by Sadie Moss
He didn’t give more details than that. I could tell no one in this room completely trusted the others yet. We’d come here to ask for help, but West wasn’t going to reveal our full story until he made sure we’d received a welcoming reception.
Alpha Elijah scratched at his beard with large, blunt fingers, tipping his head back to eye the five of us. “You been livin’ among humans then?”
“Yeah.”
“So what finally brought you to our neck of the woods? Why now?”
Val turned her head slightly, rubbing the back of her neck. She almost looked disappointed, like she sensed what was coming and didn’t want to be here for this. My stomach sank. She knew her alpha better than we did, and she’d flat out told us not to get our hopes up.
“Because we want your help.” Rhys stepped forward, his sky blue eyes blazing with passion and determination. His voice was low and fervent. “My sister was in that San Diego complex, but she didn’t get out when we did. The breach was on the male side of the compound, and we couldn’t—”
He broke off, his jaw clenching. Then he shook his head and continued.
“As far as we know, she was still in there when they closed that complex down. She was moved somewhere else. Austin, we thought; but we were wrong. She’s still out there, though. And we want to find her and free her. Free the rest of the shifters being held in captivity, experimented on every day like fucking lab rats.”
I pulled my lip between my teeth as I glanced between him and Alpha Elijah. The burly, scruffy man had crossed his arms over his chest as he listened, and now he stared intently at Rhys. Val looked down at the floor, her hands clasped behind her back.
Then the alpha let out a rough sound, half grunt and half snort.
“You’ve come to the wrong place, son. We’re a peaceful pack.” He narrowed his eyes. “We hide. We subsist. We offer haven to those lucky enough to escape on their own. But we don’t fight Strand. It’s too big. I have no interest in taking on that monster, and I won’t force any of my pack to join your fool’s errand.”
My heart sank like a rock in my chest as Rhys blinked, stunned.
Despite his resistance to coming here, I’d seen the hope building inside him as we trekked across the country, risking everything to get here. His determination to save Sariah was so strong, and I’d prayed his passion would bleed into the wolves of the Lost Pack, convincing them to join us.
But as I gazed at the weatherbeaten, tanned face of the alpha, I realized there were some things even Rhys’s passion couldn’t change.
This man was as solid and stoic as a rock.
And he’d given us our answer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“That selfish, cowardly—”
“Keep your voice down.”
“—useless fucking old man! That’s it? Just, no? Doesn’t he care about the ones left inside? Does he really think he’s doing all the wolves here such a huge goddamn favor, letting them subsist? They deserve better than that. We all—”
“Dude! Keep your fucking voice down!” Noah interrupted again.
He glared at Rhys before brushing aside the curtain and peeking through the door of the small shack at the edge of the village. Val had led us here after our meeting with the alpha. Despite Elijah’s refusal to help us, he’d told us we could stay as long as we liked as guests of the Lost Pack.
“Why? He’s not my damn alpha!” Rhys looked about ready to march back into Elijah’s quarters and challenge him to a fight.
“No, he’s not.” West’s voice was calm and serious. “But he is the alpha to every wolf here. If you piss him off, push him over the edge, none of us are gonna make it out of here alive.”
West jerked his head subtly in my direction, and Rhys’s eyes shifted to me. For a second, the ice-blue of his irises softened. Then he yanked his gaze away, smoothing the rough curls of dark hair back from his face.
“Fine,” he ground out, speaking at a slightly lower volume. “I’ll play by his rules. I won’t go starting shit.” He shot a challenging look at West. “But I’m not fucking giving this up.”
“Have we ever asked you to?” West shot back simply.
Rhys’s shoulders slumped. He dropped his head, resting a hand on West’s shoulder. West reached up to grip it tightly, and the tenderness—the solidarity—of the gesture made my heart ache.
“Rhys?”
I approached him cautiously, the way one might an escaped animal at the zoo, reaching out to grasp his arm. He stiffened at my touch, pulling his hand from West’s shoulder and pacing several feet away, refusing to look at me. West’s observant eyes tracked between the two of us, and a small crease formed between his eyebrows.
“What?” Rhys muttered.
I cleared my throat. There were a lot of things I wanted to say right now—top of the list being fuck you, you moody asshole. But I reined in my temper and quashed my heartbreak. There were more important things right now.
“I was just going to say maybe you could ask the alpha whether, if members of his pack volunteer to go, he’ll let them,” I said softly. “He doesn’t want to force any of them to go back to Strand, and I get that—I respect that. But some of the shifters here might want to. Maybe some of them left loved ones behind too. Maybe they just want revenge. Maybe they don’t want to have to live in fear and hiding all the time.”
Jackson made an impressed face. “Hey, that’s not a bad fucking idea!”
“It’ll never work,” Rhys bit out.
“Well, you won’t fucking know until you try it, will you?” I snapped, my annoyance finally overriding my need to keep the peace. “Or I guess you could just stay in here and keep whining like a little fucking baby!”
“Oh shit!” Jackson bit his lip, his eyes bugging. He swiveled his head to look at Rhys. “Damn, dude. She fucking got your number.”
