Chapter 28

Gunner's POV

Over the past few days, dad has been locked in his office on phone calls with other alphas from packs that surround the locations we had narrowed the list down to. With the time different between everybody, it was hard not to play phone tag with some of them.

Ben and I had been putting in extra time at the gym and training. If we weren't doing either of those, then we were looking over maps and my mate's notes. We had a meeting with Alpha Brock and Charlie later today and I still haven't heard from my mate in over 24 hours.

Koa would send information as she could to Maddox who would then replay the images to me. From those images and what other information she gave us and the times she would connect with us, we were able to rule out one of the other locations, St. Lucia. So that left us with Scotland and Borneo.

"Hey, you did some work in Iceland right?" Ben asked as we were driving to the packhouse for our meeting.

"Yea helped them rebuild and train after an attack. Why?" I gave him a sideways look.

"You still have connections over there?" He looked at me and I could see wheels turning in his head and I raised an eyebrow at him to say yes more or less. "I only ask because Iceland is a lot closer to Scotland than we are. Maybe they could help us do some recon." He shrugged his shoulders and looked back to the road.

"You never cease to amaze me Ben. Granted sometimes it's because you're looking for your phone while talking on it but…" Ben cut me off by reaching over and slapping my arm and then we both laughed.

I pulled out my phone and sent a text to one of the warriors from the pack in Iceland that I had worked with while my time there.

Me: I need help. Please have your Alpha get in contact with me ASAP!

PW: 10/4 heading that way now.

I put my phone back in my pocket as we were pulling up to the packhouse. I could see Alpha Brock was already here, but there was another vehicle here that I didn't recognize.

"You know who that belongs to?" I pointed at the blacked-out SUV with Florida tags.

"I have no idea. Never seen it before." Ben put his car in park and we were both out of the car and walking towards the pack house while staring down the SUV.

We made our way up to the conference room to find that Alpha Brock and Charlie and my dad were already there.

"Where's Alpha Nik?' I asked looking around.

"He's talking to someone in his office." My dad answered, but he didn't look very pleased.

"Who? What's going on?" Ben asked.

"I will let him explain when he comes in here. In the meantime, why don't we get started. Who knows how long they're going to take and I'm not missing dinner again." My dad huffed as he pulled a chair out and sat down.

Charlie started with giving us a few updates that he had from his contacts from around the world, and once put together with our information, we agreed that St. Lucia was not a possible location in this case.

"If the King is still the same guy I knew from back in the day, he's going to have hundreds of warriors." Charlie said.

"My mate has earned their trust enough to train with them. She has shown me their training groups and while I do agree there is hundreds, I don't believe that he has as many as you think he does anymore. I'd say 250 max." I said.

"Really now? That's it? Just 250?" Charlie started stroking his chin in what seemed like deep thought.

"What's going on in that head of yours Charlie?" Alpha Brock was the one to speak up this time.

"I'm just wondering where his numbers went. He used to have almost three times that amount of warriors alone. Just makes one wonder where they all went." Charlie was pacing the room at this point. "I will get my people on this one. We still need to figure out their location. Maybe figuring that out will help with the number's ordeal."

Charlie sat back down and we started going through maps and more information that my mate and Charlie's people had gathered. We had only been in there for about an hour when the door opened and Alpha Nik walked through with another man right behind him. We all stopped and stared at this man, and for some reason Maddox was on edge and I got a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Whoever this man is, it's not good.

"Everybody this is Alpha Trent," Alpha Nik paused and looked around the table at all of us with very serious eyes, "from the Everglades pack."

As soon as Alpha Nik said that I felt Maddox pushing to the surface. I could feel my eyes changing colors. Someone else must have noticed to because before I could react, I felt a very strong grip on my arm but I never took my eyes off the bastard that was standing not 20 feet away from me.

This is the man that caused so many she-wolves so much pain. The one who condones rape and the selling of she-wolves as slaves. I could only imagine what my mate and her mother and siblings went through before her mother got the courage to run. Just the thought of it made a low growl rumble in my chest. I wanted this guy's head on a silver platter.

