Hearing the question, Jon crossed to the beta and pressed his fingers against the side of his throat. He looked at Isaac and shook his head.
“I’m sorry. Juan didn’t survive.” Despite the apology, Isaac felt no pity. Juan was almost as vile as Elias. He had murderedwithout remorse and tortured Akari to send a message to Zion. Isaac knew nothing about Riverside pack, but they had to be a better alternative than the exotics. Didn’t they?
The wolf coughed, eyes squeezing shut. “My pack is done. We don’t stand a chance without a leader.”
“Where’d they take the females?” Isaac asked coldly.
“Don’t know.” He coughed again, even more violently and blood sprayed from his mouth. “Not my… problem… anymore.” He slumped, chin dropping to his chest as his breath rattled out and then stopped.
With a deep sigh, Isaac stood and looked around. Two of the wolves clung to life. The rest were dead.
The medic did his best to save the final two wolves. Unfortunately, their wounds were too severe, and they had lost too much blood. Within an hour all eight wolves were dead.
Discouraged by the outcome, Isaac crossed to where Jon and Kyle stood. The wolf bodies were being loaded onto a hover cart, so they didn’t really need to be here. Still, Isaac couldn’t make himself leave.
“Scan the room. Can you tell when this happened?” What he really wanted to know was could they have prevented the attack if they’d left immediately after Tara’s vision.
“I’ve already tried,” Kyle told him. “I can’t pin down an exact time.”
“Then it’s a good thing Juan showed me what happened,” Jon offered with a secretive smile. “We couldn’t have made it in time even if we left immediately last night.”
“How did Juan show you anything?” Isaac objected. “He was already dead.”
“I was wrong. He was unconscious, not dead,” Jon told him. “Juan arrived while they were playing with Dawn and he was furious. He’d left specific orders that the females were not to be touched. Clearly, they were touching Dawn. The argument became a fight, and the fight turned into a coup. Alex, the Riverside alpha, showed up with half his pack and we saw the results. Riverside pack now rules the village, which means they control the captives.”
“Did Juan tell you where they took the women?” Kyle asked hopefully.
Jon shook his head. “Juan didn’t tell me anything. I just watched his memory, which ended as Alex hurried the women out of the cave.”
“Damn it.” Isaac heaved another sigh. “I really wanted to do this for Tara. It would have been the perfect wedding gift.”
“They had to have taken them back to the lupine village,” Jon mused, rather than responding to Isaac’s complaint. “There are not that many places to hide a bunch of females.”
“We had no idea this place existed and it’s right under our noses,” Isaac pointed out. “There could be other places like this all over the planet.”
“Let’s go talk to Elias,” Kyle suggested. “If he finds out that Riverside pack just wrested power away from him, he might be willing to help us.”
“It’s worth a try,” Isaac conceded.
Most of the standby troops had already dispersed when Isaac reached the clearing where they had been waiting. “Where the hell is our mate?” he demanded of the first soldier they came to.
“She wanted to return to the village, so we escorted her back.”
Releasing his pent-up breath, Isaac said, “Very good, and thank you.” It wasn’t their job to babysit females, and he needed to stop taking out his frustration on everyone around him.
“You can just beat the shit out of Elias instead,” Jon suggested. “It might make you feel better.”
“I’ll beat the shit out of him after we question him,” Isaac responded with a halfhearted smile.
Knowing that cheering up Tara was going to take some time, Isaac, Jon, and Kyle went directly to the lodge. Not surprisingly, two of the guardians were updating Zion when they arrived. Zion looked nearly as frustrated as Isaac felt. The pride leader finished his conversation with his guardians then approached Shadow Team One.
“Your mate will doubtlessly give you hell, so I won’t bother berating you,” Zion began. “Was there anything you could have done differently that would have changed the outcome?”
“I don’t believe so, sir,” Isaac told him stiffly. He felt defensive, but wasn’t sure why. Zion was being more understanding than usual. “Jon was able to memory share with Juan before he died. He witnessed the entire attack. It began moments after we learned how to find the entrance.”
Zion nodded. “The medic confirms your timeline. Most of the wolves had been dead for hours.”
“We would like to question Elias,” Kyle told Zion. “See if he might be willing to share dirt on his enemy.”
