I said pregnancy question would be resolved today, but not necessarily in the next chapter. I guess that means I owe you another one... stay tuned.
(Piper POV)The next time that I opened my eyes, I was in a hotel room. Given the position of the sun and the sunlight streaming through the windows, I guessed that it was now morning.I sat up and began to look around. I felt different, but I could not put my finger on exactly why. My head did feel clearer, though. Like it was somehow easier to think.“Good morning, Sunshine,” Kade said to me as he came out of the bathroom.Kade was shirtless, and it appeared that he had just gotten out of the shower because his hair was wet. Kade was an attractive male, but seeing his semi-naked body did nothing for me. Spotting his shirt on the bed opposite me, I tossed it to him.“How long was I out?” I asked.“A while,” Kade replied with a smile. “Apparently dying, even temporarily, takes a lot of energy out of you.”“What time is it?”“8 am.”“What day is it?”“Saturday.”“My wedding day,” I whispered, almost to myself.I looked down at my left hand. My engagement ring was no longer there
(Piper POV)Kade and I made our way to a human diner that was walking distance from our hotel. Thankfully, despite it being a Sunday morning, it was not very crowded. My guess was that most people were either sleeping in or were at church. Either way, I was grateful for the quiet and super excited about the food.The pretty, young waitress sat us in a booth towards the back. After not-so-subtly trying to figure out if Kade and I were a couple, she stepped away to grab a couple of menus.Before she came back, I saw her unbutton the top three buttons of her uniform, exposing her red lace bra and the tops of her obviously-fake breasts. When I saw her do it, I laughed and rolled my eyes. Did that desperate trick really work on men?Well, apparently it does, because when she came back over and I glanced over at Kade, he was practically drooling in appreciation. In fact, when the waitress leaned over to place his water and silverware in front of him, I was half-surprised that he did n
(Piper POV)I was pretty quiet for the rest of breakfast.Kade tried to apologize, but I wasn’t sure why. I reassured him that he did not need to do so. I was the one who should be sorry. I was, after all, the one who started the conversation, and he was right that who he slept with was none of my business. I told him that I was just in a mood —because of being hungry, having died yesterday, and missing my wedding today— and that he should just ignore me.Kade did not seem too convinced that there wasn’t more to it, but he thankfully let it go. The last thing that I wanted to do was admit that I missed Leo.Once our pancakes arrived, we began to talk about the next part of our journey. And by “we,” I mean that Kade talked, and I mostly listened.Dr. Hyder wanted Kade to take me back to his pack, Red River, but that was on the other side of the country. Taking a plane would be the fastest way to get there, but Dr. Hyder did not want me getting on a plane for at least a week. He
(Leo Bloodstone POV)It has been almost 48 hours.I was supposed to be a married male by now. Piper was supposed to be wearing my mark. I was supposed to be explaining to Piper everything that I had done and why, and then —assuming she understood and was willing to accept it— having more of the best sex of my entire life while giving the symbolic middle finger to the werewolf council.Instead, Piper is gone. I have no idea where she is. Despite the three spells that I had placed on her engagement ring and despite all the other precautions that I took, it wasn’t enough. She left. And without a trace.I am a complete and utter wreck. If you were to see me right now, you may not even believe that I was me. The big, bad alpha has been reduced to a fraction of who I was before. I think most of my enemies would take one look at me and call me a major f&&king p&ssy right now. Hell, most of my friends probably would too. Especially because, instead of being out there killing someone
(Leo Bloodstone POV)After Ellis was banished, most things around Bloodstone Pack remained the same. Building layouts and training schedules, for example. However, we did make a few important changes.Some of the most important changes involved adding cameras to areas that had never had cameras in them before. This included the alpha and beta floors and all of the panic rooms. My parents had always resisted having cameras in these areas. They believed that privacy was important, especially for ranked wolves and especially for wolves forced into small spaces during a panic situation.I had a different philosophy. For me, security was more important than privacy… especially because —after everything that went down with Ellis, Ingrid, and I— I no longer trusted many of the wolves that had previously had access to those areas. Thus, when I became acting alpha, I had a special team install a lot of cameras in a variety of discreet locations. The cameras would be capable of both audi
(Leo Bloodstone POV)“You f&&king moron,” my mother said to me angrily.Sometimes I think life would be easier if the females in my family weren’t so d&mn opinionated.But then, I suppose, they wouldn’t be them.“What?” I replied as I rubbed the back of my head, feeling completely confused.“What do you mean what? Did you not watch the same video that I just watched? You broke that poor girl.”I started to get angry. “Mother, I have no idea what you are talking about.”“So you didn’t pick Ingrid and Axel over Piper?”“Goddess, no.”“Oh, really?” she said sarcastically.“NO!”“So Piper would not see it that way, either?”“No, of course not!”Just then, Grandma Rosie walked into the room.“What are you both going on about?” she asked.“Your grandson is a moron,” my mother responded.“Is that why Piper left?”“NO!”“Uh-huh.”“Mother, I did nothing wrong! Stop blaming me. We haven’t even watched all the footage yet. And she was kidnapped. She didn’t leave.”“We will see about that,”
(Leo Bloodstone POV)It took us many, many hours to get through all of the security footage.Watching it never got any easier. I lost any trace of an appetite —despite how many times my mother tried to get me to eat— and I felt my claws come out several times as my wolf tried to force a shift. On top of that, I probably did end up with a minor concussion by the end of the recordings. But I didn’t care.We saw everything. Well, mostly everything. I had not equipped any of the bedrooms on the beta floor with cameras, so I did not see what happened in Nick and Jenny’s room.We saw Ingrid in the hallway, encouraging Axel to go into Piper’s room soon after I was called away to deal with the attack. We heard Axel tell Piper that I was his father. We saw Axel’s picture, showing Piper leaving the pack so that he, Ingrid, and I could be a family again. We heard Axel explain to Piper that I only wanted her for power and revenge.At that point in the footage, I threw the laptop that we wer
(Leo Bloodstone POV)I could not, and would not, let go of Piper. That was simply not something that I was willing to consider.However, that does not mean that my mother’s words had not resonated with me. They had, because she was right. My father and I had allowed ourselves to become distracted, and in doing so, our pack had begun to slowly fall apart from the inside out.While I vowed to continue to look for Piper, I needed to also refocus my energies on my pack. I needed to clear out the bad energy once and for all, and I needed to ensure that our warriors were well-trained, loyal, and disciplined.Beginning that process meant paying visits to several key wolves, starting with Randy, ending with Ingrid, and including a whole lot of others in between. And definitely not forgetting about my father.****I sent a mind-link to Randy, telling him that he and his mate needed to meet me in the beta office in 15 minutes. We chose this location for the meeting because the alpha offic