"Gunner, as much as we want to tear him limb from limb, he does have some useful information to share with us." Alpha Nik said while looking directly at me.

Alpha Nik went around the room and introduced everybody and then sat down at the head of the table, while Alpha Trent sat alone at the other end. We were all staring at him at this point waiting for him to get on with it.

"Maddox, commit his face to memory and hang it on the 'wanted' wall." I thought to my wolf.

"Already done." Maddox growled lowly back. I knew he wasn't growling at me but at the piece of shit sitting down the table from us.

Alpha Trent cleared his throat and then looked down at his hands that were folded on the table. "I had heard through the grapevine that there was a she-wolf who had been abducted using magic, and that Alpha Nik here had been calling around other packs for information. Once it got out who the girl was that was abducted and by who, I knew I had to come here and explain something.

It was roughly 18, maybe 19 years ago, a man with a Russian accent came to my pack. He said he was on a quest to find his mate and asked permission to visit my pack territory in hopes of finding her there. Yes I did question the fact with his accent why he thought his mate would be in my pack. He had told me that he had been to every other pack across the pond and hadn't found her yet and that the USA was his last hope. I gave him permission to spend 1 week in my territory, but after that he would have to move on.

It was about 4 or 5 days later when he came to me saying that he believes he had found her. He asked for my permission to take her back home, but I told him that I needed to know who the she-wolf was and that I would have to speak to her in private before giving permission."

At this a few of us rolled our eyes and I couldn't help what came out of my mouth, "Why would you care if a she-wolf left anyways? One less sex-toy?"

"Gunner!" Alpha Nik yelled.

"What!? He raided packs and took their lands and only took the female survivors and children! It's no secret as to what he's done and is probably still doing." I snapped back.

"Although what you say is true boy, I can promise you that is not how it is today. I only wanted to talk to the she-wolf he claimed to be his mate to use my alpha command on her to not speak of what went on inside our pack. After speaking with her, she actually decided, on her own might I add, that she wanted to remain in my pack. She did not want to go back to Russia with this man. She claimed that he was not her mate. I thought it was done from there. I told the man to leave and to never return or he would be put down. The man didn't put up a fight what-so-ever. Just grabbed his things and left, or so I thought anyways."

"How do you not know if a non-pack member left or not?" Ben was the one to interrupt this time. Alpha Trent just held his hands up as a sign to just wait.

"It was about 4-5 years later, I was out on border patrol with my warriors when I saw him again. I had told one of my investigators to track him down and find out about him. I wanted to know everything about this man and why he was back around my territory. Like I said, I thought he had left all those years ago. It took my investigator some time but he finally had come back with information on this guy. Long story short, he never left and had been living in the human town just outside my border. He was sneaking in and out to see the same she-wolf he claimed to be his mate before I kicked him out."

Alpha Trent paused to take a drink of water, and by this time I couldn't sit still anymore so I stood up and was pacing the room back and forth.

"You ok son?" My dad mindlinked me.

"Yeah, just can't stand the site of him and he's dragging this out. He needs to get to the point and fast." I said back.

"Can you please just get to the point Alpha Trent?" My dad said for me, and Alpha Trent just nodded.

"I had to tell you that, so you would understand this. During those years when I thought he was gone, the she-wolf gave birth to 3 pups. First a girl, and then 2 boys. They were all born in my pack hospital and, as you know, fathers were hard to account for back then so no name ever went on the birth certificates. It was shortly after I had found out about this man and the fact that he truly hadn't left and had been sneaking around, that the she-wolf and her pups disappeared."

Maddox had his ears straight up and sounded like he was mumbling to himself when all of a sudden he let out a loud howl in my head.

"What the hell?!" I said.

"He's talking about our mate!" Maddox started flashing all the information we had learned about our mate in the beginning and clips from the story her mother had said in my head. I had stopped pacing and probably looked like I was zoned out because I was. I had stopped listening to what Alpha Trent was saying and was focused on what Maddox was showing me.

"You said 1 girl and 2 boy pups right? Disappeared about 12 years ago-ish?" I interrupted him.

