Page 11 of Targeted By Fate
Ezra pulled up a message board on his laptop and scrolled through the posts. “See here and here.” The people posting assumed the drinks had been spiked. “But none of those instances were deadly as the Pulsepoint ones were.”
If that was what happened to my mate, perhaps he didn’t ingest the drug deliberately.
“But why?” Lake was puzzled why someone—shifters or anyone—would poison people. “What message are they sending?”
“Some asshats do it for kicks and others because they want to take advantage of omegas, especially.” I hated that it was true of our present-day society.
“I’m convinced that your mate being drugged and the shifter deaths are related.” We were silent after Maynard’s pronouncement.
“The deaths happened in our pack territory.” Riggs stabbed his finger in the air. “They killed our kin, and they did it on our land.” He clapped me on the back for killing the errand boys, but those guys we ended were the paid hands. Not the guys at the top.
“Who is behind this?” Ezra closed his laptop.
“Until we find out, you may be a target, Boaz, having killed some of their guys.”
I hugged my mate, and he nestled his head in the crook of my neck. If people were looking for me, I had to keep the cat safe. Handling a gun while holding a cat wasn’t ideal, but I couldn’t put him in a cage.
“You should leave town.” Maynard was tapping his phone. “Go to the cabin for a few days.”
“Who are you messaging?” If he was sending out an alert about where I was going, he was putting me and my mate in danger.
“Grocery order. It’ll be here in twenty minutes. Then you take off. You can’t do your job as Beta and protect your mate when your mind is filled with ‘what-if’ questions about him shifting.”
I’d have to let Alpha know. I’d filed a report and spoken to him from the hotel but hadn’t mentioned meeting my mate or his little problem.
“I’m not one for the countryside.” The cabin wasn’t in the middle of nowhere. It was just outside a small town, but it was secluded and surrounded by an electrified fence.
“Stop being a baby.” Riggs folded his arms. “You have a mate to consider.”
“Fine.” I’d take off into the wilderness with my furry mate and wait out both his feline to human status and whether I was in danger from unknown elements of the mafia world.
Great!
6
KEANE
My head wasn’t working right, and it made no sense. At first I thought it was my memory, but I’d been learning a lot about my mate. Learning and retaining it. We’d been here for a few days, and I remembered all of our conversations. At least I thought I did.
He chattered on and on during the day, telling me about himself, his brothers, his family—even his job. He explained to me what he liked, what he didn’t like, when he first got his wolf. So many things that stayed right there in the forefront of my mind. Heck, I could tell you about a math test he failed as a kid because he read the directions wrong.
But the more I tried to figure out how I got the drug—the doctor called it Duskthorn—in my system, the less I was able to remember that night at all. If I could remember every single detail of the past few days, shouldn’t I be able to remember that? But the more I tried, the worse I failed.
I’d been going from place to place. I wouldn’t stay long, leaving almost instantly in some cases. The weirdest part was I couldn’t tell you what those places were… possibly restaurants or bars or maybe stores? But then again, I couldn’t actually tell anyone anything, being trapped in my fur like this.
That night was incredibly blurry. Where I went and why? Not a clue, but I remembered that every time I left, I was flustered, almost angry. It was like a bad dream you kept going through the same cycle of, never being able to break it.
And then—I met my mate, and I was in this form. I’d been under a dumpster when he found me. That I was sure of, but less because I remembered it and more because he told me. It somehow solidified or possibly created the memory.
But why? Why was I there? My gut said it had to be the result of something really bad. I wasn’t one to wander the city in my fur. With my luck I’d run into more than one do-gooder human over the years who tried to catch me with the hopes of finding my owner. Sleeping in my fur in the sunlight cascading in through the window was enough adventure for me.
Except the night I met Boaz, apparently.
This entire situation was all such a mess, and it kept getting worse and worse and worse. My mate mentioned drugs. I wasn’t someone who took drugs… ever. That wasn’t me. And I hadn’t even had any alcohol.
But why would he lie about that? He didn’t come across as the type. But if I did have drugs in my system… was that why my memory was such a hazy mess? Probably. I wouldn’t have done it on purpose, though. That I was sure of. Peer pressure had never been a powerful influence in my life, and being an omega, it was always safest to keep a straight head while out. It wasn’t as if I had a beast that could do me any good in a fight. My entire superpower as a cat was looking up at people with my big eyes and winning them over with my cuteness.
Had I gone out looking for a hook-up? Did someone roofie my drink? That happened a lot on TV… so did it happen in real life? But also—wouldn’t a roofie just make me pretty much fall asleep and be compliant? Not hide under a dumpster in my fur while my mate showed up.
