Wolf Freed

by Sadie Moss

  The humor dropped from Elijah’s gaze, and he straightened, looking more like a leader than he ever had in all the time I’d known him. “I’m not so sure about that, Alpha Alexis. In fact, I don’t believe that at all. Win or lose, I would’ve stood by my choice.”

  Our gazes locked for a moment, and something passed between us. He might be the only other person I knew who understood quite what it was like to bear responsibility for so many lives, and how that kind of pressure could make you second guess every single decision.

  “So.” I cleared my throat, reached over to rap my knuckles against the side of the truck, breaking the moment. “You really think you can drive this thing?”

  He nodded solemnly. “I’m sure of it, alpha.”

  I jerked my chin toward the driver’s door. “Then what are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  His grin made him look ten years younger, and it struck me that Elijah wasn’t really all that old. Late-forties, maybe, with plenty more life left in him—endless possibilities in a future that stretched before us like a wide-open road.

  I left him by the truck and reconvened with my mates, making sure everything was set. It took several more minutes before we were all ready to leave, partly because Sariah and Jackson had found clothes in the back of one of the trucks. They were all large, meant to fit the burly guards, but they were better than nothing.

  Finally, we all piled into the vehicles and drove away from the smoldering bunker. Elijah dropped my mates, Sariah, and me off at the van, and Rhys pulled it to the head of our small, strange caravan. I caught one last look at the dark façade of the Strand fortress behind us before we rounded a bend and it disappeared from sight.

  My head dropped back against the seat rest, my weighted eyelids falling closed as the van rumbled down the road. I was utterly exhausted, depleted at a bone-deep level, and I made a mental note not to let Rhys drive for too long before someone else took a shift. All of us were tired.

  “Oh shit…”

  West’s voice from the front passenger seat had my head snapping up so quickly my vision spun. “What? What?”

  Panic spread through my chest like napalm, and my mind flipped through a dozen different possible threats, real and imagined. What now?

  “We missed a bunch of calls from Val,” he said, picking up the burner phone we’d left behind in the van. “Damn. More than a dozen of them.”

  My breath caught in my throat as everyone in the van leaned toward him. He didn’t bother listening to the voice mails, just tapped her contact number and put the phone on speaker.

  “Val?” I blurted as soon as the ringing stopped. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Hello to you too, alpha.” Her dry voice filled the car, and even across the distance that separated us, I could feel her exhaustion mirroring my own.

  But she was alive.

  I wanted to press her for immediate answers to my questions, but I bit my cheek instead, straining for patience as she murmured softly to someone on the other end of the line before speaking to us again.

  “We did it. We got them out. It was a hell of a fight, but you were right—every shifter we rescued was another fighter on our side, and eventually it turned the tide.”

  My body seemed to go boneless, all my muscles falling slack as I collapsed against the seat, gratitude rushing through me like a tidal wave. It took me a second to gather my wits about me enough to hear her next words.

  “I think the fact that you have Doctor Shepherd with you helped. When shit hit the fan, the guards didn’t have orders coming down from on high. No matter how fanatical that man is, not all of his staff shares his blind devotion to the cause.”

  “Was,” I corrected absently. “He was.”

  A pause hung in the air before she responded. “Good.”

  “Did you… did you lose many?” Sariah asked. She leaned over the seat back from behind me, straining toward the phone with a worried look on her face.

  “A few,” Val answered, her voice hard. “A few of ours, and some of the shifters from the complex. But we freed over a hundred test subjects.”

  A hundred?

  My mind reeled at that number. What the hell would we do with so many? Where would we all go?

  “Who didn’t make it?” the dark-haired girl asked softly.

  Val listed off several names, shifters I had known and liked. Grief enveloped my heart, and a tear slipped down Sariah’s cheek. But despite her sadness, an expression of relief flitted across her face. There was someone she’d been hoping would return, someone she’d been thinking of and fearing for—and Val hadn’t said that person’s name.

  I shot a glance at Rhys, wondering if he’d picked up on the tone in his sister’s voice, but his gaze was steady on the road. I turned back toward her, hiding a small smile. She had kept my secret even though she’d been right that I should’ve told my mates about the baby. I would keep her secret from Rhys… for a little while, at least.

  As the dingy van ate up slow miles on the winding road, Val told us all about the rescue of the shifters from the complex in New Mexico. And as we hit the larger interstate that would take us back toward Salt Lake City, we began our story, filling her in on everything that’d happened since we last spoke.

  She agreed to bring the freed shifters and rendezvous with us in Salt Lake. It was as good a place as any for us to decide our next steps.

  By the time West ended the call, my head was spinning. As we’d spoken, the six of us had delved into more of the food and water Molly had packed for us, and that’d helped my energy levels a bit. But my injuries stung, my body ached, and my eyelids rebelled against rising after every blink.

  There was one more call we had to make though.

  West put the phone back on speaker, so the entire van got to hear Molly’s squeal of delight when she realized who was calling. Carl’s response was more restrained, but there was something in his voice that made me certain he was smiling.

