"Nice to have you back," Blake patted his shoulder. "You missed quite the story."

"It's good to be back," Jett smiled at his friend. He hadn't seen him yesterday, when he officially came back, but he was glad to be able to see him today. "What did I miss?"

"Wait!" Bree came running up to hug him. "First of all, you should have told me yesterday that you were going to be coming home early. Secondly, you're telling me everything!"

"I am not telling you everything," Jett shook his head. Why on earth his sister would want to know about all of the things that they did astounded him. He had been so caught up in paperwork the day that he came home that he hadn't gotten a chance to really say hello to everyone. He had made sure to tell them when he was gone for a week, just so they wouldn't get worried. But yesterday was much more of a catch-up day for him.

He was still happy that he took that week off to be with Shiro. He had no idea just how insecure the man was until he was left in a room with him for that long. He didn't know why he didn't feel like he was worthy of him even going to look for him, but it broke his heart when he said all of those things. Shiro had finally opened up to him that week, and he was still riding off from that high. He actually got to see him talk all the time, as they told each other stories. Then, when they didn't feel like talking, he found that there was a huge collection of movies in that small apartment for them to watch.

Of course, there were the dirtier parts of those days. The ones that would wind up with them glued to the bed, practically stitched together. He enjoyed just how open Shiro was with him about love. And as soon as Shiro said that he was his, he just about lost control. It took all that was in him not to mark him during that week. He wanted to have him all the time. But he knew that Shiro wouldn't want to. Jett could last another week if need be.

As long as Sakdah didn't find another reason to postpone it again.

"Did he go off on you?" Alex popped in, sipping on some coffee. He seemed calmer than usual lately, and he hadn't had time to figure out why yet.

"Not exactly," Jett sighed. "I'd rather not get into that, though."

"You are way too calm, dude," Blake shook his head at Alex. "It's weirding me out."

"Oh, shut up," Alex rolled his eyes. "You act as if I've never been calm my whole life."

"I think the word that Blake is looking for," Bree said. "Is that he's not acting horny for once in his life."

"What happened while I was gone?" Jett gave a curious glance at Alex. It was strange that he was acting like this. He wasn't staring at every guy who was walking by, for instance. And he wasn't mindlessly flipping through his phone to text every guy he ever fucked. Instead, he was merely drinking coffee and watching them talk.

"Absolutely nothing," Alex shrugged.

"Don't lie to me."

"We haven't been able to get him to talk ever since he disappeared for a day," Bree said.

"I'm still pissed at him," Blake mumbled.

"Why?"

"Because I'm just sitting in the living room," he started his story. "Minding my own business, bouncing one of my girls. And in comes Alex whining about some bad headache that he has, that he refuses to go see Bailey for. So, he sits on the couch with me and starts messing with his phone. I just decide to give him some space, because I have no clue why he was being such a grump. Next thing I know, he yells 'fuck' at the top of his lungs -in front of my baby, mind you - and then completely runs out of the house!"

Jett couldn't help but laugh a little at that. Blake got too overprotective of his babies sometimes. He was worse than his wife when it came to those girls. And cussing in front of them was a complete no-no when it came to his girls.

"And I apologized a thousand times," Alex rolled his eyes. There was the real Alex that he knew and loved. "What do you want, an apology letter written in blood?"

"Possibly," Blake crossed his arms. "Or you could finally tell us all where the hell you went to that day."

"Out," Alex shrugged.

"Come on, Alex," Jett nudged him. "What the fuck happened, and why are you being so secretive about it?"

"I'm not being secretive!" he said. "It's just not a big deal. Besides, you guys were the ones who said that you don't like hearing my sex stories."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Blake stopped him. "You mean you actually got Geo to do it, or you went with someone else?"

"He's my mate," Alex looked at him with an anger that Jett wasn't used to seeing in him. "What do you think?"

"Geo would probably kill him if he went out with someone else," Jett said. "Even if things weren't all set in stone between them."

"He practically did almost kill me," Alex muttered.

