by Odessa Lynne
Mason stared at Gray, suspicion blazing into a white hot certainty.
There was no logical way Gray could know what he seemed to know, just like there’d been no way for Cord to know what he’d known earlier, either. Gray had done nothing, touched nothing, made no gestures, said no words that Mason had heard. It could’ve been implants, sure, but now, after what had happened to him earlier…
“My God,” he breathed. “You guys are using some kind of telepathy.”
Cord frowned at Mason.
“Is that what’s going on here?” Mason’s words came out strident, too sharp and demanding, but Mason didn’t care—couldn’t care. He had to know. Maybe what was happening in his head had nothing at all to do with what was happening to his body. “Are you telepathic? Is that how you get into people’s heads?”
Gray turned, catching Mason’s gaze. Those shadowed eyes were a brilliant silver-blue that would never have looked natural on a human. “Alpha tells me what he wants me to know.” His gaze flickered over Mason. “So do you. It’s our purpose as watchers to watch.”
Mason did get the chance to ask what the hell that meant, because Cord stepped around him to get closer to Gray.
“Francis?” Cord asked.
“He’s returning with Alpha. The rogues continued on.”
The tension in Cord’s shoulders eased and he nodded to Gray.
Sharply, Mason said, “Now you’re asking what’s going on with Francis? I thought you could hear him.”
“Gray is one of our most sensitive watchers,” Cord said. “It’s why he trains the young ones.”
Gray turned and started walking again.
Cord started to follow, but Mason reached out and caught his arm.
Cord went as stiff and still as a statue. He stared at Mason’s grip on his arm with glittering eyes.
Ahead of them, both Jordan and Gray stopped and turned.
Mason had been lulled into a false sense of security with the sniping and bickering, but the look in Cord’s eyes reminded him with heart-pounding certainty that he was far from safe.
No one said a word as Mason let go of Cord’s arm.
“I had a question,” Mason said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Then ask your question,” Cord said. “I can hear Lake’s impatience growing.”
“Are these rogues you keep talking about the same wolves that tried to make a deal with Brendan during the last heat season? Are they your enemies?”
Jordan spoke up before Cord could. “Why should we tell you these things? So you can betray us to your renegades as soon as the heat season ends?”
Cord’s mouth tightened. “Your lack of respect for Alpha’s heat mate shames us all, Jordan.”
Jordan’s upper lip pulled back enough for Mason to catch a glimpse of his sharp eyeteeth. “He was there. Alpha will understand.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” Cord said, a gentleness to his tone that didn’t touch his eyes. “You’re risking your place in the pack for the momentary satisfaction of a justice you don’t have a right to seek.”
Jordan’s gaze landed on Mason again, his pale brown eyes shadowed. “He doesn’t deserve to be Alpha’s mate. He hasn’t earned his place. He submits, but not the way he should. You feel it too, I know you do.” Jordan’s voice quieted. “I don’t doubt Alpha’s reading of the signs, but this fate—he’s worthy of better. Why him?”
Mason winced. The comments stung, but in a strange way, he understood exactly what Jordan meant. He’d asked Five the same question: why him?
“The universe—” Cord said.
“No,” Jordan said, bowing his head. “Do not explain. I apologize. I’m ashamed of my thoughts and I shouldn’t have expressed them here, this way.”
Jordan raised his head again and looked directly at Mason. Something sorrowful glittered in those eyes, something Mason couldn’t understand. “Forgive me. Only Alpha has the right to judge the truth in your submission.”
Mason didn’t know what to say. So he nodded, even though he didn’t know if he should trust Jordan’s sudden change of attitude.
“He’s undecided,” Gray murmured.
Mason exhaled roughly and glared at Gray.
The corner of Gray’s mouth twitched upward, but he said nothing as he turned and started walking again. With a quick look at Mason and then Cord, Jordan followed.
Mason scrubbed his left hand down his face, looked over his shoulder once out of some kind of instinctual need to know what was behind him, and then started out after Jordan.
Cord’s footsteps hardly made a sound behind him, but Mason felt him at his back nonetheless, like a phantom shadow that had worked its way into his bones.
Chapter 21
Lake and the other wolf, Rain, met them just inside the sunlit hallway beyond the biolab’s entrance. Just being inside again made Mason’s stomach heavy and his heart pound. He remembered so much of that night, so clearly, not the least of which was the memory he had of thinking Marcus was dead, and it was surprising how viscerally his body reacted just crossing the threshold into the building.
The floor-to-ceiling windows allowed plenty of daylight into the facility and Mason was struck by how different the place looked in the light of day. The glass on the floor crunched underfoot, and he noticed right away how scattered it had become.
People had been inside, walking around since the night of the storm, he was sure of it.
“I found something you should see,” Lake said to Cord, speaking in the wolves’ language, just before taking the lead down that long hallway.
Rain stayed behind, leaving Mason to assume he was waiting for Five and Francis and whoever it was they were dragging back with them.
