Crossing Paths With The White Wolf
Chapter 77

Kassie

POV

We stood there waiting for Karissa to say something but she just looked confused. I swear if she put the pack in danger, I would kill her.

"Where's the tracker, Karissa?" I asked her again.

"What tracker? Kassie. I don't have anything," the confusion on her face looked genuine.

Helios rubbed a hand down his face. "Maybe she doesn't know Kassie."

"She's the one that warned me of my phone getting hacked. She would have checked her things for trackers." I said, but as I spoke, Karissa's face began to redden. "You did check to see if you had a tracker, right?"

"I got rid of my phone!" she defended and I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"When you were found at the safe house, you checked to see if you had a tracker on you, right?"

"Uhhh" she looked nervously at Braden, who was also looking uncomfortable.

"Goddess, Karissa. Just sit down and let us look." I told her. Biting my tongue from saying everything I wanted to say. She sighed and sat on the couch while we resumed our search for anything that might have a tracker in it. Eventually, Evergreen's metal detector found a small box on the nightstand. He opened the box to replace a ring inside.

"Careful with that. It's worth more than this packhouse," Karissa said.

"What is it?" He asked as the metal detector whined as he passed it over the ring.

"My anniversary gift. Mother had it made especially for me when I achieved 100 years on the throne," She said proudly.

"It's very clunky," I said as Evergreen began looking over the trinket.

"Well, you know mother. Her taste doesn't diminish the sentimental value."

"Or monetary," I mumbled, looking over the giant stones on the ring.

Evergreen popped one of the stones off and Karissa looked like she was about to faint. Under the sapphire was a tiny chip. "Has anyone touched this since you got it? It doesn't look like technology from 50 years ago."

"Mother took it to get it cleaned a few years ago," Karissa said, her brows knitting together. She looked at the way the rest of us were looking at her, "Wait, you can't expect me to believe that mother is the one tracking me. For what purpose? I am her daughter. Why would she want to hurt me?"

"Does she have access to your email?" Evergreen asked.

"Yeah? She helps me answer emails from time to time." She shrugged. When we looked at her she managed to look indignant, "Don't give me that look! Being Queen is a lot of work and I wouldn't have had to be queen if you hadn't tried to kill father!" Everyone looked at me when she said that. "I didn't know you were next in line," Gonzalo crossed his arms.

"Well, I..." I stuttered. "It didn't matter. My parents were already training Karissa to take over as Queen. I was never suited for it."

Karissa snorted. "If that's what you want to call it. I was only training to be an advisor or assistant because you had yet to choose a Beloved. They gave you so many options for a Beloved for over 300 years and you always turned them down. I was given your hand- me-downs and no option to decline. You were their precious golden child until you decided to rebel." "You mean until what I wanted wasn't what they wanted for me," I retorted.

Karissa opened her mouth to answer back, but Evergreen interrupted us. "The emails we confirmed weren't sent by Queen Karissa, could they have been sent by the previous Queen?"

"When did all of her assistance begin? When you started looking into the finances?" Gonzalo asked, connecting the dots for everyone.

The growing look of horror on Karissa's face confirmed his suspicions. Tears gathered and fell from her face as she placed a hand over her mouth. I almost felt sorry for her. I wasn't even surprised to replace out the woman might have been the one to sell me. In fact, it hurt less to know it was her than when I thought it had been Karissa. It made so much sense in retrospect.

"But why?" She asked quietly. I snorted, making her look at me.

"You really don't know why? She's part of the problem, Karissa. She always has been. She wants vampires to be recognized as superior. She thinks shifters are beneath us and it surprises you that she would be behind the experiments on shifters? The woman voted for my death for f**k's sake." Gonzalo growled lowly at those words. There was silence after that as we all considered what this new information meant. Evergreen destroyed the tracker and checked his tablet, then nodded at Markus.

"We need to know all you know about her so we can look into how big a threat she is," Helios said.

I nodded at his words. "A big one. Aside from being the previous Queen, she is part of an elite council of advisers to the King and Queen. They don't have any actual power, but they hold immense influence over the vampires, which amounts to about the same in our world. She was always the dominant voice of my parents. I wouldn't doubt the same is said of her place on the council."

Helios looked at his phone and then nodded to us. "We'll pick this up tonight. We've already doubled the patrols and tightened security at the gate. If they come, we'll be ready."

"Actually, Evergreen suggested something a few days ago and I think it might be a good idea to implement it now." Markus interrupted and nodded at Evergreen, who suddenly looked like a kid on Christmas morning.

"I have a few ideas on how to be able to detect a threat before it reaches the packs. I'll go get my presentation!" He said as he ran out.

