Immediately, my stomach made a beeline for the hard tile floor, but this time for a far less palatable reason than enjoying an enticing human’s touch. Because I was sorely afraid that anything Lissa might be so vehemently sorry about wasn’t something I wanted to hear.
But I needed to hear what was going on...and soon if Harmony’s life lay in the balance as I currently suspected. “Stop groveling and start explaining,” I commanded, not bothering to take the time to soothe the other female’s fears in the human way. Instead, ignoring the other inhabitants of the lab, I unleashed my inner wolf and allowed the beast to carry our human body toward the building’s exit, first at a walk then at a trot.
On the other end of the line, Lissa gulped then obeyed. “We watched the apartment all day just like Andrea told us to,” the guard started, her voice still quavering but her words significantly more understandable as my compulsion did its work. “No one of Ms. Garcia’s description left and no werewolves entered on our watch. But you sounded extremely concerned when you called, so Marcia went to check out the human’s hallway. And an old lady came to the door....”
My lips tried to turn upwards into a smile as Lissa painted a picture of the eldest Garcia attempting to chase two Greenbriar werewolves out of her hallway with that ever-present cane. But I could guess where this story was going...and there would be no happy ending to smile about. So I cut into the stream of chatter yet again.
“Tell me,” I ordered, forcing Lissa to cut to the chase.
For a moment, even an alpha compulsion wasn’t enough to break through the pained silence lying cold and hard between us. Then, at last, Lissa spoke, her words nearly too quiet to hear. “They were gone,” she whispered, the pain of a wolf who’d failed her alpha strong even if her voice remained muted and weak. “The human and her pup left before we even got there. They went to the zoo early this morning...and they never came back.”
Chapter 22
I was halfway down the block, analyzing the density of nearby shrubbery and trying to decide where I could safely shift, when a sleek black sports car pulled up by my side. “Hop in,” Sebastien greeted me, reaching across the passenger seat to push open the gleaming front door.
And even though I needed a ride, I hesitated. The professor’s vehicle was the perfect way to get across town as quickly and efficiently as possible...but I couldn’t afford to tip my hand further to someone who’d proven himself far more perspicacious than the average one-body. Shifter politics aside, I didn’t dare drag this human into the altercation that was soon to come either.
The car looked fast, though. And the human, I had to assume, would be ditchable before any werewolves came into view.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I told the professor...but I nonetheless slipped inside the waiting vehicle. And even though my own unaccustomed rudeness grated on my ears, I found myself unable to mitigate the words with further small talk. Not when my wolf barely allowed me to snap the seat belt into place before forcing our spine to take a hard left turn toward the enticing human in the driver’s seat.
Ours, the wolf whispered, filling my mind with a far-too-vivid image of myself wriggling into the space between Sebastien and the steering wheel, letting my shirt ruck up so his chest rubbed against my bare skin. In the wolf’s animalistic understanding, it was entirely irrelevant that giving the professor an unrequested lap dance was likely to cause the vehicle we sat inside to wreck. Trying to argue the complete and utter inappropriateness of the gesture was also a recipe for failure, so I didn’t attempt to make either point.
Instead, I merely shushed my inner animal while plugging an address into the vehicle’s GPS. Not the zoo’s coordinates, of course—I couldn’t risk Sebastien following me into a showdown that I suspected would turn into a blood bath at my first misstep. But I’d killed time during lulls at the coffee shop researching outings Rosie might enjoy, and the children’s museum lay only half a mile away from the zoo’s side gate. I could easily hoof it that short distance...and there were plenty of distractions in between to help shake a tenacious human off my tail.
Predictably, my wolf took offense at the idea of running away from a male she would have vastly preferred reaching toward. But when she opened our shared mouth to say something I was sure we’d later regret, Sebastien’s aroma coated our tongue and sidetracked the beast from any ill-advised speech.
