by Sadie Moss
Jesus. How the hell had the guys talked me down when my wolf went out of control?
I remembered Rhys’s soothing voice telling me to latch onto Noah and Jackson.
But more than that, I remembered Noah’s eyes. Those beautiful storm-gray eyes, almost the exact same shade in his wolf form as when he was human. He had gazed at me, drawing me in, and it had felt almost like he was linking our souls together. When he had finally shifted back, I’d watched his eyes transform from animal to human, and I’d followed him, letting him guide me back to my humanity.
Ducking my head, I locked eyes with the mottled brown wolf in front of me. His name was Caesar, and he was one of a few shifter men who shared a room with Aaron. We’d packed the rooms tight to save money, and in an attempt to keep our group more contained and unobtrusive, but now I wondered if that had been a mistake.
Caesar’s lupine eyes were golden, a beautiful, almost eerie color. He shook his head, backing up a few paces and whining plaintively, but I didn’t let him look away from me. As our gazes burned into each other, the rest of the world seemed to fade away, until all I was aware of was him—the slight movement as he shuffled his paws, the way his fur rippled as he tensed, his panting breaths.
Come back with me. Please, come back.
Though I’d wished for it a thousand times, I knew telepathic communication between wolves was impossible. Still, I repeated those words over and over in my mind, hoping that even if he couldn’t hear them, he could feel them somehow.
Then, slowly, I shifted back to human form.
It hurt.
My wolf and I were so in tune that the process was usually almost instantaneous now, and dragging it out made me painfully aware of each snapping bone and stretching muscle. But it worked.
Caesar’s body shuddered as he forced his wolf back under the surface, following my lead. When it was done, we both crouched on the floor, breathing hard and covered in a sheen of sweat.
I tilted my head up, meeting his gaze one more time. “Are you all right?”
The man nodded. He looked exhausted, strung-out, and chagrined.
Forcing myself to stand, I jerked my chin to two shifters near the front of the crowd. “Help him back to his room. Stay with him; make sure he’s okay. Don’t shift.”
They darted forward to collect him as I turned to the remaining wolf, Nia. She was an older shifter, a Lost Pack member who’d spent most of her time in wolf form at the military base. I knew our time here had been straining her; I just hadn’t realized how much.
I shifted back and moved to stand in front of her, coming almost nose-to-nose.
The transition was harder this time. Maybe it was my growing exhaustion, or maybe it was because her wolf had already established such a strong hold. But after two failed attempts, she finally completed the shift, falling to her hands and knees and gasping.
I instructed two more shifters to accompany her to her room before dispersing the rest of the crowd. They scattered quickly and silently, leaving a cloud of worry hanging in the air.
Noah peeled off his shirt and held it out to me. It fit me like a very short dress, but at least if one of the hotel staff did come up, we’d have one less thing to try to explain.
“Motherfucker.” West blew out a breath, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Do you know what set them off?”
Jackson shrugged. “Something stupid. It doesn’t take much these days. Everyone is on edge.”
My gaze lingered on the torn up carpet and the large dent in the wall, and I worried my lip between my teeth. Maybe we could bribe the staff not to report anything to management, but we were inching toward the point where we’d have to cut and run. Again.
“Goddamn it.” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have left today. That was so fucking stupid.”
“Hey.” Noah wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “This isn’t on you, Scrubs. You’re the pack alpha, not their damn babysitter. They should be able to control themselves.”
“Should be, maybe.” My gaze drifted to Rhys, whose blue irises shone as he looked back at me. “But ‘should’ doesn’t always mean shit. High-pressure situations do crazy things to people.”
My blond-haired mate dipped his head. “No argument.”
Aaron had lingered, speaking in low tones with Sariah as the rest of the pack dispersed. I asked the two of them to keep an eye out for housekeeping and let me know when they came through. Bribing them would be risky since it’d mean admitting responsibility for the state of the hallway, but I would rather get ahead of the problem than waste time chasing after it.
