6. Emrie

Everything changed with those words. And yet, nothing changed with those words.

On the one hand, if I dared to believe my alpha, it was like my wildest dreams had come true. But at the same time, I was weirdly hesitant. How many shifters got to be with the person they wanted most in the world? How many dreams came true in the exact way that we wanted them to?

Call me a skeptic, but I was sure this was all some kind of bizarre mix up.

Hope, when there had been no hope at all, was very painful.

And after all, I was broken. There was no way to accurately determine who my mate was. There just wasn't.

Roarke's expression was ultra gentle, as if he knew that I was wildly fluctuating between the desperate desire to break out my box of last year's fireworks, party hats and fizzy poppers, and walling off my heart because the hope that he might be mine was just too painful. "It's true. I can smell you now. Your scent mingles with mine. You're my mate."

I scooted away from him on the sofa, and I could feel his hurt. I wanted to punch myself in the face, but also, Roarke was possibly my mate. It was like the sentence didn't compute in my head. Didn't I hate this when the heroines did this in romance books. Oh no, he's my mate, let me run from him like an idiot! And yet...I got it now. Fear was like a multi-tentacled monster with poison dripping fangs. It was so painful it burned inside of me. I think—I felt my heart racing underneath my palm—I think I was having a panic attack.

"Shhh, it's okay," he said, rubbing my arm in gentle motions with his huge and comforting hand. The heat from his hand was soothing, and almost against my will, I began to calm down. My breathing steadied as I tried to pull myself together.

I hated panic attacks.

Unfortunately, they were just a part of life for me. This is why, outside of my Clan and Roarke, I didn't do people. People were... weirdly combative, had opinions about literally everything—even things they didn't understand—and would fight in a death match against anyone who's opinion differed from theirs. It was like the whole world had gone crazy, and here I was just very chill, and like, seriously people, can't we all just get along? The world is not a death match! Tolerance, kindness, respect...ugh. I just couldn't people.

Okay, weird soapbox moment over.

"My mate scent and my natural scent are muted," I said, shaking my head and trying to focus on what Roarke had said. "It's not possible to know."

"The locket must have been spelled, Emrie," my alpha said tapping something out on his phone and putting it away. "I think when it was pulled off, your scent became discernible."

I blinked.

My locket?

The locket my parents had given me, and had told me never to take off was what had blocked my scent?

"They knew how important a scent is in finding our mates. Why would they do that to me?" I whispered. I pulled my blanket higher to ward off the sudden chill that swamped me. It felt like my whole body had just gone icy cold.

My parents had blocked my mate scent? Why?

Roarke's hand flexed, like he was thinking about reaching for my hand and clasping it within his, but he didn't. Urgh, I was messing things up! I would not be this woman! I was better than this! I reached for his hand, and clasped it with my own. I saw his shoulders, which had been so tense they'd been nearly to his ears, release. Like his whole body sighed with my touch. I vaguely remembered that this was the case between mates.

"Remember what we were talking about earlier? That there's a possibility that your parents were in hiding here in Moonhaven? And that they wanted you to stay on Clan property as much as possible to keep you safe from whoever they were hiding from?" Roarke asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, we talked about that possibility."

"In which case, the locket hiding your scent, and by extension your family's scent, would make sense," Alpha Riggs said, steepling his fingers together, his brow furrowed in thought.

My thoughts were racing, millions of little things my parents had done or said now looking very different to me. And it was all adding up to something I didn't want to think about...

"Alpha, I was young, and I think the trauma has made the memory hazy. How exactly did my parents die? I know it was a car accident, but were there any other details? Anything suspicious?"

I didn't want to talk about this. At all. I was very much a bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away kind of person—anxiety was alive and well within me—but I didn't see how that would work in this case.

Someone had just been inside my house. They'd made it, not only onto Clan property—which was difficult considering the enforcers and the shifter senses of my Clan—but in my house.And while I was a shifter bear with a Clan behind me and a dragon shifter best friend, I wasn't invulnerable. As a matter of fact, after having my home broken into, and my locket ripped off my neck, I was feeling very vulnerable.

