Gatsby Wolves, Vol. 4

Kade set the phone receiver down with a sigh. It sounded like they were having a house guest. He had only met Clara briefly at the wedding and she seemed shy around him, but anyone involved with the pack was naturally under their protection. Especially from Kade, as the alpha. Not that Celine would have given him another choice.

Almost as if on cue, Tommy stopped in to drop off some paperwork for Kade. Kade raised his hand to stop him before he left. Tommy seemed a little nervous, but sat down in the chair across from Kade's desk.

"Your girlfriend, Clara," Kade said. "Did you know she's staying with us?"

"She is?" Tommy said with a frown. "How come?"

"Apparently she got in a fight with her uncle," he explained. "You were working, so she went to find Celine."

"I'm sorry," Tommy said quickly. "I can come get her off your hands after work."

"No, that's alright," Kade said. "Truthfully, she might be more comfortable with us than she would be alone in your apartment with you. She seems like the conservative sort."

"She is," Tommy admitted. "Not in a bad way, though. In a really nice way. Um, thank you. For helping her. And letting me know."

"What do you know about her?" Kade asked. "About her uncle?"

Tommy seemed to tense at the mention of her uncle and pursed his lips into a tight line.

"I dunno, he yells a lot," he said. "She says he's overprotective, but I think he's just trying to control her. It worries me sometimes. I'm worried he might hurt her physically."

Kade felt his stomach flip a bit, knowing the uncle had hurt Clara already, but that wasn't Kade's information to share. He was sure Clara would tell him if she wanted him to know.

"Do you know anything else about him?" Kade asked. "Where they live? What he does for work?"

"I'm not sure where they live," Tommy admitted. "She won't tell me. I always meet her at the diner or at my place. I think they live somewhere uptown, though. It's not close by. As for work, he's unemployed. He's feeding off her diner tips and the money her parents send him. Barely ever leaves home."

"And why is that?"

"I dunno. Maybe he broke a law or something? Hiding from the watch?"

"Maybe," Kade agreed, giving him a reassuring smile. "Well, she's in good hands until we sort it out. Maybe you should stop by the house tomorrow. It's Saturday. Take her out somewhere nice, put a smile on her face. She could use it."

"Sure, I'll do that."

When Kade got home that evening, he found Clara sitting on the floor with Emelie while Emelie showed off her reading skills and read a book out loud to her. Celine was in the kitchen, fixing an extra special supper for their house guest. Kade didn't expect the girl to eat much. She was thin as a twig and looked exhausted, though she was a good sport about listening to Emelie.

"Mills, give Clara a chance to breathe, please," Kade said.

Clara suddenly stood when she noticed him. She was so nervous, she could hardly get words out.

"Mr. Rosier," she said. "U-uhm, thank you. F-for letting me s-stay here-"

"You and Tommy really are great for each other," Kade chuckled. "Relax, kid. We're happy to have you. I hope you don't mind that I told Tommy you were staying with us. I left the details up to you."

"Thank you," she said again. "I'll tell him everything. I just didn't know how he'd take it."

"Well, he's protective," Kade said. "We all are. You grew up independent, right?"

"Yeah," she said. "I have some relatives in a pack, but we don't talk to them much."

Kade gave a slow nod. Things were starting to sound familiar. As they sat down for dinner, Emelie wouldn't stop talking. When she asked if Clara was the sister Kade had promised her, he nearly spit his drink out.

"Emelie, please," he begged. "If you don't calm down for Clara, do it for me, will you? You've hardly touched your mashed potatoes."

"I don't like mashed potatoes," she pouted. "They're mushy."

"That's because they're mashed," Kade explained. "Your mother mashed them with her own two hands. Are you going to let her hard work and love go to waste?"

She reluctantly started picking at her potatoes and Celine gave Kade a small smile. After dinner Clara settled into the guest room and Emelie was dragged to her own room. She tried her best to stay awake, she fell asleep within five minutes of laying her head down.

Kade and Celine started getting ready for bed too, and as he started to settle down Celine sat beside him and handed him a small package. He raised a brow at her.

"More anniversary gifts?" he asked.

"Something like that," she said.

When he opened the package, he groaned. It was a pair of reading glasses.

"You went all the way to the doctor for a prescription and refused to order them," she said. "So I went ahead and did it for you."

"I went to the doctor so he could tell me that wolves don't lose their sight that bad," Kade insisted. "I didn't think he'd tell me I needed glasses."

"Well you do," she said. "Please put them on."

He reluctantly put the glasses on, and was surprised to find Celine a little flustered when he did.

"Is it that bad?" Kade asked.

"Quite the opposite," she told him with a kiss. "You look very distinguished."

"No one else gets to see me wear them," he said.

She rolled her eyes and settled on her side of the bed while Kade picked up his book on wolves again. Turned out that he did need the glasses, after all. One chapter in particular, caught his attention. A chapter about dead and exiled pure wolves.

Exile is a fate worse than death to a pure wolf. Many choose to end their own lives after being disgraced, to avoid being cast out from the pack. Those who are cast out will usually choose to live in hiding, and are unlikely to be accepted in another pack.

Kade nudged Celine and pushed the book into her hands, pointing at the excerpt he was reading.

"Doesn't this sound familiar?" he asked her. "I mean, didn't Wes say that his brother in law jumped in front of a train after failing to defeat him in a challenge a few times? He wasn't exiled, but he was disgraced. What was his name?"

"Elliot," Celine said. "What are you trying to say? He didn't die?"

"If a wolf died as publicly and gruesomely as jumping in front of a train, we would have heard about it," Kade told her. "It would have been headlined in the papers. The MacIntosh clan didn't think to check, they just accepted the news when they heard it. And it doesn't sound like Euna was very attached. What if there's a third sibling? One that she's not in contact with?"

"An independent sister," Celine said slowly. "One who might not know about what goes on with the pack, and unknowingly sent her daughter to stay with her brother."

"Elliot is alive, and I think Clara is his niece," Kade said. "Is that stupid? Fuck, it's stupid isn't it? I'm starting to lose it."

"No, it's not stupid," she said. "You might be on to something here. That's why he didn't want her at the wedding. He's trying to frame you, and he can't have her getting too close and finding out the truth."

"Maybe he's starting an army of feral newborns to take Wes down," Kade said. "And he's using that whistle to make them feral. That fucking whistle. There's nothing in any of these books about it."

"Then it looks like the whistle is the next thing we need to find out about," Celine said. "We can't do much without knowing how to resist it. And we should probably keep Clara close by."

"You don't think he'd send a feral shifter after us because we have her, do you?" Kade asked. "I mean, to our house. At night. When we're asleep."

"I don't think he'd send someone after his niece like that," Celine said.

"What about Emelie?"

There was a beat of silence. Emelie had been taken before, so there was really no way to say she wouldn't be attacked. Clara could probably defend herself long enough to wake Celine and Kade up, but he wasn't so sure about her.

"She can sleep in our bed until we figure it out," Celine said. "She loves it, anyways. It's like a slumber party."

Kade gave her a nod and Celine got up to get her. She returned a minute later, carrying a half-asleep Emelie into the room and laying her down in bed. Illaria protectively stayed close by, and while Kade didn't like having the creature in the bed he let her curl up with Emelie. Emelie cracked her eyes open to look at Kade.

"Sleepover?" she mumbled.

"Yeah, sleepover," he said.

"Are those glasses?"

"Yeah."

"They look funny."

"Back to sleep, bug."