“You are not wrong. Yours was a one-of-a-kind situation. But you exceeded expectations, Alexi. Marvelously so.”
“What expectations did you have of a baby being thrown into a wolf’s den?”
“You were no baby.”
“What?” I pulled up short, my expression open and utterly readable.
“Do you not remember?” She sighed. “Perhaps not. You were only a few years old, after all.”
“I was a few years old when you gave me up?”
She nodded slowly.
“You hated me that much, did you?”
“No—no, Alexi. I loved you.”
This time I waved her to silence. “What is it they say: ‘Actions speak louder than words’? I am not here to rehash the past. I am a grown man. I am beyond all this. All I need from you is your scientific knowledge. To help my family. I have a family, you know. I had a wonderful father, a loving mother, and I still have three amazing siblings. I am here because of all of them. The man you see before you? He is the result of their involvement—not yours.”
She swallowed and nodded slowly. “And they are precisely what I could have never provided you with except the way I did,” she whispered. “I am glad they have inspired such love and loyalty from you.”
“Your scientific knowledge and connections, Feldman.”
She winced at hearing me use her last name. Or perhaps she winced because of the way I said it. Venomously.
“Tell me who to see and what to say when I see them.”
“What has happened that finally brought you here? Mother is dead—that much I know because Jessie recently came by with Pietr as part of their Service Learning project. But why now? What happened to force you to come to me?”
“The same company that sprouted from the research of your father’s assistant is tampering with the local school’s food in order to create a gifted group of students. They are taking casualties. Most recently a dear friend of Jessie’s has been made ill. I want them to withdraw the food. I need them to. For Jessie and the others.”
“Ah. There is only one thing that man would want from you, you know.”
“Da. The perfected cure.”
“And you understand why?”
“Da. I do.”
“And you would doom future people to save these current ones?”
I glared at her.
“I see,” she said. “Lean in. This is what you must say and do and who you must say it to.”
Marlaena
The Rusakovas’ avoidance had forced me to make a deal I already regretted with Dmitri. But my wolves were well fed and better dressed and staying at the local Motel 8, where we at least had running water. And hot showers. Often.
But the deal meant I needed to keep a close eye on the Rusakovas. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if it didn’t also mean Gabe felt the need to keep an even closer eye on me. Luckily, Gareth also shadowed me—but it was frustrating at times, having females gawk at them.
Even when we were doing something so mundane as watching a basketball game at Junction High.
Perhaps what I felt about the girls stalking Gareth and Gabriel was the same thing they thought about the way simple human males watched me.
“What?” I snapped at Gabriel.
He shrugged and scooted over on the bleachers, tilting his head as he watched me watching them.
Pietr and Jessica were a few rows below us. She was leaning her head on his shoulder. He was still banged up from the accident—more damage than an oborot would take, but far less than a human at the site of impact. The cure held. So my choices had tightened down again.
Bring him to our side—to Dmitri now—or kill him.
Pietr was trying to watch the game, and—I tried to get a look at the paper and pencil he held—extrapolate some data about the players?
Gabe was still examining me with his eyes, raking his gaze across my face.
“What?!”
“You seem so intrigued by the two of them. And so absolutely curious about him.”
I pulled back and looked at him sharply. “I just don’t get how something like that works,” I said, surprised by the disgust lacing my voice. “He seems to have so much potential.…”
“Seriously?” His eyebrow rose. “Him? We do mean Pietr Rusakova, geek, right?”
“That’s how he appears to you?” I cocked my head.
“Chyyyeah … Have you seen who he hangs with? They make The Geek Squad look like professional athletes.”
I shrugged. “So he’s geek-by-association.”
“Geek, nerd, dweeb … whatever you want to call their breed.”
I laughed. “There’s a difference, you know. Nerds are big on knowing stuff—like, all sorts of stuff—they’re the kings of book knowledge; geeks have skills—they’re tech-savvy. They can do stuff and fix stuff. Nerds know it, but geeks can do it.”
His stare had intensified. He was clearly bewildered by my sudden proclamation.
“And dweebs?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I have no idea.” I cocked my head to mimic his pose, and he smiled. “But it doesn’t matter how you label Pietr Rusakova … no label’s gonna stick.”
“So he has caught your attention.” Gareth bent toward us.
“Only as much as anything shiny and new,” I justified.
But Gabe and Gareth knew I was lying. There was something oddly intriguing about Pietr Rusakova. If I could only figure out what …
A “cured” werewolf was one thing—one really strange, disturbing thing—but Cat didn’t catch my attention the way Pietr did, so it wasn’t the cure.
And regardless of what Max claimed, he didn’t carry the same trace scent the other two did. He was the biggest liar out of them all.
Besides, Max seemed to be someone girls needed a cure against, not someone in need of a cure himself.
“He doesn’t pay you any attention,” Gabriel pointed out in that magical why-waste-my-time-on-subtlety way of his.
“He doesn’t pay his own girlfriend attention,” I corrected. “And I’m not her.”
