by D. N. Hoxa
But when Aidan opened the door, nobody was inside.
“Where’s F—”
I didn’t get to finish my sentence. It all happened so fast. With both his hands on my back, Aidan pushed me forward. It was so unexpected, my body didn’t try to stop but stumbled forward, and I fell to my knees. The door behind me closed, and Aidan locked it. The tiles were white, so I hadn’t noticed the chalk drawings on the floor.
I realized what was happening a second too late.
The scream that left my lips was of pure frustration. Finn hadn’t called me. Finn was probably not even there. No, Aidan had tricked me. He’d prepared a ritual for me, and he’d pushed me into that room because he couldn’t let it go. It was a mistake to tell him about my wolf because he was going to do everything in his power to see it now.
And he had.
I had no idea who the witch doing the spell was, but the magic of the ritual caught me before I could step out of the chalk drawn circle. It stopped me cold and stuck to my skin. It wasn’t powerful by any means, but it had time to do what it was designed to do—to reach for the wolf inside me and pull her out.
The first time Yumi and his people had done this to me, it had hurt like hell. This time, I expected nothing better. I looked around the room for something to help me stop this, but there was nothing there. I screamed again at the top of my lungs. Aidan needed to stop this. He had no idea what the hell he was doing!
But Aidan didn’t stop. He completed the spell and fueled the ritual all the way. The pain began at the base of my back and spread on both sides lightning fast. My legs gave up on me and I fell on the floor, panting. Last night was nothing compared to what it felt like to be shifted against your will with magic. Every cell in my body screamed with me, and my wolf tried to stop it, too. She tried to stand back, to somehow break the spell over my body, but it was no use. We could do nothing against magic. Not when I’d been foolish enough to trust Aidan.
I longed to go mad and lose my mind completely while the shifting happened, and my whole body broke apart and got back together again, but I didn’t. I felt it all, and soon my scream was replaced by my wolf’s howl. She took control of the body that was now hers, her anger burning me like never before. Not enough air reached her and her growl was meant as a warning to everyone who was listening. She scanned the cameras at the corner, and I expected her to throw me back, to lock me in her mind like she usually did, but she didn’t have the patience. She wanted out of there, wanted me far away from those people, so she stepped back all the way to the middle of the room, right across from the door.
No, I thought, but my thoughts melted into her anger. She didn’t hear me, didn’t care to. She took off running at full speed, and in less than three seconds, she slammed her entire body onto the door. The pain in her shoulder didn’t register. Now that I’d seen what she looked like, it was hard to picture her growling, looking anything less than peaceful, but she went to the back of the room again, and she ran at full speed, slammed against the door, which groaned in response. My wolf was strong, stronger than Finn had expected. I’d warned him. I told him to not take this lightly because my wolf was not a quitter. Four more times she went to the back of the room and slammed against the door, until the door’s hinges broke and one side of it fell.
From then on, it was easy for my wolf to claw her way out into the hallway. It was surreal to watch all of it. Once again, I was a shadow, a passenger on my wolf’s ride, watching, but unable to do anything. She made it into the hallway and scanned the people in front of her. Six men with guns pointed at her head and another five behind them. Finn was there, too, looking like he’d seen a ghost and was trying hard not to piss his pants. Then there was Aiden, Terra, Ethan, and a woman I had seen around the offices but hadn’t met. All of it was the same to my wolf. All she saw were obstacles, not people, and she calculated the time it would take her to kill all of them before reaching the door that would lead us outside.
No, please, I said, but she didn’t hear me. She took a step forward, and the men took a step back. She showed them her teeth and growled—a warning, though I felt her need for a fight. She’d rather they tried to stop her.
“Don’t shoot!” Finn shouted. “Don’t you dare shoot her!”
