There was quiet amusement in Ashleigh’s tone and Freya was pleased to see that she was coming to accept Reasa into their family. It would have made things challenging if she had continued to resist her son mating with the woman who had initially come over from Europe to assassinate him. It was good that they would have the best of starts to their life together with the blonde wolf’s acceptance.
“The sooner we get this over with the sooner we will be home,” Nors pointed out, dropping a quick kiss on his mate’s lips before turning to his sister. “Do you want to start at the attack point?”
“That makes sense,” Freya answered, waiting until Ashleigh had headed back inside the house and the door closed securely behind her. “You will have to take the lead, Nors. I cannot trust myself not to take Michael’s head if I get my hands on him and that will only irritate Rafe as our instructions are to bring him back alive. I can do without another lecture on what it means to be pack.”
Her brother smiled, quickly tying his long auburn locks back on a ponytail at his nape. Freya’s resigned tone about pack etiquette always made him smile, as well as earned her his pride. His beautiful sister had come such a long way in the last quarter of a century, though she hadn’t lost sight of her limitations. Realistically, he should have been the one concerned about possibly losing control as it was his son and his mate who had been hurt by Michael’s actions. However, he had spent all his life being the reasonable one, always looking out for Freya, that it was second nature that she would turn to him when she was worried about being able to maintain control.
“Dead vampires tell no tales, Freya, and we need Michael to be singing like a canary. Try to keep that in the forefront of your mind just in case you do come face to face with him, and I am not there to intervene.”
She rolled her eyes at him, stretching her arms above her head to loosen some of the tension in her shoulders. “Singing like a canary? Where do you get your vernacular from? Actually, don’t answer that, I’ve heard how most of the pack speak. I swear you grow more like a wolf every day, brother mine.”
“Something you might benefit from,” he countered as he turned in the direction where the assault had happened only hours before. “Come on, I want to get this over with so I can get back into bed with my mate.”
“Lead on, then, and I will dutifully follow.” Freya couldn’t hide her amusement as he snorted loudly and then took off into the trees. She also couldn’t deny the bubble of excitement that was starting to infuse her. It had been a long time since she had not only been on a sanctioned hunt, but also spent any alone time with her brother. It felt as if the years had suddenly rolled back and it was just the Erikssons against the world. She hadn’t realised how much she had missed it.
Smiling she took off after Nors, vanishing into the thick treeline surrounding the main pack compound. Her vampiric senses kicked into gear instantly, as she focused on the task at hand. In less than ten seconds, she had caught up with her brother and was fanning out on his left side, immediately falling into old habits of when they had hunted together in the past. Freya took a wide circle towards the attack point just outside their boundary line, meeting up with Nors as he circled in from the right.
“He headed that way,” Nors growled, wrinkling his nose at the confusing scents all around them.
“You’re sure?” Freya wasn’t really questioning her brother. He wasn’t usually wrong about things but the area had already been sanitised and the vampire bodies burnt. There was still the lingering scent of death all around them, mixed in with the many packs scents of everyone involved. It wasn’t unreasonable to double check they were picking up the correct scent.
“Positive… he has a rather unique… odour.”
Freya backtracked over Nors’ trail until she picked up what he meant. “There’s something very wrong with him,” she commented, her tone conversational despite the fact she was wrinkling her nose at the smell.
“I guess we’ll find out what when we catch up with him,” her brother answered. “Let’s find where he went to ground…”