by Amy Green
Days continued to pass. He ate sparingly, and he never shouted or railed. The guards were afraid of him; he could smell their fear. That was good. He was done killing, but he could still inflict pain. They should be afraid of the pain Brody could give them. They should keep their distance.
More days passed. A week, maybe more. They didn’t come.
And one day the guards opened the cell, put the cuffs on him, and took him out again. They didn’t say a word. He didn’t ask. He knew they wouldn’t answer him, and he also knew he wasn’t being set free.
They put him in the back of a police van and drove, while Brody contemplated breaking the cuffs and running. The van stopped, and the guards handed him over to different guards in a different van, and Brody thought about hurting them too. The second van drove for a while, and when it stopped they were at a big white building surrounded by ten feet of electric fence. Brody could smell live electricity and disinfectant and the stale, cold smell of metal. He could smell misery and fear. He could smell humans, and animals kept in cages, but he didn’t scent any shifters. Not his brothers, not his mate.
They took him inside. This was a hospital of some sort, though he couldn’t smell sickness. There were people in scrubs and doctors’ coats, and other people in suits, and still other people in security uniforms. They had taken his clothes, given him patient scrubs, and almost put him in the cell when he realized what was happening, where he was. It was the smell of the animals that gave it away, because the animals were in cages, and they were afraid.
Research. This was some kind of research facility.
For the first time he felt a jolt of panic, but they had already shoved him in the cell and closed the door. This was a different cell from before, whiter, cleaner, with a thick pane of glass in the door so that people could look in on him. A camera was embedded in the wall near the ceiling so that more people could look at him. So they could study him.
He stared at the camera for a long time, feeling something bubble up inside him. He’d played by the rules. He hadn’t killed Carson. He’d surrendered. He’d saved the lives of dozens of people who didn’t realize it, simply by sitting still and not killing them. He hadn’t made a fuss. He hadn’t even talked to a fucking lawyer, not that he’d ever met a lawyer in his life.
He hadn’t killed anyone. He hadn’t even hurt them.
But that camera made him mad.
Never anger an alpha wolf, the saying went.
He stared into the lens, letting whoever was on the other side see his eyes. Giving them a warning.
Then he made a single jump, grabbed the camera, ripped it from the wall, and smashed it to the floor.
18
“There has to be something we can do,” Alison heard Anna say.
“I know.” That was Ian’s voice, soft and kind when he spoke to his mate. “We’ll find it. Don’t worry.”
Alison opened her eyes. She was lying on a sofa in the living room of Brody’s house, fully dressed. She even had her shoes on. She’d fallen asleep.
She rolled over and looked at the ceiling. She hadn’t been sleeping much, but still the nap was strange. She was on edge most of the time, barely able to feel anything except grief and a hard, yearning pain behind her ribcage. Brody, that pain said in a constant refrain. It got worse every day he was gone.
It had been twenty days. She’d spent a lot of those days in a hotel room in Denver, with the other Donovans coming and going as they tried to get Brody out of prison. They talked to a dozen lawyers; none would take the case. Because Brody was a shifter, and Charlie Donovan’s son, and the alpha of his pack. Because shifters had no money and couldn’t pay six-figure lawyers’ fees. It didn’t matter that Brody hadn’t been charged, that he hadn’t been granted his rights, that there would be no bail hearing. Every lawyer looked at it and backed away. “Legally, he’s an animal,” one of the lawyers said as he snapped his briefcase closed and prepared to leave. “Technically, under the law, if the DA wants to send him to the pound, he can do it.”
“That’s insane.” Alison had been near tears. Her moods had been bad lately. “It can’t possibly be legal. He’s a human.”
“No, ma’am, he isn’t,” the lawyer said, standing up. “Not entirely, anyway, which means he isn’t human under the law. Which means I have no laws to use in getting him out.”
“So what do we do?” Alison asked.
“Wait,” the lawyer said. “Hope. Ask nicely for his release and promise he’ll behave. Pray that he doesn’t hurt anyone while he’s inside, because that means they’ll never let him go.”
“I had the same problem,” Ian said when the lawyer left. “When I got arrested for illegal cage fighting, I never got a hearing. They stuck me in a cell, and the next thing I knew, some judge had handed down a sentence. So I sat there until Anna got me out.”
“He can’t change into his wolf in there,” Alison said.
Ian nodded. “I lasted eighteen months in a cell without changing. Brody can probably go longer. But eventually, the fact that he can’t change will have an effect.”
Alison already knew. A shifter needed to change into his animal to keep his mental balance. A wolf who couldn’t change—and hunt and run—would eventually feel the effects. Depression, rage, inability to think. Listlessness. A wish for death.
Eighteen months. It was an unthinkable length of time.
Alison stared at the ceiling a little longer, then sat up. Four days ago, in their Denver hotel room, they’d gotten word that Brody had been removed from prison and sent somewhere else. It had taken every string they could find to pull, but eventually they learned he’d been taken to a research facility in the middle of nowhere. It was closer to Shifter Falls than to Denver, so everyone had moved back here to continue the fight to get their alpha back.
