by Leia Stone
The inside of the barn had been completely finished with insulation and drywall, and had separate rooms with closed doors. It took a second for me to get my bearings but my mom smelled him. Dad. She took off running and the tall young man was just coming out of a room. Seeing her, he tried to back up but she launched into the air and tackled him to the ground. Her mouth was at his throat in seconds but she didn’t clamp down. He was frozen beneath her, shaking like a leaf, whimpering.
“Please don’t hurt me. You don’t understand,” he whispered.
He was the same guy from the vision, I recognized him. I began to shift from my bear to my human form. My mother kept her mouth hovered over his neck, ready to kill him. When I was completely human, I walked closer to him and stared down at him with a dominant glare.
“You have one chance to keep your life. Tell us what you’re doing here,” I commanded.
He was silent. My mom squeezed her jaws around his neck and he shrieked, small droplets of blood dripped from his neck.
“Okay! Werewolves are the cure for every human disease imaginable. Cancer, ALS, MS, leukemia, anything. Everything!”
My jaw dropped open at his declaration. What did he just say?
My mom’s wolf froze.
“Why not just ask us! Ask for our help instead of stealing us from our homes!” I shouted at him. We would gladly donate blood or plasma or whatever if it meant helping the humans.
A dark expression crossed his face. “In order to fully and permanently heal a human without giving them the lycanthrope virus, we need to drain the wolf of bone marrow and blood, killing them.”
The crunch sound of his neck breaking in my mother’s jaws made me flinch. Before I could say anything, do anything but stare at his limp form and let that information wash over me, I heard my dad.
“Aurora!” He shouted from one of the closed rooms.
Shaken from my shock, I swooped down and grabbed the keys off of the doctor’s lifeless body, my mother’s eyes were yellow, blood dripped from her mouth; she looked feral. This doctor had werewolf blood on his hands and as far I was concerned, he deserved what he got.
“Aurora!” My dad roared again and it jerked us all into action. I grabbed the keys and snagged an extra white lab coat off the counter in the room the doctor had just run out of. Once I was covered up, I followed the sound of my father’s screaming and suddenly Mason was there. My hand was hovered over the door, but before I could even try the key, Mason karate kicked the door down in two hard slams. I gave my cousin a look of pride. I knew the feeling of desperation for your mate when they were in trouble.
My mom was the first one in the room. After assessing there were no immediate threats, she shifted into her human form and I felt the comfortable weight of Gavin’s wolf leaning against my leg lending me moral support. My father, my amazingly strong and invincible father, looked frail and weak and it brought tears to my eyes. His skin was ashy, deep purple circles lined his eyes and he was topless, strapped to the bed with needles and an I.V. in his skin.
‘Avery! Medical!’ My mom roared into all of our heads.
“Dad?” I stepped closer to the bed.
His yellow eyes caught mine and held my gaze for a long time. He was showing me he was strong, he was going to be okay.
“I’m fine, baby girl.” His voice was gruff and weak but the words sent a warmth through my body.
Jaxon and Avery burst into the room but before they could tend to my dad I heard Mason in the corner of the room let out a distressed whimper. Oh crap, I forgot about him and Alice. Avery sidestepped me and knelt down to see what was bothering Mason.
“Help her first, they took more from her. Females have a higher concentration of whatever they want. I heard the doctor talking about it.” My father was unstrapped and sitting up now, drinking some water that my mom got out of Avery’s medical bag.
Jaxon pulled bolt cutters out of nowhere and snapped the cage holding Alice. She was naked and laying half dead, panting in the corner of the large six-foot kennel cage.
“Bastards!” Jaxon growled as he took the silver-caged door off the hinges, not getting burned because of his witch heritage.
Mason took off his t-shirt and threw it over his mate, scooping her up in his arms as Avery expertly threaded an I.V into Alice’s skin and hung some saline. I.V.s really only lasted a couple minutes in our skin before the skin tried to reject and regenerate over the needle, but it would be enough to perk her up I hoped.
