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Tally was missing.
"I'll kill them. I'll fucking kill them with my bare fucking hands if I have to!" Geoff paced back and forth in the kitchen, while Lou, Elisa, and Blysse stood around the small table in their breakfast nook. No one seemed interested in sitting. Geoff was incapable of remaining still, his energy a kinetic, violent storm around him as he moved. He'd already punched one hole in the wall, and every time he reached one end or the other of his path, everyone tensed as if expecting him to do it again.
Tally was missing.
Her scent had been fresh enough for them to follow her over the wall and into the forest (why she had gone over the wall in the first place was a question for another time). The goddamn spooks didn't even bother to pick up the dart from where it had fallen. They had tried to follow her scent further, but it was significantly more difficult, only a faint trace on a random tree or leaf. It was Blysse who suggested that meant she'd been carried.
The fact that there was no pool of blood should have been reassuring to him, but it wasn't.
Tally was missing.
"Why would they take Tally?" Elisa asked.
"How the hell should I know?" Geoff spat back. Over his years as a werewolf, he'd been in a few packs where someone had been kidnapped. Usually it was done by a newcomer trying to make a name for themselves as a badass wolf, part of a case to be Odrulf without having to fight for it directly. In those situations, the culprit was almost certainly known – that was the whole point. But this? They had no clue. It seemed to fly directly in the face of what Traxler and his partner had said. Elisa put her hands up defensively and said no more.
Blysse spoke up. "Did you mean what you said? About killing them?"
The question brought Geoff to a halt, and he turned to face her, crossing his arms over his chest. "What do you think?"
She canted her head to one side, studying him intently. Finally, she said, "Lögmal Tanna." She spoke it with the slightest rising inflection, putting it somewhere between a statement and a question.
Geoff nodded. "Lögmal Tanna." As far as he knew, it wasn't some storied werewolf term passed down over generations. Someone in his pack just sort of made it up to describe the way he did things. The way it was explained to him, Lögmal Tanna translated to something like "Law of Teeth." It was fitting, and he never let on just how much the phrase pleased him. To Geoff's way of thinking, the pack leader's duty to protect the rest of their wolves meant nothing if it didn't have any teeth behind it – often quite literally. Some pack leaders only gave lip service to the protection they owed their wolves, but Geoff was committed to do whatever he had to. That meant everything, up to and including killing for the pack if need be. He never reveled in it, but he'd taken more than one life to keep the pack safe.
Now, it seemed, he'd have to do it again.
And he would.
Without hesitation
––––––––
LOUISIANNA EVENTUALLY had the idea to look up the Department of Homeland security field office and leave a message for Traxler. They could not find a direct number for him, so they opted to try leaving a message on the anonymous tip line. Geoff noted in that moment how odd it was that none of them thought to verify the agents' supposed government credentials before. Too late to worry about that now, he thought. At the very least, they were doing something, even if he had doubts about what that something might accomplish.
She had insisted on leaving the message herself, as Geoff was still insensate in his anger. She didn't want to reveal too much over the phone. He had argued that their cover had obviously been blown so what the hell was the point, but he was successfully overruled by Elisa and Lou. "Just because the house is on fire, it doesn't mean you should start dropping matches everywhere," Lou snapped at him. They finally compromised and Lou left a message identifying herself by name (which, for an anonymous tipline, might be enough to bump them up in priority) and asking specifically for Agent Traxler's help in locating a lost dog. They'd have to hope that would be enough to get the message to him. She didn't leave a return number; she suspected he'd know how to reach them.
With that accomplished, there was little else to be done. While they were busy playing telephone with the Feds, Naomi and Mystery were helping Laurell and Mark gather bedding, clothes, and toiletries from their respective duplexes. Geoff had decreed that until Tally was found, everyone would bunk in with him and Lou, even if it meant people sleeping on the floor. He was prepared to die on that hill but received no pushback.
