I’d had boyfriends before, and they might have been fun, but…What is it about Eli Archer?Was it because he was a shifter? An alpha? I’d avoided other wolves before, not wanting to have to answer the question about why I didn’t shift or where my pack was.But Eli already knows, and we haven’t done a damn thing yet.
The persistent heat in my belly started sinking lower. The ember had sparked into something hotter. Something stronger.C’mon, Iris, get a hold of yourself!When was the last time I’d let some man work me up this badly? Even my wolf was still present, and in her own, quiet way, she was practically shivering, recollecting how Eli’s wolf had interacted with her –flirtedeven.
She waslooking forwardto seeing him again.
I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I did nothing.I’m not going to get anything done until I take care of that…
I reached down beneath my sheets, fingers hovering by the hem of my shorts before I decided ‘to hell with it’ and slipped my hand inside. With Eli floating around my head, this wouldn’t take long…
After washingup and putting on a fresh pair of shorts, I sat down in front of my wall, frowning up at Ashley Sanders’ face.Why you?
She was different from the others, and I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence. People formed habits — even shifters. If they found something that worked, they wouldn’t change without reason. Either Ashley was taken for a specific reason, or something went wrong and they panicked. If it wasn’t Ashley, then it was something about her family. It wasn’t as if she was mistaken for a sister — she was an only child — so maybe it was pack standing.
Maybe one of her parents was involved in something more than their day-to-day life. Perhaps it was someone outside of her immediate family — like a cousin or an aunt or uncle.Well, I need to start somewhere.
I pulled myself away from the wall and sat at the little table, opening my computer to start studying Ashley’s social media. It wasn’t hard to find Ryan and Catherine; Catherine had been on every few hours, tagging her daughter in photos, tagging her daughter’s friends, and clearly trying to get anyone to share information. She was trying to find anything for a lead.
My heart trembled as I read post after post. I didn’t know this woman, but I could sense her growing desperation with each post. I shook my head and clicked on Ryan’s name — he’d shared one of her posts, but… he hadn’t added anything.
That’s weird.
As I opened his recent posts, I found he hadn’t made any of his own. He hadn’t even shared all of his wife’s. Now, not everyone was a social media junkie, but it was still one of the best resources people had to share information, so… It seemed odd to me that he wasn’t doing much. I wrote it down and tucked that away for later.
Out of curiosity, I typed Ashley’s name into the search engine and began to scan news articles for the past few days. Plenty of videos popped up, most featuring Catherine or the local police chief as they pleaded to the public for information on Ashley’s whereabouts. The Sanders had offered a reward for information leading to Ashley’s recovery, but… in all of the videos I was scanning, Ryan was standing back. He never spoke. In the most recent one, he wasn’t even present.
“Huh.”
I leaned back and stared at the ceiling before picking up my phone. I tapped out a quick text to Eli.
Hey— I had an idea. Do you have a minute?
It didn’t take morethan thirty seconds for my phone to start vibrating, Eli’s name popping up on my screen. I couldn’t help my grin. “That was quick,” I said when I picked up.
“Hm,” Eli huffed. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was trying not to laugh. “Did you find something?”
“Well… sort of,” I said, looking back at the screen. “I was researching Ashley’s family online, trying to figure out if maybe one of her other family members was shady. I didn’t see anything weird there, but… hey, you were there when Remus met with her parents, right?”
“I was.”
“Did Ryan seem weird to you?” I queried.
I could hear Eli pause; I could imagine that pensive little look he got when he thought too hard. “I can’t say I have much experience in dealing with parents whose child has gone missing,” the alpha said slowly, “but… everything seemed as I would imagine it, I suppose. Catherine was pretty distraught, really fidgety. Ryan was much calmer. He was clearly uncomfortable and unhappy — but he did a good job settling his wife. Why?”
I frowned, wrinkling my nose. “And the house?”
“What about it?”
“I saw the outside, but what was it like inside? Like, did they have pictures of her? Was it clean or messy? Did it look like a showroom or like people lived there? Did you notice any weird smells you wouldn’t expect in a werewolf’s home?”
“Like what?”
I almost chuckled and caught myself, not wanting to frustrate him. “Like wolfsbane. A non-pack member’s scent. Or chemicals, I don’t know. Anything out of the ordinary.”
“Oh. Well, I can’t say I did that muchsniffing, considering we were all sitting right there,” he grunted. “But nothing stood out as strange. I did see plenty of pictures of the entire family — I remember them specifically. I thought they looked happy. I thought Ashley looked very happy, too, and I thought—” He cut himself off abruptly.
I frowned. “And you thought?”
He huffed. “I don’t know. I just thought looks could be deceiving, I guess. I was a teenager too, you know.”