Our companion’s scent was different than it had been just an hour earlier. Equally as enticing, but darker and more bitter, as if the human understood as well as I did that his supposed experiment had harmed the tenuous bond forming between us.
But despite the regret hanging heavy in the air, Sebastien didn’t open with an apology when he finally spoke. Instead, keeping his gaze firmly riveted on the road, the male beside me cleared his throat loudly. Then he shattered the ounce of equilibrium I’d managed to rebuild since losing my cool inside the clinical interior of his lab.
“Derek is your brother,” the professor said, eyes glinting as they drifted over to catch my reaction. “Isn’t he?”
THE SHOCK OF HEARING my sibling’s name roll off a human tongue forced words out of my mouth that I immediately wished could be taken back. “How did you know?” I demanded.
And while I half expected my wolf to growl protest of my curtness, she instead turned quiescent beneath our shared skin. Because, attraction or no attraction, family came first. And if this male had harmed our brother...well, I just hoped I could make it out of the car before my wolf skinned our driver alive.
Perhaps the professor sensed the shift in mood, or maybe he just regretted dropping his verbal bomb with such a profound lack of subtlety. Either way, skin around his mouth tightened as the car merged onto the freeway. And after waiting for three long seconds, I was forced to prod in search of a reply.
“Professor...?” I prompted, trying to sound polite even as I fingered the mostly clean knife strapped against my bare thigh.
The tiniest hint of a smile came into my companion’s face then, and he shook his head slowly from side to side. “I thought you looked familiar when I first met you,” he began, answering my question but also apparently thinking through an issue he hadn’t previously attempted to put into words. “Derek was just as cagey as you are when I first ran into him at the bus station. And, in the lab.... Well, I’ve never experienced anything like that, except with Derek...and you.”
I wanted to pounce on the “was” he’d placed so close to my brother’s name, but instead I forced myself to cover my butt and smooth over the human’s final point first. Just my luck that the one time I’d slapped a compulsion onto a human, the one-body in question was both sensitive enough to notice and scientific enough to be intrigued. “In the lab?” I offered in lieu of an explanation. “I’m not sure what you mean....”
“Okay,” Sebastien answered, dropping the topic far too readily for my peace of mind. “So the...tingle...or whatever...was all in my imagination. But you do look like him. The hair and the nose and something around your eyes.”
You’re cuter, though, my companion’s scent insinuated, and I had to force myself not to respond to the attraction thrumming back to life between us. Now wasn’t the time to be derailed by fickle hormones.
“Where’s my brother?” I demanded instead, reminding myself that this human might have been the last person to see Derek before he went missing. Had my sibling fallen into the trap presented by the professor’s kindly face and interested manner? Had he revealed too much and ended up as an unwilling test subject in a government laboratory?
As tempting as it was to blame Derek’s absence on this human, though, I had a bad feeling that my brother’s fate had been his own darn fault. In which case, Derek might not only be a lone wolf but also the worst of werewolf offenders—a traitor I’d be forced to kill on sight.
Shivering, I reached over to turn off the AC.
“I have no clue where Derek is,” Sebastien answered, apparently oblivious to my own internal struggle as he bro
ke into my thoughts. But even though he was finally offering information without further prodding, my wolf’s ears pricked up as she returned to full alert. Because for the first time since meeting him, we could taste the distinctive odor of an acridly scented lie rolling off Sebastien’s formerly enticing skin.
So the professor was part of the problem. Disillusionment bit into my skin like the pang of a torn-off band-aid, and I was too upset to feign subtlety this time around. Instead, I barely managed to keep the alpha compulsion out of my voice as I gritted out a repeat of my initial question. “Where...is...he?”
In response, the car skidded slightly as it bumped up against a curb, and a horn sounded off to our left. The intensity of our preceding conversation had prevented me from noticing that we’d exited the highway and entered the downtown area, but I guessed that we were now no more than a couple of miles from my intended destination.
