Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Asher

"Word came in from one of the fox colonies. A man matching Phil's description has been sighted in several small towns on the way north," I told my sleuth mates.

"He's heading to the Northern Territory?" Kyle asked. It was the least populated of all the Australian states, with a reputation for being a bit wild. Most of the movie Crocodile Dundee was shot there. "Fuck, that'll make him hard to track."

"Or we just let him go." We all stared at Lucas. "I mean, if he's nowhere near Imogen?—"

"That's not enough." I snapped, not meaning to but the bear wouldn't allow for dissension here. "Phil, dead, that's the only way forward." I stared him down until he looked away. "So, how goes the examination of his hard drive?"

"Badly." Kyle snorted at Lucas' response, and the look they shared was intriguing, but I couldn't allow it to distract me. "Or good, depending on which way you look at it. The guy was into some sick fucking shit." That was self-evident and I didn't need an internet search history to confirm that. "But from what I can tell, none of the videos are homemade."

"He just trawled some of the shittiest places on the dark web to find them." My jaw muscle twitched as my fangs ground against each other. "What do we know about the time stamps? When did he download them and with what frequency?"

Lucas shook his head slowly.

"More, much more since Mary came to us, and their content… It got worse after she left."

"So he's escalating." I walked over to the map on my wall, blue pins used to track the places Phil had been sighted. "Any other details I need to know?"

"He really seems to like slim brunettes."

That admission was dragged out of Lucas, probably because we all stared in response.

"He's not the only one." Kyle tried for humour and failed, but his knowing look at Lucas made clear there was more to that statement.

"What happened?"

"I—"

"Luc—"

The two of them glared at each other before Lucas replied.

"Imogen came to find me in the server room. I clicked out of the shitty video I was inspecting, and she thought…" He looked at the two of us sheepishly. "I was looking at porn."

"You were," Kyle replied.

"To get off, not make me wish brain bleach was a real thing. She saw the thumbnails?—"

"She what?"

I was moving forward, claws snicking out without a thought, the bear pressing hard. We did not want our traumatised mate watching shit like that.

"I explained what I was doing, and she… Imogen's the one that pointed out all the women in the video looked alike." Like Mary, like Imogen, like any number of women. None of them were special to Phil. Just stand ins for his sick fantasies, dolls for him to break like a wanton child. "Then Kyle?—"

"Oh, you're missing a really important part of that story." Kyle smirked at Lucas. "Tell Asher."

That flush across my sleuth mate's cheeks told me everything I needed to know, but I waited patiently for the details.

"I told Imogen she was safe and held her in my arms, making clear we'd do anything to protect her." That part I approved of heartily, so I nodded. "Then she… She kissed me." Kyle waved a hand, indicating that more detail was needed. "She kissed me and I kissed her, and we were making out until this fucker decided to walk right in."

"The door you left open," Kyle said. "So that anyone could walk in and catch you guys dry humping."

"Dry… humping?"

I barely choked those words out. Not because I didn't want just that. If Imogen initiated sexual contact with one of us, we were free to respond, but… At those crude words, I saw it, felt it. Her scent in my nose, her body bare under mine, right as I eased myself inside her. The volcanic hot suck of her drawing me deeper. My cock throbbed like a sore tooth, demanding attention, but I was forced to forge on.

"So you responded appropriately to her overtures? Good. Close the door next time, but… good." My focus shifted to Kyle. "It seems like we're making progress with Imogen. I obviously walked in on something today."

"Oh, so you kissed her as well?" Lucas shot him a dark look. "Did you close the door?"

"Not kissed." Kyle shook his head. "I… I was about to tell her the truth." We all went quiet and he began to move restlessly under the constant scrutiny. "She's worked out that something is going on with us, that we've treated her differently to other women that come to the shelter. She wants to know why."

So we needed to tell her.

Hiding what we were was something every single one of us had been taught from a young age, but at some point, we had to confess to her what we were.

"OK, we'll work out how we're going to explain the situation to Imogen together." The look of relief on each of their faces was a mirror of my own, though I would never dare express it. "But first, we need to deal with Phil. Lucas, any mention of family in the area on his hard drive?"

We all sat down around the table as he retrieved his laptop, mirroring the screen on the data projector. That's when the long, slow, shitty process of combing through our copy of Phil's device started.