He rubbed his chin, the sound of his fingers across his short but curling beard reminding me of sandpaper whisking across rough wood. Gabriel was thinking. Hard. I shifted beside him. He dropped his hands away, reaching for my waist.
I slapped his fingers away.
He shrugged and tucked his hands into his jacket’s pockets. “Let’s go.”
Gareth shrugged. “It’s a dull game,” he agreed.
I nodded, and together we ambled away from the school and back to the car Gabe had so recently obtained. “When will you ditch this one?” I asked Gabe as he held open my door for me.
“I figure it has a couple more days left before I need to trade it in. It’s not a bad one, really. Not what I really have my eye on, though…”
I followed his gaze to the candy apple–red convertible sitting in the parking lot. The Rusakovas’ car.
“We’ve been through this. That’s way too hot a car to take, and you know it,” I reminded him.
He slammed my door shut and slid into the backseat, allowing Gareth to drive. “Look who’s suddenly become the voice of reason.”
“Isn’t it ironic?” I countered.
“Yeah. Ironic you keep your hair that screaming red—highly noticeable—instead of your natural color. Brunette, right? Gareth’s told you about it, I’ve hinted about it, but still—you have to be you, don’t you?”
“Gabe…,” Gareth warned.
“You have no idea who I really am,” I snapped. “Why I do what I do.”
“That’s because you don’t let anyone close enough to know you.”
“So is that what you want, Gabe? Some deep spiritual connection with me? Do you really wanna know me?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but I spun in my seat and cut him off.
“Because what I think you really wanna know is what’s the best path to gaining control of this little pack I’ve established. I
get the feeling that for you I’m just the means to an end. And I’d bet there’s already some twisted plan forming behind that thick skull of yours.”
His mouth closed, jaw tightening. From between thinned lips he asked, “Is that what you think of me? Of my loyalty to you? Damn it. If I’m twisted, it’s because of you.”
Gareth silently pulled the car out of its parking space and started down the road.
“You know as well as any member of the pack that loyalty has nothing to do with this. It’s normal—even preferable—for a pack to have an alpha of each gender: alpha male and alpha female. You’re doing what seems natural—trying to maneuver into the position of top dog.”
He stayed quiet, but I knew he weighed my every word.
“It’s natural for you to want that, Gabriel,” I said. “But it’s also natural for me to pursue what I want.”
“You mean who you want.”
My lips puckered. “That, too.”
“So how much wolf are we, ’laena?”
“What?” I looked from Gareth to him, puzzled by his question.
“How much wolf are we? You always act like we’re more wolf than man … or woman. What is it you believe?”
“I—” I sensed a trap. No matter how I answered, I’d somehow be wrong. Somehow I’d get tangled into one of Gabriel’s weird webs of logic. “We’re more animal than man. Or woman. More wolf.”
“Of course,” he replied, his jaw working. “You do realize that if we’re more wolf, the natural order of things really comes down to what the dominant male wants. Yes, you can lord over the females, but in a pack, the alpha male rules all.”
“Maybe I’d agree if I was truly dealing with an alpha male.”
“You are dealing with an alpha,” he said, slamming a palm against the back of my seat. “He’s just not the one you want. Neither is Gareth.” He groaned, slouching down in his seat. “And the one you want … well, he doesn’t want you.”
I snarled at him, feeling my teeth lengthen to threatening points.
“Don’t kill the messenger,” he said, holding up one hand. “Pietr doesn’t want you, and Gareth doesn’t get you.”
Gareth shook his head, the beads the pups had so recently put on the end of each of his dreadlocks rattling.
“Not like I do,” Gabe concluded.
I wanted to scream. “It’s not going to happen. You and me—taking on the world together? Not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t feel that way about you.”
“Taking on the world together doesn’t require a romantic connection,” he stated.
I looked at him sharply.
“Why not view it as a simple partnership?”
I couldn’t believe he was being so bold—with Gareth listening. And I couldn’t believe Gareth was just listening. Maybe I’d been wrong, maybe all I had were beta males.… “Because more would inevitably be expected.”
“Not by me.”
“By the pack.”
“So you’ll go it alone, shoulder the full responsibility for the pack even though you know I’ve limited my expectations and that Gareth—sorry, buddy—will never fulfill yours?”
“You’re speaking of things you don’t have full knowledge of,” Gareth grumbled at Gabe.
I rested a hand on Gareth’s arm. “Leave Gareth out of this. If that’s the way it needs to be.…”
“What do I need to do to prove myself to you? To show you I’m the alpha male this pack needs to survive and thrive? I’ve fed us, I’ve taken a gunshot for us, I’ve connected you to Dmitri.… What other proof do you need?”
Then I saw them at a stop sign and in the red convertible—her leaning on him in the backseat as Max drove, Pietr mindlessly stroking Jessica’s arm.
And Gabe noticed, too, and growled out his anger.
Jessie
Having forgotten a notebook, I was back at my locker during class when he found me.
“Hey, Jessica.”
