Chapter 31

Roane

I've spent so much time in my room these past few days that I felt like a pouty teenager again, except when I used to run to hide in my room back then Tristan and Micah would sneak in the window to hang out with me.

Never in my wildest dreams would I ever think that I would miss those miserable days. Being a teenager around all those horny a** wolves and constantly waiting to see if I would ever shift was f*cking terrible.

Even being around Tristan was unbearable at times. He used to have such a problem controlling his emotions that he would shift one or two times a day when someone would piss him off.

He was also constantly getting into fights with just about everyone who even considered looking at him. Thankfully, Micah had always been able to help him calm down and either stop the shift or shift right back.

Kesh and Tristan were practically the same f*cking person and had both the same amount of patience and temperament. Basically, they were wild animals or rabid dogs, or maybe even both.

A chuckle fell from my lips, and it came on so suddenly that it even surprised me when the sound echoed in the massive and empty room.

It had been years now that I've had a place of my own. I moved into my own apartment at seventeen because I couldn't stand staying in the pack house and being reminded every second of how inadequate I was.

Funny though, that not once since the day I moved out had I ever wished to have someone to share my private space with. At least not until now.

Every time I left Tristan's suite, I felt a pang of jealously surge through me when I would see what I was leaving behind and not just who I was walking away from.

Tristan had always been a character, loud, ferocious, sarcastic, and the main attraction in any room for good or bad, but he had always felt incomplete somehow.

Not now. Now when I saw him it was obvious that whatever was missing inside of him was now back. He looked not only complete and whole, but larger, brighter, or I don't know, just more.

It wasn't just him it hurt to walk away from though. It was her. "Gods," I uttered as I threw myself backwards onto my bed. 

I had been sitting here trying to read through some of the files that Xavier sent me, but my mind would only let me focus for a few minutes at a time before she would pop into my head.

At first, I was able to push the images of her out of my thoughts and return back to the papers, but as time continued to pass, I couldn't push the images of her out of my mind regardless of whether they were good or bad.

Auburn hair, golden eyes, fair skin, pink lips, rosy cheeks, tears, smiles, fear, laughter, pain, anger, despair, gods! 

"What the f*ck is wrong with me?" I spoke out loud to no one but myself, but right now I wished that someone, anyone was here to talk back to me.

A warm prickle ran down my spine and I let myself imagine that it was my wolf trying to tell me something about where I was letting my thoughts wonder to.

Maybe he was in line with this perverse way of thinking, or maybe he was annoyed with me for having such disgusting thoughts.

Regardless, I wished desperately to be able to hear him, to know that he was truly with me, to not let myself get caught up in the what if's and could be's.

It had been a few hours since I last saw her and yet I couldn't stop the steady increase of images that my mind kept pushing through to the front of all of my thoughts.

Proposals, advancement opportunities, mergers, and many other things that I should be focusing on were right here in front of me. Things that I have been working towards for years and yet here I was acting like some irrational man child.

Groaning, I rolled over and felt the crush of the papers that were still laying out beside the manilla files that were spread across my bed.

"What is wrong with me?" 

My voice, though soft, felt like it was echoing through the room yet again and the loneliness that I always tried to keep at bay was starting to creep in and taunt me like a ghost lurking in the shadows.

I pushed myself up, one to get off the folders before I really messed up the paperwork, and two because I needed to really get my f*cking sh*t together.

The moment I stood from the bed, I heard the soft click of the lock on the front door, and I knew that I was probably not going to like who was about to walk inside my house.

I walked over to my large closet to grab some clothes. Very few people had access to this room and while none of them would have any issues with my bare chest, I knew none of them wished to talk to me in my underwear alone.

Quickly, I threw on some navy sweats and a white t-shirt and right as I was walking out the doors back into my bedroom. I found my uncle standing beside my bed and looking at the papers that were strewn beside the folders.

"Is this the way you usually do your work, if so, I think I took the wrong position."

To my utter surprise, it wasn't Ezra who had come to see me, but Blane. My mental capacity was not prepared to try to unravel the awkwardness of him, so I just shrugged, "I was just looking over the files that Xavier had delivered earlier."

Blane continued to look through the pages on the bed but didn't pick them up or open any of the folders. I knew that he had little interest in this company and even if he cared, he was not one to buy into matters that did not directly involve him.

Or at least he used to be like that. Recently, his actions had been strange, even for him. I could hardly recall ever spending as much alone time with him as I have in the past few days in the entirety of my life.

As my uncle stood there leaning over my bed and looking at the papers, I stood where I was and took in his appearance from head to toe.

Of the two of my uncles, Blane was by far the most inconspicuous, but spent the most care and money on his appearance. His clothes hardly ever had labels but were the highest quality that one could buy.

Right now, he had on a pair of camel color loafers, straight tailored chinos in a sapphire blue and a simple black v-neck shirt that fit him to perfection.

My uncle favored black shirts and tops, personally I always thought it was because it made his hair stand out more, but I had never asked. Right now, he seemed as if he had come from a casual night out.

However, I had a feeling that he probably just came from being with my uncle Ezra. When they had left from Tristan's suite earlier this evening, he had been practically dragging Ezra from the room.

Watching him right now, I kind of felt a bit bad for my uncle. He has spent most of his life dealing with the repercussions of his brother's antics and for the first time I considered what that must be like.

From everything I have heard from my family and members of Silver Moon, my uncles were completely smitten with my mom and had been like her little shadows their whole lives, or at least until she had gone off to college.

My grandmother has photo albums full to the brim with pictures of my mother and uncles, but it has been so long since I have looked through them, that I had almost completely forgotten about them.