  We told them we were on our way back and warned them there would be more shifters with us—lots more.

  Part of me worried that this would be the breaking point for Carl. He’d helped us out more than I could even quantify, but he wasn’t as much of a “people person” as Molly. Not that we were asking if over a hundred and fifty shifters could stay at their house—that would be insane. We’d find some other place to put everyone short-term, but I wasn’t even sure he’d want all of these newcomers in their lives.

  To my surprise, he put up no protests, saying nothing more than that we’d work it out when we all got there.

  “Oh, and I’m guessing you haven’t seen the news?” Molly asked, her voice rising again in excitement.

  “No.” I almost laughed. “Haven’t really had a chance.”

  “Well, one of the biggest stories of the day is about Strand. It’s been almost non-stop on all the major networks. Not about the Shifter Initiative,” she added quickly, “but about all the other shady stuff they were into. They’ve been criticized for years for a lack of transparency, and it turns out, there was a damn good reason for that. Testing and manufacturing biological weapons, mutating virus strains—awful stuff. It’s left a black stain on the company’s record, and between the old CEO dying and the new one… uh, disappearing… I think it’s safe to say Strand won’t recover from this. They’re finished.”

  The van went silent for a moment as we all absorbed her words.

  It was over. It was truly over.

  There might still be some fanatics out there who’d bought into Doctor Shepherd’s insane preaching, but they wouldn’t have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corporation behind them anymore. They wouldn’t have the Source. All they would have were stories that, to any average human, would sound like the ravings of a lunatic.

  It’s over.

  We talked with Molly and Carl for a little while longer, but there was too much to say, and it would be better to say it all in person. As West swiped the screen
again, ending the call, I scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to get my sluggish brain to fire on all cylinders again.

  “There’s so much to do. So much to figure out,” I muttered. “We need to—”

  “Sleep,” Jackson interjected, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and tipping me sideways so my head nestled on his strong thigh. “There’s time for everything else later. Sleep first.”

  “No…” The word was thick with exhaustion, my body already relaxing under his touch. “I need to—”

  “Sleep,” Sariah agreed, crawling around the seats to crouch on the floor beside me. “I’ll clean the worst of your injuries, if that’s okay. I checked on everyone else who fought, but I haven’t checked you guys yet. You need to take care of yourself, Lexi. It’s not just you in there anymore.”

  I blinked at her, prying my eyelids open to gaze into her bright blue irises.

  She wasn’t talking about my wolf. She was talking about my baby, and her eyes glowed with quiet happiness as she spoke.

  Jackson’s large hand drifted from my hip to the soft curve of my lower belly, and mine moved to meet his. Our fingers laced together over the tiny life I carried, and I knew he was right.

  The future was big and wide and daunting, but it was no longer terrifying.

  Because we had a future. A chance to build a life outside the walls of Strand, outside the walls of captivity and fear.

  Come what may, my child would be loved.

  And she would know she was loved every second of every day we were with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Scrubs. We’re here.”

  I yawned and stretched, peeling my head off West’s shoulder and surreptitiously checking for drool marks. None, thank God.

  “Finally!” Jackson was practically vibrating in the front passenger seat as Rhys pulled the van into Molly and Carl’s simple, suburban driveway.

  Rhys had taken over driving duties again after we’d stopped for the night halfway back to Salt Lake City. The other men had switched off with him while we’d all recovered from the fight, but neither Sariah nor I had been able to take a turn, since neither of us knew how to drive—something I planned to fix as soon as possible now that we weren’t running for our lives anymore.

  I peered out the window at the trucks pulling up behind us on the street. Luckily, they were all a neutral gray with no obvious markings on the side, but they still stood out like sore thumbs in this neighborhood. We’d have to get rid of them soon.

  “We made it.” West’s arms wrapped around me, and he buried his nose in my hair. “We did it, Scrubs. You did it.”

  “We. Definitely we.”

  I turned my head and pressed a lingering kiss to his cheek, trying to ignore the small cut over his eye. Sariah had checked on all our wounds, and nothing was life threatening, but we all still looked like we’d gotten the shit kicked out of us—which was pretty much exactly what’d happened.

  We just kicked harder.

  As we piled out of the side door, Lost Pack shifters started emerging from the trucks too, stretching their legs and staring curiously at the houses around them.

  “Alexis!”

  Molly’s voice and the sound of a door closing behind me called my attention. She and Carl emerged from the house together. He had an arm slung possessively around her shoulder, and I had a feeling it would take a little while for him to relax around the new shifters. Trust didn’t come easily to the sharp-faced man—he’d been given too many reasons not to trust people—but he trusted us, which hopefully meant he would give the rest of our pack a chance.

  She broke away from him as they neared and pulled me into a hug while Carl greeted my mates.

  Her arms were gentle around me, as if she knew I hurt everywhere, and she breathed a soft laugh into my hair.

  “What?” I asked, hugging her back.