"I guess we'll meet downstairs in a few?" Helios laughed.

We started filing out when Karissa suddenly spoke. "Wait, Alpha Helios. May I have a word?" She said, looking at me before looking away.

I pulled Gonzalo behind me without another look. We were walking towards the stairs when Theo started chuckling. I stopped and looked back and I noticed he and Seb were mind linking and suddenly Seb was looking at Gonzalo and chuckling too. "What? What are you miscreants laughing about now?" Gonzalo asked, half amused and half annoyed.

"Oh, we were just thinking about your gift." Seb chuckled.

"What about my gift?" He asked.

Theo chuckled. "Well it's just that....you're Mexican."

"Yeah and?" Gonzalo replied impatiently.

"And your name is Gonzalo?" Sebastian said.

"OK..." He looked at me to see if I had understood and I just shrugged. I was as lost as he was.

"And you have speed," Theo pointed out.

"Guys, can you hurry up already? What's so funny about any of that?" Gonzalo asked.

"Well...You're a speedy Mexican named Gonzalo." Theo laughed.

There was a confused look on Gonzalo's face which matched mine.

"Arriba Arriba. Andale," Sebastian said in a high-pitched voice by way of explanation. My eyes widened and I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to smile. Gonzalo's face blanched before it turned beet red and he growled "f**k" before stomping off. Once he was out of earshot, I started giggling along with Theo and Seb, who were now holding on to each other as tears came to their eyes as they laughed.

"You guys are so bad." I shook my head at them as I continued to laugh to the conference room. Gonzalo was sitting in the room still grumbling with a very puzzled Markus. I sat next to him while pursing my lips to stop myself from laughing again. "How are your kids, Alpha?" I asked to distract everyone.

"A handful," he chuckled, "James is walking now, so we added about 100 baby gates to the packhouse last weekend. Those three are like peas in a pod. They have already gotten into the flour and bulldozed about half a dozen people as they ran away from one of us. We're having to team up to get them all under control. I can only imagine the mess once the other little ones start running around with them. Lucien looks like he adores Cory, so he'll be following around behind his big brother the moment he's able to. If those two team up, goddess help us. Oh, and Brenda, Gabriel's mate, is pregnant."

"Are you guys planning on more?" Gonzalo asked.

"We're thinking about one or two more, but we'll see how our sanity is looking in two years or so. Three under two is madness," he laughed.

The rest started to file in and Evergreen showed up a little bit later, huffing but still looking excited. He went over his plans to install motion sensor cameras around the perimeter of the borders and 5 miles or so down the road. Considering there were no other properties around the area, it would mean we had a heads up of any vehicles a couple of minutes before they showed up at the gate. It wasn't even expensive. At least that's what the consensus was and when the meeting broke up, I was exhausted. Of course, that didn't mean the day was over.

"Can you guys hold back for a minute?" Helios asked as Evergreen left.

Kassia POV

"You too, Markus. It won't take long." Helios asked be fore Markus could leave. Markus nodded and sat back down. "Queen Karissa has let us know that her mother has been asking her for our location. She's saying she wants to help her and wants to see Kassie. She wanted to know how she would respond. We need to think about how we want to proceed. We can ignore it altogether and tell her to cut contact or...we can set a trap and end this once and for all."

"What about Armand? We need to figure out if he and my mother are connected," I said. Helios nodded and looked at Markus.

"I'll get Evergreen on it." He confirmed.

"What about the rogue?" Gonzalo asked.

"It's time to stop playing with the good doctor. If Theo says he knows more, then we have ways to get it out of him." Helios said with a hard look. "Markus, can you also ask Evergreen if he can look into the Queen's correspondence for a possible link to the rogue?" Markus nodded and left.

We made it up to the suite and, of course, Aiden and Elias were waiting for us. I turned to look at Gonzalo, who shrugged, "You know they were going to replace out. Might as well do it now that it's fresh. We're going to have a long night tomorrow." He said with a kiss as he walked into the closet to grab a change of clothes.

