Should have Put a Leash On It (23 page)

Micah had seen the DVD set and figurines in one of the boxes Rylan hadn’t managed to unpack yet. Pretending not to notice his mate sneaking out of bed to put away his possessions and pick clothes up off the floor had been hard. Harder still was not saying anything about the decreasing number of cardboard boxes full of stuff. At one point Micah began to worry about how stupid Rylan thought he was.

Snapping around to glare at him, Rylan blustered. “I knew you were awake, you sneak. It’s Gargoyles. That show was awesome.” Rylan sniffed and gave him his back.

“Hey! I liked that show, too.” The voice from outside the door sounded pissed.

“And me. Ooo we can have a movie night and watch them all. The pups and cubs will love it!” This one sounded like Alex.

Micah shook his head. “I’m surrounded by geeks.”

Remy got up and came to stand beside him. “You are clearly outnumbered. Let out your inner geek, Micah, you know you want to,” Remy said in a singsong voice.

“Urgh, fine. We’ll watch them, but let’s wait until the weekend or else Mom will be around lecturing us about rotting the pups’ brains with TV.” Micah knew when he was beat and from the quick onceover he’d given the box set it did seem interesting. And the big gargoyle flying with the woman in the red jacket was kind of hot. In a weird sort of way.

“Okay, I’ve finished watching myself kill everyone and you all get back up. It was a convincing performance in all. What’s next?” Rylan turned away from the TV and looked at them expectantly.

Rylan was the picture of calm, apart from the subtle gesture of rubbing the brand on his arm.

“Ry...” Remy must have picked up on the tell as well.

As soon as the brand scar healed enough to be covered, Micah was taking Rylan down to the tattoo shop Zeke’s mate frequented for Rylan to get it covered. Either that or he’d see if the vampire elders could heal it with a drop more blood.

Not looking at either of them, Rylan brushed past him and walked straight to the door, opening it to usher the others inside. “Come on then, guys, we don’t have all day. What’s so important that everyone has to see it?”

“This,” Alex answered, holding up a disk.

“Do people still use those?” Skylar commented, taking up his usual position next to Remy.

Micah had given up on trying to figure out how Skylar somehow saw everything. It only made his head hurt if he thought about it too hard.

“Yes,” Alex barked. “Besides, every time I lend a hard-drive or thumb-drive out I never get it back. You’re all a bunch of tech stealers.”

“Hey, we’re sorry. It’s just that...they light up and stuff when you use them,” Zeke said in a pitiful puppy voice that made everyone laugh. Even Alex cracked a small smile before returning to eyeballing them.

Hell, Micah wasn’t even that technologically minded and he still had at least three of Alex’s nifty thumb-drives somewhere in his room.

“Then why don’t you just ask me for the purchase link?” Alex narrowed his eyes at each of them.

Remy barely kept a straight face as he spoke up. “We don’t have to...we’ve got one already.”

Alex put a hand to his forehead as if massaging out a migraine.

“Okay, enough. You’re all giving Alex a breakdown, let’s move this along. I’ve got a date with my mate and a tub of hot chocolate fudge sauce,” Zeke muttered with a moan.

Flinching at the unwanted mental images that conjured up, Micah shoved Zeke away from him as his brother tried to sit next to him. “Go sit over there.”

Frowning, Zeke didn’t move. “What did I do?”

“Gave me brain pictures, you freak,” Micah shot back with a shudder.

“Don’t call me a freak because you’re jealous. Besides I think you’re the one with an eating fetish from the look of Rylan’s mating bite.” Zeke puffed out his chest and shoved him back.

Micah had been about to say something when Zeke had started oversharing.

“I’m six minutes older so do as you’re told,” he retorted in his big brother voice.

“Okay—enough! It’s like being a kindergarten teacher around you guys sometimes,” Rylan said, shaking his head. At least he was smiling.

The familiar sibling arguing settled the tension from the others, especially Hunter and Gabriel who had been hovering at the outskirts of the group and eyeing Rylan closely.

He turned back to Zeke and his brother winked.

Micah nodded in thanks.

Alex must have queued up the disk on the TV, because everyone’s attention focused on the large screen when they heard the sound of someone running through the woods.

