Should have Put a Leash On It (2 page)

He lifted his chin in a quick greeting. It wasn’t always necessary to show submission to the alpha, but Remy had essentially walked in on Micah growling at Skylar and Remy wasn’t exactly known for his rational thinking when it came to his mate.

After seeing his brother in action several times, including in a few supposedly friendly training sessions, Micah was in no hurry to have Remy gunning for him.

Remy accepted. “But that’s beside the point. Every time you go off to the club to get laid, Rylan gets quiet and reserved. He won’t admit it, but it kills him. I thought he’d gotten over his crush on you a long time ago, but apparently there are still feelings there. “

“I understand that someone can’t help the way they feel...or don’t feel, but by wearing the scarf you’re marking yourself in someone else’s scent. It’s sort of throwing it in his face, don’t you think?” Skylar made it sound like Micah was wearing a damn collar with Beth’s—no,
Kate’s
name and address on it.

“It’s just a scarf,” he argued.

This was getting ridiculous. He should have made a run for it after Remy had arrived. There was no way Rylan had real feelings for him like that. Hell, it was up in the air whether Rylan liked him on any level at all.

“Micah, come on, you have to see the looks he throws you when he thinks you aren’t watching.” Remy came to stand next to him and held out a paper towel for him.

The ketchup had run out over his hand and was making a mess. Remy knew him too well. Micah had been hoping to use that as an exit strategy excuse. A little voice in the back of his mind reminded him that Remy knew Rylan well, too, better than anyone in fact, but he pushed it away.

He took it and wiped himself off, throwing the dirty paper towel in the trash.

“Do you hear yourself? If I’m not watching, how the hell am I supposed to know about these apparent looks?” Micah was out of patience. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but just because you’re loved up and singing the wedding tune, don’t try and pair me up with the first person you see. It won’t work.”

“Micah—”

“I’m not going to have a mate,” he insisted, changing tack.

Remy and Skylar shot him surprised looks. No, it was more than that, stunned would be more accurate.

“Sure, I hook up with both men and women, but I’m not going to settle down with any of them.” He shrugged again. It wasn’t that much of a big deal. He slept around, it wasn’t like he was making or breaking promises to anyone. Every person he fucked knew the score and wanted the same thing—to get laid and get lost.

“Look, thanks, but no thanks, okay?”

Remy took a step toward him, but Micah backed up. This conversation was over.

Pausing on the large porch steps, Micah glanced at the trashcan that the cleaning crew had yet to load up into the van. Remy had a cleaning crew that came in once a week to do the entire house and a laundry service that picked up loads from the household twice a week. The only chore Remy insisted everyone did themselves was cook.

On the nights the pack ran together or smaller groups went for a run on the property, they ordered pizza, but other than that people were on their own. There was a shopping list taped to one of the kitchen doors and if anyone wanted something particular, they were to add it on the list for one of the juveniles in the pack to get.

Micah shook his head and continued walking over to the car. He pressed the button to unlock it and stashed his thermos and burrito on the passenger seat, careful to put the foil wrapped packet tear side up so he didn’t get any on the seat.

He pushed the door shut and started to go around to the driver’s side, but something made him hesitate before reaching for the handle.

He fingered the soft wool around his neck and brought it to his nose. The smell of the human female hadn’t bothered him until Remy and Skylar had made a big deal about it. The memory of Rylan’s face looking at him with disgust entered his mind and his wolf refused to allow him to mark himself with the female’s scent.

Making a decision, he unwound the scarf, shivering at the sudden spike of cold attacking his vulnerable flesh, and strode over to the trashcan. He threw the garment in and returned to the car.

Micah was twelve hours into his surveillance job and already wishing he’d brought more junk food. When Remy had told him that all the cars were stocked with a supply crate, Micah hadn’t thought his brother had meant granola bars, dried fruit, packaged sandwiches and water. Where were the chips, chocolate and beer?

Okay, so he understood why there was no beer. But no chocolate? Damn, that was torture.

