“Everything I knew. Everything.”
I was trying to be patient. Trying and failing. “How much everything? I need to know exactly—”
“I’m so sorry. I told her how you’d gone to a bunch of different witches trying to break the magic hiding your bond. I told her you’d been to the Lunar Court and talked to Helen. That we knew Helen was involved somehow. She already knew we’d questioned all the Alphas, but she doesn’t know about Samantha, Dastien. I talked to her before I knew you were heading that way, and she doesn’t even know that Samantha exits. Hell, I’ve never even met her and…” She was quiet.
I wanted to scream at her for telling Shannon so much, but it wouldn’t solve anything.
“I’m so sorry,” Meredith said it so quietly, but I could hear the pain and guilt in her voice.
I didn’t want to blame Meredith for talking to her friend. Meredith hadn’t been around in a while. I knew she still trying to sort out the mess of the Irish pack with Donovan, and I knew—I knew—she would never do anything to hurt Tessa. But this still felt like she’d betrayed us. Betrayed my mate.
After a minute, I realized that everyone was waiting for me to scream or yell or get upset, but I knew that wouldn’t do any good.
Meredith was always too kind, too giving. Even as angry and frustrated as I was, I knew she wasn’t the bad guy here. She didn’t actually hurt Tessa. And she didn’t mean to give information to someone who might have participated in her kidnapping.
“We don’t know anything for sure yet. So, don’t beat yourself up. Just send me Shannon’s address if you have it. We’ll go there next. And if anyone else starts asking about her—if any of you have anyone that comes to you that makes you feel the least bit—”
“It gets a little worse, Dastien,” Meredith said. “Please, don’t get mad.”
I couldn’t promise her that. I was doing my best to not be upset already, but I wasn’t about to promise anything. “What?”
“She’s living with Imogene.”
Michael reached out, gripping my shoulder, feeding me power to keep me calm. “Breathe. We didn’t know, but this is good. We have so much more than we’ve had.”
It took me a second to realize that I was growling. It took me a while longer to make myself stop.
I wanted to yell at her for not telling me this sooner, but we discussed who could’ve pulled this off. When Tessa was first taken, we all agreed that if there was a werewolf element in play here, then it had to be one of the Alphas. They had the power and the motivation to pull off something like this. Meredith couldn’t have known.
“Where?” The word was more growl than anything else.
“Miami with a few others that got kicked out of St. Ailbe’s. I’ll send you the address.”
My knuckles popped, and I looked down at my hands. They were shifting. I was losing control.
“Stop. You can’t change now. We’ve got to get on a plane.” Michael fed me more power to fight the wolf. Power to control the wolf. And I took it because I needed to think.
“This is good news,” Michael said.
Right. Michael was right. I had something to go on. That was more than I had yesterday. I wouldn’t think about all the time wasted because I hadn’t wasted it. Everything we’d done led me to here. A place where hope lived.
“Any of our kind could help with the magic hiding her,” Kyra said, breaking the silence. “We have a long history of stealing people. Moving them to places. Changing their memories and clouding them in magic to hide them away.” She shook her head. “If they’ve made her a changeling, she could be anywhere. But there’s hope in that.”
“Why?” God, I needed more hope.
“Because if that’s the case, then she’s probably fine wherever she is. She probably has no idea that she’s missing or who she really is or that anyone is looking for her.”
I wasn’t sure if that broke my heart or gave me hope.
Hope. I’d take the hope.
“Shannon is friends with the fey.” Meredith’s voice was soft and sorrow-filled. “The entrance to the Lunar Court’s underhill is basically next door to our pack’s castle in Ireland. Which means that she has contacts. They know her and could’ve used her. I’m not sure what role she had in it, or if she had any at all, but she has access to the fey, and—”
“No one is blaming you, Meredith,” Chris said. “It’s okay.”
“No. It’s really not.” There was pain in her voice now, and I knew I should say something. I should fix it. But I couldn’t make the words come out.
“There’s one more thing,” Cosette said. “Changelings are usually infants or toddlers when they’re taken. The magic they’d need to create this…it’s not easy. Not just any fey could do it.”