disappeared.
That had gone more smoothly than I’d expected. In the future, if I ever
needed to have him do my bidding, I just had to load him up on sugar cereal.
Forty minutes later, I pulled up behind Casey’s Rav4. He leaned out of
his window and waved at the security guard, who laughed and pushed a
button that opened a chain-link gate. The guard eyed me suspiciously as I
passed through with Jaxson’s truck. Whatever.
My phone rang on the seat beside me. Jaxson himself. I answered and
turned on the speaker.
“You didn’t call,” Jaxson said, his voice rough.
“I was busy, but I’m picking up the wolfsbane now.” I parked beside
Casey in front of a three-story red brick factory. Plumes of smoke pumped
out of the roof, and I frowned. Greenhouse gases much? This didn’t look like
a shop.
Casey climbed out of his car and headed over to my window.
Jaxson grunted and continued, “Where are—”
“Hold that thought. My cousin is here.” I stashed the phone and unrolled
the window as I smiled at Casey.
“Stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes, ’kay?” my cousin said.
I nodded. “Be sure to get the strong stuff, just in case I need to douse
Jaxson…you know, if he gets freaky.”
Casey laughed and disappeared through a door in the side of the building.
“You still there?” I asked the silent phone, wondering what the wolfsbane
factory looked like inside.
“Yes.” Jaxson’s voice was even more strained than it was earlier, and I
smiled, imagining the irritated look on his face.
“Where should I meet you?”
“My apartment.”
I scanned the parking lot, making sure the coast was clear. “All right. I’ll
call when I’m headed your way.”
“Wait, what? Where are—”
“Got to go. Talk soon.” With that, I hung up and turned the phone on
silent. Sliding out of the truck, I casually glanced around the building and
slipped through the side door.
My feet stopped short as a mix of disbelief and shock snaked up my
spine.
Before me, stretching the length of the building, were copper stills, steel
vats, and tables manned by workers assembling parts. On either side of them
stood floor-to-ceiling shelves with plastic shipping crates and an appalling
array of arms—smoke bombs, grenades, cannisters, and boxes of what looked
like ammunition.
It was an unholy cross between an industrial meth lab and a weapons
manufacturing plant.
“Fuck,” I gasped, my eyes watering and my skin puckering with blisters,
no doubt from the wolfsbane in the air.
Casey was speaking to a woman who handed him a couple of glass vials.
He looked over his shoulder, and his eyes bugged out when they landed on
me.
“What is that?” I croaked to a man who was clicking several plastic
pieces into an oblong object. My skin burned, and my throat was beginning to
swell.
The worker looked up at me and frowned. “Uh, a pipe bomb. Who are
you?”
“Heyyy!” Casey slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. “I
thought I told you to stay in the car.”
He glanced around wildly, looking totally suspicious.
I pushed him away and coughed. “What. The. Fuck. Casey?”
“Keep your voice down, and don’t freak out.” He ushered me to the door.
“The last thing we need is for your magic to go haywire and blow us all up.”
My jaw slackened, and I stared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. This place would go up like a Roman candle if you
detonated a burst of magic in here. Hence the reason I told you to stay in the
car.”
He shoved me out the door, smiling awkwardly at the workers who were
now staring at us. Once we were outside, he slammed the door. “Don’t say a
word to Mom. She’ll have a fit if she knew you were here.”
My mind spun.
My family was involved in arms manufacturing. Jaxson had been right.
And not just wolfsbane. Chemical weapons and shit.
“Casey, this place…it’s wrong.” I wheezed as I braced for a fit of
coughing.
“Are you okay? What’s the matter with you?” he asked, his face a mask
of concern.
I strode toward the truck, tucking my sleeves over my hands and hoping
he wouldn’t notice the bright red blisters that covered them. It felt like
someone was peeling my skin off with a red-hot knife.
“I’m fine. I’m just shocked,” I said as I sucked in fresh air.
It was a lie. I was more than shocked. Horrified.
Casey appeared beside me and handed me two glass vials of a beige
liquid. “Don’t be. We produce this shit so people can protect themselves.
This is no different than pepper spray or guns. You, of all people, should
understand that.”
I clutched the vials of wolfsbane, feeling sick to my stomach. This wasn’t
a mom-and-pop shop—this was a goddamned factory. My cousin was a nice
guy, but how could I accept that he and his parents were involved in such
evil?
“I don’t understand. This is wrong, Casey, and you of all people should
see that.” I climbed into the truck and slammed the door.
As I drove past the guard’s booth, I glanced in the rearview mirror. Casey
was standing beside his car with a tortured expression on his face.
Was this what my parents had been wrapped up in, too? Had they blown
themselves up while manufacturing chemical weapons that killed
werewolves?