“Get her into the SUV,” Avery commanded Mason.
Then Avery turned to my father, flashed a light in his eyes and did a few other things. He swatted her hand away.
“I’m fine. Let’s go before human back-up arrives,” he gently commanded.
“Can you walk?” Avery asked him.
I know it killed him to admit it, but he shook his head.
With a groan, my mom lifted him up, hanging his left arm around her neck, I swooped in to get under his right arm.
My dad’s gaze fell on Gavin’s wolf. “Is that …”
I nodded. “Long story.”
Then he leaned over and smelled my hair. “Why do you smell like a bear?”
Mom chuckled. “Longer story. Let’s get home.”
*
The rest of our wolves bailed out the other caged wolves, over 100 in all, from all different packs. Then our small group got into the SUV with plans for all of us to meet back on the mountain.
Once we were all strapped into the SUV, Anna peeled out, leaving the area with the other wolves in their cars just behind us.
Something hit me then, a knowing, a loss in the pack bond. “James,” I croaked.
My mom gritted her teeth. “Died.”
My father met my eyes and then looked at Jaxon. It was like he was seeing us for the first time, seeing how much we had grown, how much we had dealt with in the past few days.
My mom put a hand on his shoulder and took a deep breath. “Kai.”
He didn’t know yet, Oh God, it would kill him. No one loved the humans more than my father. He believed that there were a few bad ones but most of them were good, but this would kill him.
As if he sensed it, he asked her, “What do they want from us?”
My mom looked lost for once and it killed me. It was hard to see your strong parents reduced to confusion and weakness.
“Our blood, our bone marrow, it’s the cure for every ailment that plagues the weak humans.” She talked to him like he was a little boy.
My dad’s face scrunched in confusion. “Well fine, then we can donate–”
“No.” Her voice was firm now. “They need to drain the entire wolf to cure the humans.”
My father’s jaw dropped open. When you heard it put that way, it sounded awful, it sounded like we were on the brink of genocide. Then his face took on its usual tough-ass facade.
“If the public knew, they wouldn’t go through with it,” he declared.
That’s when Gavin interjected. “Yes, they would. They will. Humans will do anything to help those they love be healthy and free of pain.”
He was right, we all knew it and it settled over us like a wet blanket.
“So what do we do? Run? Hide? Fight?” I asked my dad.
It was my mom who spoke and her words gave me chills. “Throughout history, people have been persecuted for different reasons and nothing was gained from running or hiding.”
“We fight,” my father declared. “We take the time now to meet with the werewolf council, to get a plan in place. When the time comes, we fight for the basic decency to live.”
Gavin’s hand slipped into mine and he squeezed. Holy shit, the humans outnumbered all of the supernatural races combined. This wouldn’t end well.
A memory hit me then, of Nahuel’s vision, the one I had with him in the corn fields. The humans rounding up werewolves and caging them, treating us like dogs and lab rats. That was a future vision and it would come to pass if we didn’t somehow stop it.
I closed my eyes, as a tear fell down my cheek. Spirit, have mercy on us all in the days to come.
Walker: Matefinder Next Generation Book 2 will be out sometime 2016.
If you liked this book, you should check out Matefinder: Book 1 which follows Aurora and Kai twenty years in the past.
Acknowledgments
As always, thank you to my amazing readers who read what I write and allow me to do this full time. It’s truly the best job in the world and I am so grateful. Keep reading and I promise to keep writing. A big thank you to my supportive family for always having my back and helping out with cooking, cleaning, and preschool drop-off while I am deep in my writer’s cave. Don Nakano, my eagle-eyed beta reader, thank you for finding those stubborn mistakes. Patti Geesey, my amazing and patient editor who has been with me since day one, thank you for finding those big mistakes. Jaymin Eve, my BAFF, thanks for approving this ending and making sure it wasn’t too cliffy. Love you, girl!