Therein lay a wealth of suspicions that made Bill’s stomach churn. Connors simply wasn’t smart enough to plan such an elaborate ruse on his own. No… To have his name listed on Loren’s birth certificate eighteen years ago, and though reluctantly, take her in without questioning her paternity, there weren’t many explanations for that. Either Fred Connors grew a sliver of a heart in his time as a rogue, or he’d had no choice. Someone far stronger had compelled him to maintain the lie.
Bill didn’t like where that possibility led. Not one damn bit.
Lukka was still the lead suspect—but he had already shown an inclination toward more violent routes to get his way. Beyond him, there were only a handful of other figures powerful enough to arrange such a scheme—but Bill cut off the thought then and there. Rampant speculation would help no one.
He needed real answers.
With that goal in mind, he left his truck and entered the modest station near the heart of the town. His first destination was the small room where they kept case files. Instantly, he realized why he’d been called in so abruptly.
“Hey, Bill,” Mindy, the clerk, greeted from her desk posted near the door. A slight woman with curling blond hair, she’d been one of the few friendly faces to make his post here bearable. Usually, the only thing she kept on her desk was a mug of coffee. This morning, something sat beside it, glaringly out of place—a square package roughly the size of a textbook, bound in brown paper.
“Sorry to call you in from your vacation,” Mindy went on innocently, “but this came over from Elkton with specific instructions to give to you ASAP. I don’t even know what’s inside it. They didn’t say.”
“Elkton?” Bill felt his brows furrow. “That’s a town up north, isn’t it?”
Fuck.Very north, in fact—not far from two large lycan territories nestled within the mountains.
“Yep!” He barely heard Mindy’s reply. Jaw clenched, he fought to refocus. “A ways away,” she went on. “Maybe five hours on a good day with light traffic. Do you have any idea why they might be consulting with you all the way down here in New Walsh?”
“No idea.” Bill fought to school his expression. While the Elkton police had no business with him, he could think of someone who might. An entire pack, in fact, who happened to live just outside the town’s boundaries.
Unease made him eye the package warily, suspicious of what might be inside it. Would Loreck Eislander really stoop to involve humans in whatever feud simmered between them? Considering the man’s supposed beta had the balls to trespass onto his property the night before and issue demands, who knew what the bastards were capable of.
When he finally took the package and entered the case file room, he didn’t feel confident it contained a harmless missive. It was heavy, with only his name written across the front. His nostrils flared, hunting for any trace of a nefarious substance the package might contain. Another carcass? Whether it was a good or bad omen, he couldn’t smell anything.
When he ripped off the paper, all he found inside was a battered file that could have come from any one of the cabinets in this very room. Written on the front was one name.Scolera.
Bill frowned. He had heard the name before. It belonged to a pack somewhere out west. Nomads, to be more specific. They were less organized than Black Mountain or the Eislanders, preferring to roam their territory seasonally in makeshift caravans. That, however, wasn’t what gave them their infamy.
Scolera wolves were wild and vicious. Rather than follow a single Alpha, they formed small, scattered clans with no real hierarchy. Due to that unorthodox nature, they weren’t welcome in most spaces. In fact, he only knew of them through rumors—most notably, the belief they fed on humans.
Though, on second thought, they weren’t entirely unknown to this area. If Sonia hadn’t brought up the incident, he might have forgotten it completely—twenty years ago, a spate of human murders had been attributed to a rogue prowling the area. Things had gotten so bad that Lukas Grehmaine and Loreck Eislander had joined forces to tackle the threat before it brought unwelcome attention to both packs.
Bill barely remembered that time—he’d only been a child. All he could recall was the tension that had infected everyone for those tortured few weeks. Once the rogue had been caught, things went back to normal.
He’d said as much to the Eislander as a cruel joke, but maybe it was the truth. Could that monster have been Loren’s father?
Puzzled, he flipped through the first few documents contained within the file, questioning the sender’s motives. Was this some backhanded attempt at a warning?
Perhaps.
Though, when he skimmed over a particular line, his eyes nearly fell out of his head. It was buried within a list of names that seemed to document various Scolera family members known to the area.
One, in particular, stood out—Eveline Branshaw.
Loren’s mother? Bill’s first impulse was to doubt it. Scolera wolves, what little he knew about them, were rabidly fierce to their loosely connected clans.
Then again, nothing involving Loren had made sense up until this point.
He skimmed the rest of the file, finding nothing that stuck out. One mystery, however, was answered soon enough—at the very back of the assorted documents was a note. The ink smelled fresh, presumably written by whoever sent the package in the first place.
We need to meet,rogue,it said.Wolfie’s bar in Withead, outside of Elkton. Come alone. Bring any trouble, and you will regret it. This is about the girl, nothing else.
Bill scowled, picturing the Eislander lycan from the night before. Apparently, the bastard had lied—he had recognized the name of Loren’s mother after all. Enough to place her identity, at least. Did the bastard know who her real father might be?
All signs pointed to that farfetched scenario—a crazed rogue Scolera who fed on humans, Fred Connors presumably being one of them. It was a sick twisted bit of irony.
Sadly, it wasn’t even the most tragic of turns in Loren’s case.