Chapter Thirty Four - Stolen

Liana awoke the next morning with a sneeze. She sat up, looking around the room. She was human again. When had she switched back? Obviously that hadn’t been as painful as the shift to her wolf. She was human, naked, and curled up on the floor near the fire in the Alpha family’s suite. Jake was behind her, his hand on her hip tightened slightly as her movement disturbed his sleep. She sneezed again and felt the tingling all the way down from the back of her head to her shoulders.

“Aconitine?”

Jake sat up.

“Wolfsbane? Here?”Jake stood, pulling Lia to her feet with him. “Is it on us? Do we need to shower?” She sniffed again, following the scent to the open patio door, sneezing twice before she got there. “It’s definitely coming from outside, but there can’t be any plants from the Ranunculaceae family growing wild in the winter. I think I smell Albert too, and Albert shouldn’t be hunting this close to houses.” She sneezed once more and pulled the patio doors shut against the smell and the winter wind.

“Albert again? That can’t be a coincidence. As much as I hate to think he could get this close to the pack house we need to be alert for him. See if your wolf can send me a good picture of Albert that I can share with everyone. Think hard. What he looks like as well as what he smells like.” Lia closed her eyes and focused. The image her wolf chose to send was of Albert holding a shotgun, standing in his living room surrounded by dead things. Jake hissed in disgust. “I’m guessing the smell he carries is from tanning or taxidermy.” Lia shrugged.

“I guess. It’s all over him and his house. It’s gross.”

“Okay, the whole pack is on the lookout for him now. And the wolfsbane.”

“It might not be wolfsbane exactly. I can’t smell aconitine very well since I sneeze at the first whiff of it. Aconitine is just the toxin produced by a family of plants, only one of those plants is Wolfsbane. Unless it’s directly under my nose I can’t tell which plant it came from, but it doesn’t matter much, they can all be poisonous if the quantity is high enough. I got a good whiff of the one in the attic after you opened the door for me and that dust got in my hair. That one wasn’t wolfsbane. This time the scent isn’t strong enough for me to tell.”

“Could that mean it’s a ways off?” She nodded, noticing Jake’s shoulders relax slightly. “Let’s get dressed and go see what we can find out.”

They weren’t quite finished dressing before a scream from outside had them running to the door. Jake cursed as he threw the door open. He shared the image a pack member had sent him with Liana. The Omega and the guard left with Gran were both unconscious on the deck. Selene was gone.

By the time they made it down the three flights of stairs, Beta Mark had the area surrounded and the pack’s best trackers were sniffing the ground for any trace of her or of Albert. Mother Luna was checking out the two werewolves who were still lying on the deck.

“Just standard tranquilizer darts,” she said. “Thank the goddess. Their wolves should be able to rid them of it in a couple of hours.”

Liana held out her hand for the dart. Mother Luna looked a bit surprised but handed it over without comment. Lia sniffed both ends of the dart and sneezed. Jake’s lips tightened.

“This is ….strange,” she said looking at the dart. “The blood on the sharp end is rather distracting, I’ve never tried to scent something through blood before. There is aconitine on it, but only trace amounts and I think it’s only on the flesh end, not the sharp end. Maybe I’m missing it under the blood, but I don’t think so. There isn’t much of it, so I don’t think it was intended as a poison dart at all. It also smells like Mother Luna and the werewolf it came from, which makes sense, but the other end smells like two other werewolves and Albert.”

“You can smell all that?”

Lia shrugged and looked Mother Luna in the eyes. “Gran – I mean my mother has been teaching me to scent things for my entire life. I knew it was different from what the kids I grew up with could do, but I just thought it was a cool skill. I know aconitine, more herbs than I can count, and all the edible and nonedible plants that are grown near our house. A few other scents that I now know were specific lone wolves or their homes that I was taught to associate with safety. I know the general scent given off by a werewolf in wolf form, though I didn’t know that’s what it was until a few weeks ago when I found out we are werewolves. That and a few other scents I was taught to associate with fear or danger without Gran ever putting a name to them.” She shivered and wrinkled her nose as she handed the dart back to Mother Luna. “I still have moments where the smell of werewolf wolf fur sets my teeth on edge and I’ve been one!”

Mother Luna nodded, a thoughtful look on her face. “Selene didn’t want you to shift, but she wanted your wolf senses sharpened.”

“I guess,” Liana’s face suddenly paled and she spun around to face Jake. “We have to go to Albert’s place. He’s got to be behind this! You know I’m right. From the very first I’ve been smelling him with the aconitine, and now this?” Her eyes filled with tears as the reality of the situation finally sank in. “We have to go now! I...please no. I don’t want my Gran...my mom to be his newest footstool. We can’t let that happen!”

It had taken far to long in Liana’s opinion, but they set off before lunch towards her old home with the intent of scoping out Albert’s place. Lia hugged herself, covertly touching the holstered handgun she was wearing under her sweater. If he’d hurt Gran, she would use it. If the bullet didn’t kill him, the poison would.

Jake watched his mate caress her own sides for the third time in the space of ten minutes and knew it wasn’t just nerves. She was hiding something, or at the very least not sharing all she knew and felt. It irked him that she didn’t seem to trust him, even after having mated with him. Her link with him wasn’t quite like that of a normal werewolf yet. If it were, he’d know what she was hiding and she would know how he felt about it. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and kept his eyes on the road. Her wolf shared in flashes, seemingly random ones. If she focused, the message was clear, otherwise, it was hard to read. The last image it had sent had been the box of poisons by the back door of her cottage. Before that, the view of Albert’s place from what he knew was the tool shed he’d hidden in before. He could smell her fear, but her wolf wasn’t sharing that with him. It had sent some sort of call for rescue to David, who had messaged him to find out what was going on. A few of the lone wolves were going to meet them at the cottage. David was there now, watching from the bushes. He’d seen Albert in the house, but no sign or scent of Selene.

Jake wished he had managed to convince Lia to stay at the house, but he knew she was right. They needed her nose. It was a bit disconcerting that a werewolf who had been raised to believe she was human could scent poison better than his own trackers. They had been rather put out by it too, but before they left his top tracker had come to Liana and asked if she would help them learn to scent better when this was all cleared up. If anything good came from this, it was that at least some members of the pack had found something to respect about their Luna aside from just her association with him.

He slowed his truck as they came up on her driveway. Lia was peering out the window towards Albert’s place, hanging on the door as though she were going to jump out before he stopped again. She waited for him to stop, but then jumped out and went straight towards Albert’s front door rather than towards her own cottage as they had planned. Fortunately, one of the Lone Wolves had been crouched in the bushes and managed to hop out and wrap her in a hug, making it look as though she’d simply been going to say hello. He then kept an arm around her shoulders and guided her back towards her own front door. “You must stick to the plan Little Lia, for the safety of all concerned, including Selene.”

Lia and David puttered around in the yard. To most people, it would look like they were checking on the bedding and covers for all Selene’s plants. Jake, Jasper, and the warriors from Cloud Lake were crowded into her living room talking about entry points, timing, and strategy. She didn’t know why they were bothering with the false front, if Albert were in on it her arriving home just hours after he’d kidnapped her mother would be a dead giveaway that she knew it was him. She bent over to fluff the straw that covered the berry bushes near the woods when she suddenly smelled Albert, a strong werewolf sent, and another scent that made her instantly terrified. Her heart rate increased, her senses heightened and her knees bent, as though she were prey about to flee. She heard David’s voice, but it seemed to be a long distance away, “Lia, everything okay?” She glanced up, sneezed, and everything suddenly went dark.