Feral Lust (Feral Souls Series - I) (18+) [Currently Editing]

thirty-three.

"I have a theory," Celeste announced, getting comfortable on Elliot's bed. Unbridled emotions welled up in Elliot's heart but he suppressed them, instead, focusing on his envy which had become the supreme feeling as of then.

"And have you, pray tell, shared this thought of yours with Callahan already?" He retorted which resulted in a snort from Celeste.

"Don't get territorial and petty. I am not a bloody lampost for you to pee on and call yours."

"No," Elliot stepped closer to the bed, "but you're my mate." His voice was bordering on a whisper, however, the intensity of anger it carried could not be mistaken.

"Unfortunately so," Celeste decided to proceed confidently, despite the surge in her heartbeat, "however, that does not make me anyone's property. I am my own," she paused, squaring her jaw and straightening her spine as much as she could on the feather-soft mattress, "before anyone else's."

"From what I comprehend, you have then accepted yourself to be mine?" Elliot's eyes held a brightness that could swallow the darkness altogether.

"Uhm, I don't mean to intrude... but I was told that we had something portentous to canvass."

"Oh, hey! Cal, my buddy!" Elliot clasped Callahan's shoulder a little too hard, "we were just waiting for you, my friend."

Callahan, in turn, raised an eyebrow, his gaze volleying from Celeste to Elliot and back.

Celeste tried her hardest to restrain herself from laughing, but in the end, she failed to be strong enough.

Her laughter came out as a squeak at first, scaring both the men into thinking that she was having a problem in breathing all of a sudden. However, in the next moment, she released all the laughter at once. Her eyes turned misty with happy tears.

Elliot was caught off guard. To him, Celeste's laugh held a semblance to what rain has for a drought-ridden land, as food does for a homeless individual - a reason to live another day and be optimistic in spite of all the pessimism surrounding one.

If it was even viable, he fell harder.

When Celeste took in his expression and came into senses regarding what her mate was feeling, all the emotion left her face at once.

"So," she started, clearing her throat in an attempt to dispel the air of awkwardness, "I was just telling Elliot that I have a theory or incertitude if you will," her mate and Callahan nodded for her to keep going, "we are all conscious of the fact that there is a traitor, roaming free among the pack members, who must have been responsible for poisoning the food which those hapless wolves must have consumed before the others. Now, I believe, it has to be someone from either the lower-ranked members or one of the halves owing to their ease to access all the food that is served and brought in," she stopped to analyze their expressions.

Up until that point, both men appeared to concur.

"But there are a few things which I cannot put a finger on, and it's disconcerting. When the same predicament had taken place before, in the rogue pack, it was four wolves that had been affected. Isn't it a bit peculiar that the count is the same? Also, if it was the food that had been laced with poison, why, if anyone else had it too, did the toxin work on just the four?"

The silence, following Celeste's confab, was dense.

"I would admit that these are sound questions but unless we have had the doctor give us some solid intel on the remains, we cannot draw an austere conclusion," frowning, Elliot stated.