Rhys froze. For a second, I wasn’t sure if he was going to haul me into his arms and kiss me or throw a punch at me. But he didn’t do either.
“All right.” He dropped his chin in a jerky nod. “I’ll go talk to Alpha Elijah.”
With those words, he stalked out of the makeshift dwelling.
“Damn it, we better go with him. He’s gonna lose his shit about two seconds into that conversation if we’re not there to calm him down,” Noah groaned.
“Or one second,” Jackson said, still grinning. He threw me a wink and a smile that made my insides warm as the two of them headed for the door.
Once they were gone, West turned to me slowly, a serious expression on his dark features. “All right. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
I blinked. “What do you mean? You know more than I do.”
“Not about this.” He gestured around us, encompassing the shack and the Lost Pack’s village around us. “What’s going on between you and Rhys?”
My stomach dropped. Was the angry, heated energy between me and the dark-haired shifter that obvious? Did all of them know?
“Nothing.” I shook my head and looked at the floor, letting the dyed-blonde strands of hair frame my face. “He just doesn’t like me very much.”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s definitely not true.” West shook his head before crossing closer to me. “Talk to me, Scrubs.”
He tipped my chin up with the fingers of one hand, then ran his knuckles up my jaw to my cheek. I shivered at the strength and gentleness of his touch, and unwanted tears rose to my eyes.
“It is true, West.” I looked up into his soft brown eyes, hating what I was about to say. “The night I got hurt… I didn’t just hear a noise. I snuck out of camp, planning to leave. I thought it would be better that way; that I didn’t belong with you four, or with the Lost Pack.”
I saw his eyes widen in surprise and rushed on, knowing if I didn’t get it all out at once, I never would.
“Rhys came after me. He was furious that I tried to sneak away, and he… he kissed me. He told me he can’t stop thinking about me. I don’t know what happened, b
ut it was like this inferno flared up between us. It was like I couldn’t get enough of him, and I thought he felt the same way. We were lost in each other, and then—”
I broke off and looked away, shame rushing over me all over again at Rhys’s rejection.
“Then what?” West asked softly.
“He found out I was a virgin, and everything changed. He backed away—could barely look at me.” My head lifted, my gaze almost challenging. “It’s not like there’s something wrong with me! I know about sex. I want it. I just never had the fucking chance! I’m not broken! I’m not—”
More tears streaked down my cheeks, and West gathered me up in his arms, pressing me against his strong, warm body. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with you, Scrubs. You’re perfect.”
“Rhys doesn’t think so.” My voice was muffled by his shirt and his hard pecs.
“Yes, he does.” West’s large hand palmed the back of my head. “Believe me on that. I’ve seen how he looks at you.” He sighed, his chest shifting under my cheek. “Rhys has been through a lot. He has a hard time… processing emotions. Especially positive ones.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered, and he chuckled.
“The reason he backed off, and why he’s been acting like such a dick around you since, is probably because he feels like a fucking asshole for almost taking your virginity in the middle of the woods like that.”
“But I wanted him to!” I blurted, and then blushed. That had been an overshare. Especially since I was talking to Rhys’s best friend… and a guy I had fantasized about more than once.
West cupped my face in his hands, tilting his head to look down at me. “It doesn’t matter. It still would’ve been a dick move. You’re too precious for that.”
I scowled. “I’m not, though! I’m not a fucking delicate flower. I may have been sheltered most of my life, but I’m not that breakable.”
Something shifted in West’s eyes. The chocolate brown pools seemed to darken even more as his pupils dilated. His hands moved around to the back of my head, sliding through my hair.
“I didn’t say you were any of those things, Scrubs. I said you were precious. And I won’t take that back.”
My breath hitched.
His voice was deep and low, the timbre seeming to reverberate through my whole body, lighting up my nerve endings. My core clenched, and I realized that somewhere over the course of this conversation, we’d shifted from friend and confidant to man and woman.
What had happened with Rhys the other night was still burned into my mind, branded on my body. But it didn’t stop me from wishing that West would lower his face the few inches that separated us and press his perfect lips to mine.
“West…”
My voice was breathless, hopeful, lustful.
And it was the only invitation he needed.
Tightening his grip on the roots of my hair, he leaned down and kissed me.
The second man to kiss me in all my life.
It was so different than Rhys, but so perfect. West’s lips were full and warm, smooth and commanding. He kissed me like we had all the time in the world, and he’d be goddamned if he rushed something so sweet.
My hands flew up to cling to his biceps, which bunched under my fingertips as he adjusted the angle of my head to take the kiss deeper.
Having learned from my experience with Rhys, I opened my mouth right away, welcoming West’s skillful tongue like a long lost friend.
Jesus fucking Christ.
This was what I’d been missing all those years I was locked away in the complex for years, and in this moment, I hated everyone at Strand for that more than any of the other lies and deceptions they’d fed me.
They had kept me from experiencing moments like this.
They’d kept me from living.
But dear sweet Lord, I was living now.
I pressed my body against West’s, relishing the rough, deep noises that rumbled from his chest. I wanted to see what other sounds I could pull from him. I wanted to make him feel as good as I felt.
