Chapter 85

Rachel POV

Moonglow Pack Territory

"Are we leaving already? I didn't greet Alpha Campbell."

"You'll get a chance to kiss his ass later, Lewis. For now, we have to get to the gate."

Art kept a hard grip on my elbow as he nearly raced us out the front door of the Alpha House. I couldn't understand how Nathan was back already. Hadn't we just arrived? Time seemed to have stopped for me as soon as I had seen the giant picture of my mother in Alpha Campbell's office.

My thoughts kept flashing back to Lindy: his supposed daughter who was a bland copy of my mother. Was she my sister? Why did she look so much like me and my mother? She couldn't be the Alpha's bastard because he'd been bled into House Campbell rather than born into it.

"The gate? Why are we going to the gate?"

I tripped down the stairs and out the door as I took two and three steps at a time to keep up with Art. Nathan finally noticed my predicament, taking hold of my other arm to tug me away from the Alpha Inspector.

"Stop dragging her, Windsor."

Art let go of my arm and I sagged against Nathan in relief. I wasn't prepared to run around even for a short distance.

"We have to get this sample to a messenger. I can't summon one. I have to go to the gate. Campbell isn't welcoming us any further until I get the results back."

Art cast a meaningful glance at the big guards at the door; Nathan wrapped his arm around my waist to support me before following him out to the gravel path before the Alpha House.

"Do you want me to carry you?" Nathan asked, his voice a low murmur against my cheek.

I didn't want to run or be dragged so I nodded. He swept me into his arms bridal style and I let myself take comfort in the strength of his arms.

Laying my head against the solid wall of his chest, I asked, "Did you run all the way to the car and back?"

"No. Well. I'd consider it closer to power walking."

My frozen features cracked as a smile curved my lips up on either side. I had missed Nathan in ways I hadn't even remembered. He was a good man.

I hoped I wasn't jeopardizing his relationship with House Campbell. Full Moon Pack had never been one for warring. They were bankers and real estate tycoons. I couldn't think of a single time they had gone into battle much less waged war.

"Sorry for being deadweight. I didn't know we would have to run around or I would have worn more comfortable shoes."

In all honesty, no shoes were comfortable enough for me to feel up to running around these days. I didn't want to bring my pregnant condition up with Nathan though. I knew I had hurt him enough for one lifetime without reminding him I carried another man's child.

"Don't be sorry. I'm enjoying having a reason to hold you. We could run around this whole territory for all I care."

Art paid no attention to either of us as he raced ahead to the gate. He really was only a breath away from running; I wondered if he was worried some harm would come to him or us or the DNA swab he carried. His urgency was enough to make me anxious.

"I think Art would have a heart attack if we had to run the whole territory. Do you think we need to worry?"

Nathan increased his pace, his breathing nice and easy as he carried me along with him with the ease of a man whose strength was far greater than his tasks required. I might as well have been made of air for all the strain my weight seemed to put on him. I tried to match my breathing to his.

"Nathan?"

He made a sound before finally saying, "No. I think we'll make the gate without a problem. Did you have a bad meeting with Alpha Campbell? What's his hurry?"

I didn't know how to answer him. Alpha Campbell had been direct, blunt, and hard. I could tell he wasn't pleased we were there from the way he greeted us. He hadn't directly threatened us though or even been rude. It was more a feeling than anything he'd done directly.

"The meeting was fine. He was polite. I met Lindy. She looks like me and my mother. Younger though."

"Younger? She's the same age as you. Older actually. She was born a few months before you from what I understand."

"You've not met her?"

I was surprised by that. Nathan and his family had been to visit Moonglow Pack more than once when he was young which was one of the reasons I'd wanted him to come as my escort. I trusted him to protect me, but I also wanted to use his familiarity with the Campbells to give me a little more of an edge during my visit.

"No. The women are kept separate. They rarely introduce their girls to any males either in or out of their pack unless they're arranging a mating. My family never considered her as an option for me."

I fell silent for the rest of the run to the gate. Looking around as we sped along the path, I didn't know what to think of the members of the pack we passed. Most of them didn't even look at us and the ones who did only seemed to want to see who we were before dropping their eyes again.

What kind of place was this? What were these people used to dealing with out here in the middle of nowhere?

Art snarled something at the gate attendant before we reached him. I couldn't pick it up even with superior wolfen hearing. Whatever he'd said made an impression because the gate was opened immediately and Art waved us through it with all the impatience of a man on a mission.

"Okay, we've made it outside the gate. Now you have to make a call and we have to stand around and wait for a messenger. Want to tell me why we ran here before you made that call?"

Nathan had a good point: we were going to be waiting a while on a messenger.

Art snorted, "I'm sending for a witch. We won't be waiting anywhere near as long as you think."

He took a knife from his belt and sliced open his palm, squeezing a rivulet of blood onto the ground before saying something which could have been a spell or might have been a name. I couldn't understand well enough to tell either way.

The copper scent of his blood turned my stomach. I twisted my head to bury my face in the crook of Nathan's neck. He was hardly strained from our mad run, but he had exerted himself enough for his body to offer up a few drops of sweat. His rich musk grounded me again, getting me through the worst of my nausea.

A petite woman appeared before us without even stirring the leaves on the trees. One minute we were standing outside the gates just the three of us and the next she had joined us taking our party from three to four.

"Arthur, is there a reason other than laziness for you to be summoning me?"

"Arthur?" Nathan asked, sharing a grin with me as we learned the Inspector's full name.

"Moonglow doesn't take kindly to magic. The whole place is surrounded with iron. They've got secondary iron borders around the Alpha House and Pack House. I can't leave the woman with just this boy. Why? Aren't you happy to see me, Justice?"

The woman held out her hand for the sample package Art carried. She rolled her eyes with an eloquence I thought said a lot about her relationship with Art.

"As happy to see you as I am to greet Mother Nature every month."

"Pretty happy then. I'll take the compliment and say thank you."

"Oh yes, it was meant as a compliment."

"The alternative is you wind up in Rachel's position," Art tilted his head in my direction so the woman looked at me before noticing my swollen belly and looking away again.

"Point taken. I'm not in any hurry to add to my brood. I'll get this to the lab. Do your phones still work? We wondered about signal jammers."

"Phones work as far as I can tell."

"Then next time? Call me first. I'm not some dog like you. I don't come on command."

"I would beg to---"

"You would beg, Arthur," she broke in, eyeing him with a malevolence I could feel down into the marrow of my bones before she vanished from view as suddenly as she had appeared.

"She was pleasant. One of your former lady loves? Which of your children came from her?" Nathan asked and I chuckled as I realized he was probably right about her relationship to Art given how she'd treated him.

"The twin boys. She's never going to forgive me for them either. Let's get Rachel back to the cabin so she can call her own baby daddy. The last thing we need is Wright showing up to start a war."

I really hoped my phone worked. I didn't think I could take being cut off from the outside world any more than I was already.