I know.But it’s a start.
She studied him for a long moment.A start to what?
A start to understanding each other.A start to working past the barriers between them.A start to something that might eventually resemble the partnership the mate bond insisted they were meant to have.
No.That truth was too complicated, too dangerous to voice aloud.
A start to finding your father’s killer,he said instead.
She nodded, apparently satisfied with the partial truth.Then we begin tomorrow.And, Conall?She paused in the doorway, not quite looking back at him.Your brother doesn’t trust me.That could be a problem.
The understatement of the century.
Quinton’s suspicion had been written across his face in letters ten feet tall.
The twin bond that had always been Conall’s anchor now felt like a chain, holding him back from something he wasn’t sure he wanted but couldn’t seem to resist.
I’ll handle Quinton,he said.
Will you?Her smile was sharp.Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re choosing between us.And we both know how that choice has to end.
Come on,he said finally, pushing aside questions that had no easy answers.Let’s go find your father’s real killer.
Because despite everything—the problems with Quinton, the danger, the suspicion, the impossible situation he’d stumbled into—Conall found himself looking forward to tomorrow.
To working with Nadine.
CHAPTER 12
THESUNBURSTPACK COUNCILchamber felt like a tribunal.
Nadine sat at the far end of the conference table, evidence boxes stacked before her.
The drive to Roswell that morning had been tense—Anders maintaining professional silence while she’d retrieved the materials from her safe deposit box, each piece of evidence another nail in what could be Conall’s coffin.
Now, facing the assembled pack leadership, she fought to maintain the clinical detachment that had kept her alive before—the distance Gregory had taught her to cultivate whenever faced with difficulties.
Malcolm and Larissa occupied their usual positions at the head of the table.Anders stood near the computerized displays.Sarah sat with Nick, while Una sat next to her, hovering like a bodyguard.The elder pack members, Stephanie and Raymond Gonzales, representing traditional pack justice, had taken seats across from Sarah and Nick.
And there, on either side of Nadine, sat the Stewart twins.
Identical in every way that mattered—same dark hair, same strong jawlines, same brown eyes that seemed to see straight through her defenses.
But where Conall’s presence sent familiar electricity through her nervous system, Quinton remained a cipher, his emotions deliberately restrained.
Both of them watched her with the kind of attention that preceded either vindication or violence.
You called this meeting to present evidence regarding Gregory Torrance’s death,Malcolm said.We’re listening.
Nadine opened the first evidence box, forcing her hands to remain steady despite the magnitude of what she was about to reveal.Three weeks ago, I found my father’s body at the abandoned Aventura mine.What I discovered there points to a coordinated assassination.
She pulled out the first evidence bag—dark brown wolf fur, preserved in clear plastic.Shifter hair samples recovered from the crime scene.Two distinct scent signatures.
The bag passed around the table, each council member examining the contents with the enhanced senses that made scent evidence as reliable as fingerprints in human courts.When it reached Conall, his expression shifted subtly—surprise, followed by something that looked almost like recognition.
The scent matches,Anders confirmed grimly.Both Stewart twins were present at the scene.
That’s impossible,Quinton said flatly.We were never at that mine.