She stood up and went to the kitchen, where Ian and Anna were talking quietly. Anna was leaned in close to her mate, obviously drawing strength from him. He was watching her intently, all of his attention on her, one of his big hands stroking her long, dark hair with infinite gentleness. They weren’t doing anything, they were barely touching, but the way they stood made Alison’s heart split in half. She was lonely, and she wanted Brody. She missed her mate. She missed him.
Anna noticed her. “Hey, honey,” she said. “Want something to eat?”
Alison shrugged. She did, and she didn’t. She was hungry, but her stomach hurt. “Maybe some tea.”
“I’ll make it.” Anna pulled away from Ian and looked through Brody’s cupboards for tea.
It felt a little better, being back here. She was used to this house now. She would have preferred to get used to Brody’s house while she was here alone with Brody, but that wasn’t meant to be. She had slept in his bed last night—it smelled of him—and used his bathroom this morning, pushing aside his shaving things so she could dry her hair. It was strange, because it felt intimate when he wasn’t even present. Like they were living together, except they weren’t.
She wondered if they let him shave in prison. She doubted it.
Her parents had brought her things from her old place—clothes, toiletries. They knew now what had happened, that she was Brody’s mate. Her father was worried for his alpha and his daughter both, but as always he stayed strong. She was glad to have a shifter for a father who understood when to step in and help and when to back up and let the pack take over. She was Brody’s now, which meant that his brothers and their mates looked after her all the time. She was never without one or another of them here, even when she was sleeping. They almost seemed to be standing guard over her, which she was too drained to figure out.
Anna pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, and Alison sat down. “Nadine was just here,” Ian said.
Alison frowned. She’d slept right through Nadine’s visit—she must have been tired. “Did she have news?”
“Not much,” Ian replied, taking the chair opposite her as Anna plugged in the kettle. “This Larkhaven place is a tough
nut to crack. There isn’t a lot of information about it—at least, not public information. No one knows exactly what they do there, except that it’s a medical research lab.”
A medical research lab. That was where her mate was right now. Alison thought she might throw up. “Ian, we have to get him out of there.”
“I know.” Ian glanced up at Anna, then looked at Alison again. “I think we’ve exhausted all the legal avenues. There’s no point in any more lawyers or petitions to judges. Devon and Heath agree with me.”
“You mean escape,” Alison said. That would make Brody a fugitive, unable to live free anymore. Unable to take his rightful place as alpha while the law was after him. If they could even do it without getting killed, or caught themselves.
Alison stared at the table. You’re our alpha, Heath had said that first night. It’s you. Until he’s back, you’re him. She had to make an alpha decision. She had to make them every day. Even with the help of Brody’s brothers and their mates, it was so fucking exhausting she felt like sleeping all the time.
Still. “Okay,” she said to Ian. “Let’s make a plan.”
“We’ll meet tonight and come up with something,” Ian said. “In the meantime, we need to talk about this house of Charlie’s.”
Anna slid Alison’s tea across the table and sat down, too. “The house on Barfield Road,” she said.
Tears stung Alison’s eyes for a second. She really was an emotional wreck lately. She bit the tears back and raised her head. “What about it?”
With Brody gone, they had all done their best to keep the everyday business of the pack going. One of the things that needed handling was the list of properties that Charlie had left behind. Alison had shared the list with the others, including the house—going, yet again, against Brody’s wishes. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d silently apologized to Brody in her head. At least she hadn’t told Brody’s secret about the letters jumbling. She’d been able to keep that to herself, at least for now.
But the house on Barfield Road—Brody’s mother’s house—was one of the hardest problems for Alison to solve, because she couldn’t figure out what Brody would want. Did he want it preserved? Did he want it torn down? In the years since his mother’s murder, Brody hadn’t ever gone to the house or asked about it, and he hadn’t gone since the day Alison told him it was still standing. Whatever Brody thought about his mother’s house was hidden in the depths that Alison, in their short mated life, had never had time to see, like a relic sunk to the bottom of a very dark, still pond.
So, with everything else going on, she hadn’t done anything about the house yet. “Do I need to make a decision?” she asked.
“It’s falling down,” Ian said. “It’s becoming a hazard. There are animals nesting in there, and it’s too dangerous for the neighborhood kids to go near. The people who live in the neighborhood are complaining.”
Alison nodded. “So it should probably be torn down, then.”
“Probably,” Ian said, rather gently for a big, dark wolf.
Alison thought it over. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I don’t know what he would want. I don’t know if he would want me to make a decision, or wait and let him make a decision when he comes back.” If he comes back.
Stop thinking like that. Just stop.
Anna touched the back of her hand lightly. “Do you want to go see the place?”
No! It was her first knee-jerk reaction. But then she thought it over. What was there to be afraid of? Nothing, that’s what. And maybe seeing the place, from the inside instead of driving by, would help her decide. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.”
The house was awful.
Devon, Heath, and Ian accompanied her. Devon kicked the rotten door down while Ian made sure Alison didn’t step on any of the broken glass littering the overgrown front walk. Heath walked in ahead to make sure there were no pitfalls or falling ceiling timbers waiting inside.