I turned so fast my neck hurt. I didn’t know what it was about the guy, but something about Gabriel told me he was far from his mythologically angelic namesake. Something about the way he watched me and talked to me just put me on edge. “Hey.”
“I was thinking about the assignment in Ashton’s class and wondered if maybe you had some advice.”
I nodded, a slow bob up and down of my head. “Sure. What do you need help with about it?” I glanced down the hall. Why did everyone always seem to disappear whenever I had an extreme sense of distress brewing in my stomach?
“I was just wondering what she meant by this question.” He pulled out the textbook and flipped to the right page, pressing the book up against the wall.
Hesitantly, I looked over his shoulder. He was much too close for my comfort.
I tried to work past it and focus on his question. I rested my hand on the page. “Oh. Basically she wants us to—”
And then he sniffed me. Pulled down a deep breath of my scent.
I jumped back from him, releasing the book and letting it drop to the tile floor with a thump. “What are you doing?”
But I knew because it was something Pietr had done when I challenged him on that first day of class—Gabriel had taken in my scent so he could track me. So he wouldn’t easily lose me again, even in the thickest of crowds or the busiest of cities.
My heart pounded against my rib cage, racing as I ran through the multitude of possibilities this might really mean. He could find me, track me …
“Relax, Jessica,” he said, crouching to pick up the book with a fluidity Pietr had seemed to have recently forgotten.
“I know what you are.”
“Of course you do. So you should also know that’s just something we do. You don’t need to get so defensive.”
“Fine,” I said. Totally defensively. “I’ll believe it’s just a thing you do. Although Cat and Max have never sniffed me like that,” I added belligerently. “But I’m not helping with your assignment.”
And I grabbed my notebook, unnerved, and left him there in the hall.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alexi
It was a large building. Sleek metal ribs and a silvered glass skin scraped the gut of a blue sky, disappearing into the atmosphere in dramatic lines that threatened to stab into the rare cloud. The absence of curves or any hint of softness made it even more clearly masculine, sharp lines and angles, hard and dramatic. The Socialists and Communists who pressed Russia’s traditional artists into factory molds proclaiming only the glory of the State would have been proud. And yet, everything about it bore a stark testament to one man’s gleaming capitalistic dream.
At its very top was rumored to be the living quarters of the man I sought out—his was a prime view, an eagle-eye view, of the city. A place he stayed to be alone and yet intimately connected to every bit of his corporation.
It was a building I could respect. However, it was not filled with men I could respect.
That was exactly what brought me to its front door. Doors, I corrected myself, counting them. Five bold glass doors, two that spun visitors in or out.
I swallowed. This was a big place. A big job.
But I had worked for Nadezhda’s father. Although he owned nothing quite this presumptuous, still, he was involved in a multibillion-dollar industry and it was certainly a multinational business.
The Mafia had ties everywhere.
I was not here to make friends. I was here to influence people, and to encourage them to make the right decision.
I checked my hair in the reflection of the bank of windows as I strode into the main lobby.
Inside, granite was polished to such a high gloss it glowed like Italian marble, gleaming up from the floor. Huge exotic plants decorated the broad room—proof that even this far north man could conquer nature and make tropical plants bloom and bear fruit to his will alone.
I suddenly doubted my ability to influence a man of such standing. Da, he had been
my grandfather’s assistant, but whereas my grandfather had died in poverty, this man had broken through the dreaded Iron Curtain, crossed an ocean, and pulled himself up by his bootstraps, as the saying went.
This man’s building was the culmination of someone’s pride and effort—a glorious corporation built on the backs of many workers. My grandfather would have been jealous—nyet. I thought back to his journals and notes. Although he betrayed Wondermann, he would not have been jealous of his advancement. He would have been proud. That was enough to make me feel the opposite way as I stood in the midst of the lobby taking in my surroundings.
Hanging from the high ceiling ahead of me was a lengthy banner that read: BUILDING A STRONGER, BETTER YOUTH TO LIGHT THE FUTURE’S PATH.
I froze. Where had I heard that before…? Was it something Jessie had said?
Directly beneath the banner was a large desk swarming with security officers and special uniforms. The colors of their uniforms appeared to have been chosen to complement the accents lining the walls and trimming out the large frames of paintings of two men. Done in a classical portrait style, one picture showed a man with only a fringe of graying hair, his complexion sallow, his cheeks sunken. Here was a man who had seen better times. Yet there was a brightness about his eyes, a sharpness, an intellect, and depth that even this mediocre painter managed to capture.
Below the first portrait and engraved on a small brass plate was the name WONDERMANN. My grandfather’s assistant, coworker, and confidante; the man Grandfather willingly betrayed in the name of the advancement of science—and the embracing of his own agenda. He was the company’s founder and now the owner of a multibillion-dollar multinational corporation.
Beside that portrait was another done by the same artist, the style an absolute mimicry of the classic. This one was of a much younger man, still older than myself, but a man with sharp features, narrow eyes, and an unforgiving stare. This was a man not to be trifled with. This was a man with a hunger in his eyes. And certainly a man I was glad I would not be meeting.
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