Guilt burned through me that I hadn’t been here when the blow-up happened, that I hadn’t found a way out of this place yet. I couldn’t change the first part, but it was time to move forward on the second part, ready or not. We hadn’t found the information we needed about Strand through any of the channels we’d tried so far.
So we needed to try new channels.
We headed up to the third floor, and Noah slipped away to gather Val and the Elders before everyone crammed into our room.
“I knew it.” Simon slid a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair after I explained the situation. “This is the longest some of these people have gone without shifting in years. Their wolves don’t want to stay pushed down. It’s no wonder they won’t shift back.”
“They’re both long-time Lost Pack members too.” I blew out a breath. “This isn’t just about old blood versus new blood anymore. Everyone’s on edge.”
“Alpha Alexis, we yielded to you when Elijah did, and I don’t mean to question that, but… are you sure this is the right path forward?”
Joelle, usually one of my biggest supporters amongst the Elders, grimaced as she asked the question.
No! I wanted to scream, but I clenched my teeth against the word.
“I don’t know if it’s the right path,” I admitted. “But it’s the only path I can see. I meant what I said back at the base. If we don’t go after Strand, we’ll spend the rest of our lives running from them. Nils is dead, but Doctor Shepherd has other hunters. And he’s like a dog who’s caught a scent. Now that he knows we’re out in the world, he’ll do whatever it takes to find us.”
“Yes, but when are you going to go after Strand?” The oldest of the six Elders, Kent, glared at me, his lips pressing into a thin line. “You keep saying that, but so far, you’ve been all talk and no action. And in the meantime, here we are—not only sitting ducks for Strand, but for the rest of the human population as well!”
“I know. We’ve been… waiting for updates. But you’re right. We can’t wait anymore. My men and I will do something about it. We’ll find something, so we can all get out of here soon.”
“Good. I hope you do.” The man crossed his thick arms across his chest, but the look in his eyes told me he didn’t believe I could deliver on any of my promises.
We talked for a while longer, discussing ways to maintain peace among the agitated shifters and stay off the humans’ radars, but nothing we came up with was more than a temporary solution. A Band-Aid on a gaping wound.
Finally, the Elders left to go check on Nia and Caesar, and my men put their heads together with Val, brainstorming alternative ways to get the information we so desperately needed—the where and the what that would help us take down Strand’s Shifter Initiative.
I listened to their conversation, but I felt detached, like I was floating on the periphery. After a few moments, I excused myself and stepped out into the hall. Padding over to the door next to ours, I lifted my hand, then paused. Steeling my nerves, I knocked twice.
The man who’d been assigned to keep an eye on Elijah answered the door. He dipped his head deferentially when he saw me. “Alpha.”
“Matt. Is Elijah here?”
“Of course.” He stepped back, opening the door wider to reveal the old alpha sitting in one of the room’s two chairs near the window.
Matt gestured me inside before slipping out to stand g
uard in the hallway. The door clicked shut behind him, and Elijah’s blue eyes met mine. His face was healing, but the cut in his lip was still angry and red. He probably should’ve gotten stitches, just like I should have in my ear. But we’d both live, with one more scar to tell the story of our lives.
“What do you want?”
Elijah’s voice was thick, muffled slightly by the swelling of his lip. His eyes weren’t friendly, but they weren’t hostile either. He looked a little curious and very, very tired.
Fuck. I know what that feels like.
Ever since I’d beaten him in our fight and he’d yielded his position, I’d kept a guard with him—but the truth was, I had never expected the old alpha to attack me again or try to reclaim his title. Why would he? His job had been more difficult and terrifying than I’d been able to comprehend until the responsibility fell on my head.
“I think… I’m failing.”
The words dropped from my mouth before I could stop them, and I blinked at the honest truth in them. I was pretty sure that wasn’t what I’d come here to tell him, but I honestly couldn’t say quite why I was here.