"Yes." Alpha Trent nodded his head.

"Cheyenne." Was all that came out of my mouth.

"Cheyenne? Who's Cheyenne?" Alpha Trent asked looking at me confused.

"She's my mate and the first-born pup of the woman who escaped your pack 12 years ago. She would've been 4-5 years old at the time." I said still going over all the information in my head.

"Sorry son, but the little girl's name was…"

"Alida. Alida Romanov." I cut him off.

"Yes. How did…"

"How did they escape? No one up to that point had ever escaped from your pack. And what about the other she-wolf with pups that escaped with her?" I asked rather harshly.

"Unfortunately, I don't know how they escaped. We searched for months but could never find them. As for the other she-wolf and pups, nobody else left with her. Her and her 3 pups were the only ones missing, and trust me, with the shit that we had going on within our walls, I kept everyone on a lockdown in fear they would go out and tell people what happened to them while at my pack."

"Alpha Brock, didn't her mother say sitting right in this room, that there was another woman with children with her when she left." Alpha Nik asked him.

"I do believe she did Alpha Nik. Which raises the question, who's lying." Alpha Brock said and all eyes turned back to Alpha Trent.

"Whoa guys, come on. You really think I would come all the way out here to you, to give you this information just to lie about it. I admitted what we used to do back in the day, but since that she-wolf escaped we started toning it down. I thought for sure the Higher Ups were coming for me and I was a dead man."

"How long after she escaped did you "turn things around"?" Alpha Nik asked.

"Like I said, we searched for months after she left and when we couldn't find her or the children I gave the order to release any unmated females. They had the option to leave or stay. Most of them left, some took their children some didn't. Those of who did stay, some took in the abandoned children and others started an orphanage and schools."

"Have you ever seen that man since then?" I asked.

"No I haven't. He disappeared when they did actually. I thought they all ran off together back to Russia or something." Alpha Trent said.

"I have a sketch here I would like you to look at." Charlie said sliding my sketch over towards Alpha Trent.

Alpha Trent took the paper and his eyes went wide and I swear I saw a flash of fear in them before he hid it again.

"That's him. That's the guy." Alpha Trent said calmly sliding the paper back across the table towards Charlie.

"Ok, we need to get her mother back in here now. She obviously lied or just didn't tell us the whole truth." Alpha Nik said to Alpha Brock.

"Agreed. I have already mindlinked my Beta to bring her over."

"If he helped her escape with her pups, it would explain how he found her almost 13 years later. We need to know exactly what happened between them two and what she's not telling us." My dad said still looking towards Alpha Trent.

"My Beta is on his way with the mother now. Also, while we are waiting, has anyone heard from or seen Kira? Her Alpha got ahold of me the other day thinking maybe she was with Cheyenne's family since that's her best friend, but she hasn't been there." Alpha Brock asked looking mainly between Ben and me.

We both looked at each other and then shook our heads saying "no" at the same time. With everything going on, I honestly forgot about her. My focus has been on getting my mate back.

"Ok so now, not only is my mate missing, but so is her best friend and now we think my mate's mother has been lying to us?" I rambled off more frustrated than ever.

"The mother is on her way here now. Us Alphas will get to the bottom of that one. Ben and Gunner why don't you guys go to the college campus and see if you can gather any info on Kira. Find out when they last seen her, did she drop out or just stop showing up, if there's any rumors going around about her disappearance. Kids like to talk. Best place to get information and a starting point." Alpha Nik said.

"Wait, why are we looking for her? She's not part of our pack nor anybody's mate within our pack." Ben asked.

"Because she's Cheyenne's best friend, and with Cheyenne missing and then her best friend is now missing too, Rule 39 boys." My dad said.

Great so now not only do we have to find my mate, now we have to find her best friend too?! What the hell is going on around here?!

Ben and I nodded our heads and walked out of the room. We were talking about our plan for when we got to the college while walking out to his car, when we saw another black SUV pulling up. I knew it was the mother and the Beta from my mate's pack and I told Ben to get me out of there because I couldn't even look at the woman right now. We both got in the car and Ben peeled out heading for the front gate.