No one really speaks to me about my mother or what she was like after she met my father. I had been so young when she was killed that what little memories of her, I had are now few and far between. However sometimes I can still picture her in my dreams.

My mother had pulled away from her family because they had been upset about her marrying my father. She hadn't seen them for a few years due to some huge argument but had reconciled with them after having me.

I'm sure that it had something to do with the fact that I was born with lots of health issues that she couldn't take care of on her own since I wasn't a normal human child, but my grandparents didn't like to talk about that either.

When I came to live at Silver Moon, my uncle Ezra would hardly ever come to see me, but as I stood there letting the memories of the past come unwanted to the front of my mind, I recalled that it was Blane who had always taken the time to visit.

I was running through some of those first memories that I had completely forgotten when Blane turned around with a questioning look on his face as he said, "well?"

Sh*t, I had been so lost in my own head I hadn't heard what he either said or asked me. "Apologies, uncle, what did you say?"

Blane angled his head to right as he took me in for the first time since he let himself into my bedroom. Then he looked over to the black leather sofa I had near the window.

Nodding at him, we both walked over to the sofa, but instead of sitting on the opposite end of where I sat, he went and walked towards the window.

That entire part of the wall was glass and right now it had the most impressive view of the night sky.

Dark gray clouds filled the sky but didn't block out the brightness of the stars that were spread through the sky. I had no lamps on this side of the room because with the curtains open, it filled the room with enough light that none were needed.

For a minute or so, Blane just stood there by the wall of glass with one hand placed upon it looking out at the gods only knew what.

"Nephew, what are you planning on doing?"

His question didn't make sense at first. I had no idea exactly what he was asking about. There are so many different things going on that I have a multitude of plans, so I waited for him to elaborate.

When no further questions came from him, I asked, "What are you referring to uncle?"

Blane was still looking out the window, but I saw the hand that was down by his side clench into a fist for a moment before he spoke again.

"What are you planning on doing about her?"

There was only one her that I or any of us gave a damn about right now, but I hadn't been prepared to neither hear this question nor have an answer for it. 

I must have been quiet for too long because he finally turned to look towards me. My uncles were very handsome men, at least from the comments that I have heard my entire life from others, that is what I can tell.

Right now, I saw it, Blane looked like some type of fantasy character out of a movie. I wasn't sure if it was the sky, or the glass, but it was as if he glowed, or was shining a little.

A soft smile spread across his face, but instead of moving to come and sit beside me, he turned back to the window. I blinked a few times to see if my eyes had been playing tricks on me or not and sure enough there was no longer anything there.

Bothered by not only his question, but at this weird and strange situation I asked him a question instead of answering him.

"Why do you ask Uncle? Is there something that you know that I don't or is there something you want me to do that I am not?"

For another few moments Blane didn't turn to look at me, or even move from what I could see. So, when a cloud moved outside, I was able to see his reflection in the glass and I could have sworn that I saw a tear fall down his cheek.

This time when he spoke, he did not turn to look at me. As another cloud moved across the sky and covered the almost full moon outside the image of his face was wiped from my view.

"Don't do anything to push her away. Get her to stay. Help her to see how beneficial it could be for her to stay here. If he takes her away, you will never see her again and we need her here."

When Blane finally turned to look towards me, there was no tears on his face, nor wetness showing that I had seen what I thought I had. The look on his face however, let me know that there was something more that he still wasn't telling me.

As Blane finally moved from the window, he walked towards where I sat on the couch. He had just placed his hand on my shoulder, but before he could say anything, the sky went dark so fast that both of us turned to look out the window.

Even with the small lamp on near the opposite side of the living massive room, darkness seemed to swirl both inside and outside the window in a way that I was becoming very familiar with.

Before the first clap of thunder filled both the sky and my ears, I was up, off the couch, and searching for my phone. Ezra's phone began ringing right when a bolt of lightning lit up the sky.

I knew exactly where this storm had come from, and my heart was already racing as the thoughts of what might have happened for Dylan to be manipulating the weather and creating a storm again ran through my mind.

Even though it was not the first time I nor Blane had seen this happen, it was truly spectacular to witness. His phone rang again before he slid his hand across the screen as he pulled it from his pocket and put it up to his ear.

My hearing was nowhere near as good as the wolves, but it was heightened enough that I could hear that it was my Uncle Ezra and what he was saying through the phone.

"I don't where you ran off to but find Gabe. The two of you need to get over here as soon as you can. It seems that Rogan left his pack lands, but the tracker lost his trail."

Blane's eyes found mine and once he had my attention, he kept it. Maybe it was to make sure that I heard what Ezra had said so I nodded at him just before he answered.

"I just so happen to be with said nephew and we will meet you at Aspen shortly."

Blane hung up right after he responded to Ezra, but within the matter of a few blinks, I saw that whatever softness he had shown mere moments ago was completely gone. 

Back to his usual aloof self he instructed, "go and get dressed. We will leave for Aspen the moment you are ready. I will reach out to Micah and Tristan and find out what has caused this," he trailed off as he pointed towards the window.

A bit annoyed that he was going to reach out to my friends instead of having me do it, I just turned and headed back towards my closet. 

As I dressed, I heard him speaking to someone, but from this distance I couldn't pick up the words of the person on the other end of the phone. From what he was saying it sounded like it was Tristan.

I dressed swiftly, but not in a rush, I wanted to make sure that I looked the part I was going to be playing. When I walked back out towards Blane, I noticed that the sky was completely back to normal.

"What did they say happened," I asked with true concern as I latched the gold cufflink in place but dropped the second when he responded.

"Her mate," he said, and I felt my breath catch as I quickly turned to look at him. He continued with a grave look on his face though, "it seems that he is alive."