Irritated by the buzzing, I reached over her to grab my phone from the end table, my eyes perfectly adjusted in the dark, even in human form. With a glance at the number on the glaringly lit screen, I accepted the call as I slid out of bed, trying not to wake her.
“Just a second, Warner,” I whispered into the phone. I stepped into my underwear on my way into Abby’s brothers’ bedroom, then pulled the door closed at my back. “Okay, what could possibly be wrong at…” I pulled the phone away from my ear to glance at the on-screen clock. “…five in the morning.”
“You mean other than the fact that I’m locked out of my own cabin?” Warner Green and Chase Taylor shared the bedroom across from Luke and Isaac, but I’d asked them both to take a shift in the main lodge overnight as part of the security step-up for my mother and sister. And to give me and Abby some privacy. “Let me in, boss.”
“Abby’s asleep on the couch.”
He huffed. “What a shame cats aren’t famous for their silence and stealth.”
“Smartass.”
“It’s important,” he insisted. “I won’t wake her up.”
I hesitated until I realized that even if I went out instead of letting him in, he’d smell Abby on my skin. I’d known our secret wouldn’t last long, but I’d hoped we’d at least get a chance to shower off each other’s scents before morning.
Reluctantly, I crept back into the living room and quietly unbolted the door, then closed and rebolted it after Warner stole in on bare feet in spite of the near-freezing temperature. He had Hargrove’s laptop and a manila envelope tucked under one arm.
Abby groaned in her sleep and rolled over, but neither the noise nor the cold gust woke her up.
I gestured for Warner to follow me into Luke and Isaac’s room, then closed the door behind us. “What’s so important?” I said, as he opened Hargrove’s laptop on Lucas’s desk.
“Sorry about the timing.” Warner’s face was lit only by the glow from the screen. “Especially…considering.” His pointed glance strayed south of my navel, but my near-nudity wasn’t the issue. I never slept in clothes, and even though Warner preferred guys, he knew I did not.
His point was that he could smell Abby on me.
“She’s none of your business,” I growled, already resentful of the cold air against my skin, where Abby’s warm body had been seconds earlier. “None of anyone else’s either. If she gets even a hint of judgment or criticism from you, I’ll—”
Warner held up both hands, palms out, protesting his innocence in advance. “I’m happy for both of you. Brian was never her type.”
I lifted one brow at him in surprise, and Warner rolled his eyes.
“No, he’s not my type either. I’m just saying they were never really right for each other. But Brian may not know that yet.”
“He knows,” I mumbled, and Warner snorted, scrolling through a menu with Hargrove’s mouse pad. “But he doesn’t know about me yet.”
“And maybe if you hadn’t locked Brian’s brother and two of Abby’s out of their own cabin for the night, that secret might have kept for a while.”
“They’re already talking?”
He shrugged. “There’s no such thing as privacy for an Alpha. Or for a tabby, for that matter.”
Our situation was delicate, politically speaking. We’d have to make an official announcement at some point, and it would be the first of its kind. The US Prides had never seen an unmarried Alpha, which meant that even if Abby hadn’t just dumped her fiancé—the son of one of my allies and brother of one of my enforcers—our fledgling relationship would be under considerable scrutiny.
“What the hell am I doing?” I sank onto the end of Lucas’s bed. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”
Warner turned from the laptop to grin at me. “The Spanish poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca reportedly said, ‘When love is not madness, it is not love.’”
“So, that’s a yes?”
Warner laughed and clicked another key on the laptop, then turned it to face me more directly. “Okay, I’ve been up all night, going through Hargrove’s computer. Abby did a good job, but she doesn’t have the tools or the training to access password-protected files and emails. Including this.” He tapped a few more keys, then clicked the trackpad, and an email appeared on the monitor.
I frowned at the screen. “What am I looking at?”
“This is an email from someone named Darren. I’m not sure who that is yet…”
“Yeah, Abby said the same thing.”
“…but let all learned men be warned—the grammar is painful. According to this message, Darren was writing to Hargrove from some place they call the ‘lakeside cottage,’ where there’s evidently spotty Wi-Fi. I haven’t found any other property in Hargrove’s name or any other mentioned in his correspondence, so this cottage could very well be where he’s hiding out.”