The footage had clearly been shot with a phone because the picture jumped and wobbled as if the person filming was running. All at once the frame stabilized and showed Rylan standing in front of the house where Saffron and Rosemary’s pups were hiding in what was meant to be a safe house.

The camera cantered on Rylan and zoomed in.

For every two steps Rylan took forward, he took a shaky one backward.

As Rylan, still under Trevor’s sway, made his way up the porch steps and reached the door, the camera zoomed in again. This time Rylan’s face filled the whole of the screen. It was clear there was an inner battle being waged inside Rylan from the way the wolf shook violently.

Micah held his breath as he watched Rylan raise his hand to reach for the door, the shaking stopped, but just as the hand was about to make contact with the door, Rylan’s body stilled for a whole minute. It appeared as if the shifter shut down completely.

Taking his mate’s hand, Micah used the physical contact to remind Rylan that he was here and that what they were watching was in the past. The echoes of Rylan’s feelings were jumbled and gave him no insight into how his mate was handling watching this. He surreptitiously took a deep breath to separate out what Rylan was feeling from the others in the room. He blocked out everything that wasn’t his mate. Rylan’s scent was dusty and confused as if he wasn’t sure what he was feeling.

On screen, Rylan turned away and began to run in the opposite direction. The person filming made to give chase and the recording stopped, but not before catching one last image of Rylan’s face, blood trickling from his eyes, nose and ears.

His wolf snarled at the image.

Rylan couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the TV and the frozen image of his own face twisted in pain. “Why did Ashlock record this?”

“I wanted to make sure everyone saw that even under Trevor’s control you were loyal and fought to protect the pack, even against yourself. I know shifters take that stuff seriously.” Ashlock’s voice came from behind them and everyone but Zeke and Remy startled. He hadn’t heard the door open.

“When did he get here?” Liam whispered the question in his ear and Micah had to shrug. He had no idea when Ashlock had joined the party.

“Don’t worry about it, he does that,” Zeke said, waving a hand dismissively.

Mars stepped forward from where he’d been lurking next to Ryder by the bookcase. “The chip or whatever it was is definitely gone, right?”

“Yes. Jake did a scan with some borrowed hospital equipment before we came back here,” Remy started, but stopped and glanced at Rylan when the wolf snorted.

Mars looked taken aback. “Borrowed?”

“Yes, the hospital won’t even miss it. We’ll have it back by morning,” Remy explained as if stealing from a hospital was perfectly acceptable.

Micah took up the conversation to try and steer them back on topic. “There is nothing in Rylan’s head—”

“Thanks,” his mate said sardonically.

“I didn’t mean—stop distracting me. Anyway, as I was saying. I told Jake that Trevor had said something about once he’d disabled the device it left no trace and now Jake thinks that that was a backup plan. If Rylan had been caught, then Trevor would only have to press a button and no one would be any the wiser as to why Rylan did it. Rylan would have been executed as a traitor.”

“He’s clever,” Hunter spat.

Gabriel nodded. “He can’t be doing this alone.”

“No. I had Michael chauffeur the suspected traitors over to the Coven House. Elder Lavi wanted to have chat with them.” Remy’s voice was hard and Micah knew his brother was angry that they had been betrayed by pack members.

Micah didn’t have to be a genius to figure out the elder was going to do more than talk to them. Not that he cared. As far as he was concerned, everyone loyal to Trevor or involved with Rylan’s kidnapping deserved what they got.

“Are we done? Zeke and I have a...date.” Ashlock’s scent skyrocketed as the vampire looked at Zeke as if he were something to eat.

“Eww,” Asher sang, making gagging noises.

Micah echoed the sentiment along with Remy and Sage.

“Shut it,” Zeke countered with a smirk, striding over to Ashlock and taking the vampire’s mouth in a passionate kiss.

When Ashlock’s hands drifted down to Zeke’s ass, Remy called an end to the make-out session. “Okay, stop before I throw ice over you. We have one more issue left to resolve.” Remy turned the sharp gaze on him and Micah saw the quick flash of wolf.

Fuck.

Until now, he’d forgotten about the lingering matter of his challenge to Remy’s authority. Damn, was that just days ago? It felt like a year or more.

“Why are you looking at Micah like that?” Rylan inched in front of him slightly.

