“At least two,” Saint confirmed. “Why?”
Sammy looked at Dominic before answering. “I think—” He paused, took a deep breath, and forced the words out through trembling lips. “I think the missing shifters are the ones who passed.”
Dominic didn’t have to think about it long to see the logic. The theory made sense, but it didn’t answer what the hell the bloodsuckers were looking for in the first place.
“There was an old vampire.” Thierry adjusted in his armchair and rubbed the back of his neck. “He only came once, but the vixen said he looked important.”
“Important how?”
“He was dressed in a suit.” Thierry stared at his knees, his words slow as he recalled the information. “He had guards with him, also dressed in suits.”
“How did she know he was old?” Boone asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting had begun.
“She didn’t say. A feeling, maybe?”
“Powerful,” Chapel elaborated. “She said he wasn’t like the rest of the vampires, and the others seemed afraid of him.”
“Did she hear a name?” Dominic asked.
Chapel shook her head. “But she said he had an accent. French, I think.”
“It’s escalating.” Perched on the arm of the sofa, Saint growled as he dragged his fingers through his damp hair.
From the outside, it did seem that way. When they had first been contacted, less than a dozen shifters had gone missing over the course of a few months. Dominic would argue, however, that they didn’t have all the information. They never had.
“We don’t know that.”
“Bullshit,” his brother snapped back. “Something is going on. I don’t know what, but it feels big.”
To that, Dominic could agree. They had set out to rescue a few shifters, and instead, had walked into something far more disturbing than any of them could have anticipated.
“Let’s say you’re right.” He was. They both knew it. “What would you have us do about it? We don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”
A long, tense silence followed, broken only when Saint shoved to his feet with a growled curse.
Dominic sympathized, but he also had to be practical. Right then, they had less than nothing to go on, and unless that changed, there was little theycoulddo.
He glanced at Sammy from the corner of his eye and felt the familiar squeeze in his chest.
Time was running out, and not in some abstract way. He had been careful to project calm and confidence, but in truth, he didn’t know how to help his mate any more than he did the shifters. As much as he might want to hunt down this rogue coven, he had problems closer to home at the moment.
And if he had to choose, Sammy would win every time.
Chapter thirteen
With the pack safe and the shifters rescued, the following evening found Sammy gripping the edge of his bathroom vanity as an entirely different problem plagued him. The urgency of survival had faded, replaced now by a quieter, more insistent question.
Did he truly belong here?
The harsh fluorescent light outlined the exhaustion in his face—shadows under his eyes, skin dull and worn. Otherwise, he looked the same as ever. Green eyes, unruly strawberry-blond hair, soft cheeks, a sharp jaw. He studied his reflection in the mirror, searching for evidence of change, but he looked exactly as he always did.
And that worried him.
He had expected, maybe hoped, that being with Dominic would transform him in some way. A streak of color in his hair, a shift in his eyes, anything. But the emptiness persisted, both in his appearance and beneath the surface.
Worse, he felt nothing. No spark, no tether.
With Dominic, he didn’t experience the knot in his stomach or the currents of electricity that swept across his skin. He didn’t feel the tingle across the back of his neck or the pressure that built at the base of his skull and crept into his temples.