“I asked why you’re here,” she growled, “not why you’re not.”
“I’m here to negotiate with you. I need your help, just as you need mine.” He moved towards her, sensible enough to be cautious about it. The guards had probably told him not to wake her Lioness. They’d warned him that she had a sleeping monster inside her.
She almost wanted to laugh. Poor bastard didn’t have anything to worry about. She wasn’t sure her Lioness would ever wake again.
She grabbed the water from him, unscrewed its lid and took a long swig. It was cold, refreshing. For the first time in days, a little clarity started to make its way into her mind. Whatever was in the liquid was definitely doing the trick. It was nice to feel a little lucid for once.
“Negotiate what?” she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her dirty hand, a move that she immediately regretted. Ew. Please tell me you’re going to negotiate a long, soapy bath for me.
“The people who work here want information,” the man said. He had such a nice voice. A little too nice. Sinead found herself enjoying the sound; it was like a distant, lilting music. Seductive, even. She could have listened to him all day.
No. He couldn’t be seductive, and she couldn’t let herself enjoy him. This man was a pig, just like the others. She was only hanging onto anything positive because if she didn’t, she’d go completely mad. She was falling in love with a sound because she needed to believe that something in the universe was still beautiful.
“What kind of information would they want from me?” she asked. “I work for a tech company. I’m no one.” She knew the lie in her words. She knew what he meant. But she didn’t want to confront the awfulness of the truth—that a group of British men had thrown her into a cell under London because she wasn’t like them. They’d thrown her in because they didn’t like the idea of the giant cat inside her. She was their enemy because she had something they didn’t. Because she didn’t fit into their idea of normal.
“They want you to help them uncover other shifters. The ones who are causing issues in London, killing people. That sort of thing. If you help, then…”
She made a scoffing sound, then laughed. “I can’t help you, but even if I could, I wouldn’t. Don’t you see? This whole thing is fucking eugenics,” she said, gesturing towards her cell walls with her arms outstretched, a little of the water splashing out of her bottle. “You’re rounding us up like we’re…”
“Animals,” the man said, his tone hard for the first time. Sinead realized that his face was obscured in darkness again, his phone pointed at the floor. “Well, you are, aren’t you?” he asked. “You are an animal.”
She opened her mouth but stopped herself before growling at him. “Half animal,” she said. “But my déor is dormant right now, thanks to whatever fucking cocktail of narcotics they injected into me. My eyes are bleary, my sense of smell is choked. I’m no threat to anyone, and no use to them, either. I’m half-dead.”
The man pulled his phone towards his face again and backed up against the wall, looking down at her with a strange glint in his eye. She wished she were alert enough to sniff him, to figure him out. She couldn’t tell if he was awful or nice, evil or kind. Couldn’t tell if he was there to make her life hell, or if he genuinely wanted to help her.
He was beginning to seem good, protective. But that might have been the drugs messing with her mind.
Of course, that was probably what he wanted her to think. It wasn’t like he’d offered her anything. He hadn’t said he’d help to free her, to guide her back to her life. Hadn’t said he’d get her some proper food, a change of clothing.
“No,” he said softly. “You’re quite right. You’re not a threat.”
He went silent after that for a moment, and then a familiar sound hit her ears.
Sniffing.
At first she thought she was the one doing it. Maybe her Lioness had taken over and was trying to assess him.
It took a minute to realize that the sound was coming from him.
“What are you doing?” she asked, waving her hand at him as if to shoo him away. “Don’t do that; I know I smell rank. I don’t exactly have a bath tub in here.”
“You really are a Lioness,” he said, ignoring her words. “They told me so, but I wanted to be sure. I wanted to find her scent on the air.”
With those words, Sinead’s head cleared, like the fog that had consumed her for days had been blasted away with one quick gust from a high-powered fan.
“Holy bollocks,” she gasped. “You’re a shifter.”
“Yeah. I am. A Dire Wolf, to be precise.”
She stared at him for a moment. His eyes gleamed in the darkness. Why hadn’t she seen that before? He was so tall, so broad-shouldered. She should have known immediately what he was.
But wait—how the fuck had a shifter waltzed into a locked cell under the Anti-Shifter Task Force’s headquarters?
There could be only one answer, and it wasn’t a good one.
“Traitor!” She tried to yell, but her vocal cords were too strained, too useless to let the words out with any force. The syllables emerged in an ugly, venomous rasp. “You’re a goddamned traitor!”
“No, I’m not,” he said softly. “I’m not, not to you. If anything, I’m a traitor to those who work here. Sinead, you need to listen to me before you put us both in more danger.”
He moved closer and held his phone up to the side of his face, illuminating his features starkly so that she could see his eyes clearly for the first time. They flashed a light, impossible blue. The eyes of a Dire Wolf. Fierce, feral.
Sinead finally understood why she’d felt protected in his presence. She could feel the surge of energy in the room, wrapping in soft ribbons around her mind and body.
She inhaled deep, daring to take in his scent. She could smell him now on the air. But better still, she could see him. Every line of his face, every aspect of him. A beautiful dream who had walked into her worst nightmare.