He was positioned on a hill, parked almost at the top outside an empty house. The mail piled up underneath the letterbox told he him the occupants were on vacation and the parking spot was perfect. It gave him a direct line of sight to the warehouse half a mile away.

No one had come in or out and he was recording the license plate of every car to see if anyone was passing the place or checking it out. He was writing down anything else that happened.

So far he’d had one old lady yelling at a taxi driver, a group of kids passing through talking about calories—
what kind of kids talked about fucking calories
—and a feral cat that seemed intent on catching a crunchy orange leaf making a run for it at the edge of the woods not far from the road.

This wasn’t exactly excitement central.

He reached into the crate he’d dragged into the front seat and dug around for one of the less disgusting granola bars that had honey in it. Without some sort of sugar the bars tasted like chalk. Chewy, bland oaty chalk.

Fuck, he’d kill for some chocolate right now.

Surveillance and waiting around watching people wasn’t something that was new to him. Micah had often taken similar jobs working for his old alpha who owned and ran a detective agency. He honestly didn’t mind staying in his car for days with no sleep.

As long as he had junk food, he was golden. But this wasn’t his car, he’d left his with his old pack and brought his motorcycle with him instead when he moved here, and there was no stash of goodies to keep him busy.

Micah grabbed the bar he wanted, tore it open and sighed. It just wasn’t the same without chocolate. He took a bite and tried to pretend it was something loaded with sugar and all the yummy things doctors said were bad for you.

As he chewed, something niggled at him.

“Stash...” He tapped the steering wheel with the unappetizing bar as he thought about it. Remy was always teasing Skylar about his stash of chocolate since the vampire had a sweet fang and a weakness for expensive chocolaty goodness that he hid everywhere. That meant there might be some in the car because the couple took this one out to the woods sometimes.

It was bad enough he’d followed them one time to make sure they had someone to watch their back. He’d heard things, terrible sounds he never wanted to acknowledge his baby brother made.

Micah shuddered and repressed the memory.

Most of the vampires he’d met seemed high maintenance. Even Zeke’s mate was particular about his multicolor hair and style. His brother had gone over to the dark side and was now wearing studded jeans and novelty t-shirts. It was like the body snatchers had taken over.

There was a bet going between him, Asher and Sage that Ashlock would convince Zeke to dye his hair or have a piercing by Christmas. They knew Zeke had gotten a tattoo, but none of them had managed to find out what or where it was. No one from the vampire camp was talking on that front. Not even Elder Lavi would spill the beans and you only had to be in the same room as Zeke and the elder vampire to feel the tension between them. He’d heard from Remy that Zeke was planning on getting the vampire a mother’s day bouquet and a Venus Flytrap addressed to monster-in-law when the day came around.

Micah refocused on finding munchies when his stomach rumbled. The healthy snack had done absolutely nothing to satisfy his craving.

He tried think of where he would hide a secret hoard of chocolate if he didn’t want people to find it. It would be no use trying to locate it by scent, he would have noticed by now if he could smell sweets. Other people had used the car, too, so it would be no good just sniffing where Skylar had been either. So that left good old fashioned searching.

Micah kept an eye looking out of the windshield so he didn’t miss any cars passing and started rummaging. There was nothing in the glove box or the console compartments. He checked the pockets in all the doors with no luck. He thought about ripping the boot flooring up so he could look in the spare wheel well, but nixed that idea almost immediately.

“No, he’d never put it there.”

If there was a trove of chocolate, then it would be somewhere Skylar could get at it fairly easily. He was thinking about this all wrong. Vampires were notoriously sneaky. It would have to be in plain sight, something he’d overlooked. Micah looked round the car and settled his gaze on the crate of supplies.

“He wouldn’t,” he said, squinting at the crate in suspicion. Micah picked up the wooden crate and examined it.

There wasn’t anything strange about it that stood out. He tipped the crate up, glancing out of the window to check there was still nothing to report or write down. It was almost dark and the rush hour had passed so he probably wouldn’t have anything to watch for the next little bit. Besides, the best time to enter the warehouse would have been when the traffic of people heading home was available as camouflage to hide their movements.