"Okay," Blake sat down on one of the sofas. "I cave. What the hell happened?"

"You want the long version," Alex's mischievous smile came back. "Or the short version?"

"Short version, please," Blake said. "I need at least fifty beers in me for the long version."

Jett sat down too, enjoying the light atmosphere that was his pack house. Even though he missed Shiro and being close to him, he couldn't deny that he missed his home as well. He did make sure to check his phone for him, though. He had been so caught up in work that he completely passed out last night without waiting for his reply. It bit him in the ass, because he was having nothing but nightmares that he couldn't seem to wake up from. He felt so relieved to see the text from him that he had gotten home safe when he woke up. He sent a reply to see if he was awake, but he didn't expect one until later. Knowing his mate, he was either going to be sleeping in due to getting home so late, or slammed with a bunch of work like Jett had been when he got home.

Knowing Shiro, it was probably the latter.

"Sent a bad text," Alex quickly explained. "Raced over there before he tried to ghost me; got in a huge argument; settled the argument; and then we fucked."

"Wait," Blake leaned into him. "You mean that he yelled at you and we completely missed it?!"

"Oh yeah," Alex laughed. "It was bad, man. I don't think I've ever been more scared for my life than when he was yelling at me."

"Dammit all!" he shook his head. "I was looking forward to that."

"Was it really that bad?" Bree asked.

"Do you remember when I pissed of Luke from the Noble pack?" Alex asked.

"Yeah."

"Let's just say that Geo made his seem like a marriage proposal," Alex laughed. "It was so damn bad."

"Why the hell are you laughing then?" Jett asked. His friend had the weirdest reactions to stuff like this.

"Well," he said. "It's all over now and we basically got everything settled."

"Until he gets jealous because you're looking at someone else," Blake said.

"I don't think that's ever going to happen," Alex said. There was a sparkle to his eyes that Jett hadn't seen before. It reminded him of when he was with Shiro. That, along with the fact that he was actually calm, made things click into his head faster than normal.

"You're in love with him," Jett smiled.

"Of course, I am," his best friend frowned. "He's my mate. Why do you guys think that it's so hard for me to fall in love when it comes to that?"

"Because you've been with so many people that we lost count in high school," Blake laughed. "He must have whooped you good, Poodle."

"I'm not a poodle," he rolled his eyes again.

Jett didn't say anything to that. He just let all of them continue talking without him. He was glad that Alex finally got his mate. He hadn't known just how happy he could look until now. And both of them had been waiting to find their true love for the same length in time. It was great knowing that neither of them were going to be alone anymore.

Sure, there was going to be some complications, since they were going to both be in leadership positions. But they would figure that out. The whole point was that they had finally found the other half of their soul. They finally found the person that completed them. And that truly made Jett happy.

A knock at the door interrupted all the chatter. Jett walked over and opened it to find a large group there. Nir and Roger being some of them.

"Ah, good to see you, Jett," Roger said. "How was your vacation?"

"It was good," Jett let them all in. "I hadn't known that all of you were coming over, though. Did something happen?"

"Results came back," Nir said. His voice was frank and straight to the point. The urgency in it left Jett on edge. "And more clues have been found. I believe it would be best to talk about it privately."

"Of course," he gestured them in the direction of their meeting hall. He had completely forgotten about the investigation until then. He had meant to ask Shiro what had happened to Teddy, but he had gotten side tracked with the curse's affect on his mate. And, with all the joy that was last week, he had set all of those thoughts aside for another time.

Alex and Bree followed behind the group. Most of them he recognized as Luke and Detective Jim. The rest were merely bodyguards that they had brought. This must have been serious for them to go to such extreme measures.

"So, what have you found?" Jett asked after they had all sat down.

"First of all," he handed him a packet of papers, "The DNA tests came back from the hair follicle. It did, indeed belong to Theodore Hitoro, or 'Teddy' as his friends and loved ones called him."

