Chapter 11 - Kane

After a night spent tossing and turning with very little sleep, the last thing Kane needed in the morning was raised voices. Yet he was awakened from a shallow slumber by distinct yelling that immediately set his teeth on edge.

Nightstar was a fairly quiet place, and the manor always peaceful, more or less. But it appeared that was not the case this morning.

With a deep groan, Kane rolled from his bed and threw on last night"s clothes in order to hurry down the stairs and find out what the hell was going on.

The scent that met his nose as he rushed down the stairs made him stop dead in his tracks. He should have known they would be at the center of this.

Coming around the corner of the staircase, he found Jack at the bottom with none other than the Peterses. Mr. Peters was glowering at Jack while holding his wife close.

The woman was nuzzling into his chest, weeping as if inconsolable.

Pain lanced through Jack"s chest. Had something happened to Miley last night when he had let her go?

Guilt gripped his insides before he could rationalize that he had sensed her reaching the safety of her friend"s house. He hadn't followed her, but he had been damn sure to make certain she was safe before he returned to the manor.

What if she didn"t stay there?Kane thought grimly. That damn woman was a wild card. She"d definitely fit in with a pack of werewolves. That was, if something terrible hadn"t happened to her.

"What is going on?" Kane asked, taking the final steps two at a time.

Jack turned to look at Kane with a weary expression. "Miley has gone missing."

Kane"s chest tightened. He barely bit back the urge to tell them that he had only seen her the night before. The last thing he needed was her parents looking to blame him for the disappearance. They were causing enough trouble already with his need to get her the hell away from them.

If she was missing, it seemed she had accomplished that herself. She had no need of him anymore. So why did he feel a horrendous pain in his gut at the thought of never seeing her again?

Mrs. Peters cried louder then until Mr. Peters muffled the sound, pulling her in closer to him.

From the second he had laid eyes on them standing there like that, he had known the truth. They didn"t care for their daughter"s disappearance save for the fact she was practically their meal ticket. Without her, their debts would not be paid.

Maybe she"d be better off staying missing, Kane thought, but though he knew that might be true for her, to him it felt like the worst torture imaginable. Never knowing what had become of her might well drive him insane.

"You must help us, Mayor Blackwell," Mr. Peters insisted. "It isn"t like Miley to go running off like this."

"Have you tried her friend"s house?" Kane asked, stepping up to stand beside Jack.

The other pack members were crawling out of the woodwork now, lurking in the shadows of the hallway, murmuring.

"What"s going on?" Kane heard Will mutter to Eddie, but the two of them remained well back. Hanson appeared down the other end of the hall and stopped by the archway, leaning on the frame with his arms crossed. Clearly, all three of them sensed the desperation and aggression coming from the Peterses.

It was only when Bonnie, Zander and Layla arrived that Jack finally spoke. "What would you have me do, Mr. Peters? She is a grown woman."

"She is nineteen and naive!" Mr. Peters protested, squaring his shoulders. "Anything might have happened. Someone might have taken her, assaulted her and left her in a ditch somewhere, for all we know!"

"As Kane asked, have you tried her friend"s house?" Jack asked, crossing his arms. Kane could see the tension in his shoulders that suggested he didn"t like the Peterses barging in any more than Kane did.

"Of course we have!" Mrs. Peters snapped, pulling her face free of her husband"s chest. "We have checked all her usual hiding places."

"So then you admit she is one for running away?" Jack asked, raising a brow at having caught them in a lie.

"No, she doesn"t run away! Not our little girl," Mr. Peters snapped. "She goes to her friends or goes off in the woods sometimes, but she always comes back by morning."

Kane bit back the urge to laugh. The uncertain glint in the man"s eye suggested that wasn"t entirely true, and Kane got the sense that he was not the kind of man to care where his daughter was so long as didn"t have need of her.

Jack looked to Kane then and a cold shiver ran down his spine. Biting the inside of his lip, Kane turned to the Peters and said, "Perhaps she caught on to your little plan?"

"You mean, our plan?" Mr. Peters corrected him, looking between him and Jack. "You are as much a party to this as I, and we know your background. We know you and your friends are ex-military. We know you have the skills to find her."

Kane cringed. They didn"t know the half of it. Being black ops, he had seen and done and experienced more than he cared to admit.

Through gritted teeth, he snarled, "What if she doesn"t want to be found?"

The murmuring from his other packmates told him that the longer this conversation went on, the more questions they were going to have, and right now he was in no mood to answer any of them.

From the second he had heard the name Miley followed by the word missing, his hackles had been standing on end, and his entire body was fizzling with adrenaline.

Had he any idea of where to look, he would have already been out the door by now.

"What if she does not wish to be found?" Jack asked, speaking the words carefully, words Kane might have said far less politely.

"Oh, please, Mayor Blackwell, we must find her, we simply must!" Mrs. Peters said pleadingly—so pleadingly, in fact, it made Kane's skin crawl. She was a terrible actress.

"If I have to search all night and day myself, I will," Mr. Peters said, raising his head high. "I"ll do whatever it takes, but as our families are soon to be joined," he paused, looking to Kane and then back at Jack before finishing, "we had hoped you might see fit to help us."

Another round of murmuring struck among his packmates, and Kane's insides twisted into painful knots.

Jack dipped his head and cleared his throat. When he looked at Kane, his intentions were clear even before he spoke.

"Kane, as Miley"s husband-to-be, perhaps you ought to be the one to volunteer to find her?"

Gasps of shock filled the room then. Only Zander did not appear surprised, and Kane suspected that Jack had told him everything. It was only right. He was the beta of the pack, after all.

But it surprised Kane that even Bonnie and Layla were shocked. He hadn't imagined either the alpha or the beta keeping things from their mates.

Inhaling deeply, Kane gave a curt nod. "I"ll look for her. Do you have any idea of where she might go outside Nightstar?"

The Peters couple looked at each other, shaking their heads. When they looked at him again, Kane"s small hope that they might actually have something helpful dimmed.

"Miley has never gone further than Pine Valley before," Mrs. Peters explained. "And she hasn"t been there since she was yea high."

She gestured to her waist as she spoke, and oddly, Kane smiled. Just imagining a young Miley, no taller than her mother"s waist, made him all warm inside. It was an odd sensation that he was forced to push away quickly. He couldn"t allow himself to get distracted.

"So you don"t have any friends outside Nightstar? Any family she might go to?" Jack asked before Kane could ask the question himself.

Again, the Peterses looked at each other, and just when Kane thought they were as useless as a bucket with a hole in it, Mr. Peters turned to him and shrugged. "My mother has a farm up north. I hated the place as a kid, but I did have some good memories of the place. I used to tell Miley stories, and she always seemed in awe of it. She always said she"d like to see it someday."

Kane sighed. It was a long shot, but it might well be their only lead.

"What"s the address?" he demanded, "I"ll try there first."

Nausea clawed his stomach. Only days ago, he had never considered marriage, a mate, or even a real relationship, and yet here he was, about to go gallivanting off in search of a woman. It didn"t really matter to him that she was likely a woman who didn"t want to be found. All that mattered to him was being sure she was safe.

If he turned up at this grandmother"s farm and she was there, safe and sound, he would happily leave her there to continue living her life. Or at least, that"s what he told himself over and over as he prepared to leave.