Oh. Right. I’d forgotten that was why he’d put it in there in the first place. In a moment of weakness, he’d convinced me to use the belt on his ass, and ever since, he’d considered that his special belt. My little masochist.
“I love you,” I said, climbing out of bed and walking over to wrap my arms around him.
“I love you, too,” he said, kissing me firmly but quickly. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on with Bryce?”
“Yeah,” I promised. “When we get on the road.”
I’d fallen asleep dressed, so I just pulled on my boots and went out to the kitchen to make coffee. It would be a long day, and I’d need caffeine to make it through.
* * * *
By seven AM, we were all in the car, headed north toward Hunter’s Point, a dense forest in Copper Harbor in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or the UP as natives to the state call it. Usually, it was an eight-hour drive for me, but since the trunk was loaded down with every weapon I owned, I really didn’t want to get pulled over. With stops for food and bathroom breaks, the trip might take as much as ten hours. And we’d have to hike once we got there, since there were no roads running through the park. There weren’t even real paths leading to Pop’s cabin, just random landmarks Bryce and I had added on various trips to help us locate the place faster.
“Can you tell me what’s going on now?” Sebastian asked.
“Okay,” I agreed as we pulled onto the highway. “So Pops is our grandfather on our father’s side. He’s been living off the grid since right after Bryce was born. He used to come visit. Then after our parents were killed, he split time between here and there, so we could stay in high school in Detroit. We spent the summers up there learning to become exterminators. Then, after I graduated, he went home for good, and Bryce and I stayed here, opening the office with our friend Landon, before he took off, too. We try to get up to Copper Harbor every few years to check on Pops. I don’t know why I didn’t figure out that’s where Bryce would run to.”
Now that I knew, I felt stupid for not realizing it. The kid had no other friends, and Pops was our only family. Where the fuck else would he have gone?
“Cole,” Bastian asked tentatively. “How did your parents die?”
“Now’s not the time for that,” I snapped, gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather creaked audibly in my hands. “I can’t… I don’t want to get into it. Please.”
“Sorry,” he said, resting his hand on my thigh. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I blew out a sigh and squeezed his hand gently. It wasn’t his fault, and I shouldn’t have yelled at him. But I didn’t talk about my parents, if I could help it. Maybe, Bryce could tell him someday. It wasn’t a story I shared.
“Hey, Darla,” I called toward the backseat. “Have you heard from any of the other panthers yet? If you shifted, they probably all did, too, right?”
“I’d imagine so,” she answered. “When I shifted early, I came straight to you guys, but no one called after I left your office yesterday. If they’re feeling what I’m feeling, they’re probably all on their way to Bryce, too. The call was so strong. The men probably felt it first, and that’s why they disappeared. It’s the only thing that makes sense, if you can call it sense.”
“Why wouldn’t Sebastian have felt it sooner?” I asked.
“Because the weaker ones would have been called easier.” In the rearview mirror, I saw her shrug. “Female weres have a stronger resistance to mental attacks, and since Bastian is our beta, he’s stronger, too. If Bryce sent out a call, the weakest of the cats would have been affected first, then down the line. Since I would have been beta if Bryce’s beast hadn’t chosen Sebastian first, my constitution is on the same level as his.”
She didn’t sound angry or even disappointed. I wondered if that emotion was buried inside her, though. It had to cut deep to be the strongest female of the pack and have the alpha choose another male, one who couldn’t produce offspring.
“Bryce has been gone for two full moons, and he hasn’t sent for us before now. Do you think the call went out because of the lunar convergence?” Sebastian asked.
“Probably,” Darla answered.
“What’s this stuff about the moon?” I asked, unsure why an eclipse would affect the cats so strongly.
“Well, it’s a cluster of activity all at once,” Darla explained. “This month is a blood moon, and then there’s the eclipse, and on top of that, this month is the closest the moon has been to the Earth in over fifty years. That messes with our beasts pretty badly. The orbits being so near each other probably helped Bryce call our beasts and force us to shift early. And again, the males would have responded first since their panthers are always closer to the surface, even in human form.”
“So basically,” I said, hoping to understand everything she’d told me. “I’m driving you two into a hotbed of lunar activity that will make your cats crazier than they usually are?”
“Pretty much,” she agreed.
Great. Every month, just before the full moon, Sebastian went sex crazy. It was all I could do to get him out of bed. If there would be a flurry of solar activity as they expected, I’d either have a panther on my nuts for four days or he’d fuck the ever-loving hell out of my brother. I wasn’t sure how I felt about either of those options. I’d just gotten him back to myself. It would be difficult to hand him over to Bryce again.
“How long until we get there?” Sebastian asked.
“Five hours and if you ask one more time before
