Connor shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got one of those faces.” He smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes.
“When I look at you,” Duncan said, standing just inches away from the cell. “I hear screams. A kid crying.” Connor looked like he was close to Duncan’s age. Maybe a bit younger.
“I can’t help what you hear.” But Connor’s smile had slipped a bit. “Can’t help you at all.”
Holly’s footsteps padded closer. “I could…I could make him tell you what you want to know, Duncan.”
Connor’s stare drifted to her. Sharpened. “The vampire. The sweet bite I’d hoped to enjoy.” He inhaled. “Don’t you smell nice, just like honey and—”
Duncan’s hand flew through the cage bars. His claws hung inches from Connor’s throat. “I already warned you about her.”
Emotion finally flashed in those eyes. Rage. “You think you’re gonna mate with a vampire? Think you’ll get all of that power to control?” He shook his head. “Better rethink that. You’ll just make the same fucking mistake he did. And you’ll leave the same bloodbath behind.”
Duncan’s heartbeat drummed in his ears. “Who are you talking about?”
Connor’s gaze searched his. “Maybe you need to get the vamp to bite you. Get her to make you remember.”
Connor was just jerking him around. Duncan yanked his hand back through the bars and barely felt the singe of the silver on his fingers.
“You believe you were the good guy, don’t you?” Connor mocked as he rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. “The human out there, fighting the werewolves. Putting us in cages and sending the worst of the lot to rot in your Purgatory.”
“I was saving humans.” He wouldn’t regret what he’d done. He’d never taken down any paranormal without proof that the man or woman had been killing humans. Never. “I don’t throw innocent paranormals into cages. Every single one I captured was a menace. Someone who had to be stopped.”
Connor’s gaze was on Holly once more. “Are you going to be able to stop him, do you think? When the moon rises and the alpha werewolf really comes out, I don’t even know if someone like you can control him.”
Another one singing the song about him going moon crazy. Sure, it was a fear that Duncan had, but he was tired of everyone throwing it in his face.
“I trust Duncan,” Holly said, voice clear. “He will keep his control.”
Connor shook his head. “You’re a fool. The werewolf in him will come for you because he wants your blood and your body. And he’ll kill anyone who comes between the two of you.” He tapped his chin. “That’s the way for mates, and whether your special agent werewolf wants to admit it or not, he’s marked you as a mate.”
Duncan could feel the glance that Holly cast toward him. He didn’t look at her then, couldn’t. Connor was telling the truth, and there was no point denying it. I want her. “I have ten minutes, and you’re wasting my time.” And not answering his questions. Deliberately, Duncan was sure. “Why do I see you and hear a child begging for help? Screaming my name?”
A muscle jerked in Connor’s jaw. “You don’t know me.”
“I know your face.” He just didn’t know how. “I’ve seen it before.”
Connor shook his head. “Let me guess…in your nightmares?”
Yes.
“Not all humans can become werewolves,” Connor murmured. “You have to possess the DNA that will let you transform.”
“I don’t want a science lesson!” Duncan snarled. Wasting time, wasting—
“Where do you think the DNA comes from? It’s no random mutation.”
“It’s passed down,” Holly said, her body sliding closer to Duncan’s.
Connor nodded.
“Werewolves and humans…we’re separate, but we can mate. But the half-breeds…they can’t always change,” Connor murmured.
“The genetics are there,” Holly said to Duncan. “They would still pass down…in children, grandchildren.”
Connor’s stare was back on him. “We’re everywhere, you see. The teacher in your school. The cop walking his beat.”
Me.
“They’re us, and they don’t know it.” His teeth snapped together. “Not until they get the bite.”
“The bite must activate the dormant DNA.” Holly’s arm brushed his. “That’s why some humans can change and others can’t. Those who can…they’ve got an ancestor who was a werewolf. I should have realized it before. It’s not about mutations—it’s…” Her head turned and her gaze found his. Softer, she finished, “It’s just family.”
Duncan’s hands fisted. His claws were trying to break free. “Werewolves killed my family.”
“Is that what you were told?” Connor asked, words rumbling.
“It’s what I saw.” He glared at the wolf, glared and heard—Help me! Duncan! Duncan! A child’s voice.
His eyes squeezed closed.
“Hearing voices are you? Those screams again?” Connor taunted. “Careful, or even your vamp will start to think you’re going crazy.”
His eyelids flew open. “I. Know. You.”
“And I know you,” Connor fired right back. In that instant, the mask he wore dropped. Rage burned fire-hot in his eyes as his fangs extended. “I know your face. I know your scent. I’ve looked for you…for years. And I found you, hunting me. Hunting our kind!”
“There’s no ‘our kind’ here! Werewolves killed—”
Holly wrapped her arms around Duncan and pulled him back from the cell. “Elias is coming back.”
The thunder of his heartbeat had drowned out the sound of approaching footsteps.
Connor’s cheeks were flushed. His claws out. His chest heaving.
Duncan’s claws were out. His chest heaving.
“Alphas aren’t made,” Connor told him. “We’re born. One generation to the next. Alphas only come from alphas.”
The door was opening behind him.
