“I don’t know. I can only feel him. I can’t see what’s around him.”
“You can feel him?” Merric frowns. Brenna puts a hand to his shoulder.
“Why do you think it’s the Syndicate?” she asks.
“Who else would take him? He refused them. He sent us a family.”
Conner speaks without looking up from the table. His voice is low and controlled, and I can hear the undertone underneath it— the brother. The one who wanted to be done with him and isn’t.
He’s nodding as he looks at me. “The family was a test. Garrett pushed back at them.” He rubs his eyes. “He knows they’re going to retaliate, so he’s drawing them away from the pack. He would do that.”
Brenna looks from him to me. “You canfeelthis?”
“Yes. We… We have a mate bond.”
There. It’s out.
“Since when?” asks Brenna, though I’m sure she suspects. She’s just confirming.
“Since I went after him. Weeks ago.”
Silence. Merric’s face doesn’t change. Brenna’s doesn’t either. I’d expected something — surprise, disappointment, the expression she wears when someone in her pack has withheld significant information — but what I get instead is the alpha processing the operational implications.
“And you’re certain he’s been taken.”
“Yes.”
“How certain?”
“I can feel physical sensation from him. He’s restrained. He’s been moved into some kind of vehicle. And there was a moment of pain, just now, a reaction to something. I’m certain.”
Brenna looks at Merric. “Call his second. Dawes.”
Merric reaches for the phone on the wall. He dials from the ledger — the number we got from the rendezvous yesterday. It rings three times before Dawes picks up.
Merric puts it on speaker. “Dawes. This is Merric Rourke at Ravenclaw.”
“Rourke.” Dawes’s voice is the voice of a man who’s been waiting for this call. “What can I do for you?”
“We have reason to believe Garrett Forrester has been taken by the Syndicate. Can you confirm?”
A pause. Long enough that my wolf lunges against my ribs in anxiety.
“He left the compound at eleven-thirty this morning,” Dawes says. “He was meeting with the Syndicate. Didn’t give a location, but the meet was at two o’clock. He went alone. He surrendered himself on the condition that they leave the compound untouched.”
“Surrendered.” Brenna.
“Voluntarily. We’ve had no contact since his departure. His truck is presumed abandoned at the depot.”
“What did he tell you about their intentions?”
“Nothing specific. He expected to be questioned. He didn’t expect to come back. He asked me to contact you if he didn’t.”
“Why me?”
Dawes is quiet for a second. Then: “He said you’d understand what to do with the information.”
The three of us look at Brenna. She looks at the phone.