At the end of the hallway, Lake led them down a set of open stairs to the lower level. From the front of the building, it would’ve been considered the basement, but from the back, it appeared to be the ground floor. Mason hadn’t explored that area with Jay and Sebastian. If there’d been more time, they would have gotten to it eventually, but there hadn’t been more time, and they’d never made it past the first floor.
He was halfway down the wide stairway when a fly buzzed past his ear, startling him into jerking his hand up to swat it away. It was a bad move, reminding him with a sharp stab of pain that he had a broken bone in his hand.
“Are you okay?” Cord asked from behind him.
“Yeah, it was nothing. Just startled me.”
At the foot of the stairs, a whiff of something unpleasant stuck to the back of his tongue. Nothing overt, but it made him look around, searching for the source, but all he saw was the empty hallway and windows that looked out at nothing but trees and brush and, in the distance, what looked like an old retaining wall made of dark red brick.
Several doors lined the inside of the hallway, and Lake stopped in front of one in particular with a cracked panel set into it at eye level. In the past, the panel would have given a hint of what was behind the door, but without power, and broken, all it promised was a nasty surprise.
Dread curled tight in Mason’s belly. He didn’t want to see what was behind that door, but he couldn’t explain why. He glanced to the side at Jordan and took notice of the suddenly stoic expression on his face.
Mason swallowed hard.
He knew exactly where these feelings were coming from—the wolves around him. This was how they’d done it—how they’d turned Brendan and Marcus and so many others—they were burrowing so deep into him that he wouldn’t ever be the same. He could feel them—Jordan’s dread, Cord’s unease, Lake’s determination, Gray’s curious sadness.
It didn’t make sense and he didn’t know how it was possible, but by God, it was there and he wasn’t crazy.
Lake opened the heavy door, the low shush of a seal releasing making Mason’s scalp crawl. The smell hit him hard.
Mason turned quickly, bending at the knees and covering his face with the bottom of his t-shirt. He couldn’t breathe. It was difficult to even thin
k as his stomach rebelled at the stench of death.
A light flared behind him.
Cord gripped the back of Mason’s neck, his hand warm and firm, his claws nowhere to be felt. “Will you be able to tell us anything about these people?”
Mason shook his head, unable to speak for fear of losing the breakfast he’d had that morning. He pressed his thumb and fingers tight against his eyes, forcing himself to calm down, take a breath, ignore everything except the fact that he had to get his shit together.
This was a mission. He had a purpose for the first time in years that didn’t involve chopping wood and hiding from his past. He coughed a few times, fighting back the burn of acid at the back of throat, and then made himself straighten.
Cord rubbed Mason’s neck lightly before removing his hand.
Mason felt the lack of contact immediately, as if he’d been relying on Cord’s touch for support and hadn’t even realized it.
He turned, holding his shirt to his face, and took a step forward. The sunlight streaming into the hallway illuminated the area near the door and he could see—
Too much.
Lake had entered the room, and he held a small white object in the palm of his hand at chest height. Light glowed from the center in a downward arc, lighting only the space directly in front of him.
“I found the room earlier. The door has an airtight seal so I didn’t know to expect this.”
A body lay stretched out on a table, only one of many. Death had come and gone, days, and in some cases even weeks, before.
Mason crossed to stand beside Lake, carefully avoiding the horrors that had dripped and puddled onto the floor near the tables while keeping the fabric of his shirt as tight over his nose and mouth as he could with only one hand. Flies buzzed around him, drowning out the sound of his rushing blood. Only sheer force of will and tightly clenched teeth kept him from throwing up.
He knew without a single doubt that nightmares about this room would haunt him for the rest of his life.
“She’s been dead for several days,” Lake said.
Coughing against the stench, Mason waved his bound hand in front of his face, trying without success to drive away the flies.
“She looks like a scientist,” Mason said, voice muffled. He had to draw in more air than he wanted just to speak. “That’s a lab coat. Don’t see a name tag.”
He coughed again, and looked over at Lake, who stared with unflinching regard at the dead woman.
It wasn’t until Lake had to take in a breath to speak that Mason noticed just how little breathing Lake was actually doing. “These people… the weapon killed them all.”
“I thought—” Mason shook his head. “The weapon—it’s not meant to kill wolves. I don’t understand.”
“The weapon is meant to kill humans, like your kin, humans like First Alpha’s mate, and many others. Like you, as Alpha’s mate.”
Can’t kill the wolves… that dark little voice in Mason’s head whispered. Can’t kill the wolves, but the wolves have already proven that humans are the easy prey.
Mason shoved that goddamned voice as far back into his head as he could and took a harder look at the woman’s body. He didn’t have the kind of knowledge he would need to know how she’d died, but whatever had done this…
“They’re going to burn down the goddamned world,” Mason said. “That’s what Marcus told me. This weapon, it’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Very bad,” Lake said. “They’ve made the kind of mistake that could bring about the end of your species.”
Mason couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s stained lab coat. His eyes burned at the caustic odor as much as his lungs ached with his resistance to taking a deep breath. “What have they done?”
“According to the information stored on the display you found, they discovered a living sample of a virus that should never have existed in the first place. They set out to create a version of it that would infect easily but kill quickly enough to burn itself out before it could infect the population at large. They succeeded with the one and failed the other.”
