deep breath. When I was ready, I said in a quiet voice, “Look, Mary. Dunn was your alpha, and he was in Colorado under my protection.” It hurt to say it out loud again, but I made myself do it. “He got killed on my watch. We both want to find out who killed him, and we both agree it wasn’t my boss. Right?”

She gave me a tight nod, then added, “But you have loyalties to the witch clan, too.”

Was that what this was about? “No,” I said slowly, “I have loyalties to Simon and Lily Pellar. They are my friends. The rest of Clan Pellar hates and fears me.” Vampires knew if someone was telling the truth by how their scent and pulse changed; now I hoped werewolves had similar abilities. “I know you haven’t spent much time with them, but in your gut, do you think Simon or Lily was responsible for this?”

Mary hesitated, but she had to concede. “No.”

“Then, like I said, we want the same thing. But I need to know who in your pack knew about Matt and Cammie’s trip.”

Mary chewed on her lower lip for a long moment, looking at me. “We all did,” she admitted finally, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. “The pack voted on where we wanted to go with the next weekend pass, and we all knew Matt and Cammie would be the scout team.” She shrugged. “The exact date and time wasn’t common knowledge, but anyone could have just asked Cammie and she probably would have told them.” Her face softened. “Cammie wasn’t a suspicious person.”

I nodded. It was my turn to share information. “Quinn and Maven were the only vampires who knew, and neither of them told anyone,” I told her. “Not even me. The witches didn’t know.”

“You think they didn’t, but they could have found out without being told,” she argued. “Someone in a witch clan might have seen the Ventimiglias at a gas station or rest stop. If someone’s been keeping tabs on us, they could have been spotted.”

   
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