Duncan didn’t look back. He couldn’t. He remembered what Connor had told him when he’d burst into that basement room, so desperate to reach Holly.
“Hello, brother.”
His eyes swept over Connor’s face. “Have you gotten his DNA?” Duncan asked Holly.
“Yes. A sample was taken when he first came in to the facility.”
They had the best lab in the nation there. With equipment most couldn’t even dream of.
Connor smirked at him. “Figuring it out, are you?”
“How?”
“The ten minutes are up,” Elias said before Connor could speak. “And I just saw Pate in the hall. He’s coming this way.”
Because Pate would have been listening. He would have realized exactly what or rather, who, Connor was to Duncan.
“It can’t be possible.”
“What? That you were always the monster you hated? Trust me,” Connor growled, “it’s possible. Welcome to my nightmare.”
“I don’t have a brother.” Why dance around this anymore? “Holly will check your DNA against mine, and this BS you’re spilling won’t fly.”
But Connor just stared back at him.
“It won’t. I don’t have a brother.”
Connor lunged forward in an instant. His hands wrapped around the silver bars and smoke rose from his flesh. “Because you let that bastard take me! I begged you to save me. I was four! Fucking four! You were supposed to watch out for me. You were supposed to save me!”
Duncan couldn’t speak.
“You let him take me.” Connor’s gaze slid to Holly. “Now I’ll take everything from you.”
Holly had stiffened beside him.
“The hell you will,” Duncan snarled. No one was taking Holly. No one was hurting her.
“It’s already started,” Connor said, voice lowering. “You don’t even realize it. The moment you were bitten…it was all planned. Your humans? They sold you out. They gave you to me. This time, you’ll be the one to scream and beg. And there will be no one to save you—or her.”
They were brothers. Duncan and Connor. She’d done Y Chromosome testing, and the proof was right there for her to see. They shared the same father.
Alphas are born, not made.
Their father had been a werewolf alpha, and now, so were both Duncan and Connor.
The two men also shared the same mother. She’d been lucky enough to get DNA from the ME who’d worked Katrina McGuire’s murder case that had confirmed their link.
“It’s true.” Duncan’s voice. Flat. Cold. And coming from right behind her.
She pressed her hands against the table. Thanks to the high-end equipment that Pate had stocked in her lab, she’d had the results in just a few hours. Hours that Duncan had spent pacing.
She turned toward him. “Same mother. Same father.” A father who’d been a werewolf.
Duncan shook his head. “I don’t remember a brother, I don’t—”
“You remember his screams. Now that you’ve seen him again, you’ll probably start to remember even more.” She walked toward him. Duncan’s body was thick with tension and the room seemed charged with his desperate energy. “You were a kid then, too, you—”
“I was five. I would have remembered him. Not just screams. Him.”
Holly swallowed. “You survived a blood bath. Your mother was slaughtered. You must have been in shock when the authorities found you.”
“And I—what? Just pretended my own brother didn’t exist?”
“You were a child,” she said as she tried to keep her voice soothing. “You can’t blame yourself for something that happened back then.”
“He blames me. He hates me.”
Connor certainly seemed to. “Well, if Pate’s intel on him is right, the guy is psychotic so he probably blames a lot of people for—”
Duncan’s head had snapped up.
I said the wrong thing. Oh, crap.
“He’s slaughtered so many. He’s my blood, that’s what you’re test showed, right? That’s what he told me.” Duncan sucked in a deep breath. “A killer…that’s what he is.”
“But that’s not what you are.” She wanted to shake him—so she did. A hard yank against his shoulders. So much for soothing. “You aren’t him. You haven’t spent years killing. You’re a good agent. A good man. Whatever he is, that isn’t you.”
“But we share blood. A father.” His brows furrowed. “Wait, if my father was a werewolf, was it some kind pack war? Is that what happened? Other wolves came and killed him and my mother?”
And here was going to be another revelation that wasn’t easy to give. “I…I got the ME from your hometown to fax me the autopsy reports for your parents.”
“What?”
“I should have told you first but…” But what if she’d been wrong? “Duncan, the man who died, he wasn’t your father.”
But Duncan shook his head. “He was. That was my family. My mother. My father. My—”
“Do you remember them? Or do you just remember…” She hated hurting him. “Do you just remember that the cops told you that your parents were dead?”
His silence was her answer.
“You don’t remember your life with them, do you?”
His jaw locked. “I don’t remember anything before the blood and screams.”
He was ripping out her heart. She couldn’t stand for him to be in pain. “You were alone with their bodies for…for three days.”
His pupils expanded, turning his blue eyes almost totally black. No trace of gold showed in his eyes then.
“The ME…he told me that one of the cops found you in the closet. You were covered in blood. The woman in the house—”
“My mother.”
The pain in his voice made her ache. “Her body was found outside of the closet. It appeared as if she’d locked you in, and then she’d been killed outside of the door.” The ME’s reports had said that her blood had slid under the crack near the bottom of the closet door.
Duncan had been trapped in that darkness as the blood came toward him.
All alone.
Three days.
She blinked away the tears in her eyes. She wasn’t shaking him now. Just holding him and wishing that she could take all of his pain away.
