Seethe: First Draft

Seethe: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

LORELAI'S POV

"What did we find?" I'm talking before Xavier's office door has even shut behind me.

Xavier had sent a pack wolf by my cottage to tell me that they'd found something about the Siren, but the messenger hadn't known anything else. It left me running out of my cottage, nearly forgetting shoes. I'd had to run back when I was halfway to the pack house because I'd forgotten to bundle up. With the weather growing colder and my not feeding my Siren side, I'd started to feel colder and colder each day. Thomas had taken to making fun of me because I ended up layering a lot of things that should probably never be layered.

Today, I was wearing leggings and a long sleeved shirt under a short sleeved, mid-length floral patterned dress, thigh high socks over the leggings with knee high boots and a leather jacket over top it all. My hair was braided down my back as it usually was, though I'd taken to wrapping it around into a bun since I've noticed the dark looks a lot of she-wolves have been sending my braid's way. I don't think they'll do anything since the whole Siren terror has yet to wear off.

Thomas looks up at me from where he and Xavier are standing at the desk. They'd both been intently staring at something laid across the desk. I don't take offense that Xavier refuses to look up from whatever it is they're staring at. He's been acting colder and colder each day, his mood seeming to change with the weather. I'm not sure if it's my being here or the fact that we haven't managed to hear anything else from the other Siren since I got here.

"It's not directly related to the Siren."

I raise an eyebrow as I step up to the desk and peer down at what had them both so captivated. "What exactly am I looking at?"

Xavier looks up at me then, and I find myself wishing that he hadn't. I'm not sure if the icy look on his face is how he normally looks or if it's just a recent development. Either way, it feels like a part of me is cracking whenever he looks at me now. "A she-wolf was out in the town last night and she returned this morning looking disheveled and said a rogue tried to lure her off and kill her. She said that he bragged about how she'd be joining multiple other she-wolves he's gotten to. I guess he's got a taste for female wolves he deems as being disloyal to their future mate."

I frown, still trying to make sense of the map lain across his desk. "But why the map?"

"She said that he told her he frequents multiple clubs to find his victims."

I tilt my head to side as I study the different markings made on the map in pen. "And how does she know all this about this guy?"

"Are you saying you think she's lying?"

My eyebrows nearly disappear into my hairline at the dark tone Xavier addresses me with.

"I'm just wondering how talkative this guy is if he's killed as many as he told her about. Which makes me wonder how we haven't noticed something like this sooner."

I hadn't phrased it as a question but Xavier answers nonetheless. "There are some girls that have gone missing that could potentially be his victims. They're girls that we wrote off as just being victims of the Siren but it appears we've got more than one creature plaguing us."

I rest my fingertip on one of the pen markings on the map. "I'm guessing these are the different clubs in town?"

Thomas nods. "We'd marked out the clubs because Sarah couldn't tell us anything else about the girls the wolf had taken. We'd tried to get a scent off of her but he'd dragged her out into the middle of nowhere and she was so coated in mud and twigs when we found her that we couldn't get anything."