He looked to see a vaguely familiar face on the file. He was one of the Reverence Pack members that had just started to come out of the woodwork. He hadn't really known him all that much, or talked to him for that matter, but Alex told him enough about him to know that he was a good warrior and an innocent man.

"So, he's dead," Jett said, putting the paperwork back down on the table. "Do we have a motive?"

"It gets a little more complicated," Nir said. "I got the results back from the soil in that area that we were in. In that direct spot where we saw the fresh blood, the test results came back with 30% mixture of human blood, coupled with pig's blood and cow blood."

"What?" Jett looked at the new packet that he gave him incredulously. "What the hell does that mean?"

"That's what I want to know," Nir said. "The blood was Teddy's, but there wasn't enough of it for him to have completely bled out there."

"He could have died from something else," Alex said. "But that doesn't explain the animal blood mixed in with it."

"It sounds like a ritual," Roger shook his head. "But it gets stranger from there."

"When I got the results back from the other soil samples," Nir continued. "We found that there were multiple types of blood, from animal blood all the way to werewolf. And some dating all the way back to five years."

"Five years?" Jett asked. "You mean to say that they've been doing this for five years?!" He couldn't believe this. If these murders had been taking place for so long, then that meant that they had slipped it past all of them. It had happened right under their noses.

"If I may," Detective Jim spoke up for the first time that day. He was older, and always tried to be respectful in his line of work. Jett hadn't worked with him too much, as he was of the Dynamic pack, but he knew him to be good at his job.

"Go ahead," he sat back in his chair, ready to take as much of this as he could in.

"There's something that I didn't tell you yet, Alpha Nir," Jim said. He set down more folders as he talked. "I looked into the DNA results of the older blood you took. The one's that caught my interest were three: Kuijo Jay, Gutang Tung, and Phil Fugil. I don't know if you all remember them that much, but they were all a part of Munni's council when he was in command of the Reverence Pack."

"What were their ranks?" Nir asked. The air was tense as they talked. This was going deeper than they ever thought.

"Kuijo Jay was Munni's Beta," Jim went on. "Phil Fugil was his Delta. Gutang Tung was his Gamma, with whom he replaced with his son, Shin Tung, when he retired from his position."

"Wait," Jett stopped him. "Shin Tung, as in the Shin Tung that's still in the council today?"

"The exact one," Jim told him. "He is the only surviving member of the active council of Munni's. The rest were all reported to have died of either old age, or in combat. However, if that were the case, then their blood wouldn't be there."

"So, the next question," Alex said, his eyes hard and focused. "Is why they would be lying about these guys deaths, and why did it happen the same year that Munni died?"

"Hold on," Jett said. "This is supposed to be about Sakdah. Why is Munni involved in this?"

"Because nothing about this ceremony adds up," Roger spoke. "All we have is a bunch of results from people that either went missing or mysteriously passed away, and more questions than answers. The best thing we can do is try to look back at when this all started."

"We might need to bring Manny in here," Alex looked over to him. "He knows Shin more than any of us."

Jett nodded and sent the message to him. It was a good thing that he was in the pack house that day. This made it all the more handy.

"How many people did you find through your results?" Jett asked Nir.

"We're still finding more with every sample we get," Nir told him. "So far, we have 378 DNA results from people who were either registered under deaths or missing peoples reports."

"And all of them belonged to the Reverence Pack?"

"All of them," Nir nodded. "If all of these people are truly dead, then this is much more than a single murdering. This is a slaughter."

"We still haven't found the reason for all of this," Jett frowned. The more they talked about this, the worse of a feeling he got. It was the same feeling in the bottom of his stomach that he had when he woke up that morning from nightmares. "Why are they doing this?"

"This can't just be to prevent mates anymore," Roger shook his head. "An Alpha wouldn't slaughter that many of his pack due to that. If he did, the curse would affect him as well."

Manny finally came after that. He quickly picked up on the seriousness of the situation and took a seat near Jett.

"Manny," he said. "What do you know about Shin Tung?"

"Shin?" Manny asked. "He's always with his son, Jin, lately. The two of them are practically inseparable. And I never see them when they aren't working. Other than at the carnival with Jin."