Mason coughed again and swatted at more flies. There were so goddamned many. They were everywhere. “What virus?”
He shifted his foot and grimaced when he heard a low squelch. So many horrible things lurked underfoot that he couldn’t look down, not if he wanted to keep his shit together.
“The research documents referred to it as the 2060 influenza.”
Mason would have sworn to anyone who asked that in that moment his heart lurched.
Several deadly flu viruses had swept across the world at various times in the past, but he knew almost nothing about them—expect for the 2060 flu. Everybody had heard of that one, simply because it had been one of the most significant events in recorded human history, wiping out half the population of Earth.
Human progress had sputtered and stalled as the world picked up the pieces.
If not for the 2060 flu, the world would have been a completely different place when the wolves finally found Earth. The population would have been larger, leading to more aggressive trading for land and resources. The desire for medical advancements might not have been so great and the wolves’ offer of technology and knowledge so tempting.
Mason remembered one popular veo drama from his younger days that had imagined an alternate history of the world—one without the 2060 flu.
It had been strange and fascinating to imagine North America thriving as independent countries and the east collapsing under the threat of a fourth world war if only one woman hadn’t died. He’d stopped watching before he found out if the hero could stop the spread of another, even more deadly plague that would have brought the world back to rights.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, finally bringing himself to look to the side. Some of the bodies had clearly been decaying much longer than the one in front of him.
A cold sweat rose on his skin and his throat tightened. He swallowed hard, repeatedly, and returned his eyes front and center.
Cord’s hand landed on the back of Mason’s neck again. The notion that the wolves knew he was struggling stiffened his spine.
“Isn’t this a risk? What if I catch this thing?”
“You’re not at risk,” Cord said. “You’ve already been exposed and were likely infected. Your kin tested positive for antibodies to the—”
“What? Is he—”
“He isn’t at risk.” Cord’s voice was calm. “Both of you are safe. Alpha would never have brought you with us if he believed you could become sick.”
Sweat tickled Mason’s upper lip. With a calm he didn’t feel, he rubbed it away with the fabric binding his broken hand. A twinge of pain raced up his arm but disappeared almost as fast as it occurred.
“Because of what’s happened to us,” Mason said. “Because of whatever you’ve done.”
For once, Cord didn’t put him off. He nodded. “Because of the gift inside you. You are safe.”
Mason lowered his arm. “If we hadn’t had this… this gift… we’d both be dead, wouldn’t we? Or dying.”
Cord gestured to the room at large. “What do you think?”
“I think…” Mason looked down again, taking in the short blond hair and blood spattered lab coat soaked in fluids he couldn’t name. “I think it doesn’t matter what could have happened. What is, is.”
For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he had the sudden desire to turn to Five—to say something smart, to say something funny. To say anything that would take his mind away from the tragedy staring him in the face.
But Five wasn’t there, so Mason looked over at Lake instead. “What are you hoping I can tell you? I’m ready to be done with this. I want out of here.”
“Can you tell us if you recognize any of the people here as members of the renegade groups you were in contact with?”
Mason studied the woman, then braced himself and turned. He reached for the light but hesitated. “Can I—”
Lake tu
rned his hand over and the light brightened, flowing into the outer edges of the room, reflecting off the ceiling and cratering shadows into the walls and along the floor. “You’ll find it too difficult to control. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Just… lead me around the room. I’ll look at everyone I can.” He closed his eyes for a second before reopening them. “Don’t skip anyone. Sometimes you can recognize a person if you’ve known them pretty well just by their clothes.”
Lake nodded and redirected the light to the body nearest the woman.
Mason walked slowly around the room, following Lake from body to body. At one, tucked into the corner, half upright, Mason stopped and stared, not sure what it was about the man’s bloated body and distorted face that seemed familiar.
“This is difficult, I know,” Lake said, “but necessary.”
Mason started to tap his thumb and finger together at his side out of habit, but a needle-like pain in his hand stopped him. He forced himself to stand still despite the nervy energy rushing through him.
“What’s going to happen to them when we leave?”
“We’ll send a pack to collect and preserve them, and study them, for the benefit of your people.”
“They’ve got families.” And then it hit Mason, what it was about the guy that had caught his attention.
He squatted and reached out with his bound hand, taking the edge of fabric at the man’s collar carefully between his fore and middle finger. He tugged, ignoring the twinge in his hand, and the fabric slipped down.
Bile rose up Mason’s throat quickly—almost too quickly to swallow back—but the man’s flesh hadn’t decayed to the point where Mason couldn’t see the rest of the colorful tattoo covering the man’s neck and shoulder.
A deep breath nearly undid him. The fabric of his shirt wasn’t a mask and the protection it offered was minimal. The only thing it was stopping were the flies. He stood. Despite knowing his shirt wasn’t really helping, he couldn’t bring himself to release it and breathe the tainted air directly into his lungs.
“I knew him,” Mason said. “He was the kind of guy you could count on to have your back. He was one of—uh, Brendan’s guys.”