I brushed aside the tear that slid down my cheek as I drove toward the
Midway Dens. Here I’d thought that Jaxson and the pack were the monsters,
but the sad truth that was beginning to surface was far worse.
Maybe the real monsters had been my family all along.
16
Jaxson
I clenched my phone as I took the elevator down to the lobby. Savannah
had called me ten minutes ago and ordered me to meet her outside. Ordered.
Me.
I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
The doors opened, and I cursed the fates as I strode toward the glass door.
“Sir.” The bellman nodded and opened the door for me, and I handed him
a fifty.
My truck was idling in front of the building in the No Parking zone,
Savannah Caine sitting in the driver’s seat like she owned the godsdamned
thing. The problem was, she looked fucking good driving my truck.
I reached for the door handle. It was locked. Savannah glanced at me and
gestured with her thumb that I was going to be sitting in the passenger seat.
I would not have tolerated this shit from anyone else on the planet. Why
her?
My patience dwindling, I crossed in front of the truck, not wholly trusting
that she wouldn’t run me down.
I climbed up and clicked on my seatbelt. Savannah tossed a vial into my
lap. “Where to, grumpy?”
She gripped the steering wheel, and I noticed the pink welts on her hand.
Anger and protectiveness flashed through me, catching me off guard. I slid
the vial into my pocket, worried I might crush it.
“What the hell happe
ned to you?” I growled, my jaw cracking.
Startled, Savannah tugged her sweater sleeve down to conceal her hand.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
She didn’t understand, I couldn’t simply not worry about it. That wasn’t
the way the mate bond worked. I could almost feel her pain and couldn’t tear
my eyes away.
But the last thing I was going to do right now was explain our mate bond.
Hopefully, that would all go away with the cure. If it didn’t, I wasn’t sure
what I would do. Maybe ship her off to Prague, or to another magical city.
The farther, the better.
I gripped the grab handle above the door, and something buckled in the
roof of the cab. “I need to know.”
My voice was low and charged with enough power to compel the answer.
Savannah’s body tensed, and she stared at me. “Casey brought me to the
family business. I went inside, and my skin blistered. It’s fine and already
better than it was.”
Better? My head snapped to her, fury coursing through my veins. I’d
torch that fucking place if I found out where it was.
Savannah glided her hand over the seat and placed it on my leg. “Are you
okay?”
Her touch sent heat surging through my body, which only exacerbated my
rage and added an unrelenting urge to claim my mate.
I glanced down at her hand, my chest rising and falling with each strained
breath. I couldn’t help but stiffen as indecent images filled my mind. “That’s
not helping matters.”
Shock and then understanding crossed her face, and she removed her
hand. “Sorry. What can I do to calm you down?”
“Drive.” I punched Alia’s address into my phone and clicked it into the
holder on the dash.
She would be able to smell my rage and desire just as easily as I could
sense hers, so I cranked up the AC and rolled down the window even though
it was a blistering hot day. Sitting so close to her was abject torture, and it
took twenty minutes in traffic before I managed to wrestle my murderous and
lecherous urges into submission.
We didn’t talk until Savannah pulled up beside Alia’s building and turned
off the car. “Feeling better?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, detecting the faintest trace of amusement in
her concerned expression. She had no idea how attractive my wolf found her.
“Let’s go,” I said, climbing out of the truck. “And give me the keys.”
After slamming her door shut, she stopped in front of the truck and
dangled the keys out of reach. “Can’t handle a woman in the driver’s seat?”
I closed the distance and snatched them from her hands. There were only
inches between us, and it was impossible to miss the swell of her breast as
her pulse quickened. A bead of sweat rolled down her collarbone, and I
leaned forward, wanting to taste it. I paused, breathing in her citrus scent like
a fine perfume.
Instead, I dragged my nose up her neck, feeling the prickle of her skin as
shivers worked their way through her. “You can drive my truck anytime,
darling. All you have to do is ask.”
One more hint of her fucking sweetness, and I was going to lose my
damned mind. I stepped away abruptly, leaving her breathless and wanting.
Her desire wrapped around me, taunting me like a siren’s song.
Fuck, this was going to be harder than I’d expected.
Though instinct urged me to claim her and ravage her body like the queen
my wolf wanted her to be, I couldn’t let that happen. Sex would seal our fate,
and that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, no matter how much I wanted to
fuck Savannah Caine.
We needed to cure her today before both of us did something reckless.
Steeling my resolve, I opened the front door to Alia’s building and waited
for Savannah to enter.
She squared her shoulders and walked past me, feigning disinterest,
though I could smell her heat, and it only aroused me further.
I dragged my hand through my hair and followed her to the elevator. The
ride up was tortuously slow, and when the doors opened, Savannah bolted
out.
