Page 196 of The Alpha's Second Chance Mate

If that was true, then maybe I could communicate with him. Taking a chance, I said, “Gabe? Are you in there? Can you hear me?”

The wolf gazed at me for several seconds before it lowered its head and brought it back up—a clear nod. Turning, I caughtTrent’s eye. He looked as shocked and surprised as I did. Shifters held a bit of their human side at the ready when they were in wolf form and could do some very minimal communication like this, but they were shifters. The fact that a human could be transformed into a wolf and still maintain their soul, consciousness, and wits was astounding.

Langston’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it from his pocket. “Zayde was able to clean up the video and enhance it,” he said. “It looks like the guy who passed Gabe on the street had some sort of injection device hidden under his arm. Like a dart gun. There’s only so much Zayde can get off the footage.”

Glancing back at Gabe, I knelt, trying to appear as peaceful as possible. “Gabe, if you can understand me, do you remember what happened on the street? Did you get poked or stabbed or injected with something?”

The wolf nodded again.

“Did you see the face of the person who passed you?” I asked the wolf, then looked over my shoulder at Langston. “Can Zayde get an image of his face?”

Langston shook his head. “He already said he couldn’t. The guy kept his head down. Like he knew there were cameras around.”

“What about you, Gabe?” I asked. “Did you see him?”

Another nod.

Then Gabe moved his paw forward and began to dig in the mud beside the creek. My mouth dropped open as the jagged lines formed two words. He was obviously not used to the body yet, and was having a hard time making his brain and paws do what he wanted. For a moment, it looked like simple gibberish, butupon closer inspection, I managed to make sense of the jagged, squiggly lines.

It was two words:Human again?

“Aww, shit,” Trent cursed under his breath as he read the words.

“Gabe,” I said, looking into his eyes, “we will try everything we can, but I can’t make you any promises. I have to be honest about that.”

It killed me to say it, and the raw sadness that fell over him tore at my heart. This guy was as innocent as could be, a bystander caught in this weird war between me and Kyle. Guilt gnawed at me, and my wolf whined in agony. Regardless of what anyone else said, this was partly my fault.

One emotion did rise above the guilt, though. Rage. Blinding, white-hot rage. My vision nearly went red. Another innocent person hurt. Another life ruined, and all because of one man. This needed to end. If Kyle wasn’t going to come to me, then I’d go to him. I would put a stop to all of this one way or another.

46

AVERY

After Cole dropped me off at Stormy’s house, we sat around waiting for… well, we weren’t sure what. Every day, things moved faster and faster toward some inexorable conclusion, and nothing we did could slow it down or stop it.

Zayde was tapping away at his computer, analyzing the video of the attack earlier that day. The walls of Stormy’s house felt like they were closing in on me.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I told her.

“What do you mean?” Stormy asked.

“I can’t sit around while Cole is out there doing whatever he’s doing. Can we, like, go shopping or something? Anything to get my mind off what’s happening.”

Stormy watched me carefully, then shrugged. “I do need to grab some stuff for Shiloh. I’d planned on going tomorrow, but if you want, we can go now.”

“You two go on,” Stormy’s mom said. She was feeding Shiloh, who was strapped into her high chair. “Me and this little lady will be fine.”

“Porter?” I called, and the other man leapt off the couch.

“Wassup? What’s wrong?” He looked at us blearily.

“Were you napping?” I asked, my lips twitching in amusement.

“What?” Porter looked abashed. “No, uh… I was resting my eyes. That’s all.”

“I could hear your ass snoring,” Zayde said without looking away from his screen.

“Whatever,” Porter scoffed.

---