Read Online Forbidden by Cathy Clamp - Free Book Online Page B

It was stiff, like there was something inside other than paper, and the address was written in Yupik, the Cyrillic alphabet—and again in English, probably translated at some point in its journey. “Thanks, Fred. Really.” Smiling, Alex turned to go.
    Fred called out, “Hope it’s good news, kid. You’ve had enough of the bad stuff in your life. See you at the meeting tonight?”
    The last sentence brought him up short and he turned with his hand still on the door. “Meeting?”
    â€œYeah, at the Community Center. The mayor said it was mandatory. Some big announcement. Maybe they found the kids.” He shook his head with a worried expression. “Hope they’re safe. Cute kids, those two.”
    Alek felt his brows furrow. “Really? That’s weird. I just saw Van a minute ago. He didn’t say anything about a meeting, or about Kristy or Darrell.”
    Fred shrugged. “He’s been going from store to store, telling people. Don’t know why he forgot to tell you. But anyway … it’s tonight at seven o’clock. I’d be there if I were you. They don’t do mandatory meetings very often.”
    True. Very true. The last mandatory meeting was to announce they’d caught a snake shifter in a stolen car trying to sneak into town on a back road, nearly a year ago. Good thing they’d caught him too. The car had been filled with knives and ammo made of silver. Deadly to their kind. But he’d been turned over to Wolven without violence.
    â€œThanks, Fred. I’ll be there.” He’d tell Claire too. Maybe that’s what the meeting’s for. It would make sense to introduce a new town resident to everyone at once. Yeah, that seemed logical.
    The image of the splotch of red against the white bandage flashed through his mind. What if she was seriously hurt? What if they didn’t notice until it was too late and she collapsed?
    Alek wrenched his mind away from thoughts of Claire. First things first: the letter. It had taken nearly a month to learn enough of the Yupik language to write the first letter to Mikhail, Siberia’s pack Alpha. He’d painstakingly copied each letter onto the page, not even sure if the grammar had made sense. Then the Omega in his old pack in Chicago had read it and corrected some of his syntax. Yurgi had told Alek he hoped that Sonya wasn’t there. He said that being a woman in the Siberian pack was a hard life and he would help do whatever was necessary to bring her home if she was there. Nikoli, the wolf representative on the Council, said through Yurgi that he would also help … if there was proof she was there and was being held against her will.
    In other words, he wouldn’t confront Mikhail unless negotiations failed. The Siberian leader must be one tough S.O.B. for the head wolf to not want to get into a fight with him.
    Alek fought with the strong shipping tape for nearly two minutes, finally resorting to using his teeth before he realized he was going to destroy the contents if he ripped the package open using Sazi strength. Defeated, he returned to the post office to find a grinning Fred standing just inside the door, holding out a pair of scissors. “They use a lot of tape over there. Figured you’d need these.”
    They were sharp, like twin razor blades, but it still took multiple snips to get through the packaging. Alek handed the scissors back before slowly removing a cardboard file folder from the envelope. A slim stack of pages lay inside.
    Alek closed his eyes. Was his little sister found at last?

 
    CHAPTER 7
    Claire was definitely in a cat lair. The back office of the police station where she sat, waiting for the chief and the mayor to finish talking in the front room, was thick with scents and none of them were good. Granted, she had expected the lingering scents of fear, anger, and worry. Those could be expected in any law enforcement office. But