Chapter 11

I sat in my office with the door closed, my thoughts spinning over how much had changed in the last month. Fuck, even the last week. We'd gotten our Sunshine back, and that seemed to have pushed everything between the pack and Ethan into overdrive.

Before Shae had been taken, I had started meeting with Dr. Bea, the matronly woman that Drake House employed for its employees' mental health services. It was insane how much the therapy had helped me sort through the fucking mess my mind had become. We'd started with three sessions a week, which was a lot at first. Jade had been there for a few of the ones where I knew we would be discussing what happened with Poppy. But little by little, I was starting to feel like myself again.

Theo had been right; I had lost myself. I'd made sure that only Jade and sometimes Shae saw the other side of me anymore. The side I never hid from those I loved before Poppy had taken so much from me—before I'd let what she did take so much from me. By blaming all Omegas, letting that hatred fester, and refusing to get help, I'd let her have power over me. Dr. Bea had helped me fully separate Omegas in general from what had happened to me, ensuring that I only held responsible the one Omega who was actually to blame.

Apologizing to everyone in the pack for not going to therapy sooner, and all the things I'd put them through as a result, had been easy enough. I'd been able to face everyone, except Ethan. Jade and Theo had agreed with me that it wouldn't help if I wasn't ready to work on building a friendship with Ethan. The chance that either of us could inadvertently trigger the other was too high. Then everything had happened with Shae and that was all that mattered for any of us. Now that we had Shae back, though, I wanted to fix things with him. That night when Shae was taken, as we'd left for Drake House, he'd moved toward me like he wanted to say something or comfort me. I'd felt my pulse skip for a moment until his steps faltered and I saw the almost fearful look on his face before his hand dropped. It had felt like a dagger to my already aching heart.

He'd taken my words at face value and cared for Miles when he wouldn't, couldn't listen to anyone else. He'd kept Miles going and I was as grateful for that as I was for how much he'd helped my team run down leads and locate Shae. The day we all were together in the hospital was equal parts fever dream and fear. We'd had Shae back but didn't know what would happen to Theo. I'd been the last to fall asleep, afraid that, if I did, I'd wake, and my brother would have been lost in the night or something else would happen to my pack. I'd laid my head on the bed, a hand on Theo and one on Jade and had let go of my reservations, pressing my face into Ethan's legs, letting the combination of his cinnamon roll scent and the rest of my pack's scents calm me. My dreams had been filled with what our pack would be like if we were together like that all the time. Dreams I'd stopped letting myself have had roared to the front of my mind again as the Omega I'd always wanted finally had a face.

A smooth rap on my door told me that Jade had arrived. She came in, knowing she didn't need to wait for my permission to enter. There was nothing in life that I could possibly hide from the woman who owned my soul so completely. Not to mention that we were at work and she was technically my boss. Thoughts of things she could get me to do in this very office had me getting hard so fast my head spun.

She took a deep breath, recognizing the arousal her arrival had inspired through my scent and the bond. Smirking, she moved over to perch on my desk, forcing me to move my chair back to give her room. Jade slipped one of her heels off and crossed her legs, pressing her foot lightly into the bulge in my slacks, and purred. Fuck.

"Is that for me, love?"

I nodded fast, completely under her spell and ready to do anything she asked. She hummed a throaty, sex-drenched sound of approval and leaned into me, threading her hands through the looser strands of hair in the messy bun at the back of my head. Tightening her grip, she forced my head back as she pressed her foot more firmly into my cock. I hissed at the pleasure-pain combination, and she dived in to catch the sound with her mouth.

I hadn't come since before Shae had been taken, so if anything happened here it would be over embarrassingly fast. I needed to shut it down, anyway. There was a reason I'd called her down here and, as much as I wished that reason was sinking into her pussy or making her come on my tongue, I knew Cole would be waiting for me to call him to my office. I pulled back from her perfect, full lips and groaned lightly because I really wished I could just disappear with my mate for a few hours.

"As much as I want to continue this, and I really, really want to," I thrust my hard length into where her foot still pressed against it to emphasize my words. "Cole has been running down that theory he brought to me the morning after Theo woke up. We need to pass it by you before proceeding."

"Later, then."

Jade nipped my bottom lip and pushed on my chest so the chair rolled further back. She slipped her shoe back on and I stood to call Cole in. My moving also enabled her to sit in the chair behind the desk rather than one of those in front of it. Not that Cole was under any illusions about who ran the company, or that she led me around by my dick, but it just felt more respectful that way.

I opened the door to my office and saw that I was right. Cole was standing by the stations with a laptop and some papers in his hands, waiting to be called in. I waved him over and he hustled inside, closing the door behind him.

"Alright, gentlemen. Why am I here?"

I gestured to Cole to indicate that he had the floor and he began to explain.

"I—we believe that there is a mole of sorts in the BullPen."

Jade's entire demeanor shifted at his statement. Gone was the corporate facade of an amiable businesswoman. In her place, my cold-blooded Valkyrie leaned forward to brace her forearms on the desk and stare down the young Alpha. Cole swallowed thickly and fidgeted under her gaze.

"Explain."