Alpha Riggs went to my fridge and grabbed a few bottles of water, which he passed out among the three of us before sitting down again.

"You'll remember, Emrie, that I wasn't the alpha then," he began.

I nodded.

"But there is always certain information that's passed from the previous alpha to each new alpha of the Clan, and the history of your parents was one of those things." He took a sip of his water and leaned further back in his chair, getting comfortable. The alpha power radiating from him was subdued, and he had a far away look in his eyes, as though he were deep in thought.

"Your parents came to this Clan when your mom was pregnant with you, Emrie. Their circumstances were unusual because your dad had been an alpha for a mid-west Clan of bears before their move. But he stepped down, leaving the Clan to his beta, and he and your mom moved here, to Moonhaven. The reasoning at the time made enough sense for our previous alpha, and he and your dad were okay being in the same Clan, even though from what our previous alpha told me your dad was the more dominant bear, with the stronger alpha pull.

"Alpha Demarco quickly assigned him as his second. He was in charge of the safety and protection of the Clan, and he excelled in his position. There were no dominance fights, and even though he was new, and your family was new, they fit in as if they'd been a part of the Clan for years rather than months. Time went by. Alpha Demarco noted the many times your dad seemed to sense that there was something else going on in the shifter world, but your dadrefused to tell him anything for years, stating that it was safer if Alpha Demarco didn't know. And since Alpha Demarco had come to trust your dad, he waited for the day that your dad would open up to him.

"When you were around ten, your parents went on a Clan supply run. Your dad and a few enforcers left Clan property, heading into Moonhaven. But Moonhaven didn't have some specialty parts we needed for some new homes that were going up, so your dad decided to split from the group and head to Portland to pick them up.

"The rest of the supply group arrived safely back onto Clan property and put away the supplies. Your mom, when she'd discovered that your dad had gone to Portland on his own, well, Alpha Demarco had said she'd had a bad feeling. She took your family jeep to meet up with him, leaving you, Emrie, here with the Clan."

He went silent, taking another sip of his water. There was sorrow in his eyes now, and I clutched Roarke's hand like a lifeline.

"They never came back," I said, remembering.

Alpha Riggs nodded. "We were able to piece a few things together. Your mom was able to meet up with your dad in Portland. They loaded up the jeep and the SUV your dad was driving with the building supplies, and started for home. Their vehicles were found at the bottom of Santiam Pass. Their injuries had been too extensive, and they passed away shortly after impact."

Roarke didn't seem to be able to stand the distance between us, even though he held my hand. He scooted closer to me, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, letting me sag against him. For once in the last ten or so years of my life, the question of my mate didn't even matter to me. My thoughts were churning with the information about my parents.

"But why? What happened to them?"

"Alpha Demarco never found out. After their deaths, he, like we're doing now, pieced together a few clues from your dad and mom's actions over the ten years they'd been a member of the Moonhaven Clan, and he became suspicious of foul play. But a careful search of their bodies, their vehicles, the crash site, and the last place your dad had been, revealed nothing.

"There were no skid marks, no dents or scratches on the vehicles other than those that happened as the vehicles had crashed into the bottom of the pass. There were no unnatural smells on your parents—so they weren't drugged—and there were no other obvious smells around the vehicles, so no one had touched the vehicles other than your dad and mom and the bears they'd gone with on the supply run. Alpha Demarco checked those out himself because of his stronger alpha senses. He interviewed everyone who'd gone on the supply run, and they all didn't remember anything unusual other than the supplies not being in Moonhaven, necessitating your dad needing to pick them up in Portland."

"But..."

Roarke squeezed my shoulders, his deep voice saying quietly, "But a locket that had hidden your scent for your whole life was just stolen. A locket with a picture of your parents in it—"

"And that puts a different spin on things entirely," Alpha Riggs finished.