His brows drew together, and he studied me in silence for so long I got antsy and moved to sit on the bed. Finally, he rubbed a hand over his beard, careful to avoid the wound on his lip.
“There’s no such thing as ‘failing’ to an alpha. There’s only doing. You make choices; you do what you can for your pack. Sometimes the choices are between ‘shit’ and ‘different shit’, but choosing one of those paths doesn’t make you a failure. Not when there are no better options.”
“But what if there are better options, and I just don’t see them?” I asked softly, staring down at the garish pattern on the carpet.
“There aren’t.”
Elijah’s blunt words caught me by surprise, and I glanced up. He leaned back in his chair, legs spread wide as he slouched in contemplation.
“How do you know?”
“Because you were right. Hiding isn’t enough.”
I blinked at the grizzled man. We’d spend weeks arguing about this exact subject, so hearing him agree with me now threw me for a loop. He must’ve read the distrust and confusion on my face, because he sighed.
“The Lost Pack was dwindling before you and your mates showed up. From time to time, a new escapee from a complex would find us, but they didn’t come fast enough to replace those who left.”
“Left?” I shook my head.
“The ones who let their wolves take over. Who gave up on the other half of themselves. They stopped shifting back, and eventually, they slipped away into the woods to join other—true—wolf packs. I tried to stop it, and I was able to bring a few back, but without any reason to remember their humanity, to embrace it, they had nothing to hold onto.”
Sadness filled his dark blue eyes as he spoke, and it struck me that, whatever his failings had been as a leader, caring about his pack hadn’t been one of them. I would’ve bet anything that he could tell me the names of each and every wolf who’d left his pack, no matter how long ago it had been. They still haunted him.
But…
“Do you ever think they had the right idea?” I asked wanly, studying his expression. “That maybe this struggle to balance the two sides of ourselves isn’t worth it? That maybe we should just give up, let our wolves rule, and stop fighting?”
Elijah scoffed under his breath, the leathery lines of his face hardening as he met my gaze. “Is that what you want?”
I thought of everything I would be giving up. Conversations with my mates, the feel of their skin on mine. Getting to know Sariah and Val. My friendships with Molly and Carl.
“No.”
The old alpha inclined his head in a told you so gesture. “I didn’t agree with your ideas—hell, I’m still not sure I do—but maybe it’s time to try a new tack. For years, I led my pack down the ‘shit’ path, and we got nowhere. You’ll lead them down the ‘different shit’ path.”
I snorted at his analogy. It was crass, but all too damn accurate. “Yeah, that’s definitely the path we’re on now.”
Elijah reached up to scratch his beard, tipping his head back to gaze up at the ceiling. “Well, who knows. Maybe there’s a fuckin’ rainbow at the end of that one.”
Chapter Six
“Stop thinking so loud. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.”
Jackson’s soft whisper in the darkness startled me out of my reverie, and I jerked. West muttered something unintelligible in his sleep, tugging my body closer to him on the queen-sized bed. My amber-eyed mate, not to be outdone by a sleeping man, pressed his body closer to my other side, making me the happy center of a hot, hard sandwich.
We’d all slept in the same bed since arriving at the hotel. I was always in the center with two men on ether side, although exactly who was where changed overnight like a game of sleepy musical chairs. Tonight, Rhys was curled up close behind West, one arm draped over his pack mate’s body to rest on mine. After what’d happened between the three of us in the van, that small gesture seemed achingly sweet.
They were both so damaged, so broken down by life; maybe that was what had bonded them so closely in the first place. But if they could help heal each other’s wounds, I would love them both even more for it.
“Seriously. So. Loud,” Jackson teased, his warm breath on my ear making a tingle race down my spine.
Turning my head, I met his gaze. “No way. You can’t really hear me thinking, can you?”
He shrugged. “Nah. But I can tell you are. I can smell the gears grinding.”
I slapped him lightly under the covers, and he let out a soft oomph. “You can’t smell me thinking either!”