The shifter standing guard in front of Alia’s apartment tensed but
recognized me and spoke into a small radio on his shirt. A recent break-in
had changed the potion maker’s perspective on the reliability of demons.
A few seconds later, the heavy wooden door swung open, and Alia
appeared in a silky floral dress. “Jaxson.” She eyed Savannah and smiled.
“And Savannah, nice to meet you. Please come in.”
She motioned for us to enter her loft.
“Thank you so much for helping us,” Savannah said.
“Of course. I’m sorry you’ve been afflicted, and I hope I can help with an
antidote. But I just want to make sure you understand that the cure may be
worse than the affliction. Depending on when you were…infected, it might
take several days to work through your system. Whatever you experienced
before, this will be far, far harder on you.”
Savannah’s heartbeat raced, and I could smell the fear rising from her. It
was one thing to hear this over the phone, another in person. She set her jaw.
“Nothing could be worse than this. I need to be myself again.”
My stomach twisted as my desire to protect her wrestled with deep
resentment. Her blatant disgust and horror at being a wolf was infuriating.
The sooner we got rid of her wolf problem, the sooner I’d be rid of the
bond.
Lies.
Alia nodded. “Okay, then. You have the wolfsbane?”
“Jaxson has it. I hope it’s enough,” Savannah said, taking in the huge
space Alia had decorated with plants and books and faerie lights.
I gave the vial of the cloudy mixture to Alia, my claws aching at the
thought of that poison. If Savannah knew how many people had been killed
by that stuff, she might think differently of the LaSalles she called family.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
The apothecary shook the vial as she crossed to a table in the corner that
was covered in bottles and bundles of dried herbs. “This will be more than
enough. I just need one more ingredient—your blood.”
Savannah spun around, her eyes dropping to the small gold knife and dish
that Alia picked up from the table. She crossed her arms. “Absolutely not. If
there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t give your blood to anyone.”
Alia shrugged. “Wise. I understand your mistrust. You don’t know me,
and blood is a very powerful magical component. Thankfully, we can make
do with other things.” She rummaged around on a shelf and held out a
disposable plastic cup. “Fill this up a little. In the bathroom.”
Savannah looked on for a second without comprehending, and then her
eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Your choice. We need to test how it reacts with an essence from your
body.”
Savannah turned red, and I could smell her embarrassment. I smiled and
took a seat on the sofa, amusement replacing my earlier sour mood.
“Think of it like a pregnancy test.” Alia handed Savannah the cup and
motioned toward a room at the other end of the loft. “The ba
throom’s back
there.”
Savannah’s jaw slackened, and then, glaring at me, she turned on her heel
and stormed toward the bathroom.
After five minutes, she returned and awkwardly handed Alia the cup.
“Wipe that grin off your face, Jaxson,” she said.
I most certainly would not. Savannah took great pleasure in irritating me
and was due for a taste of her own medicine.
“So how does this work?” Savannah watched as Alia plucked various
herbs from the table and crushed them in a mortar.
“It’s fairly simple.” Alia grabbed a tincture from the shelf and poured it
into a beaker, then sprinkled in a mixture of red and white powder and stirred
it with a glass stick as it fizzed and turned pink. “I’ll add the wolfsbane and
urine, and the solution will turn red if you have lycanthropy.”
Savannah put her hands over her face and sighed. “Can’t you just give me
the cure? I know it’s lycanthropy.”
Alia smiled. “I’m sure it is, but I need to be certain what you have before
I administer you a potentially toxic antidote. Now, please step back as I pour
in the wolfsbane. In concentrations like this, it’ll burn your eyes.”
Savannah didn’t need much convincing. She crossed the room and stood
beside me, arms wrapped around her. Alia put on a pair of safety glasses,
then opened the vial of wolfsbane and poured two drops into the beaker.
Even ten feet away, my throat tightened, and Savannah launched into a
coughing fit.
“Sorry!” Alia vigorously mixed the potion, adding in several more
ingredients. “As soon as I add the pee, the wolfsbane will be rendered inert
and it shouldn’t affect you.”
Savannah’s pulse was distractingly loud, and she nervously bit her lower
lip. She wanted the cure to her lycanthropy, and though that’s what I also
wanted, something about it still stung.
A muscle in my jaw tensed as Alia dumped the cup of Savannah’s urine
into the beaker. I leaned forward, anxious for the solution to turn red. But it
didn’t.
Alia gasped and took several steps back as the contents of the beaker
turned a blueish purple and began bubbling. “Oh, no!”
She dropped into a crouch as the beaker exploded, sending glass shards
across the room.
I was up in a flash, drawing Savannah’s body to my chest as the scalding
projectiles embedded into my back. Growling at the pain, I looked down at
Untamed Fate (Magic Side: Wolf Bound Book 2) Page 12