The crate just appeared to be a regular crate. There was nothing special about it, the sides were all normal and the bottom... he looked more carefully at the bottom, spinning it so it was the right way up and he noticed a slight flaw in the wood. At first it looked like a knot, but he knew enough about wood from Zeke to know that the wood used for crating wouldn’t have knots.

“He did,” Micah corrected himself. He lifted the false bottom and moaned. It was like finding the Promised Land.

Underneath the piece of wood was a beautiful layer of decadent, rich, fine chocolate in white, milk and dark flavors.

“Damn sneaky vampire,” he said with a laugh.

Micah took a bar of each variation and replaced the bottom.

As he put the original contents back in the crate, he ripped the dark bar open so he could smell the luscious bitter cocoa. He’d say it was better than sex, but that would probably be exaggerating. A better sentiment would be that it was better than
most
of the sex he’d had.

Getting settled back into the seat, Micah got ready for another round of nothing-ever-happens while he bit into the heavenly scented bar of awesomeness. “Fucking genius vampire.” He had to find out who Skylar’s chocolate dealer was and beg the vamp to hook him up.

He finished off the bar and reluctantly put the other two to the side. If he kept them close, he’d scarf the lot and be sorry for it later. A grown-ass beta male wolf sitting there with a stomach ache from eating too much chocolate would just be embarrassing.

Buzzing alerted him that someone was calling him and he fished his phone out of his jacket pocket. He stabbed the green phone icon with his finger and held it up to his ear.

“Hello,” he said, hiding the evidence that he’d found Skylar’s stash by tucking the wrapper into his inside jacket pocket.

“You need to get back here,” Skylar told him, sounding angry.

What the hell, did the vampire have CCTV in here or something?

Micah looked up at the little car speaker on the roof and narrowed his eyes. It would be easy to hide a recording device in there. He’d installed more than a few of the little buggers in his time.

“Why?” Micah wasn’t admitting to anything until he knew for sure he’d been caught. He didn’t make it through six siblings by giving people ammunition against him.

“Rylan’s been taken.”

Micah didn’t hear anything else Skylar might have said as blood roared in his ears and his wolf went deadly still inside him.

“I’ll be there in an hour. Tell me everything.” He was at least two hours away, but he wasn’t planning on slowing down for anyone or anything.

He put the call on speaker and threw it onto the seat next to him. Micah gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking space fast enough to leave rubber marks on the road behind him.

“It’s been almost two months, Micah.” Asher’s voice was quiet and he guessed the rest of their siblings had nominated Asher as the spokesman to talk to him. Out of all his siblings, he was closest to Asher. The wolf was dominant but reserved, not a loud personality like the rest of them, and when they were little it had brought out Micah’s protective instincts. Not that Asher needed it.

“Six weeks. We’ll keep looking until we find him,” he snarled back at Asher.

“Of course we’ll keep looking, he’s family.” This time Asher sounded angry, but Micah couldn’t seem to care. It took a hell of a lot to ruffle Asher’s fur, but when he erupted, it was wise to get out of his way. Again, Micah couldn’t care less.

If Asher got mad, good. They should all be mad, mad enough to do something that actually made a difference and got them a step closer to finding Rylan.

All the leads they had dried up within days of Rylan being taken and they hadn’t found anything useful since.

There were whisperings in the pack that Rylan hadn’t been taken at all and that he had just taken off, the pressure of being second in the pack becoming too much for him, but Micah knew they were wrong. Remy was doing his best to quash them, but that just seemed to make them multiply.

It made Micah sick that people would doubt Rylan when the wolf could be suffering through God knows what trying to protect them and keep their secrets. Despite the animosity between them Micah had never doubted Rylan’s loyalty to Remy.

A week after Rylan’s disappearance Micah had thought he’d found something, a traffic camera in the city that showed a car following Rylan, but it had just turned out to be a student borrowing his parents’ car to make deliveries for a pizza place and getting paid under the table.