One of his large hands slipped from my hair, trailing over my collarbone and tracing the line of my breast. I shuddered, grabbing his palm and pressing it hard against me, determined to make him believe I wasn’t fragile. I could handle this. All of it.
All of them.
The thought lit an inferno inside me. I wanted them all. I hadn’t even admitted that to myself until this moment, but I’d felt it building inside me for weeks. The whole time we’d been on the run together—through the horrible attack at the hotel in Texas, through weeks cooped up in too-small spaces together, through dancing and drinking and all the little moments in between—I’d been falling in love with these four wild shifter men.
And right now, one of them was kissing me like he might be falling for me too.
“West.”
I breathed his name again, as though if I said it enough times, I could own it. Imprint it on my soul.
“Goddamn it, Alexis. I’ve wanted to do this since the day I met you.”
His voice was ragged, his breathing uneven. He pulled back for a second to stare into my eyes, and the spark in his told me he liked what he saw there.
He moved to kiss me again, but before he could, there was a commotion outside.
Raised voices moved closer.
Angry voices.
Both our heads whipped toward the door just as Rhys, Jackson, and Noah burst inside the shack, followed by Alpha Elijah, Val, and several other shifters I didn’t know. West’s pack mates all stopped short at the sight of the two of us clearly locked in an embrace.
But then Alpha Elijah stepped forward, his eyes flashing.
“She’s from an elite complex? And you didn’t check her for a damned tracker?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Fear swept over me like a cold wind.
I had no idea what the alpha shifter was talking about, but his voice was full of both anger and fear. And the word “tracker” couldn’t be good.
A sudden image from one of the countless nature documentaries I’d watched while locked up in the Strand complex flitted through my mind. A wolf being tagged with a microchip then released back into the wild so the scientists could study its movements.
Goddamn it. I wasn’t an animal.
But had I been tagged like one?
“What the hell is going on?” West’s arm tightened protectively around me.
The alpha’s chest heaved as his gaze scanned me up and down like I was a ticking time bomb that might explode any minute.
“You all escaped from San Diego six years ago,” Elijah boomed. “Back before Strand realized they needed to do more to keep their little pet projects from escaping. But your friends just told me this one”—he turned to me, his lip curling back in anger—“was stolen from an elite, underground facility. That means she’s important to them, which means she’s being fucking tracked!”
He strode toward me with an intentional stride, but before he reached me, all four of the men were in front of me.
“Back. The. Fuck. Off.” Noah’s voice was soft and dangerous.
“Not until she’s dealt with. She’s a threat to everyone in my pack!”
“She’s not being fucking tracked!” Jackson shouted. “We’ve been on the run together for weeks. We were camped out in Vegas for days. If they had a tracker on her, they would’ve found us already.”
“Unless they were hanging back,” Val said softly. “Waiting to see where you’d go.”
Her quiet voice cut through the angry yells, and she stepped forward, slipping between Noah and Rhys to approach me. Her hazel eyes met mine as she slid her arm around my shoulder, running her hand over the space between my shoulder blades. Her fingers pressed and massaged the skin, searching for something.
I saw the truth in her eyes before she said the words.
“She’s tagged. I can feel the chip.”
The ground seemed to pitch beneath my feet. Horror and fear m
ade my skin prickle.
What? No… Please, God, no.
On top of everything, on top of all the ways the doctors at Strand had betrayed me, had broken my trust, had treated me as less than human—this was too much.
“No. No! Get it out!” My voice rose to a panicked screech as I clawed at my back, trying in vain to reach the spot where Val’s fingers had pressed. “Help me! Please! Get it the fuck out!”
“It’s too late,” Elijah said, resignation and pity mixing with the anger in his eyes as he watched me.
“Maybe not.” Val turned to look at him. “If we extract it now, we can have someone carry it several miles from here and destroy it. Maybe it will be enough to avoid detection.”
I could barely hear her. I thrashed, arms wrapped around myself like I was in a straightjacket, fingernails scratching like knives, straining to reach the object lodged in my body.
The alpha growled in frustration before giving a decisive nod, and Val sprang into action. She turned back to me, grabbing my face in her hands.
“Okay. Okay! Alexis, we’re going to help you. But you have to stay still, all right?”
I nodded desperately, allowing Jackson to pull my hands away from my back. My heart slammed against my ribs, as if it too were trying to force the tracker—the parasite—out.
“Knife.” Val held out her hand, and one of the other pack members darted forward, pulling what looked like a hunting knife from a small sheath he wore. My breath picked up at the sight of it, until I was almost hyperventilating.
“Keep her calm,” Val ordered, her tone clipped. “And turn her around.”
Strong hands fell on my shoulders, spinning me away from her. My four wolf shifters crowded around me, steadying me, their faces filling my vision.
“It’s all right, Scrubs. It’ll be out soon.” Noah palmed the back of my head and brought my forehead to his chest, pressing me to him.
I stared down at our feet, sucking in air and blinking tears from my eyes as Jackson and West each grabbed one of my hands. I lost track of Rhys for a second, then realized he’d gone behind me to help Val.
