This. I’d never get enough of this.
I woke to the sound of a phone ringing and Donovan cursing.
After talking some more, we’d had some food, turned on a movie, and fallen asleep. Dad was going to be annoyed about that, but he wouldn’t say anything. At least not to Donovan.
“Aye.” Donovan’s voice was thick with sleep, making his accent even richer as he answered the call.
“John’s dead.” A firm, feminine voice spoke on the other end of the line.
Pain rippled through our bond, and I sat up, placing my hand on Donovan’s arm. He turned away from me as he tried to control the wave emotions rushing into me. Hurt. Pain. Guilt.
Guilt? Why…
John. Oh shit. That John. His second. His best friend.
“Christ Jesus. I don’t understand. How? Who’s done this?”
“It’s nothing like I’ve seen before, Don.”
I swallowed at the use of a nickname for Donovan. Something about this woman was setting me on edge. I scooted closer to Donovan, pressing my stomach against his back as I pulled him toward me. He twined his fingers with mine with one hand, while gripping the phone with the other. He wasn’t crying on the outside, but his pain burned through me.
Donovan Murry was devastated.
“You have to come back. It’s enough playin’ around in America for you.”
Playing around? Was that what his pack thought we’d been doing? Because playing implied fun, and nothing about dealing with Luciana had been fun. Not even a little bit.
And who the hell was calling that they could talk to their Alpha like that?
Donovan stifled a growl. “You need to watch your place, Vivian.” Power rolled off him in waves. Fur rippled along my arms, and I struggled to let his energy flow through me without forcing me to change forms. I must’ve whimpered because Donovan squeezed my hand and toned himself down a few dozen notches.
Vivian. She was third in the pack, so it was her duty to inform the Alpha, but it was a little eerie how we’d just been talking about her. Now his second was dead, and she was on the phone?
“I’m aware of my place, Don, but your second is dead. The power struggles will flare up if you’re not here within the day.”
A second had to be seriously powerful, and, in an established pack like Donovan’s, they’d be pretty damned hard to kill. Which left me with one question.
Donovan rubbed a hand down his face. “How’d he die?” He said, echoing my thoughts.
“Might’ve been a fey. He’s in fecking pieces, but it was done in our stronghold. In his own damned room.”
Being killed by a fey was one thing. Being killed by a fey inside the stronghold…
I’d never heard of something like that happening. It really shouldn’t have been possible. But the fey could do the whole teleportation thing, and I’d only just learned about that. Who knew what other powers they’d been hiding?
Still, it seemed impossible that no one had seen or heard anything. There were too many Weres in the Irish pack for a fey to sneak in, murder someone, and then escape before anyone noticed.
“Everyone is going crazy, and—”
“Aye. I can feel it for myself.”
“You could’ve fooled me.” She had some major attitude, but she didn’t sound like a mad wolf. Annoyed. Pissed off. But not crazy.
“Enough, Vivian.”
The rumble in his voice should’ve stopped any wolf from talking back to him, but Vivian didn’t seem bothered. That was one point in the crazy column. “Don’t snap at me. It’s not my fault you’ve been neglecting us.”
From the amount of power he was radiating, he had to be pushing his commands all the way from here to Ireland through the pack bonds. I’d felt Alphas do that over short distances before, but never something like this.