“Fine.” He chuckled before the lightness vanished from his face, and his hold on me tightened. “But do you wanna tell me what you’re thinking about?”
My chest constricted. This was the side of Jackson that didn’t come out often, the one his optimism and cheerful exuberance hid. The one who knew just how badly the odds were stacked against us and felt as terrified as I was.
I wrapped my arms around him, trying to offer as much strength and support as I took. My face burrowed into his strong chest, and I spoke against the hard slabs of muscle.
“We can’t wait any longer, Jackson. We’re out of time.”
“I know.”
“If Carl hasn’t been able to find anything, we need to look somewhere else. I just don’t know where that might be.”
“Well,” he said softly, pressing his lips to my hair as he spoke. “Maybe we need to retrace our steps. Go back over what we know about Strand and see if we’re missing something. If they kept most of their stuff off the books, then we need to find other ways to get it.”
I moved my head against his chest in a sort-of nod, then froze as an idea struck me. “What if—what if we just go straight to the source?”
Jackson tensed. “What, go after Doctor Shepherd? Jesus, I don’t know, Alexis. That guy scares me more than Nils did, to be honest. Anyway, we don’t know where he is either.”
“No, not him. I mean, a Strand facility. When we broke into the complex in Salt Lake, we didn’t even get to explore the whole thing before we destroyed it.”
“Yeah… But then we destroyed it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know. But maybe we didn’t destroy everything. We barely even set foot on the upper levels, and West threw down those last few charges in a fucking hurry. I’m sure Doctor Shepherd and his team came through and cleared away all the evidence they could, but—what if something is still there? Maybe we can find some hint they left behind.”
He ran a hand through my hair, making a small noise in the back of his throat as he considered it. “Yeah. I guess it could be worth a shot; that place is the closest connection we have to Strand right now. There’s no guarantee we’ll dig anything up, but I dunno what else to do instead.”
“It’s the ‘different shit’ path,” I murmured, inhaling his warm scent.
&
nbsp; “What?”
A soft smile touched my lips. When I’d left Elijah’s room earlier, I had dismissed Matt from his guard duties. I wasn’t sure if the old alpha and I would ever see quite eye-to-eye, but it felt like something had changed between us. An understanding of some kind had been forged.
“Nothing. I love you, Jackson.”
“Love you too, Alexis.”
I nestled further into his chest, letting West’s large frame cradle the back of my body. Surrounded by my mates, I let sleep steal me away.
It took a lot more arguing to get the rest of the men on board with my plan than it’d taken to convince Jackson in the sleepy pre-dawn hours. Sariah insisted on going with us, and Rhys was so opposed to that, he instantly nixed the entire idea.
I tried to talk her out of it, agreeing with him that it would be too traumatizing for her to return to the site of her captivity and torture, but she wouldn’t be dissuaded. With her lips pressed together and her blue eyes flashing fire, she’d never looked more like Rhys’s sister. I couldn’t help but wonder if part of her refusal to listen to me was because she was still pissed I hadn’t told my mates about the baby.
Finally, Rhys managed to wrangle a compromise from her. She would assist our efforts by helping Carl and Molly do research rather than coming into the defunct Strand facility with us. It was a decent middle ground—she would come to Salt Lake but wouldn’t actually enter the complex.
I left Val in charge of the pack, knowing everyone, both old and new, would respect her authority.
Because it should’ve been her. She should’ve been alpha, a little voice whispered in the back of my head.
My wolf growled at that, raising her hackles as she quivered under the surface of my skin. The she-wolf side of me, at least, still thought I was capable of leading a pack and guiding my people to a better future.
God, I hoped she was right.
We headed down to the lobby a little before noon, our two large bags—dirty, ripped, and stained from everything they’d been through in the past few months—slung over Jackson’s and West’s backs. The woman at the front desk cut her gaze to us, her eyes narrowing with annoyed suspicion as we trooped through the lobby.