Alison stood in front of the house for a second, staring at it. Once upon a time, it had been a modest bungalow built for growing families. Now the roof was sagging, the windows were broken, and piles of garbage littered the front walk. No wonder the neighbors were uneasy—Alison wouldn’t want her kids playing here. It was obviously a place where terrible things had happened, a place where death had come and never quite left. A place that was sitting in memory like a rotten tooth that had never been pulled.
When Heath gave the okay, Alison walked inside. It was even worse in here: dark, smelly, rancid where animals had nested and left droppings everywhere. It was dim, because the electricity was long gone. The living room contained nothing but an old sofa, rotted and stained, and the ragged remnants of a sleeping bag a vagrant had left there years ago. Alison was almost reluctant to go near the bag, just in case there were old bones in there.
She stepped further into the house. The kitchen had flooded at some point, the linoleum curling along the edges, the sink brown and stained. The hallway behind, leading to the bedrooms, had once been carpeted, though what was left was mildewed and mostly rotted away. She had no desire to walk down that hallway.
Where had the murder happened? He snapped her neck, Brody had said. She begged for mercy. Teenage Brody had had to watch. Had it happened in this room right here? In one of the bedrooms? Where?
She had to get out of here.
Her stomach gave a sudden heave, and she ran to the rusty sink and threw up—once, and then again, dry spit coming up. She felt a presence behind her as she rinsed out her mouth with the rusty water, and then a soothing hand on her back. Heath. He was always the best at this kind of thing.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
“I’ve let him down,” Alison said, letting the tears fall now. “I keep letting him down. I should never have gone to Pierce Point—he asked me not to go. He said he needed me, and I didn’t listen. But if I’d been here, he would never have gone to see Carson Dunne. I could have stopped him, and none of this would be happening. And now I’m letting him down again.”
Heath came closer, patting her kindly between her shoulder blades. “Sweetheart, ease up on yourself.”
“And this house,” Alison continued, disregarding him. “Look at it! Do you see this place? It’s a nightmare. This is where Brody comes from, Heath. This is his past. This is what he’s had to live with—his mother being killed here, right in front of him. And I don’t know what to do about it, how to make it better. I can’t even see him. I couldn’t get him out of prison, and I can’t get him out of that awful place he’s in now. I’m not the mate for him. I’m not an alpha. I’m no one. I really am.”
Heath kept rubbing her back as she caught her breath. It was a brotherly touch, affectionate and warm with no subtext to it. Shifters were so simple that way; Heath belonged to Tessa, every piece of him forever, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t comfort a woman who was weeping heartbrokenly over a rusty sink. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a brief squeeze, and she let herself warm to him for just a second, take comfort from his strength. It was nice sometimes, having strong wolves as family.
“Alison,” he said, “I’m going to give you some straight talk here. So stop crying, all right?”
Alison sniffed and nodded, wiping her eyes.
“First of all,” Heath said, “you are Brody’s mate. We’ve all known it for years, even when he didn’t. Second of all, you are an alpha, and you’re doing just fine. Being an alpha doesn’t mean you’re right all the time. It doesn’t mean you’re infallible. Got it?”
“Yes,” Alison said, straightening a little. She turned away from the sink and saw that Ian and Devon had come into the room, watching Heath comfort her. Ian was leaning against the counter, Devon against the rotten doorframe. They’d all heard her little breakdown, then. Wonderful.
“Last of all,” Heath said, stepping back from her, “you need to take care of yourself.”
“Heath.” Devon’s voice was a warning.
“She does,” Heath said.
Ian rolled his eyes. “You had to say it.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Wait,” Alison said. “What are you talking about?”
Heath crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her. “Sweetheart. The crying. The sleeping. The throwing up.” He raised his eyebrows.
His meaning clicked. Alison frowned and counted the days. It had been three weeks since she’d last seen Brody. Three weeks since— “Oh,” she said. She put a palm to her forehead. “Oh.”
It wasn’t a surprise. It was what she had wanted, deep down, or she wouldn’t have mated with Brody the way she had. She had thought… Well, she had wondered if it would happen. And he hadn’t backed away from it.
It had happened.
She looked at Heath. “How do you know? So soon?”
“You give off a scent,” Heath said. “We can all sense it. You haven’t noticed that we’ve been smothering you like mother hens?”
She hadn’t. But now she saw it. For the last few days, there had been a Donovan brother somewhere in earshot, twenty-four seven. And their mates had been especially kind to her. The family instinct kicking in, she realized. Protecting Brody’s mate and looking out for her while he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry I had to tell you,” Heath said. “It should be Brody’s place. But you have to take extra care of yourself. If something happens to you before he gets back, he’ll kill all three of us.”
“With glee,” Ian added.
“Eat right,” Devon instructed her from his spot leaning in the doorway. “Get rest. See a doctor. Don’t take any risks. Or Brody will have our heads.”
It hit her—truly hit her. She was going to have a baby. Brody’s baby. She was going to be a mother.