My wolf didn’t like that. Not a fair fight, she thought, before she jumped into action. I tried to stop her with everything I had, but she was too far gone. She reached Finn’s men in a heartbeat, and though they were ordered not to shoot, they tried to use their weapons to hit my wolf. Some of them managed, but the pain was nothing compared to what she did to them. The smell and taste of blood on her tongue was revolting, but she didn’t give me time to think about throwing my guts out. She went from one man to another, biting, clawing, throwing them off to the other side of the hallway. The girl I hadn’t met had left with Ethan, while Finn, Aidan and Terra retreated to the research office, their eyes never leaving my wolf.
Go, go, go! I shouted in my mind. The door was right there. Maybe Ethan had left it open and she wouldn’t even have to break it. We could run free, out of the building, far away from here!
But my wolf had other plans. Her anger didn’t let her leave, not yet. She wanted revenge. She wanted the guy responsible for doing this to us, for bringing her out without our consent. She wanted Aidan.
Slowly, she walked inside the research office, ignoring the men who were now all on the ground, but some of them were still alive. She knew that even if they made it up to their feet, they wouldn’t dare come after her, not again. She was calm as she slowly entered the office, the smell of liquids and medical equipment making her wrinkle her nose. Terra was on one side of the office while Aiden and Finn were on the other. She had nothing against Terra, so she went straight for the left—and at Aidan.
He was chanting fast, a spell made to push us back, I think, but it wasn’t strong. My wolf felt it against her skin, but a push was all it took to break through it.
“Stop it,” Finn said, grabbing Aidan by the back of the neck, but Aidan was too afraid to stop chanting. He started another spell, this one stronger, and it burned my wolf’s skin, but even if she’d been in all the pain in the world, she wouldn’t have stopped going after him.
Aidan was already sitting on one of the three desks, trying to lean as far away from my wolf as possible, but there was nowhere else to go. He couldn’t escape now.
Please, don’t, I whispered over and over to her without stopping, hoping she’d hear me. Aidan was a fool, but he hadn’t meant for this to happen. He’d just wanted to see her, that’s all.
Unfortunately, my wolf didn’t care. She ignored his cries when she growled, opened her jaws and closed them around his left arm lightning fast. Before I knew it, Aidan was on the other side of the room, sliding down the wall, his left arm almost completely torn from his body. He was crying, shaking, keeping his eyes closed because he knew my wolf wasn’t done.
“Easy there, Victoria,” Finn then said, getting her attention. She turned to the werewolf and analyzed him, smelled him, as if trying to determine if he deserved to die, too.
He didn’t know, I said, in another desperate attempt to get through to her. He wasn’t here! He didn’t know!
Leaning closer and closer to Finn, who’d become one with the wall, she sniffed him once more, his nose a hair away from his. She bared her teeth—a warning.
No! I shouted at the top of my imaginary voice. You can’t kill him. He’s helping us. Please!
The cries of Aidan, still on the floor, distracted her for a second, but Finn moved. He straightened his shoulders, and she took that as a sign. I wished the old man had just stood still. I wished he’d gone out together with Ethan and that girl.
But he hadn’t. And now, my wolf wanted to sink her teeth in his flesh.
Rowan, please, I thought, knowing I was fighting a losing battle. He’s helping us, Rowan. You can’t kill him.
That’s when everything changed.
By some miracle, my w
olf had stopped sniffing Finn. By some miracle, she took a step back, allowing him some room to breathe. I couldn’t allow myself to be happy. Nothing was over yet.
We’re safe, Rowan. We’re fine. You can let me out now. Nobody’s going to hurt us.
I spoke in a voice reserved for a child. This wasn’t the first time I was speaking to my wolf—far from it—but it was the first time I felt like she actually heard me.
And she understood me.
She could feel it, too. The danger had passed. Finn’s men had allowed her to hurt them, though they’d had the means to protect themselves in their own hands. They had done nothing but let her attack. This was Aidan’s fault. He’d betrayed me, but it was okay now. We were safe.
We are safe.
We are safe.
