Josephine's Secret

28. Yellow Gummy Bears

He contacts Roland and a couple other wolves to lead the search parties, including Nate, before sending them all off. "Do I go with my training group or do I search with you?" I ask when I get a mind-link from my officer. They have two other trackers on the team, but I know that I'm still expected to show up.

"I'm not staying here by myself while everyone else goes out to look for Eric." I add, stepping a few feet away from my mate. Regardless of what he 'allows' me to do, I will go looking for my brother.

"I didn't say that you're staying here by yourself-"

"No." I shake my head, walking out of the office and into the living room to get my shoes.

"You aren't suppose to be working yourself so hard, Josephine, you still need to heal." Archer sighs, trying to get rid of the distance between us. "Our search teams will be able to find him."

I resist the urge to scoff, not wanting to give him too much of an attitude, "You don't know how he is. If he's hiding in the territory, he won't be anywhere our wolves can find him."

"Do you have an idea of where he is then?"

"Yeah." I stand up after tying my shoe laces. "That's where I'm going."

"I'll send the search wolves to the location." he puts his hand on the front doorknob before I can open it.

"If you do that, he'll bail."

Archer gives me a stare and I can tell that I'm annoying the hell out of him and his wolf right now, especially considering the fact that Alphas can't stand being challenged, but I don't back down. "I'm not going to stand here and argue with you, Josephine," he says in a low tone.

"Then we can make this easy and just go, right?"

I already know that I'm not going to leave the house alone and I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't want to be alone outside anyways. "You can come with me if you want, Archer. I don't care." I say even though I absolutely care if he comes with me or not.

"If I go with you, I'm not leaving your side and you don't leave mine." he tells me, still not letting me open the front door. "I can't have you get hurt again."

"Can we go now?"

"Not wearing that."

"Fine." I huff, not wanting to waste time arguing.

I push past him and head upstairs into the bedroom, smirking when I hear him follow about ten feet behind me. My consciousness tells both my wolf and I that our plan is stupid, but I honestly don't care right now. No one is going to stop me from seeing Eric.

Closing the door to our bedroom only gives me an extra few seconds, but that's just enough time for me to get the window open wide enough for me to slip out. "Come on, Archer!" I call out after I land on the ground, taking off in a jog in the direction of where I think my brother is hiding.

"Josephine?" I hear him call out from the window. "Josephine, the hell!"

"HURRY UP!" I shout, not wanting to be alone out here.

It doesn't take long for him to catch up to me. I'm pretty sure he thought that I was trying to get away without him, but he probably thought otherwise when he realized that I wasn't speeding up as he got closer to me. "I can't believe you jumped out the window." he shakes his head, oddly seeming less annoyed with me than he was before.

I slow my pace as we approach my old neighborhood, the one I lived in before my family broke apart. No one has moved in since we left, but I know that the property isn't under my parents' names anymore. "Why are we in a neighborhood?" Archer asks me, frowning when he notices my discomfort.