That obliviousness was something I needed to fix. A warring werewolf didn’t last long if she lost track of her surroundings.
My hand hovered over the door latch as rush-hour gridlock slowed the surrounding traffic—and Sebastien’s car—to a crawl. I ought to step out now, I thought, and leave this human behind. Harmony’s absence turned my spine ramrod stiff while the threat to Rosie’s future was a spider-crawl of tension skittering across my skin. Even on two human feet, I could easily reach my sister in a few short minutes if I exited the vehicle now....
And yet...once I left his side, I’d never see Sebastien again. Because the professor was too clever for me to safely cultivate, regardless of our budding connection. He was already on track to figure out that Derek and I weren’t your average one-bodies. Meanwhile, his government affiliations made any potential realization far more dangerous than it might otherwise have been.
No, this was my last opportunity to dislodge answers. So, forcing myself to sink back into the car’s soft leather seats, I ignored the snail’s pace of the traffic around us and instead bored my gaze into the side of Sebastien’s head. “Are you really going to leave me dangling, thinking my brother may be dead?” I asked, allowing myself to sound just as young and wounded as that scenario made me feel. I wasn’t a defenseless damsel...but I could play one on TV. “Please, just tell me what you know.”
For one agonizing moment, I thought Sebastien might not comply. But then he turned the wheel rapidly, pulling the vehicle into the entrance of an underground parking garage. Not bothering to hunt out an empty spot, my companion merely screeched to a halt in the middle of the aisle and swiveled around in his seat so we were facing. Only a few inches of heated air now separated our eyes and skin.
“Ember, I really, honestly don’t know where your brother is,” Sebastien told me, his voice rich with both contrition and truth. The professor swallowed, then continued. “I can’t give you an address or even a city...but I do know it’s probably my fault that he ended up there.”
Chapter 23
Humans love the dark. Being unable to look into a companion’s face gives them an entirely unwarranted belief in anonymity...and Sebastien was no exception to that rule. So, like a church-goer shielded from view by the confessional, as soon as the headlights went dim my companion’s story came pouring forth.
“Your brother showed up on a Greyhound bus two years ago,” Sebastien told me, his voice steady in the darkness. He glanced toward me, providing an opening in which I might explain the familial mode of transportation. But I merely shook my head rather than taking the bait.
Because I couldn’t tell my companion that moving vehicles were exempted from the territorial rules governing werewolves. That my brother and I had both felt safe within those metal walls while passing through land owned by other packs. Off the bus, on the other hand...I doubted a lone male shifter would have been welcomed into the heart of the Greenbriar clan with the same open-armed generosity I’d recently been granted as a pack-affiliated female.
“And you picked him up?” I asked instead, nudging Sebastien’s story beyond what I suspected would be the first of many disclosures my wolf wanted to share but that my rational human brain forced us to sidestep.
Sebastien nodded in agreement, his eyes searching my face in the near darkness. Then a sigh gusted out as he accepted my evasion for what it was. “I handed your brother a business card just like the one I gave you. Told him about the candy bars and the cash. Unlike most of my subjects, Derek seemed more interested in the latter than the former.”
And this I could explain...at least tangentially. “My brother lived pretty close to the poverty line,” I murmured, shivering as I realized I’d joined Sebastien in referring to my sibling in the past tense.
“I don’t think he’s dead,” the professor interjected so quickly that it almost felt as if he’d read my mind. One large, male hand stretched toward me, and I itched to accept the consolation physical contact would provide.
But, instead, I tamped down my inner wolf’s urges and glanced the other way, effectively cutting my companion’s offer of solace off. “Where do you think he is then?” I asked instead. Even to my ears, my voice sounded hard and cold.
For a long moment, no one spoke. Then the professor answered my spoken question while ignoring the undercurrents flowing beneath. “It’s complicated,” Sebastien told me. “During your brother’s first experimental session at the college, I felt something strange happening when Derek shut the shocks down.”