My wolf was convinced. Though she didn’t like it, she knew she could trust Finn—or rather, let me trust Finn. Slowly, she began to step back and allow me to come forward. I welcomed the shift, unafraid of the pain, and maybe that’s why I didn’t feel it. Or maybe I was too distracted by what had happened, but it was almost like there was no pain at all.
The shifting didn’t last as long as when Rowan came out, and I was thankful for it. It still drained my energy, and I hit the floor as soon as she was gone, but I was breathing and I was alive. Finn was alive, and so were his men. All of them, hopefully.
Nobody dared to make a single move as they watched me try to make it to my feet. I don’t think anybody even breathed, and Aidan had already passed out. I looked up at Finn, but I didn’t need to tell him I told you so. He figured it out all by himself.
9
Finn took me up on the third floor, in the lounge room where I’d trained with Moore for two days now. He felt more comfortable away from the basement, he said, and I agreed. There was coffee in my hand and a bottle of water on the table in front of me, and the werewolf couldn’t stop pacing. The sound of his wooden leg irritated me, but I kept that thought to myself. It had only been half an hour since my wolf let go of me, so I was still recovering.
“Fucking traitor,” Finn said for the tenth time in a row.
The door opened and Terra came in with a tray in her hands and a fake smile on her face. She hardly even met my eyes as she put two bowls of fruit salad on the table because I’d insisted I didn’t want another one of those sandwiches. Fruit was much better.
“You feeling any better?” Terra asked me, her cheeks flushed. Too bad. She seemed like a really nice girl. Maybe I could have even been friends with her, gone out with her to grab a drink after work. Now, that had no chance of happening.
“I’m fine, I promise. He’s the one with issues,” I said, pointing at Finn. My attempt to joke was wasted because Terra didn’t dare laugh at Finn. With a nod our way she left the room and didn’t return.
“Can you please sit down?” I asked Finn. He was making me dizzy, and that awful noise was driving me insane.
He did take a seat in the empty armchair and grabbed a bowl furiously, eating like those poor pieces of fruit were to blame for everything that had happened.
“I should have seen it coming,” he said with his mouth half full. “He almost cost me my life!”
Aidan was still alive. His arm was reattached to his body, so physically he was going to be fine. Mentally? I couldn’t be sure. He’d have nightmares for a long time, at the very least. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“He’s going to rot in jail for the rest of his life, that’s what,” Finn spit, and he meant every word he said. My wolf wasn’t pleased. She’d wanted Aidan dead, but I was perfectly fine with jail. He couldn’t betray anyone else in there, and if he tried, he was going to have a very bad time. They didn’t put people in there for being Good Samaritans.
“I told you to be careful. She’s strong,” I said, not to rub it in his face, but to make sure he understood exactly what had happened just in case he wanted to make me shift again. It had been my own fault, I got that. I should have never suggested this. It was stupid.
“Are you kidding me? That door was made of steel,” he said, throwing the empty bowl on the table. “Eat.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. You said it yourself that I couldn’t trust anyone, but I thought…” I thought I knew what I was doing.
“Yeah, well, now that all those people have seen you, I’m having trouble deciding what to do,” he said, making me shiver. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a wolf. A real wolf.”
A bit offended, I raised my chin. “You think I lied to you?”
“No, no, I just couldn’t imagine it. A real wolf,” he repeated with a sigh, shaking his head.
Something occurred to me. “Did you…did you get anything?” Finn only nodded, making my heart skip a long beat. “And?”
He shrugged. “Magic. Pure, raw magic. It’s like the wolf is an illusion, but it isn’t. I smelled him. I saw him. He was there.”
“Her,” I reminded him. My wolf was a her. “And, yes, she’s very real, not an illusion. Maybe your equipment is broken?”
“Nothing’s broken, kid. She reads as an illusion, but while she was there, you were gone. Not a trace of you or your magic or your scent was left behind—only the wolf.”
That was nothing new to me. We never were something together—either I was me, or she was she. Never anything in between.
