by Amelia Jade
“What the fu—”
Aiden drove his fist into one of his kidneys. The other werewolf curled over in pain.
“What goes on this room?” he snarled.
“Fuck you.”
“Wrong answer, bud,” he muttered, grabbing Patrice by an ankle, whirling him around and launching him into the wall along the rear of the building. The cinderblocks cracked and dust flew everywhere as Patrice slipped to the floor, moaning incoherently.
“What goes on in here? There’s more to this room than just this emptiness. Tell me.”
Patrice spat, blood and more than a few teeth coming with it. He was too weak for it to hit Aiden, but it splattered on the floor nearby.
“I really don’t want to have to torture you for the answer, P. Just be a good boy and give it up.”
A shake of the head was his answer.
Aiden sighed, leaned forward, and grabbed Patrice’s wrist as he swung a punch at him. Aiden snarled, twisted his hand around and then drove the other down hard onto the elbow joint. Things cracked and made disgusting noises. Patrice howled in pain.
“Tell me!”
“Go suck your momma’s—”
Aiden slapped Patrice twice in the face, grabbed his neck, and hurled him against the opposite wall.
“That will be the last time you mention my mother,” he said calmly as he walked over.
Patrice was slumped on the floor, back against the wall, feet outstretched.
“Ready to talk?”
The werewolf weakly lifted his good arm and extended the middle finger. It was curled and unable to straighten, but the point was there.
“This is just not going the way I expected it to,” Aiden said with a sigh. Then he stomped on Patrice’s ankle, crushing bone before he ground his foot back and forth, turning more of the bone into dust.
“So, ready to talk yet?”
But Patrice was too overwhelmed with pain to respond. He just kept rocking back and forth, tears streaming down his face as he tried to handle the pain.
Aiden grabbed his good ankle, pivoted and set his feet. “Last chance,” he prompted.
The foot jerked in his grip in an attempt to wrench it free.
“Fine.” Aiden hauled on the leg, tossing Patrice at the wall opposite the one he came through. “Have it your—”
He’d timed his sentence to complete when the wreck that had once been a human-looking person hit the wall. But when Patrice went sailing right through an incredibly well-concealed set of doors, his timing was interrupted.
“Well look at that. You wanted to help after all!” he crowed. “So nice of you.”
The room beyond was dark, except for a number of soft blue glowing lights. Aiden walked forward. He’d never thought that perhaps Stephen owned more of the building than just the shipping facility. But the room beyond was so large it had to be two or three of the units next to them as well. Which meant that the signs out front of them were all cover for what was actually going on.
“Which is what?” he murmured to himself as he stared at row upon row of blue lights. They were coming from some sort of boxy contraption, one that looked oddly like a shortened version of a coffin.
He walked up to the first of them and peered inside. His eyes widened as he realized what it was he was actually seeing.
“Oh. Shit.”
Seventeen
Willow
She returned to her room to cry where nobody could see her.
How could Aiden do this to her? After all she’d done for him, after she’d given herself to him, both her mind and her body. Apparently that wasn’t enough though. He needed her soul as well, which he was trying to take by severing all the connections she’d known.
That doesn’t make any sense, girl.
Okay. Maybe it didn’t. But it didn’t mean that he wasn’t acting jealous, trying to get her to abandon her father so that he could be the only man in her life.
You know that’s a stretch.
“Stop it!” she snapped, speaking out loud to her inner voice. It had always been pragmatic when forced to acknowledge something. Normally Willow appreciated that, but now that she wanted to keep living in the perfect little world she’d constructed, its inability to believe the lies and falsehoods that surrounded her was extremely annoying.
Aiden was lying. He had to be lying. Oh, Willow could buy in to the fact that maybe her father was doing some things that weren’t…strictly speaking illegal. But whatever it was, she was sure it was for a good reason. Wasn’t she?
Why would you be sure of that?
Angrily she tried to come up with logical reasons, but each of them fell apart as she tried to construct an argument around them.
Okay, fine. Maybe he is involved with something shady or even illegal. But he’s not lying to me about what happened to my family. He wouldn’t do that.
Would he?
The question echoed around in her head. Willow was torn on this one. She obviously wanted to believe he was telling the truth, that her family had been killed in an unfortunate attack by a wild shifter. But the truth in Aiden’s voice, the way he’d told her not what had actually happened, but simply that it hadn’t happened the way her father told her, that was near impossible to ignore. He didn’t know any better than she did why Stephen might have lied to her. That was the part that made it believable. Or at least, not immediately unbelievable.
So what did she do? The answer was obvious, but for a solid half an hour she shied away from it, unwilling to confront that particular path. But as the noise outside in the house increased and the pack came awake, Willow knew she would never be satisfied unless she confronted her father and got the truth out of him. She’d learned to read him well, and since this wasn’t a question she’d ever asked before, or something she’d ever seemed to doubt, any surprise should be easy for her to pick up.
“You can do this.” The spoken encouragement didn’t help.
