TEMPORARY MATES PERMANENT CRAVINGS novel Chapter 169

One hundred and sixty nine

LISA POV

The drive out of the pack wasn’t exactly safe, but we found our way out.

My father’s pack clearance had given us a narrow window through the military-designated route, and the convoy. moved fast through it. Two vehicles in front, one behind, all of them carrying Cameron’s guards. My father sat in the lead car. I sat in the middle one with my mother and Dr. Harry, watching the trees change as we crossed into neutral land.

I stopped counting the checkpoints after a while.

It took three hours to reach the neighboring pack’s transport hub, and every checkpoint we hit added time. The guards at the first gate looked at the documents twice before waving us through. At the second, they held us for nearly twenty minutes while someone on the other end of a radio confirmed our clearance.

When we finally reached the neighboring pack’s airport, the weather had already turned.

The airport was regional and small, with a low ceiling and a departures board cycling through three destinations. The kind of place where the coffee machines were older than the planes. The rain had started while we were still on the road, and by the time we pulled in, it was coming down hard enough to reduce visibility to the edge of the

runway.

The woman at the check-in desk told us that all flights were grounded until the weather corridor cleared and security lanes had been re-verified following the lockdown protocols. The estimate was six hours.

I found a seat near the far wall, away from the main body of the room, and sat with my bag on my lap. My mother sat beside me. Harry brought water and then went to stand near the window and look at the rain the way he looked at most things, like he was taking notes.

My phone connected to signal the moment we crossed out of the border zone, and I stood there watching the bars fill in like they had been waiting for permission. Four missed messages from Sasha. One from James, asking when we were landing. Nothing from Cameron.

I looked at the old texts between us. The last one I had sent. Still unread.

A guard stepped aside a few meters away and answered a call.

“Yes, she’s here… no, stable… we’re waiting for clearance.”

I didn’t hear the rest, but I could tell it was Franklin.

I leaned back in my seat and let the noise of the terminal fill the silence.

My father was standing near the entrance doors, watching my mother. He was not trying to be subtle about it.

She was on her phone and wasn’t using her thick-framed glasses.

I watched my father watch her.

He had spent years assuming she would stay exactly as he had last paid attention to her. That was the thing about people who took others for granted. They froze you in the moment they stopped looking, and they genuinely believed you would be standing in the same place, waiting, when they finally glanced back.

She was not waiting. She was with Alpha Kieran now.

I heard her say his name, and whatever conversation followed put a full smile on her face that had nothing to do

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with the airport or the delay or anything in the room we were standing in.

My father had his hands in his jacket pockets by then. He was looking at the departure board.

We boarded when the rain had eased enough for the tower to give clearance and the security lanes had processed. My father walked us to the gate. He gave Harry a nod. Then he turned to me.

“Keep your head down,” he said to me. “Stay out of anything that doesn’t concern you. Don’t get involved in the politics of that house.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, Lisa.”

“I know you mean it.”

He pulled me in for a side hug. Then he stepped back and looked at my mother.

“Take care of yourself.”

My mother said, “Goodbye, Richard,” and walked toward the gate.

I gave my father one more look before I followed her. He was already watching us go.

We boarded.

The flight was short. Too short for how much had happened. The rain followed us halfway, then cleared enough for the pilot to adjust course.

We transferred at a regional hub and came into Silver Creek by convoy, the same way we had left but in reverse. The vehicles were already waiting when we landed, two of Cameron’s pack cars, and I recognized one of the drivers from the compound.

The safe house was lit when we pulled in.

James was already outside when we arrived.

He walked up before the car fully stopped. My mom hugged me while I gave him a nudge.

He had grown a beard since I had last seen him, short and still uneven at the jaw, and when he stepped forward to take my bag, I playfully rubbed it, making him laugh.

I sat down on the sofa and immediately felt how tired I actually was, the real kind that settles into your joints,

I pulled out my phone and opened Cameron’s chat.

My last message sat there with no reply. I locked the screen and set the phone aside.

He was probably busy.

Franklin came by that evening. He stepped inside, and the first thing he did was look around the room, cataloguing who was present and what had changed. Then he sat down and looked like a man who had not slept properly in days.

“You made it back,” he said.

“We did,” my mom replied. “You look exhausted.”

“I’ve been moving around.”

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“Is everything alright?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The answer came quickly.

My mother was visibly relieved to see him. She asked if he wanted tea before she even asked how he was.

“Please,” he said.

She asked how Cameron was while she was already moving toward the kettle.

“He’s resting,” Franklin said.

He said it carefully. Not the way you say it when an Alpha has been in back-to-back meetings and needed the afternoon. The way you say it when you have chosen that word because it is the truest thing you can offer without offering more.

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“He’s been pushing,” Franklin said. “He needs it.”

That answered the question without answering it.

I asked about the rogues. Who had found them. Whether they had been identified. Whether the network blackout had been confirmed as a security measure or something else. My mother started explaining the events of the festival to Franklin, and I watched his face while she talked.

He listened. He asked a couple of questions. And then he said, quietly, that the report of rogue movement and the pattern of the network disruption did not fit together the way they should.

“Rogues don’t move without prior signs,” he said. “Patrol disruptions, scent crossing, pack border testing. Those things come first. There was none of that reported.”

“So what does that mean?” I said.

“It means we don’t have the full picture yet.”

Which meant something else was happening. But a thought crossed my mind.

What if this was planned?

I stopped myself.

That didn’t make sense.

Why would anyone go that far for me?

I was a surrogate whose job was to carry the alpha’s child. It would be absurd to position myself as the kind of person a pack-wide network blackout would be designed to contain.

I was not important enough for that.

The festival had been a coincidence of bad timing, and the whole thing had been stressful. I was reading into it because I was tired and a little scared.

But the thought did not fully leave. It moved a little further back and sat there quietly, the way things do when they have decided to wait. 1

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Franklin stayed a few minutes longer, then straightened.

“You’re leaving already?” my mom asked.

“I have things to handle. I’ll check in later.”

He left as quietly as he came.

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