He didn’t? He could have turned himself into the Easter Bunny and she would have been less surprised. Ashlee stared hard at Theo. The usual gruffness and attitude was absent from his face and his posture. He seemed pretty relaxed.
Ashlee’s throat felt dry, her voice sounded tight. “I’m sorry they’re gone. I only knew them two days, but I liked them very much.”
Theo rose and crossed the room to the dresser that held a stainless steel water pitcher. “You know everything they knew. Their powers are yours. I haven’t heard of anyone doing that for three hundred years.” He handed her the glass he’d filled. “I’ve been a little hard on you. I was afraid when Tristan met you…afraid of what that meant for the pack. The spell killed everyone thirty years ago, but it feels like yesterday to me, and I was afraid that it would all start again. I’m sorry if I turned out to be the Cassandra of the pack. I assure you, it was not my intention. I would rather have been wrong.” Theo paused for a second, his brownish-blond eyebrows pointed downwards. Ashlee was struck by how much Theo’s insecurity reminded her of Tristan, then she remembered Theo and Tristan had been born only a year apart, so they must have been raised almost as twins.
“You were worried about your brother. I understand.” Ashlee smiled. She looked around the room for a clock. What time was it? Had she missed her flight to Cancun?
“You leave in about an hour for the airport.” Theo must have read her signals. His eyes lit with admiration before he lowered them in a submissive gesture. “You didn’t run.
I told you to run when Tristan attacked, but you stayed and talked him down, spoke to him and reasoned with him when it should have been impossible. Now you’re running off to face our father and his witch. I think you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met and I’m proud to call you sister.”
Ashlee’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. She didn’t need Tristan’s soul to tell her Theo was not a man who expressed emotion easily or trusted others with his feelings. She wasn’t going to let any of them down. She would bring Tristan back.
Theo laughed. “Gabriel and Cullen have been arguing all day about who is going with you and your dad to Mexico. They can’t agree, so they’re both going. Michael wants to go too but we won’t let him. He’s our interim Alpha.”
“He needs to do the ceremony.” Ashlee knew what the Alpha ceremony entailed; with the Aunts’ knowledge, she felt like she’d witnessed Tristan’s father’s personally.
Theo nodded. “He will. I believe in him.”
“Can you do something for me, Theo?”
Theo nodded, no hesitation, no hedging. He didn’t even ask her what she wanted.
That was how he treated his family. She felt honored. “Send Rex up to the arboretum; I need herbs. I’m going to disguise my smell so your father doesn’t know I’m a wolf. I know how to do that now. I’ll try to do Gabriel and Cullen too, but he knows them; he doesn’t know me.
“Then take the ferry to the shore, get in my car, and drive to New Jersey. Go to my mother and demand that she and my sister come here to the island. The spell that I will need to do on Tristan requires one leader and two other mystics. Two other female shifters. The Aunts knew this. They must have known I would need my family. My mother will object—she doesn’t want Summer here yet—but there is no choice. If my mother refuses, go and get Summer yourself, or at least threaten to. She goes to Columbia University in New York City.”
“I’ll be back with both of them before you return.” Theo’s eyes held resolve.
“Good, then its time I go witch hunting, don’t you think?”
The flight from Portland to Cancun was a blur. Every time Ashlee closed her eyes, she saw Tristan as she’d last seen him, on the floor writhing in pain. Or she heard his voice, so cold and unfeeling, when he’d yelled and threatened her through the door of his cell.
The flight she’d booked stopped in Newark, New Jersey, where she picked up her father at their house; he fortunately remembered her passport. Theo, traveling by car, hadn’t yet arrived to pick up her mother, and Ashlee decided not to illuminate that fact for her father. He’d be pissed. He didn’t like people ordering Victoria around. Ashlee smiled. Scott wasn’t a wolf, but she could see now why her mother’s wolf had fallen for him.
Daddy. Family. Love. Her wolf stretched out inside of her, content to be with her father even as she worried endlessly about Tristan.
Ashlee stood beside her father outside of the Cancun airport. The heat was not the only thing making her sweat. Cullen and Gabriel had waited inside of the airport, and the plan was for them to follow a few minutes behind, and break through IPAG’s security after Ashlee and her father got inside. This would mean they needed to somehow get through the front gate; both Gabriel and Cullen had assured her they were more than capable of handling this, although both had been vague about the details of their plan.
The driver IPAG sent had run to retrieve his car after he informed them that it would take them an hour to get to where they were going.
“You were so quiet on the plane, Ash.” It was the first time she and her father had spoken in an hour.
“I’m sorry, Dad. We really appreciate your help with this. You’re placing yourself in danger.”
“You’re my baby, what did you think I would do?” Scott sighed. “When your mother told me she would not outlive me, that she would die when I did, it all seemed very romantic. The first time I saw her wolf, I was awestruck. I never could have become all the things I’ve become without your mother. She pushed me, in the best possible way.
She never let me settle for mediocrity. She has always been my strength, my life.”
Ashlee smiled. Her mother knew how to push, even if Ashlee didn’t always find it to be ‘in the best possible way.’ Her father had always been the heart of the family, the gentle one. “Even before I knew you were mates, I found the love you have for each other to be inspirational.”
“This boy, Tristan,” her father began.
“He’s about fifty years older than you are, Dad.” Ashlee laughed.
“Regardless, he wants to marry my daughter.” His voice sounded rough. “That boy Tristan, if he dies, you die too, right?”
“Now that we are mated, yes. Either that or I’m doomed to live a half-life, never complete, always alone. Never happy.” The Aunts had felt that way. She could feel their pain now inside of her. She pushed it down; she didn’t need the faces of the men they’d loved haunting her on this trip. She had enough burdens with just Tristan on her mind.
“It doesn’t seem so romantic now,” her father grumbled. “And you’re sure there’s nothing medical science can do to help him? I could load him up on Valium, drive him down to Bergen Pines Institute, and let Dr. Lewis have a look at him. He’ll come up with a good cocktail of psycho-pharmaceuticals and maybe it’ll take care of the problem.”
Ashlee laughed, one large blunt hiccup followed. “No, Daddy, but thank you for offering. And he doesn’t want to marry me. For all intents and purposes, we are married already.”
Scott shook his head and pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his sweat drenched forehead. “I’m just human, Ash. This man hasn’t come to me, hasn’t asked my permission, and I haven’t walked you down the aisle so, no, you are not married yet.”
“Tell you what Daddy, if we get through this and find the witch—which is already unlikely—say we do that, then I somehow subdue her and drag her out of the facility without getting caught, again a big problem. Then we put her in the car, get her back into the United States and onto the boat to the island, where I miraculously perform and survive the cleansing spell, that is after I kill her—”