  “I was just thinking of the first time I met you.” She pulled away a little, her blue-green eyes shining as she gazed at me with something like awe. “The four horsemen brought you to my house in rough shape, and I patched you up the best I could. They told me you were strong, but…” She shook her head, her gaze trailing from me to the Lost Pack shifters gathering behind me. “That wasn’t the half of it. You took down Strand—and your pack just tripled in size.”

  Gripping her tighter, I leaned forward to speak low into her ear. “I’m so fucking scared.”

  Her head tipped back, a peal of musical laughter falling from her lips. “Well, sure. That’s how I know you’re not crazy. But it’s gonna be okay; I promise. Will you introduce me?”

  Grinning at her enthusiasm, and trying to let her confidence in me bolster my own, I took her hand and led her over to the gathering pack. She smiled broadly, shaking everyone’s hands as I introduced her. I caught her gaze tracking over their injuries, checking the makeshift bandages Sariah had applied and gauging the severity of the wounds, but she didn’t say anything about people’s disheveled appearances or the ill-fitting borrowed clothes they wore.

  Carl wandered over before too long, wrapping an arm around her waist and greeting the new shifters with her.

  To my surprise, after the introductions, they invited us all into the house. My mates disappeared for a few hours to get rid of the trucks, and in that time, Molly revisited each of the Lost Pack shifters with Sariah by her side, tending to their wounds.

  When the men returned, we ordered dozens of pizzas for dinner, and to Jackson’s obvious delight, I ate an entire pie by myself. The hot look in his eyes made me blush, but I didn’t let it stop me from polishing off my last bite of crust. My stomach was pleasantly rounded, although I had a feeling that, at the moment, it was more food baby than actual baby.

  After dinner, shifters crashed all over the house, sleeping curled up in small piles like puppies in a box, but my mates, Sariah, and I stayed up with Molly and Carl, conversing in low voices in the kitchen.

  I leaned back against Jackson’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind, offering the strength and protection of his body as my own melted against him.

  “We need to decide where we’re going to go. What we’re going to do.” My gaze darted toward the front door, as if I expected dozens of newly freed shifters to burst through it at any minute. “Jesus, I have no idea what to do.”

  We could always return to the woods—make a small village there like Elijah had done with the Lost Pack for so many years. But I didn’t want to. Doing that would mean neglecting our human sides, and I didn’t want to lose any more shifters to their wolves. We needed to be somewhere close to other people, to human communities, but far enough removed that we could let our shifter sides out without risking discovery.

  I blew out a breath, sitting up straighter in Jackson’s embrace. “I mean, I know what I want to do. But the steps to making it happen are… I don’t even know where to start. I mean, Jesus, just getting clothes for everyone so we don’t all look like rejects from some kind of private security training camp seems like a huge undertaking, much less finding a place for us all to live. And if we can’t afford clothes, how are we going to afford anything else? Almost none of us have employable, real-world skills.”

  A knot formed in my chest as I spoke.

  Fuck. Maybe we would have to go back to the woods, at least for a little while. It would be okay though. We’d just have to make sure we didn’t let our wolves take over, that we kept our human sides close—

  “Uh, actually, I think we can help with that.”

  Carl smoothed his hair back with one hand as he spoke, sharing a secret, pleased look with Molly.

  My brow furrowed, and my gaze darted back and forth between the two of them. “Help out with what? Getting us jobs?”

  His smile widened as my mates and I all leaned forward, eyeing him curiously.

  “Not exactly. But you won’t need them for quite a while.” He ducked his head almost bashfully before his bright green eyes lifted toward me. “Remember that little heart-
to-heart Doctor Shepherd and I had before we left the safe house? Well, he happened to mention the details of a few offshore bank accounts where he sheltered money he funneled from Strand to fund his… private experiments. Sick fucker.”

  A grimace twisted his face, but it melted into a sly smile as he continued, glancing at all of us.

  “Since he’s not around anymore, he won’t come looking for it, so I took the liberty of transferring it to a new emergency funds account. It should be more than enough to give you all a fresh start.”

  More than enough.

  Apparently, that was Carl-speak for millions of dollars.

  When he’d flipped open his laptop and shown us the numbers in cold, hard dollars and cents, my eyes had practically bugged out of my head. It was incomprehensible to me, but when I thought of what the money had originally been intended for, I didn’t feel a single qualm about using it.

  After Val and the new Lost Pack members arrived, we did end up going back to the woods for a while. Forty shifters could—uncomfortably—cram into one suburban house, but three times that number would’ve been impossible.

  Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was force everyone into close quarters. A sense of relief hung over all of us as we slowly digested the fact that Strand was gone, but the physical and mental scars weren’t magically erased just because we’d fought our way free. We all needed some time to decompress, and I didn’t want to take the risk of anyone shifting out of control and attacking our human friends, or each other.

  So, we ventured back into the foothills surrounding Salt Lake for several weeks while we looked for a more permanent place to live. Val and Elijah were extremely helpful in maintaining order among the much larger pack, and we did what we could to keep stress and fear from pushing anyone’s wolf over the edge.

  It wasn’t always easy, and there were nights when I lay awake questioning the wisdom of every decision I’d made.