Page 39 of The Alpha's Forced Pregnant Mate

When I was sure Julian wasn’t looking, I took a vial of peppermint oil out of my backpack and rubbed some below my nostrils.

He glanced at me when I came out of the car, and I could feel his eyes on me as I approached. “What?”

“You smell like Christmas,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I like it.”

“Good thing I don’t care if you like it or not,” I replied coolly, stepping past him.

He sighed and fell in step beside me. “I was just trying to be nice.”

“You know what would be even nicer? If you’d keep your comments to yourself.”

Laura laughed softly, coming up to walk on my other side. “Wow. You guys are hilarious. I can’t wait for the honeymoon period to be over so you can stop flirting.”

I shot her a dark look, but it only made her laugh harder.

We stepped into the demon cave and I immediately wanted to turn around and leave. The stench of death, rot, and sulfur was so strong it almost knocked me over, and I had to stop for a moment to let my stomach settle. I took out my peppermint oil and rubbed some below my nostrils again, trying to ignore Laura and Julian’s confused expressions.

“What?” I snapped, putting the vial away. “If we’re going to do this, we might as well try to make it bearable.”

“I’m just saying…” Laura held up her hands. “It’s not like I don’t have a nose either, but if it helps, I’m not complaining.”

“Me neither,” Julian said quickly, stepping forward. “But…peppermint?”

“It’s an old human trick I learned from our pack medic. He’d done some time working in an ER and said the smells were unbelievable at times.”

“Okay, yeah. That makes sense.” Julian looked at the cave, then back to me, and sighed before holding out his hand. “Give it here, then. I’ll try anything once.”

I tried not to smile at his double meaning as I pulled the vial out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Just rub a little below your nose and you should be good.”

We entered the cave to begin our investigation, and everything looked frustratingly the same as it had the previous day. We’d all hoped that the freshness of the site meant that they were still using it, but it looked like we were just a few days too late to catch them. Damn.

Laura guarded the cave entrance while Julian and I donned gloves and started to pick through the detritus left behind, hoping to find any clue as to what their intentions or next move might be.

It was a frustrating exercise, and it wasn’t long before I felt like I was about to lose my mind. “Let’s just burn it all and be done with it.”

“I understand the urge,” Julian said from deeper in the cave, but there was an edge of uneasiness to his voice that had me snapping to attention. “But I think we should be a little more thorough. Look at this.”

I came a few steps closer and gasped, almost dropping my flashlight when I saw what he was holding—a human skull with some flesh still clinging to it. My stomach turned, but I held myself together. This was just a part of the job.

“There’s more of them,” Laura said quietly, coming to stand next to me. “It looks like a whole pile.”

“We need to move them out,” I said, forcing myself to look at the skull in Julian’s hands. “They deserve better than to rot here in a cave with these monsters.”

Julian nodded grimly. “Laura, you run back to the cars and see if you can find a couple of tarps or something that we can use to carry them.”

“Got it,” she said quickly, already sprinting for the exit.

Julian and I both stared at the skull in his hands for a long moment and then he cleared his throat and set it on the ground. “I could be wrong, but they’re expending a ton of energy if they’re going through human vessels this quickly. They could always be eating them, but it seems like a lot of work to hunt people when they can subsist off of normal food when they’re wearing a human vessel.”

“Do you think it could be something else? Like…I don’t know…a ritual of some kind?”

“Maybe. I’ve heard of demons needing to eat humans to keep their power up, but if that was the case, it would have to be a big ritual with a ton of power.”

I grimaced, thinking of all of the possibilities. “Let’s just hope that whatever it is, we can stop it before it’s too late.”

We spent another hour searching through the cave for any clues but came up empty-handed. We’d managed to move the bodies outside when I heard Julian’s phone ring. Usually, I would have ignored it, but I felt a shiver run down his bond when he looked at the screen and saw the name there. Shock, anger, and concern. Who the hell could it be?

I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Julian took his filthy gloves off and put the phone to his ear, biting out the name, “Danny.”

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