Page 46 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“When?”

“Months back. Everyone wrote it off. Those two had a reputation, so the alpha figured they’d run somewhere with louder music and looser rules.”

“And you don’t buy it.”

Adrian taps the folder. “One of them had a girl. Shifter, same as him. She says he proposed the week before he vanished. He’d been pricing houses near her parents, saving every cent he could scrape.”

“People run from weddings too.”

“He left the money behind.” Adrian leans back. “I pulled his accounts. Every dollar is still sitting there, untouched. His card’s last swipe was a bar tab inside that club.”

A man building a life doesn’t walk out on it and his savings in the same night. “So they didn’t run.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“You said two cases.”

“About a year before, a couple disappeared the same way.” He pulls a second sheet from under the first. “Shifters, both of them, in love. Families on both sides hated the match. The two of them checked into a human-owned hotel together and dropped off the map.”

“Let me guess. Everyone blamed everyone.”

“Her side swears he stole her and ran. His side swears they eloped.” Adrian shrugs. “Except she kept a cash stash her family never knew about, and she left every bill of it behind. Nobody elopes broke when they’ve got a way not to be.”

I close the folder. “Hunters in that area?”

“Active. And here’s the part that’ll interest you.” He waits until I look up. “One of the hunters worked the search for the missing boys. Stood right there beside the pack, helping comb the woods. Name of Leroy Hades.”

That one I’ve heard before. “I know that name.”

“You should. Leroy’s the right hand of the man who runs the local syndicate.” Adrian’s mouth goes thin. “Kylan.”

“I’ve met Reuben once, but not Kylan,” I murmur. “He’s the new leader, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know about new,” Adrian responds. “He’s been around for six to seven years now.”

I had heard about Reuben’s death when it happened. I didn’t know much about him except that he was a cruel bastard. His brother is probably cut from the same cloth.

For a moment, neither of us speaks. Hunters run an order older than our packs, with their people seeded through courts and council seats, the same trick we work in reverse.

“If you found out about her stash,” I say slowly, “then Leroy knew about it the same day. He buried it.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

“Stay low. Keep digging.” I stand and move to the window. “If hunters took them, they didn’t keep anyone breathing. Those kids are dead, Adrian. We need the bodies.”

“And how do you want me to manage that?”

“You’ve got friends in the Ridgeback pack.”

“A few.”

“Get a handful of them quietly into the trees out there. Tell them to stay where wolves don’t run.” I glance back at him. “If those bodies were anywhere our kind passes, somebody would have caught the scent already. Look where nobody looks.”

Adrian nods slowly. “That’s smart.”

Four shifters gone in two years, and every time the pack shrugged it off. The killing I can stomach. What I can’t stomach is how clean it was, how willing everyone was to call it running and move on.

He gathers the folder, then doesn’t move. His eyes land on the coffee table by the couch, on the cluster of white lilies in a glass. “You keeping those?”