I understood the anxiety that tainted his scent at her tone. Cole shook himself, like he was shaking off the haze of her dominance and his own nerves. He steeled himself and continued.

"Right, so Ethan and I had been running around in circles the whole week we were looking for Shae. You remember, each time we thought we had a lead it turned into a false trail or something? We'd thought they just had someone like us on their side. It wasn't until I came in the morning after you all got Shae that I started to suspect that person was in our own house."

Jade straightened and her typically calming scent electrified, causing Cole and I to both shrink a bit, our instincts recognizing that a more dominant Alpha was nearby. Cole swallowed hard as he overcame that hindbrain response to bare his throat and hope the threat passed.

"I was supposed to go home but, after I took Ethan to the hospital, I couldn't just go stop working. He's my friend and you all are his pack, and I just—I needed to do something instead of just sitting at my house."

"You're a good friend, Cole, and a good man but you're no good to anyone if you don't take care of yourself."

Jade was right. I took in the dark circles under his eyes, the more rumpled than usual appearance, and a kernel of guilt wormed into me. I'd been letting him work himself sick for too long now. He needed to rest, I caught his eyes and resisted the urge to lace my next words with command.

"After this meeting, you go to the barracks and stay in one of the rooms reserved for our pack. Clean up, put on some of the spare sweats we keep in there and rest. Understood?"

His jaw clenched at my order and his fingers flexed on the laptop he was holding but he nodded. He'd probably work from there too but maybe he'd get some rest first.

"So, when I came back into the BullPen, I wasn't supposed to be on shift, right? I had been running a program to look for links between the Jackals and more influential packs. The way Ethan and I figured it, a gang doesn't just have an Omega heiress fall into their laps and no one's talking about it. They had to be connected somewhere.

"But when I got to my station, my screen was on, and the program had been aborted. It hadn't finished running and the commands to kill the search were still up. Someone had been at my station and didn't have time to cover their tracks."

Jade growled low and both Cole and I sat up a little straighter.

"Who was in the BullPen?"

"That's another problem. I didn't have the access to the records, so I called in Trevor that next morning. I only saw four people in the BullPen when I was there but I knew someone could have gone out when I was at my station."

I took over the story from that point on.

"The logs showed that seven people, including me, had been in the BullPen in the time between when Cole left with Ethan and when he came back."

"You?" Jade's brow wrinkled in confusion as she connected the dots we had. "You were with us in the hospital before Ethan and Cole came. You and Miles met us there when we arrived."

"Exactly."

"We ran another search of the times that my access card had been used and there were several times during that week when I was sleeping or just not in the BullPen when my card was being used."

"I started to wonder about the break that we caught, finding the deliveries to that warehouse, and who wasn't there that day. There were five people who weren't there but did work with us throughout the search for Shae."

"We need your permission to move forward with investigating our own people, Jade. Especially if we need to interrogate any of them."

"Do it. Fuck the lawyers on this one. If someone in here helped those bastards keep and hurt my mates, I'll claim pack retribution and handle them myself."

Cole's eyes were wide as he saw the cold-blooded killer that my woman kept hidden for appearance sake.

"We'll get it done."

My assurance brought her back from the darkness enough to remember where we were and the persona she needed to keep up. She turned back to the young Alpha sitting before us.

"Cole, I appreciate all you have done. Please know that Ethan cares for you, too. Take what we said to heart. My pack is whole, and they are all safe. We have a list of people and they are none the wiser. Go to the barracks and rest. But keep this between the three of us until you know more."

The young Alpha's shoulders dropped slightly, and he nodded as he rose and left the room, closing the door behind him. I stood to walk around the desk and position myself behind Jade so I could rub some of the tension from her shoulders. She tipped her head back against my stomach and looked up at me with so much rage filling her gaze, it all but consumed our bond.

"Right under my fucking nose."

Her hands gripped and flexed the arms of the chair as she struggled for control. I moved around until I was crouched before her.

"We have Shae. Theo is going to be fine. We will find whoever helped them and we will handle it. Then we'll make sure we bring them all down."

The rage bled from her features and some of the tension left her body as she reached out and cupped my jaw between her palms. Tipping my face to hers, she met me in a kiss that wasn't full of the wild heat that she'd given me earlier, but I felt her love and the promise that we were sealing with it. Moments later, she pulled back and pressed her forehead to mine briefly. We both stood and she reached out for my hand.

"I have to go home to stay with Shae, or Miles won't feel comfortable leaving them to pick up Ethan."

The tiniest spark of jealousy lit within me. Not because I didn't want Miles and Ethan to make progress on their relationship, whether that was friendship or something else, but because I wanted to be there too. I just wasn't sure how to get there without risking Ethan rejecting me. I deserved that, his rejection, but I still hoped enough to make me afraid.

"I have an appointment with Dr. Bea, but I will be home after."

She pressed one more quick kiss to my mouth before reminding me to keep her updated then she left my office. I left only a minute or two behind her and struggled not to give anything away in my interactions with the people I worked with, who I'd come to respect as much as I had my team when I was still doing fieldwork. Knowing one of them was actively betraying Drake House, betraying me, stung as much as it angered me. The sooner we rooted out the mole and dealt with them the better.