My nostrils flared as I took in the scent filling the car. Discomfort, curiosity, worry. Not so different from the feelings currently running through my own body in fact.
“I was intrigued by the sensation,” Sebastien continued after a moment. “So even though it wasn’t really appropriate, I hired your brother under the table and let him stay on my couch for a while. He seemed to need somewhere to sleep, and my house is really too big for one person.”
A good home, my wolf interjected. For a moment, I didn’t understand what she was referring to. But then, abruptly, I could envision my companion’s living room in all its book-lined glory.
Because Derek had called once from a place that looked less like a hostel and more like a home. Shelves and plants competed for pride of place along brightly painted walls, tweaking my inherent curiosity. And before I could think better of the question, I’d found myself asking my brother who he was crashing with.
I realized the error of my ways immediately, of course. Because my brother failed to give a straight answer to my simple question, instead setting off on an extended tangent that told me nothing except that I’d crossed an improper line. For three days after that, Derek hadn’t answered my chat requests. But when he’d returned, the lapse was forgotten, my question never spoken of again. He’d even provided a PO address to send a care package to later that month—a compromise from a shifter who was unwilling to let even his sister know where he currently denned.
It had hurt to confirm how little Derek trusted me, and I now sensed that Sebastien had been equally stung by my brother’s failure to confide in his pro bono house-mate. But while I could understand Sebastien’s regret, there were more important matters at stake. Matters like my brother’s safety and continuing existence. So, ignoring the human’s bowed shoulders, I continued to nibble around the edges of Derek’s unexplained absence.
“You gave my brother room and board so you could study him,” I guessed. It wouldn’t have been a formal experiment. No, Sebastien was far too clever for that. But if he placed Derek in situations that would tempt the latter to spill alpha compulsions then subtly monitored the results...well, what human scientist wouldn’t be thrilled by the opportunity to explore such inexplicable behavior?
“I was too fascinated not to,” Sebastien admitted, the scent of old books—the tell of his intellectual curiosity—once again filling the air. “But then I made the ultimate mistake.”
Now we were getting to the heart of the matter. I clenched my hands together, hoping the professor would say he’d scared my brother away with a lapse
much like my own verbal faux pas. But I knew that wasn’t the case. Not when the scent of guilt was now so thick in the atmosphere that I almost choked on my companion’s unspoken words.
“You contacted your funders,” I suggested, filling the extended silence with words my companion seemed unable to spit out. “You told DARPA about this test subject that made you feel...what...all tingly inside?”
“Something like that.” Sebastien laughed, but it was an embarrassed chuckle rather than any indication of true amusement. “I mentioned Derek’s name in my usual monthly summary. And, the next day, your brother failed to show up for dinner. I waited a week, then had to admit the truth. My test subject had disappeared without a trace.”
HE’S GONE.
For a long moment, I sat in stunned silence, trying to wrap my head around complete and utter failure. Because I’d been willing to leave my pack behind and fight the Greenbriar clan for permission to hunt my brother within their territory. I’d kept my options open to travel even further afield, had envisioned sniffing along Derek’s trail and rambling from pack to pack if necessary until I finally tracked my little brother down.
But going up against the human government? At some point, even a wolf has to admit she’s been beaten.
It’s not supposed to end this way. Because Derek was my blood, dammit. I could feel the connection in my soul even if our bond couldn’t be explained away using my rational human mind. Losing my only sibling before I’d so much as felt the touch of his bare hand against mine...the concept was so foreign as to be unthinkable.
Two and a half days earlier, I certainly hadn’t been thinking about the possibility for failure. Instead, rolling my suitcase up to the waiting bus at dawn had felt like embarking on a brand new adventure while the butterflies in my stomach originated from excitement rather than dread. As a result, I hadn’t even looked over my shoulder when dozens of pack mates called fond farewells toward my retreating back.
Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1) Page 46