“That’s okay,” I said reluctantly. “This was a mistake, anyway. I’m not going to get her to obey me with spells or whatever.” Instead, I was going to have to find another way around it.
“But we need to figure it out. The only thing that makes even a little bit of sense is that you’re spelled,” Finn said. “Somebody spelled you and created a wolf in your stead.”
“They didn’t. My wolf was a wolf before she was…before she became one with me. She had a life before all of this,” I said. Now that I’d seen inside her head and looked at her memories, I could be a hundred percent sure of it.
But Finn wasn’t. “I don’t know, there’s something about it that just doesn’t add up.”
“Hey, it’s fine. I am what I am. No need to exaggerate it.”
“Exaggerate?” he said incredulously. “Victoria, something like this isn’t supposed to exist.”
I threw my hands in the air. “It’s magic! Do you really need a better explanation?”
He flinched. “Whatever it is, I’m keeping you away from here for now. You’re coming back with me to the headquarters. It’s safer there.”
“You thought it was safe here, too.” Who knew how many Aidans would be in the headquarters?
“Out there is different. I have more people I trust who can protect you better. Trust me, it’s the right thing to do.”
It didn’t matter if I liked it—I couldn’t argue with that.
I texted Amara as soon as I got into Finn’s car and his driver took me home. It occurred to me that I wasn’t freaked out about it all. Not like before. My whole life I’d tried to keep my wolf a secret, but now, too many people had already seen me. Maybe that was why I wasn’t as alarmed as before. What was the worse that could happen?
By the time I got to my apartment, Amara was already there, going up the stairs. I’d given her a spare key the night before so she wouldn’t need to pick my lock every time she came for a visit. She was worried, but when she saw me in one piece with only my clothes torn, she was relieved. And if I wasn’t mistaken, my jeans and shirt were in better condition than the clothes I’d had on the night before when my wolf took over. A much better condition. Go figure.
“What happened?” Amara asked, eyeing the torn pieces of jeans around my ankles.
“One of Finn’s men did a ritual on me and made me shift,” I said with a flinch and fell on my couch. I was too tired to get something to drink. Amara could get something herself if she wanted to.
“What the hell?” she said, half a smile on her face.
“Yep. My wolf almost killed him. He put six of Finn’s men in the hospi
tal, but at least none of them are dead. The guy who did it is in jail, though.”
“In jail? You let him live?” Now she was surprised.
“I didn’t. She did.” My wolf, whose name was Rowan. For whatever reason, I smiled.
Amara noticed. “What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “Her name’s Rowan.”
Surprised, Amara leaned back on the couch. “Really.” It wasn’t a question.
“She had a brother. He was completely white. His name was Ban,” I informed her.
“Mhmm…” Amara said. “And what the hell was Rowan’s deal last night?”
Last night. Oh, shit. I’d almost forgotten about last night.
“What happened? Did you get away in time?”
“I did,” she said. “And so did Haworth, your sister, and the rest of them.”
I flinched. It felt like a lifetime since that happened.
“She took me away. She doesn’t want me anywhere near Haworth. I think she knows how he can control her.”
It made perfect sense. If I was her, I wouldn’t have wanted to be close to Haworth, either.
“Well, if we could have followed him last night, maybe today he’d have been dead,” Amara said.
“What do you want me to say? You know I don’t call the shots here. If it had been up to me, I’d have never let him get away.”
“Your sister is in on it, too. You could have at least tracked her,” she said. I could hardly believe my ears.
“You think I wanted to get away? Didn’t you just hear me?” Amara refused to meet my eyes. I was tempted to laugh. “Look, I know how this looks, but trust me, I didn’t have any choice. I’d have never let my sister get away if I could.”
“You should have stopped her before she punched you in the face.”
Her anger radiated from her skin now. I’d never seen Amara more pissed off.
“I didn’t. What more do you want from me?” I didn’t want to make it worse for her, but if she thought I’d have let my sister walk away like that, she didn’t know me.