The man had learned to mask his true nature. He was a rogue, a spy. A double agent.
A pulse of electricity seemed to light the air between them as she stared into those strange eyes of his, seeking out his hidden déor. But she couldn’t quite find him; he was concealing himself well. Aside from the initial flash, the Dire Wolf refused to show himself.
His human side, on the other hand, was on full display.
He looked about thirty-five. His hair was dark brown, his eyes intelligent and sympathetic, narrowing as he looked at her, as though he was trying to figure her out just as much as she was attempting to decipher him. Dark brown hair, close cropped at the sides and back. His lips were full, kissable, though the last thing she should have been considering was kissing anyone. The stubble on his cheeks made her want to claw her fingernails along his skin, to feel the sensation of resistance and roughness. To taste him with her fingertips, if she couldn’t do it with her lips.
He was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on, and something told her that it wasn’t mere desperation that led her to that conclusion. He was simply extraordinary, and somehow fate had brought him to her.
For the first time in days, she felt her Lioness stir to life inside her, waking to have a look at the Wolf shifter who might just find a way to save her life.
“I’m listening,” Sinead said, tears welling in her eyes. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
The man’s lips curled into the slightest hint of a smile, which faded almost immediately, no doubt forced away by the seriousness of their situation. “My name is Brigg. I’m a member of a pack who will offer you protection, as will the Dragons’ Guild. But first, I want to get you out of here,” he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “I have a plan for it. But you need to go along with me, do you understand? You need to be my accomplice. They cannot know what I am, or they’ll throw me in here as well. They need to think I’ve convinced you to cooperate; that we’ve struck up a deal but that I need you with me,
outside of this cell and this building. Do. You. Understand?”
She nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Loud and clear.”
“Good. So here’s what we’re going to do.”
Chapter 5
When Brigg had pulled the cell door shut behind him, he nodded silently to the nearest guard and yanked his cell phone out of his pocket.
He had no intention of making a call, and in fact there was barely a signal in the dank depths below the task force’s headquarters. But he needed the excuse to stand still, to let the battle raging inside his chest calm before he made his way back up the corridor towards Collins’ office. Otherwise there would be no holding his Wolf back. No stopping the hellfire that was about to explode from his chest.
He pulled his head up and looked around at the guards who kept watch over the cells. Each of the men was a silent, complicit monster. Following orders mindlessly, unquestioning, while powerful beings suffered agonizing fates mere feet away from them.
Anger roiled inside Brigg, for the men’s cowardice, for their pathetic lack of strength. They didn’t, for one second, question the very morality of their duty. Didn’t consider the fact that shifters were the greatest allies that Britain had ever seen. Their kind had kept London safe for decades, defeating the unseen forces who threatened humans. They were the shadowy sentinels who had kept blood-thirsty creatures at bay. But now at the first sign of trouble, London had identified them as the enemy.
Even as he fumed about the injustice of their plight, though, another emotion stirred Brigg’s insides.
One even more powerful than anger.
As he began to walk towards the staircase at the end of the long corridor, his head swam with thoughts of the beautiful woman he’d left behind in her prison cell.
The image of her face had already branded itself on his mind, on his heart, in perfect, exquisite detail. He couldn’t ignore what she’d done to him, how his cock had sprung to life the moment he’d picked up her scent on the air; a scent that couldn’t be masked by even the dankest prison. He couldn’t ignore what she was.
Sinead had been foggy and fuzzy-minded at first. She hadn’t grasped all that was happening between them. Whether because of the drugs or something else, she probably hadn’t seen that it was fate that had drawn them both into that small, dark cell, face to face.
But Brigg had seen it. He’d sensed it in the air between them, in her voice, in her scent. He’d felt it deep in his soul from the moment his eyes had met hers. But he hardly dared think the words. To presume that she could be his destined mate seemed insane.
The thing was, he wasn’t presuming. He simply knew it, and so did his Dire Wolf. The realization was the only thing granting him any modicum of calm right now as he lifted one foot in front of the other and forced himself towards Collins, avoiding eye contact with the foolish guards who inspired such rage inside him.
Easing along foot by foot, he forced away his anger by thinking of her sad eyes. Dark brown, flecked with golden reminders of the Lioness who dwelled silently inside her, they had sparkled in the dim light with a luminosity that only a shifter in distress could reveal. If eyes were the window to the soul, her soul was complex and wonderful. A tangle of mixed emotions and confusion. She’d looked so lost, and he’d wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and to comfort her, to tell her that he would break her free if it was the last thing he did in this world.
But holding another person was no simple matter, not for Brigg. He never touched anyone, not unless he was left with no choice. He couldn’t. Touch for him was a strange, intimate toxin, a sensory explosion that few people could understand. To touch Sinead would have been to open a door into her soul, to violate her by walking directly into her mind.
No. He would never touch her. Not unless she asked him to.
The only time he grabbed hold of anyone, in fact, was in the moments when he needed to seek answers from criminals. To uncover the location of their victims, to see their crimes, to read their deepest, darkest secrets. Brigg had few qualms about violating those who killed and maimed. They deserved the invasion.
