Page 72 of The Alpha’s Unclaimed Mate

“Okay.” Tomas gets in between us. “We now know what you’re not. I want to know if you can cook.”

I sigh. It’s easier than arguing, and the kitchen’s already destroyed. My hands want something to do. “Sure. Sit down.”

I’m three eggs in when Bella and Mia come padding down the stairs. Bella takes one look and rolls her eyes, familiar with the pair of them. Mia, though, stops dead, her mouth open.

“You’re on TV,” she breathes.

“We sure are, kid.” Cole grins. “You a fan?”

Mia nods so hard I worry for her neck. She wants to play, of course she does, bouncing on her toes at the edge of the kitchen despite the gray tiredness still under her eyes.

“No.” I don’t even turn from the stove. “You’re resting today. Doctor’s orders.”

“Aw, come on, Mom.” Tomas claps a hand to his chest. “There’s more than one way to play.” He crouches down to Mia’s level. “Ever played from up on someone’s shoulders?”

“Absolutely not.” But Mia’s face has already lit up. Bella’s caught the fever too, and both of them turn on me with the same pleading eyes.

“She won’t run a step,” Cole promises. “She’ll just sit up top and shriek. We do all the work. Scout’s honor.”

I should say no. I say no to almost everything; it’s how I keep us safe. But Mia’s looking at me with big eyes, and I’m so tired of being the one who takes the fun away.

“Fine.” I point the spatula at both men. “If she so much as gets jostled, I will end you. I’ve been to a shooting range.”

“She’s not kidding,” Bella supplies helpfully. “Her neighbor was a marksman.”

Out on the back lawn, the two of them boost the girls onto their shoulders, Mia up on Cole, Bella on Tomas. They start knocking a ball back and forth between them, slow and careful. The girls sway up top and scream with laughter. Mia’s shriek carries all the way to the kitchen window, where I stand with a dish towel in my hands. I catch myself smiling so widely it aches.

This is something I’ve never been able to give her. A yard, grown men who’ll play the fool, and a morning with nowhere she has to be. These moments, this carefree life, she’s never had this. It’s always work for me, study for her. Ever since she met Bella and Marcus entered our lives, there’s been a happiness in her eyes I’ve never seen before.

My phone buzzes on the counter, and I glance down. It’s an email from a firm three states away, the second follow-up, the offer still open, the fresh start still sitting there for the taking.

I look back out the window at my daughter, thrown against the sky and laughing, and I catch my lower lip between my teeth.

Chapter Fifteen

Marcus

I run until the land forgets me.

Two hours out, maybe more, the pines start to smell wrong, and the dirt under my paws turns unfamiliar. Home sits a long way behind me now. Adrian’s coordinates drag me past the last of our territory, deep into a country where our kind doesn’t set foot. He wouldn’t say why over the phone, only to shift and come.

Cole and Tomas will be with the girls. I’ve told myself that since I crossed my own tree line, and it hasn’t loosened the knot in my chest. Leaving Jessa and the girls behind, even guarded, goes against everything the animal in me wants. The wolf keeps trying to turn me around. I push it down and run harder.

The clearing opens where the coordinates end, and Adrian’s already there, standing over a low mound of turned earth. He’s got a pair of pants slung over one shoulder, thrown to me before I’ve fully shifted back. I pull them on.

“What am I looking at?” I ask, looking around.

“Keep it down.” His voice stays under the wind. “We’re on Ridgeback ground. We shouldn’t be here at all.” He crouches at the edge of the mound. “You needed to see it for yourself, though.”

I lower myself beside him. Somebody dug shallow and left fast. Two bodies lie side by side in the dirt, gone to bone in places, the rest of them held together by cold and the years. A man and a woman, both young, probably in their teens, from what’s left of them.

“So these are the two who went missing,” I murmur as I reach out touch one of their bones. The bone breaks as if it is made of sand, and my jaw tightens. However, I keep my thoughts to myself.

“That’s them.” Adrian’s jaw works. “Dead a long while. Long before anyone bothered to look.”

“So I was right.” The words bring me no pleasure at all.

“Apparently.” He picks two thin sticks off the ground and leans over the woman’s remains. “That’s not why I dragged you out here, though. Look at this.”