“I didn’t come up here to raid your kitchen. We need to talk about Slade.”
“Oh, right. Please sit.” Rylee came to lecture her on pack protocol. Couldn’t she wait until the morning?
Rylee sat on the couch and cocked her head. “Is he why you’ve been crying?”
As if. “No, of course not. I was watching a love story.” She waved the DVD cover of the two star-crossed lovers. “The guy died of a brain tumor…”
“I see.” She smiled. “You are so refreshingly human.”
Cricket wished she’d instead said she was refreshingly wolfish. What did she have to do, besides kill a grizzly bear, to prove she was more wolf than human? Impossible. A runt had more human liabilities than wolf strengths. Including, a bout of sentimentality and a tendency toward defiance of pack rules. “Not a good thing, I suppose.”
“No, I never meant that. You can pass as human better than anyone on the ent
ire team, which I have said countless times makes you invaluable.” She sighed. “This brings me to my next point.”
“Which is?” asked Cricket.
“I don’t want you getting your hopes up about Slade.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your wolf knows your limitations amongst the packs, but I worry your human heart does not.” Rylee shot her a condescending gaze. “Like it or not, Mia, the only human to take an alpha as a mate, is the exception to the rule. Slade can never have you…as a mate.”
Lucky Mia. Her new BFF had Stallo’s blood and in essence was a human with the ability to produce offspring with a werewolf. “Duh. Just because he’s good looking and yeah, I’m sort of in-lust, doesn’t mean I’ll take him seriously as anything, but a team member.”
Rylee sighed. “Good. Lust all you want. I just want to make sure you don’t confuse his need to have you around as anything, but his need to protect a pack member.”
At least she hadn’t said “weak” pack member. “Got it.” Still hurt like hell, he was unattainable.
“You know I’m loose about inappropriate rank love affairs, but Slade is not just any alpha. He’s the only surviving alpha of the Yukon pack. A prince.”
Yeah, yeah. Coming from Rylee, good advice. After all, she had a long distance love affair with the packs’ Enforcer Dominic’s second, beta Carson. Not that an alpha couldn’t mate a beta, but for the pack leader of Lycan Intelligence, an unsuitable mating. Of all the alphas, Rylee was the most open-minded about mixed-rank mating. Though Cricket shouldn’t bed humans, Rylee never reproached her about it. A normal pack would have disciplined her or worse sent her to the enforcer for re-training.
Cricket shrugged. “I’m sure his royal highness will warm up to Jesper.”
“Dr. Warner will work with Slade for a few more days, before he returns to his clinic and then we’ll see how it goes.”
“I take it you want me to meet the prince at his guest quarters tomorrow?”
“No. I need to update you on the missing werewolf cases.”
“What’s new?”
“Besides the three missing betas in the States, we now have a missing German were. An alpha, Raulf, in his mid-twenties, went missing from his pack in Germany. His older brother, Alrik, the pack’s alpha reported it to us. Raulf might have travelled to America. They lost his scent in Europe and feared he might have gotten on a plane or boat. Raulf disappeared about a day after Slade arrived here.”
Cricket’s curiosity piqued. “Do you think it’s related or a coincidence?”
“At first I thought it was a coincidence, except for the fact the alpha named Raulf suffered from morphopsychosis and was being treated in Berlin.”
Two wolves with the same affliction? “That’s weird. Any idea what happened to cause it?”
“His alpha mate died in a car accident.”
No wonder poor Raulf was so vulnerable. “Maybe Dr. Warner and his shrink should compare notes.”
“Not possible. A couple days after Raulf went missing, they found his psychiatrist, Dr. Ivo Strom, in his office, shot and decapitated.”
“Holy crap. Did Raulf do it?”