He knew it was an unconscious action, which made Micah appreciate it even more. Rylan was instinctively protecting him. No one had done that before except his brothers.

Remy watched all that with a small smile before leaning to the side to look around Rylan and meet his eyes. “Do you want to tell him or should I?”

Rylan didn’t move from his positon in front of Micah, simply swiveled his head to pin Micah over his shoulder with his piercing green gaze. “What’s he talking about?”

“Well, when you were still missing, I sort of, of...umm. I knew the elders were hiding something and I thought it might be important to finding you and I figured out that whatever it was Remy knew, too. Remy tried to shut me down, but I kind of fought him until I almost collapsed, I hung up on the elders and maybe challenged Remy.” Micah squirmed as Rylan continued to stare silently at him.

He rushed to try and explain. “You have to understand. I hadn’t slept for days, and even before then it was only a nap. I was running on empty and my wolf was going crazy. I was desperate to find you, Ry.”

The room was so quiet a pin dropping would have been deafening.

Micah wasn’t even sure if anyone was breathing.

When Rylan finally did say something it wasn’t what he was expecting. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, kinda,” Micah agreed with a grimace, having no recourse.

Rustling of paper caught his attention and he saw Skylar hand Remy a piece of paper.

“Now, usually the consequences for challenging the alpha would be a fight to submission. However, I think everyone here will agree that there were extenuating circumstances what with Rylan turning out to be your mate and all. So I’ve come up with some other ideas of how to settle this so my wolf won’t see you as a threat to my authority.”

Micah didn’t like the way Skylar was smiling. The vampire had a sick sense of humor sometimes.

Taking the sheet of paper Remy held out to him, Micah slowly read through the list of options. Options—that was a joke.

Looking up, he spotted Skylar holding something else. An expensive chocolate bar wrapper—the same one he’d left in the car after raiding Skylar’s secret stash. Busted. He’d forgotten to hide it when he got called back when Rylan was abducted. Now he knew why his choice of punishments were so inventive. Skylar must have been waiting for a chance to get even for weeks.

“What does it say?” Rylan’s worried question caught his attention.

He passed the paper to his mate.

Rylan moved to take it, then hesitated. “No...read it to me.”

Shaking his head, Micah backed up. He couldn’t read it out loud with everyone watching. If he got a word wrong, then everyone would know he couldn’t read properly. No, it was too much pressure.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Asher straighten from where his brother had been leaning on the desk.

“It’s okay,” Rylan said, coming up to him and putting an arm around his waist.

He cleared his throat and hesitatingly started reading the bold print, “One—Get a tattoo, font and placement of my choice, saying Alpha Runt Rules. Two—Pierce a nipple—seriously?—or bellybutton. Three—Sing...uhh...sing a Be-Beyoncé song in front of the inner circle. Four—Get a back, sack and crack wax and dye hair pink...How the hell did you come up with these?”

Smirking, Remy tipped his glass in Sage’s direction. “I may have had some help.”

“Bastard,” Micah snarled without much heat. “It’s okay for you, with your experience in the music biz,” he taunted with a calculated comment. The jibe landed on target.

Sage lost his smirk and glanced around at the others nervously. It wouldn’t hurt for Sage to remember Micah had dirt on him, too. “You wouldn’t,” Sage said with a disbelieving frown.

Micah paused for effect. “I would.”

Zeke and Remy knew what he was referring to, the others didn’t. But they all saw Sage’s reaction and that alone was hilarious. Even Ryder chuckled.

Micah sighed and looked to Rylan and pointed to the third option. There was no way he was getting a tattoo on a bet—or piercing any part of his body. No way, no how. Rylan poorly hid his grin, but nodded. The Beyoncé song was the best option of the lot because he wasn’t about to get his balls waxed. Uh-uh.

His pride would take a hit, but it was for the greater good.

Usually an indirect challenge was met with severe punishment and often the offending shifter was exiled. This was much better than that. It would solve the challenge issue by humiliating him, but also bring the inner circle together.

“Fine, okay. We might as well make a thing of this. Get everyone to meet in the great room with a karaoke machine and some beer.” Micah figured he was going to have to make a fool of himself whichever way he played it so the least the others could do was bring the beer.

“And chocolate,” Skylar added.

“Ooo, good idea. I’ll order pizza, too,” Asher offered, sounding excited.