"Do you know what he does most of the time?" Jim asked Manny this time.

"Well," Manny stopped to think about it. "There's their family business, of course. Everyone of the council members of the Reverence Pack has a family business in the city."

"What's theirs then?" Alex asked.

"It's a butcher," he said. "I've been there before. They have a lot of good meats."

The room was silent as they all looked at each other. This didn't settle right. And the more he thought about this, the more he wished that he didn't leave Shiro alone. They were getting all of these clues, but where was it leading to? Who exactly was the cause of all of this? And why were they doing all of this?

"There's one more thing," Jim cleared his throat.

"What is it?" Roger asked this time. He must have not clued him in on whatever he was going to say now, because he looked a bit confused.

"When I talked to my contact to see which direction all the Reverence citizens of the city were going in, he pointed in the direction opposite of the area that you found."

"Wait," Alex said. "Isn't that the way that we found this area in the first place, though?"

"You see," Jim said. "He had originally told me that it was Southeast that they ran. But that was over the phone. When I went to talk to him, he pointed me in the opposite direction."

"They were running to hide from it," Alex said. "It has to be."

"Jim," Jett got his attention. "Do you know if these Reverence citizens are in their houses right now?"

"I can figure that out," Jim said.

"Do it," Jett told him, then he looked to Roger. "Can you to try and figure out who these citizens are? Their names, jobs, anything?"

"I'll have my men look them up on the police database," Roger said. "We could also try and ask around some more."

"Those citizens might be our key to figuring this out, then," Jett said. "If they're running away to hide from a ceremony like this, then they must have a reason. If we find out the reason, we can find out what this is truly about."

They all nodded and got up. It was noon at that point. And they all had so many things to do. But for Jett, it seemed like their pack hadn't done much at all. Every time they tried to get any answers out of Shiro or Geo, they would just give them the runaround. This pack was too good at that. The last time he had seen Geo, he looked like he had known exactly what was going on. Only he told him that it wasn't what they thought. He told him that what they found wasn't what it seemed to be.

How could he believe that if there was all of this blood everywhere?

Jett took out his phone. The other Alphas had already left for their duties. He needed some kind of answers. And, since he wasn't going to get it from Geo, he was going to get it from Shiro. He still hadn't gotten any message from him since the night before. But it was common for him to not answer until the end of the day.

He didn't like this. Every time he thought about Shiro, there was a heavy feeling in his gut. His anxiety was through the roof because of it, and it didn't help that he wasn't answering his phone calls. He even tried using his office phone to call him, in an attempt to make him think that it was business.

It was business. He needed to figure this out. Because if Shiro was involved then this was much worse than he thought.

"Alex!" he yelled for his Beta. Alex quickly rushed in there. Both of them were on edge after what they had both heard. "Call Geo. I need to figure out why Shiro isn't answering his phone."

"You aren't going to try and question him about this, right?" Alex asked. "He's not going to be able to answer you if his Alpha told him not to."

"I'm aware," he told him. His nerves were getting to him. "I just need to know why Shiro won't pick up his damn phone."

Alex quickly dialed his mate's number. Thankfully Geo was a little more reachable than his alpha. He answered within the third ring.

"Hey, Hound Dog," he said over the speaker. "What's up?"

"Not now, Geo," Alex said. "Can you give the phone to Shiro, please?"

"What do you mean?" Geo sounded alarmed when Alex said that. "Alex, he's not supposed to come home until tonight. Alpha Jett should be with him at the moment."

His heart almost stopped. After what they had just heard, and the fact that he didn't answer his phone, Jett was this close to panicking.

"Can you mind link with him?"

"Why?" Geo asked. "What's going on?"

"Just try and mind link with him, Geo!" Jett yelled over the phone. Geo must not have known that he was listening in on them.

There was some silence, where it seemed like the world went still.

"Geo?" Alex tried to get his attention over the phone. "Geo, talk to me."

"I need to go," Geo told him, his tone getting serious.