"You guys are so spoiled. You know that, right?" I told Adrien as I sat down on the bed. Gonzalo came out and wagged his eyes at me as he showed me that he had clothes for me too. He dumped them in the bathroom before he came back over and pulled me onto his lap as I continued to explain. It was getting a little hard to concentrate as his fingers caressed my hips as he leaned back on the headboard. After promising Adrien that I'd ask Helios if he could sit in for the interrogation, they left. I very wisely left the part about Gonzalo's new nickname. I'm sure Theo will tell him when they see each other tomorrow. Adrien was going to have a field with it and I wasn't about to be the one to open that can of worms. I liked my place out of the dog house. Thank you very much. I was going to try to salvage the day, but Gonzalo looked dead on his feet, so we showered and headed to bed. I found myself in a dream. This one was one that I hadn't had before. It wasn't a nightmare. At least, I don't think it was a nightmare and I was painfully aware I was in a dream. There wasn't very much around. I walked forward for minutes but there was nothing anywhere. Just smoke and darkness. I tried scratching myself. They said if you experience pain you wake up, right? Nothing happened. I heard whimpering from somewhere in the distance but I couldn't tell which way the noise was coming from. I don't know how long I walked through the all-consuming darkness around me, but I kept walking forward in a desperate attempt to replace a reason for being here. I heard something wet fall in front of me and my hand went to my nose. The crimson liquid was staining my fingers. I kept walking trying to replace the source of the whimpers when, suddenly, the overwhelming smell of Key-lime pie and musk that was wholly Gonzalo invaded the space. The whimpering seemed to crescendo as the smell intensified, bright flashes and sparks briefly illuminated the area and I thought I saw a lump or shape in the distance. I changed directions towards the only thing in this place that wasn't empty or smoke. The whimpers changed suddenly. There was a sense of desperation in it that hurt my heart. I heard Gonzalo's voice through the noise and as it increased in volume. I kept trying to call back but no sound left my mouth. Finally, I felt myself being pushed forward through the mist. I felt something soft graze my thigh on the way out before I found myself looking into the worried eyes of my mate and realized that he was crying.

I raised my hand and cupped his cheek. "What's wrong?" I asked.

He raised a hand to cup my face and I noticed it was stained with blood. I sat up and checked my nose. It wasn't just stained, it was covered in blood. I looked down at myself and there was blood soaking my shirt and the bed around me. It looked like a horror movie set had exploded on the bed and I couldn't begin to imagine what I looked like. I could feel my hair plastered to my scalp in places.

I looked back at Gonzalo, who still had a wild panicked look on his face. "Hey, I'm OK," I said before he pulled me into a hug that I thought was going to break my ribs. I got a little worried when he started shaking but wasn't letting go. "Lalo, love. I'm OK. Talk to me. I'm sorry I scared you. It was just a dream."

"You weren't waking up. I couldn't wake you up. Goddess, I thought you wouldn't wake up." He whispered.

I did my best to pull my arms around his chest, which was a difficult thing to do considering he had trapped them to my sides. I hugged him close and rubbed his back to calm him down. I am not sure how long we stood there, but I could feel the blood on my face drying. He finally pulled back and pulled me off the bed. "Let's take a shower." He said quietly. I started walking but he picked me up in his arms and carried me there. I was going to object, but the worried wild look hadn't quite left his face, so I let him do what he needed to ensure himself I was OK. I caught my reflection in the mirror and winced. If the bed looked like a horror movie, I looked like the movie's first victim. No wonder he freaked out.

He removed both of our clothes before we walked under the warm water. I looked down at the drain as all the bloody water drained. Gonzalo's arms came around me from behind. He didn't speak. He just laid a kiss on my neck and held me. It was now less than a week to the full moon and I was beginning to get scared. Things were escalating. What happened if I had another episode and didn't wake up in time for the full moon? What would happen if I didn't wake up at all? Gonzalo grabbed the shampoo and began massaging my head, then washed my body. As he worked the lather, I realized I couldn't feel anything through the bond right now. He dried me with a towel and then carried me to the sofa before he put on a pair of shorts and left without saying another word. I was getting worried about him leaving before he came back with new sheets and pillows. I got up with the towel still wrapped around me and helped him put the new sheets on the bed.

I walked around to his side of the bed and stopped him from mindlessly messing with the pillows. I grabbed his hands and waited until he looked at me. "Don't. Don't close me out of your feelings. Don't pull away now." I begged him. He sighed and sat down at the end of the bed. He pulled me onto his lap and rested us against the headboard. He buried his head in my neck and inhaled deeply. I felt my neck begin to dampen. I held him close and gasped as I felt him open the bond and his fear hit me all at once. "I can't lose you again, Kassie. I have never been more terrified in my life." He whispered into my ear.

"I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep you. You won't get rid of me that easily." I told him, "We have to trust that the moon goddess knows what she's doing. We're so close to the full moon. We just need to make it 5 more days." He held me for a while longer before he pulled us down to the bed and threw the covers over both of us. He kept me tightly cocooned in his arms and I had no complaint. As I began to fall asleep, I sent up a quiet prayer to the moon goddess to not make me a liar.