But Sinead didn’t.
Even if he couldn’t read her mind, there was no question that he had to get her out of there, and soon. She was weak. Perhaps not physically, but mentally. He could see that the prison had worn her down. He had to get her to a place of freedom, of comfort, where she could breathe again. A place where he and Cillian could get to know her, but more importantly, they would be able to help her.
She would never see the inside of a cell again, not on his watch.
But getting her out of this hell-hole required a plan, and Collins would have to be on board in order for it to work. Which meant that Brigg needed to manipulate the bastard a little.
He climbed the narrow spiral staircase towards the director’s office, breathing slowly in a final attempt to calm himself. It wouldn’t do to have the director see him agitated; the fucker needed to think he had nothing more than a passing interest in the prisoner. He was going to portray himself as an objective, cold-hearted investigator, just doing his job.
A job that just happened to involve the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.
“The meeting went well,” he said when he’d stepped into Collins’ office. “The shifter is willing to make a deal. She wants to talk to you.”
“Me?” said the man, looking up from some paperwork, a pair of reading glasses balanced on his red nose. “Whatever for?”
“To negotiate, I presume. She’s agreed to help us, which is good. Like you said, she could be very useful. But she says she can’t do anything for us if she remains locked up. She’ll wither in there. It’s not natural for a Lioness to live underground.” With the last words he felt his throat dry out, his emotions fighting their way into his chest in spite of every effort to curtail them. But he pushed them back and swallowed hard. Professional, he told himself. Be a professional, indifferent tool, like the rest of them.
Collins raised an eyebrow. “It sounds to me like she’s charmed you a little, Brigg. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were looking for an excuse to take her home with you.”
“Charm me? She’s done nothing of the sort,” the Dire Wolf shifter replied, steering his eyes to a work of art on the other side of the room. If he looked at Collins right now he risked betraying his inner animal. Speaking of the Lioness was stirring his emotions, heating his insides too quickly. The massive Wolf inside him was too close, too present. “I simply think she’d be more useful outside the prison than inside.”
“You do realize that she’s not actually a Lioness,” Collins said, his tone scoffing. “She’s a creature with a mutation that turns her into one on occasion. Some screwed up gene that makes her dangerous. We mustn’t sympathize with their plight. They’re not human, remember. They’re sodding freaks.”
“Yes, well, however you want to describe her, her instincts are honed for hunting, not for living in a hole in the ground. Even so, I don’t believe she’s a danger to society. She wants her life back, and I think we should consider letting her have it, provided she accommodates our needs for a time.”
“So what’s this proposal of hers, then? Are you actually saying you want me to let her out into the world, given what she knows about what we’re doing here? You realize, of course, that even if I do, she’ll never have her life back.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her job, her flat, her belongings. They’re all gone. All record of Sinead’s existence has been wiped off the map. She is now a person—a shifter, rather—without identity.”
Brigg stiffened, fighting back his déor once again. So, the fuckers had disappeared her. She was now a ghost, a creature devoid of significance to anyone. They’d stolen from her. Ended her.
“Isn’t that a violation of her rights?” he asked.
“Rights? What rights? She’s not a human. She has no more rights than a dog.”
Brigg bit down hard on hi
s tongue, trying to keep his rage from spilling out in a sea of words. “Well,” he said, doing his best to calm his voice, “of course I’d be a fool to suggest that you simply let her walk out of here and run free.” Much as I’d love to do exactly that. “I do, however, think that you should surrender her into my custody. Let me use her in locating the shifters’ leaders. Let me take advantage of her instincts. I can manipulate her, employ her as a hunting dog of sorts. It will be an…amusing…sort of experiment.” He almost hated himself for saying the words, even if they were his only hope of getting the Lioness to freedom.
Collins’ puckered his lips as he contemplated the idea before letting them curl up in a wicked smile. Apparently he liked the idea. “Well, I must say this isn’t what I was intending. She’s got the potential to be dangerous, as I’ve said. I was planning, if anything, to assign her to one of the mercenaries at our disposal,” he said. Mercenaries? thought Brigg. That doesn’t sound like something Scotland Yard would approve of. “Either that or let her rot. But if you really think this will work, it’s worth a shot.”
“I do. And for the record, I’m not concerned that she’ll hurt me. Besides which, I’ve been known to handle my weapons well. You should know that if you’ve read my files.”
“Yes, I know it very well. They say you have the best reflexes of any shooter the Yard’s ever seen.” Collins studied Brigg again for a moment, that strange, curious glint in his eye that made the shifter uneasy. “Fine,” he said. “I suppose we all need to learn how to handle the freaks. Perhaps some of them can be trusted, even. She’ll be a guinea pig of sorts. Besides, there’s another little experiment I’d like to try out on her.”
“Oh?”
“It’s what I call the “Three Ts. Tested, Tagged, Tracked. Eventually all shifters will be chipped so that we can locate them if they get up to no good. We can start with her.”
“Ah, I see. But what exactly do you mean by ‘tested?’” Even as Brigg asked the question, the answer came to him.
Dire Wolves of London Box Set Page 18
