Chapter 36

Sarah POV

“Mommy,” Grace said, which made my heart turn over a few times.

“Yes?” I asked from where I was sitting on the floor in front of my Monopoly money and properties, which included three railroads, Boardwalk, and the light blue trio.

“I don’t want to stay in your house.”

“Do you want to play the game?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle.

“Yes.”

“Well, if we play the game, we have to follow the rules.” I looked at her angry face for a moment. “You remember the rules of tic-tac-toe?”

She nodded.

“Well, let’s say I made an X-O-X and said I won.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Why is that?”

“You have to have X-X-X or O-O-O to win.”

“So, if I play tic-tac-toe, I’m not allowed to ignore the rules?”

Grace saw through me and scowled harder.

“If you’re tired of playing Monopoly,” I said, “we can play something else.”

“Miss Sarah?” asked a voice from the doorway to the playroom.

I turned to see a beta I didn’t know standing there.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Alpha Zane and Agent Travis have asked if you would join them in the study.

I kept off my face how pleased his words made me. I’d seen Travis’s car pull up earlier and assumed I would be left out of the investigation at this point. It seemed my assumption was wrong.

I desperately wanted to understand what had happened with Chloe’s kidnapping, Marshal’s murder, and all the rest, but I was acutely aware I could be shut out at any moment. My best bet was to be useful, not to complain or insist.

In truth, I had no place putting myself forward in the investigation. I knew almost nothing about Olivia’s death and nothing about Chloe’s kidnapping except that Marshal, for whatever reason, had left her on my doorstep. I was at best a witness of interest, and at worst I was a detective-wannabe.

So I had decided simply to be here, ready if I could be useful, the human who was ready to assist. It had been difficult, but it looked like my strategy was paying off.

I suspended the Monopoly game and set them up with Sorry! before I left. When they protested, I just whispered, “Murder mystery, girls,” and that satisfied them, at least for now.

I followed the beta, whom I assumed was one of Travis’s men, to the study.

Travis had laid out several sheets of reports, and a glance brought me to the papers talking about how the body of a female werewolf had died of natural causes. Obviously, the men had already thought about the incongruity of secretly burying someone who died naturally, so I kept that thought to myself.

I did direct to them, “And what constitutes ‘natural causes’ here, if I may ask?”

They both looked uncomfortable, so I knew it was something about being a werewolf.

“I will remind you that I am the goddess-mother of two alphas,” I said. “I’m not really one to gossip with my human buddies, of which I have none.”

“Of course,” Travis said, looking chastened. “It’s just that her cause of death is a strictly werewolf matter.”

“‘Her’ cause of death?” I asked.

“Yes. The body belonged to a Miss Jessica Silverwood, who was a known associate of Mr. Kim.”

I thought about what Mavis had said. “His fiancé?”

“It would seem so. She did have an engagement ring on her finger and a matebond bite on her neck.”

“I see. But she died of natural causes? Some sort of werewolf-specific natural causes?” I asked.

Travis nodded, shot a quick look at Zane’s expressionless face, and continued. “Werewolves are particularly vulnerable when they are in the process of transforming. The body is completely at the mercy, if you will, of what happens, the slotting in and out of part for human and werewolf and werewolf for human.”

“Yes,” I said, having read as much.

“Miss Silverwood gives all the signs of having died in what we call a ‘transformation infarction.’ That is, there was an obstruction of the needed blood supply during the transformation. Now, such a problem should usually abort the transformation altogether, but in this case it did not, and she died from a loss of function to several major organs at once.”

“Sounds horrible,” I muttered, thinking about it in general terms and angry at myself that I didn’t know more details.

“It would have been incredibly painful,” Travis said. “But at it was least quick.”

I nodded, but I was acutely aware that Travis and Zane knew all about something of which I was quite ignorant. I acutely hated in that moment that as a human I was effectively being left out of the conversation.

I realized Agent Travis was looking at me.

“Would you like to see a transformation?” he asked me gently.

I looked at Zane, who was no help, then back to Travis.

“Very much,” I said.

The agent nodded and took off his jacket and then his shirt, pants, shoes, and jockeys. There was something clinical, even matter-of-fact in his attitude that calmed me. I knew werewolves weren’t shy about being naked in front of each other, and I thought about what Zane had said, “At our most basic, our most base, we are wolves,” and “we show our most primal selves to the pack.”

It was easy, actually, to stand there with a naked Agent Travis in the room, easy in a way it could never have been with Zane.

Travis closed his eyes and breathed deeply in and out. Then he leaned over, hands on his knees, before he wrenched his back in a perfect inverted curve, in a way no human could have managed. In a moment, his hair sprouted, and then his face elongated. His hands become paws in a second, his nails claws, and his teeth fangs.

At the same time, his body thickened and stretched forward. I saw he lost mass here and made up for it there. What were thigh muscles became muscles in his back legs, and what had been the plain brown eyes of a beta became the brilliant, other-worldly brown eyes of a wolf.

And then he was just that: a wolf, standing there on all fours, panting slightly. He was gray, brown, and black, his pointed ears pointed forward, and his mussel pointed toward me as though to ask, “What do you think?”

“I think you’re magnificent,” I said honestly.

He stretched, putting his legs out in front of him and arching his back. He howled very quietly, and then he used a back leg to scratch behind his ear.

I laughed and said, “That’s wonderful! Thank you so much for showing that to me.”

“He’s just a beta,” Zane muttered, then looked as if he hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

I laughed. “Well, maybe sometime I can see you transform?” I asked somewhat brazenly.

Zane looked at me through narrow eyes. “Maybe,” he said.

His tone made me shiver.