Let Imogen lead the conversation, I thought that as we walked towards the dining room, lured there by the smell of good food being cooked. Let her decide how much she wanted to know. I wouldn't initiate anything, but I also wouldn't hold anything back; and while that decision was arrived at through logic and reason, that wasn't what I felt right now.

Anticipation.

My heart was beating faster, the bear this fucking close. He wanted, needed, to get out to meet her. The dreams had been enough to keep him at bay, but that was no longer working. He wanted more.

He wanted her.

Her fingers in his fur, her hand smoothing over his head, an indication that she recognised what we were to her, but that's not how it worked I told him firmly. Imogen making out with Lucas, so readily coming to my bed in my dream could be anything. Lust, boredom, a need to just feel something. Hell, if Elodie were to speak on it, it could be that our mate was simply seeking something to fill the hole Mike left behind.

No, not that, my brain rejected that entirely.

This was fucking killing me, but as I walked into the crowded dining room, I realised that I wasn't in control here. I couldn't plan my way through this, meticulously preparing for every step I took towards her. Instead, I was forced to join the line, grab a plate, and shuffle forward with the rest, waiting for her to notice me.

"Lamb…"

Imogen had looked up with a well-practised smile, her tongs at the ready when she saw who she was serving. Her eyes widened at the sight of me, and I sucked her reaction in hungrily. I wasn't the same as everyone else here. She didn't stare at them like she did me, and as much as I wanted to just let that happen, restless sounds from the people behind me meant I had to break that spell.

"Yes, please."

I held out my plate and she deposited a heap of meat on it, blinking the entire time.

"You're going to want more than that." Without bothering to get a confirmation, she added more meat to the plate, the smell filling my nose. Roast lamb was tolerable, but when my mate prepared it? It was amazing. She shook her head and then went back to her well-practised patter. "Um, the sides are all here. Help yourself and let me know if there's anything you're missing."

"What about you?" She flushed then, making clear the unintended innuendo. "I meant, when are you getting something to eat?"

"I'll grab something to eat after everyone else."

Imogen said that in such an offhand way, and that had my fangs grinding together. Her needs came last, that was maddening enough, but to be so blasé about it meant this was her normal.

"Plate," I demanded, looking at my sleuth mates. Kyle apologised to the people behind him and reached across, plucking one from the pile, before holding it out.

"You're what…?" She stared down at it. "Saving me a plate?"

"You need to eat," I replied with a shrug. "And if you cooked, you deserve more than scraps."

"You can come and eat with us."

Her focus shifted then to Lucas, and I caught the moment her gaze softened.

"OK." She nodded to herself. "Some roast potatoes then, please. They're really good if I say so myself."

"They look good."

Kyle reached out to pluck one from the bowl, but she smacked the back of his hand with her tongs.

"Don't touch the food with your hands like an animal…" This was it, the moment when she realised, because on some level she already did. I saw it in the way she straightened abruptly, her eyes flicking from me to the rest of my sleuth, but whatever instinct was kicking in, she shoved it back down. "Using the serving spoons like a civilised person."

But we weren't civilised. Underneath this skin suit lurked an animal, one whose heart beat for her and only her, and I hoped… I hoped she wouldn't run screaming when she met him.

As we walked over to an empty table, I couldn't help but remember. The bear shifter community told its history via stories because the gods knew we couldn't write it down. There were tales of the trials we went through to earn our mates, the lengths we would go to, and most had a happy ending.

Most.

But at the end of the night, when the shadows grew long and strange things shifted in the darkness, the elders might speak. Of women who rejected the mate bond, who saw what was on offer and shook their head, or worse, left screaming, never to return. They were cautionary tales, ones each boy was told to make clear that nothing was certain. I'd been able to live with it then, the idea that someone I cared about being taken from me a familiar one. But having my family torn from me was different to this. I barely remembered them, and what I did was largely confined to the photographs I'd been given. Imogen, though…

When I looked across a crowded dining room to watch her at work, she stopped mid conversation with one of the workers, somehow sensing my attention. Our eyes locked, and we shared something then. Something complex, a tangled mess of curiosity and fear, wariness and pain, and a whole lot of other things I couldn't decipher, not without talking to her.

"Tonight," I said, to my sleuth mates, to myself. "We tell Imogen what we are tonight."