He left Lou and Elisa to work out the logistics of who was sleeping where. He opened the front door and stood in the doorway, looking out over the spread of now-empty duplexes, a tumult of emotions swirling in his chest, guilt first and foremost among them. He didn't normally second-guess himself, but he was beginning to regret his insistence on staying in D.C. after the problems with The Agency surfaced. The safety of the pack was his primary responsibility, and because of his stubbornness, Tally was in danger. Maybe dead.
Tally was missing!
Laurell lightly tapped him on the shoulder. He'd heard (and smelled) her approach, so he didn't jump. Nor did he turn to face her when he spoke. "Hey kid, what's up?" He tried – and mostly succeeded – to keep the strain he was feeling out of his voice.
"Umm." It was all Laurell said. Maybe she wanted him to turn around. He closed his eyes for a second, opened them, and did so, looking the young woman up and down. She was much worse at hiding her emotions than he was; there was a pained, pinched expression on her face, and a tightness around her eyes that Geoff liked not at all. "Umm," she said again, visibly gathering herself up before she continued. "I was wondering if it would be okay if... I slept with you and Lou? In your bed?"
He didn't need to consider the request long before nodding once. It wasn't the first time he and Lou had welcomed someone – sometimes, multiple someones – to bed with them. He had been in some packs that operated more or less like communes, with love and sex very freely given. That was never his style, and he was adamant about keeping things strictly platonic with everybody but Lou. He didn't care who else slept with whoever else, but for him it was always more about the comfort of casual physical contact. The wolves thrived on it, even in their human form.
This was, however, the first time in his memory that Laurell had initiated such an arrangement. She was always so very paranoid about taking up too much of Geoff and Lou's attention, despite their constant assurances to the contrary. His eyes narrowed slightly. "Is everything okay?" He held up a hand before she could speak. "I mean, I know that nothing is really okay right now, but specifically with you? Have you been sleeping okay?" It had been a few weeks since her last sleepwalking episode, and with everything else going on he hadn't had time to follow up with her. (He felt another pang of guilt at that realization.)
Laurell bit her lip. "I... I still have nightmares sometimes. I mean... I think so. I never remember them when I wake up. Except for the red."
Geoff frowned. He still wasn't sure if this was burgeoning memories of her time in wolf form or not, but from the sounds of it, things weren't getting better. "When was the last time you had one of those?"
She considered for a long while before answering. He could feel her pulse accelerating slightly as she tried to recall unpleasant memories. Almost reflexively, he let his lupine energy brush against hers and she gave out a small sigh of relief. "It was... I think... maybe two or three nights ago?" She winced a bit as she said it, as if afraid Geoff would be angry at her.
"Hmm." It was harder than it should have been to keep his tone noncommittal. In truth, he was more than a little alarmed. It had been some time since the last full moon, and as far as he knew, Laurell hadn't shifted to wolf form in the interim. He frowned as another thought struck him – as with their first pack hunt, Geoff had been unusually tired the next day. He didn't think to mention it to anyone at the time, and this didn't seem the time to start down that path. He made a note to ask Lou about it and returned to the matter at hand.
If Laurell's bad dreams were related to her memories on four legs, he would have expected there to be a correlation in the timing. That didn't seem to be the case, which put them firmly back at square one. "Once we get this business with the government sorted out, me and you and Lou can sit down and talk about it, okay?" He didn't like the notion of brushing her off, but the situation with Tally was much more urgent and needed his full attention.
Laurell brightened a bit, nodding. "Okay. Thank you, Geoff." She stepped up to him and wrapped her arms around him, at first timidly but then squeezing him in a fierce hug. He wrapped one arm around her and pulled her against him. Despite his prickly demeanor, he was still a wolf, and he savored the contact as much as the next lycanthrope. The embrace lingered for a few seconds longer than it might have between two humans, and then Laurell disengaged, flashing Geoff a small, grateful smile, and turning to leave.
As he watched her go, Geoff wondered absently if Laurell's request to sleep with him and Lou was related to her nightmares. Later, Geoff would bitterly regret not following up on it.