“Fine. You’re a coward if you don’t.”
Willow was on her feet ten seconds later. For whatever reason, that particular designation had always been something she’d feared being assigned to her. She may not be a fighter, but she was no coward.
The walk out of her room and through the house to her father’s office downstairs felt like the longest steps of her life. Twice she paused, and once she even turned around to head back upstairs, hoping to put the conversation off to a later point in time. But she didn’t. Her hands were shaking and she was on the verge of tears, but Willow wound some coil around her fragile mind and yanked it tight, forcing herself to keep it together until she could get through this.
Then, and only then, if her fears were confirmed, would she allow herself to have the mental breakdown that was likely to come with having her entire world torn apart. The fact that she was already preparing for that eventuality told Willow several things in itself, but she refused to acknowledge them just then. First her father. Then her.
His office door was closed, but he responded readily when she knocked on it.
“Can I speak to you?” she asked, pushing the door open.
“I’m sort of busy right now, Wil, but once I’m done, of course.”
She stood her ground, not willing to take his dismissal. “Please, Father. I don’t ask much of you. But I need to talk now.”
It wasn’t hard to pick up on the fact that she was in distress. It had to be practically etched on to her face. Stephen nodded to Flint and Orren, dismissing his two senior-most lieutenants. The werewolves nodded respectfully at her as they passed, then closed the door behind them.
“What is it?”
She noticed he didn’t get up from behind his desk.
“I need to know something.”
“Of course. Anything.” He spread his hands wide, then indicated she should take a seat.
Willow approached, but she remained standing. She caught his gaze and kept it, staring into his stormy gray eyes. “Father, what really happened to my family?”
If she hadn’t been looking for it, she never would have seen the slight tightening around the corners of his eyes, or the way his pupils dilated ever so much. But it was enough.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
His voice was tighter than normal too.
“Your parents and older brother were attacked by a wild werewolf. I’ve told you this before. We were on his tail, closing in on him, but we were too late. By the time we arrived and dealt with him, the only one left alive was you.”
Stephen—not her father, but Stephen, the pack leader—got to his feet with a sigh, coming to wrap his arms around her. “Willow, you know how sorry I am that I couldn’t do more. It is my biggest regret in life.”
She heard the lie in his tone now.
“Why is this coming up now?”
“What was his name?” She worked herself free of his grip, pretending to pace back and forth, but putting herself closer to the door. “The shifter. What was his name?”
Stephen seemed to grow a little more angry. “I don’t recall, Willow. It was nearly thirty-five years ago. My memory is hazy. I could find out, I just need to look at the records.”
She latched on to that. “Records?” she asked. “What records?”
“The ones that I submitted to the regional Alpha at the time.” He shrugged and turned to face the window. “Any time there’s a wild Were, of any sort, we’re required to file a report if we take it down.” He rested one hand on the window behind his desk, looking out from it. “I don’t agree with everything regional does, but on this, we are in complete agreement.”
“What is it with the questions today?” he asked. “Why are you bringing this up again?” His eyes narrowed. “Does it have anything to do with Aiden?”
Willow shook her head, not answering. “I just want to know the truth.”
Anger flared in his gaze as he spun to face her. “Excuse me?” he snarled.
“I want to know what happened to my family!”
“I told you what happened!” he raged. “What is Aiden telling you?”
“He’s telling me more truth than you are,” she fired back. “He doesn’t like lying to me. But apparently you do!”
“I’m not lying!” Stephen’s knuckles were starting to turn white.
“Sure. Like you’re telling the truth about those ‘government’ contracts you have. Or the private room, where you do stuff that I’m not allowed to see. Totally aboveboard, and not trying to hide anything at all.” She was crying now, but it didn’t matter. “I believed you, because you gave me no reason to doubt you. But now I find out you’ve been lying to me the entire time. Since I was an infant. You’re all I ever knew. How could you do this to me?”
“I didn’t do anything to you!” Stephen snapped at her, and she saw his façade crumble, revealing to her the monster behind it all.
Willow gasped and stepped back.
“Where is Aiden?” the Alpha snarled. “Tell me where he is.”
Willow went to the door and opened it. “I don’t know. Probably off finding proof of how much of an asshole you are. Goodbye, Stephen.”
She stepped through the door, not even bothering to close it. Behind her a howl of rage erupted from the room. Her father came storming out.
“Orren!” he shouted. The third-most senior werewolf stepped around the corner.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Take her to her room. She’s not to leave. I’m going to the facility. Our newest member is apparently smarter than we gave him credit for. Summon the others, be prepared to come to my assistance or…well…just be prepared! Have Deckard look after her.”
Then he was gone.
Willow watched her father go, frozen in shock at the sudden change in him, as well as the order he’d just given. Put her under house arrest? What the hell had she done?!
“Don’t you touch me,” she said as Orren came closer. “Stay back!”
The shifter sneered as he came closer.
Willow screamed and tried to dodge around him. If she could just make it to the garage, maybe she could get a vehicle and escape.