“How do you know he wasn’t my father?”
“Duncan, you know what happens when a werewolf dies in human form.”
“The teeth and claws come out.”
Because at death, it was if the beast inside was dying, too. The body shifted back to human form, but the beast didn’t totally vanish. The claws and teeth always stayed out in death. “I saw…I saw the pictures taken at the scene. The man who died then didn’t have claws. There were no fangs either.” MEs had been covering up those little telltale signs for years, and she’d even taken the step of calling the retired ME, Louis Hall, to make sure that her suspicions were correct.
“Hell, no, lady,” he’d told her, voice grousing with age. “I know a werewolf when I see one. Had two of ‘em cross my table. Scared the hell out of me at first. That slaughter? No, those were two humans who died.”
Darkness had filled Duncan’s gaze. The same deep rage that had burned from Connor’s eyes.
“He knows what happened to them,” Duncan muttered.
Yes, she suspected that Connor knew a great deal.
“I’m going to make him tell me.” He spun away from her and rushed for the doors.
But those doors were already swinging open. Pate stood there. With Shane and Elias at his back.
“Duncan.” Pate’s gaze swept over him. “I’m going to need you to come with us.”
“Get out of my way, Pate,” Duncan snapped. His hands were at his sides. His claws? Most definitely out.
Pate shook his head. “Don’t make us do this the hard way.”
Duncan laughed. “Like there’s any other way now.” He pointed toward the doors. “That asshole in Containment Five knows about—”
“You mean your brother? The alpha werewolf who’s been clawing his way through the town? That asshole?”
She could have slugged Pate right then. Holly marched toward him. “You tapped into my computer.”
He nodded. “And your phone line.”
Jerk. She should have known he’d pull tricks like that.
But Pate’s stare actually seemed to hold real sympathy as it turned back to Duncan. “In the morning, I’ll let you grill the guy as long as you want. But the moon is going to start rising soon. Your first full moon. And I can’t take chances with this night.”
“Scared I’ll hurt you?”
“No, scared you’ll hurt her.” Pate’s attention shifted to Holly, then back to Duncan. “The wolf will be in control. What do you think he’s gonna want most?”
“Not me,” Holly said. That had all the guys looking at her. She licked her lips. “Blood. Revenge.” That was what she’d seen in Duncan’s eyes.
“I want to talk to Connor.” Duncan’s voice had deepened. Roughened. Goosebumps rose on her arms.
“In the morning. When the moon is down, and your control is one hundred percent set.” Pate’s mouth firmed. “I have to make sure you control your beast tonight, and that he doesn’t control you. Duncan, you know the first full moon transformation is supposed to be hardest.”
“The one that tells me if I stay sane?” Duncan’s voice made the chill she felt even worse. “Or proves that I’ll be psychotic, just like my brother?”
She so wished she’d never used that word. “Duncan…”
His head inclined toward her. She could see his fangs. So what? She had fangs of her own. Holly reached for his hand. “You can talk to him tomorrow.”
There were no transfer orders on Connor yet. Duncan would get his answers. They had time.
“Just come with us for tonight,” Pate said. “We’ve got a secure cell waiting for you.”
“Like the last one?” Duncan mocked. “I ripped right through those bars.”
Pate’s cheeks flush
ed. It looked like Shane fought a smile. Elias…he paled.
“You’re going in the holding room tonight.”
The holding room? She sucked in a sharp breath. The holding room was the paranormal equivalent of solitary confinement. No windows. Walls reinforced with a combination of silver and steel. One door. Thick. Heavy. An eight by twelve foot prison.
There was only one light that shone from the ceiling in the middle of that room. It was normally where the most dangerous paranormals were kept before transfer. Where Connor probably would have been housed, if Pate hadn’t been so worried about Duncan’s transformation under the full moon.
Holly’s whole body was tight with tension. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” She didn’t want Duncan locked up. The collar was bad enough. “He’s one of ours.”
“That’s why I’m doing everything I can to keep him safe and to keep him from hurting anyone else.” Pate rolled his shoulders. “How do you think he’ll feel, Hol, if he wakes up tomorrow and finds the dead bodies of his fellow agents around him?”
“That’s not—” Holly began.
“It could happen,” Duncan said at the same time.
No, it couldn’t. Why did she have more faith in the guy than he did in himself?
Her hold tightened on him. “You’re not like that.” Not like Connor.
“It’s time to find out if I am.” He pulled away from her. Damn him, he pulled away. Then he glanced back at Pate. “Take me to holding.”
“No!” Holly sprang between the men. “He’s wearing the collar. Just let him stay here. I can keep an eye on him tonight, I can—”
Duncan’s hands closed around her shoulders. He turned her toward him. Kissed her.
Not a hard kiss.
Not wild.
Not what she’d expected.
Soft. Controlled.
He has control.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
No, he wouldn’t. That was what she was trying to make them all understand. If the idiots would just listen to her.
“Stay away from me tonight,” he said as his gaze held hers. “Connor might have set this in motion, but I’ll be damned if I lose what matters most to me.”
Her heart slammed into her chest. Wait. Was he saying that she mattered? That it wasn’t just sex and need?
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