“I could,” she allowed, but she sounded distracted as her gaze flickered to the window. “It’s the full moon tonight.”
The atmosphere of the room instantly changed, a subtle but tangible dread settling over them.
“We’ll find them,” he told her, projecting a confidence he didn’t feel.
Reports about shifters going missing throughout Georgia had started trickling in right before Halloween. Nothing alarming at first—drifters, loners, those who existed on the fringes of the pack—and certainly nothing that necessitated Blackrock’s involvement.
But it kept happening. More and more shifters vanished, the disappearances escalating in both scale and frequency as the weeks passed.
Then the first body had been found at the beginning of December, two days after the full moon, naked, bruised, and drained of blood.
From there, the pattern had continued. More shifters went missing. More bodies turned up after every full moon. Not everyone who vanished resurfaced, though, and no one knew why.
“What if we don’t?” Chapel asked, trying and failing to sound detached.
Dominic sighed.
The last report had come three weeks ago from a pack outside of Valdosta, and this one hit different. Three teenagers, taken in the middle of the night, gone without a trace. Not outsiders. Not a crime of convenience. This one felt targeted.
“We’ll find them,” he repeated.
Chapel blinked a couple of times and shook her head as if flinging off intrusive thoughts. “Right, good talk.”
“Chapel.”
Pushing off the desk, she landed on the floor with a light bounce and a crooked grin. “I’ll go get ready. Meet you outside in an hour?”
Dominic sighed, knowing there would be no reasoning with her. “Make it two.”
First, he had another mission. A solo one. One that required finesse rather than brute force and came with a small likelihood of success.
Chapel nodded her agreement and sashayed out of the office, but he didn’t hurry to follow.
He checked his emails for any urgent messages, but nothing required his immediate attention. So, he saved his work on the inventory reports, cleared his browser, and powered down his computer. Then he spent a few minutes straightening his desk,drawing the curtains, and rearranging the chairs that hardly anyone used.
Only after he had run out of ways to procrastinate did he go in search of his mate.
He muttered to himself as he navigated the hallways and trudged up the stairs, rehearsing what he wanted to say. An apology didn’t feel appropriate. He technically hadn’t done anything wrong, even if he hadn’t done anything right either.
The idea of some sappy, long-winded speech aboutfeelingsgave him heartburn, taking that option off the table.
As he neared Sammy’s door, it dawned on him that he didn’t actually need areasonto talk to his mate. He just needed an opening.
Drumming his knuckles against the frame, he considered announcing himself, but before he could, the knob jiggled and the door swung open.
“Oh, hey.” Sammy greeted him with a courteous but plastic smile. “Do you need something?”
He wore a cream-colored sweater that hung limply off his small frame, the sleeves bunched around his wrists. Maybe it was because of the abundance of fabric, but he looked thinner than the last time Dominic had seen him.
It could have been a trick of the light, or his imagination, but he thought Sammy appeared paler as well, with soft bruises under both eyes. His hand twitched, his fingers tingling with the desire to trace the shadows.
Before he could do something stupid, like act on the impulse, Sammy spoke again, mistaking his silence for catastrophe.
His face fell, his lip quivering with obvious distress, and he stepped forward, crowding into Dominic’s space. “Did something happen?”
Dominic hated seeing the panic in his eyes, but he couldn’t deny he preferred the genuine reaction to the fake politeness.
“Nothing happened,” he assured him. “Chapel and I are going to talk to your friend at the nightclub in Galveston. Do you want to come with us?”