An iron vise-like grip closed around her wrist as Orren’s fingers snagged her easily. “I don’t think so. Let’s go, this way.” He wrenched her arm around her back and forced her stumbling down the hallway and up the stairs.
Willow wanted to struggle, but she was so unprepared for what was happening that she simply did not know what to do. This was not the way things were supposed to happen.
She could only hope that Aiden was more prepared than her. That perhaps he would learn of her plight and come rescue her. Or else…
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked nervously as Orren shoved her into her room.
“With luck, never have to put up with you again,” he replied before slamming the door in her face.
Willow backed into her room, looking around nervously. This wasn’t at all the way she’d expected things to go. What had happened to her father? Why had he so easily turned on her? She hadn’t done anything to him!
Despite her best efforts, and the self-directed anger for her perceived weakness, Willow began to cry. She cried for the danger she knew she was in now, but most importantly, she cried to remember the life that had been nothing more than a lie.
Eighteen
Aiden
A pair of unfocused blue eyes looked out at him.
Aiden hissed in fury as he recognized what was going on. Everything fell into place now. What the chambers in this room were, what the human gunmen the other day had been trying to stop. Even the thousands of near-transparent white packages he’d picked up with Willow made sense.
He stepped back, looking around the room in horror.
It was a shifter blood bank. He counted thirty total. Five rows of six. Each of the little coffin-shaped metal boxes was a containment for a shifter. Looking inside again he could see the lines hooked to their veins. Lines that were both pumping them full of drugs to keep them out, removing blood from their system, while also injecting IV fluids and other necessary things to keep their bodies fueled.
“Those assholes,” he snarled. “I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill them all!”
Selling shifter blood was among the worst crimes a shifter could commit. To humans, shifter blood was an opiate with the addiction level of fentanyl, higher than that of heroin or cocaine, while lacking the lethal side effects of overdosing. A human quite literally could not OD on shifter blood. They would go on an insane trip that would last for hours or days, but in the end, they would always come down unharmed.
Which is why it was sold at such a premium. But it ruined lives. Aiden had seen that firsthand during his time on the Regional Response Team. They’d broken up two rings like this in his time. Both of them had only been small-time and operating for no more than a few months before they were brought down. Yet despite that, thousands of lives had been ruined, destroying families and relationships. In some cases, he knew addicts had even ended up committing suicide when it was revealed they couldn’t get any more of their fix.
It was a horrible, horrible thing to do, and one reason why it was outlawed in the shifter world. Period. There were no loopholes, no places on the planet where it was allowed. Nothing. It was one of the few things the various Were-Councils could agree upon with one hundred percent unanimity.
But motherfucking, sheep-sucking, shit-for-brains Stephen had gone and broken that code. Not only a little, where perhaps he bled his men once or twice a week and sold that. No, he had dozens of shifters in captivity, and was bleeding them constantly.
“How the hell did this fly under the radar for so long?” he muttered, still stunned by the ego necessary for such an operation. This was by far the biggest operation he’d ever heard of.
He felt bad for taking down those human gunmen the other night. Now suddenly he understood. They weren’t cops, they were simply men who had had enough of this drug trade happening in their backyard, and wa
nted to put an end to it.
Well, so did Aiden. But how?
That question was a little beyond him. He wandered around the room, finding several control panels.
“But which one is it?” He was speaking to himself now, talking aloud while he punched buttons, scrolled through screens and menus. But there was no simple option for “turn it all the fuck off.”
Damn, so much for simplicity. Why is there never a big red STOP button when you really need it?
The truth was, Aiden had no idea how to shut it down without harming the occupants inside. He could start killing power, ripping things apart, that sort of thing for sure. But there was exactly zero guarantee that the shifters being bled would emerge from it alive. He was going to have to report this. Thankfully, due to the severity of the crime, he could simply call the regional office—Mack’s pack house—and leave an anonymous tip about a blood bank. They would check it out regardless.
So he pulled out his cellphone and made a call, hanging up shortly.
“Shit.”
Another thought came to him. This was going to destroy Willow. When she found out that her father was a drug lord, it would absolutely devastate her. Aiden slumped as he headed for the exit. Why him? The last thing he wanted to do was to have to give her more bad news, to destroy her world some more. She didn’t deserve that. Head bowed in defeat, he didn’t even hear the movement ahead of him until a voice spoke.
“Aiden?”
He jerked. “Stephen?”
“What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to play it off. Improv had never been a strong suit of his, but he needed time to collect himself. “I came in to get a shirt I forgot that I wanted to wear out tonight, when I saw the doors there were wide open.” He pointed behind Stephen at the double doors he’d tossed Patrice through. “Then I saw Patrice lying on the floor and I came to check.”
He pointed at the unconscious body between them.
Stephen nodded. “How is Patrice?”
“He was still out cold when I tried to wake him. I thought I heard a noise, so I went to investigate. But I couldn’t find anyone. Whoever they are, they’re long gone.”
