by Jade, Amelia
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, an
d wanted 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.”
It was obvious the Alpha didn’t believe him for an instant.
“Indeed.”
Aiden paused, trying to act surprised. “Why are you here?”
Stephen shrugged. “Well,” he started pacing back and forth in front of the entrance. “I was in my office having a meeting with Flint and Orren. We usually do that every Sunday you see.”
Aiden nodded, his eyes watching Stephen closely. He was up to something. His pacing was absolutely on purpose, heading toward an end result that Aiden couldn’t quite pick up on yet. Was it a distraction? He’d searched the room fairly carefully; there didn’t appear to be any other entrances or exits, or ways for others to sneak in behind him. Trying to disguise it as scratching his face, Aiden lifted his nose and tested the air.
All he could smell were Patrice, Stephen, and the vast amounts of metal around him. No other scents reached his nose.
“And then, in the middle of the meeting, Willow comes barging in, says she just has to talk to me.” He stopped and gave Aiden a knowing look. “You know how women are. Tells me to dismiss my men, we need to talk now . So, I do. They leave. And then she starts to ask me questions. Questions she hasn’t asked me for years. Then she calls me a liar. ME!”
Aiden understood now. The pacing wasn’t a distraction. It was a lead-in to the anger that Stephen was doing his best to contain. He was furious, and it was dictating his actions, making him think less clearly. Perhaps Aiden could use that to his advantage somehow. He looked around as surreptitiously as he could while Aiden continued to speak.
“She proceeds to ask me what happened to her family. When I tell her, she doesn’t believe me. And you know what else she told me, Aiden? Do you?”
No, but I suspect that you’re going to tell me one way or another.
“She tells me that the person who fed her the idea that I was lying, the one causing her to question all this? That it was YOU!” The final word was a bellow, the loudness of it catching Aiden off guard.
Even as he yelled it Stephen came at him, cold fire burning in his eyes, careful training guiding his motions. Aiden dove to the side, just ahead of the charging Alpha. He had underestimated the older werewolf, assuming him to be caught up in his anger. Instead, Stephen had played him with ease, luring him into a false sense of security before attacking.
Aiden got to his feet and dodged behind the nearest container, buying himself a few moments of time as he moved deeper into the miniature maze of wires, boxes, and other equipment.
“You know what the worst part of all this is?” Stephen said, his voice echoing so much it was hard to pin his location down. “Now I’m going to need to find a new secretary.”
Aiden’s blood froze. He was going to kill Willow. His own daughter.
“Why even keep her all this time then?” he shot back, fighting for time, hoping to keep the Alpha talking.
He needed to win this fight, and win it swiftly. Aiden felt he could beat Stephen one-on-one. But to do so would require a lot of him, and he wouldn’t emerge unscathed. One way or another he was going to need to deal with the rest of the pack as well. Whether they were waiting outside for him, or back at the pack house, Aiden needed to save his energy. There was also the RRT to consider. They would be mobilizing and heading this way at all possible speed. In fact, they might be going to both here and the pack house. Aiden needed to go, and go now. The best way to do that was to not fight fair.
To cheat.
He crept around several more coffins until he found something he could use.
“I never took you for a simpleton,” Stephen said. His voice sounded more like it was coming from off to his right now. “But come on. How perfect of a cover was it? Nobody would suspect the guy who took in a human and adopted her. That’s not the sort of person that gets another look. It was the perfect cover.”
Aiden felt chills as the layers began to peel back around Stephen, revealing his true ugliness. He’d hated the bastard even before Mack had assigned him here. Now his hatred was justified even more.
“I cannot wait to take you down,” he snarled. “I was going to kill you, but now I think I’ll leave you and Patty-cakes there for the RRT. You deserve to be locked up for a long time. Death would be too kind to you.”
As soon as he finished speaking Aiden hefted the chunk of metal pipe he’d found, bouncing it off the aisle three coffins away. He spied movement as Stephen went to inspect it.
Which is when he hurled the bigger piece of pipe straight at him like a javelin.
Stephen heard something and pulled back, but not before the wobbling piece smacked sideways into his neck. The blow wouldn’t have been anything damaging, except for the fact that Aiden was charging in right behind it. He hit Stephen low, like a linebacker, intending to take him to the ground and try to choke him out.
“ARGH—”
Stephen’s voice cut off abruptly as a massive tremor ran through his body and into Aiden. He abruptly bent in half over his shoulder, and when they hit the floor, the Alpha didn’t rise.
“What the fuck?” Aiden stood up, looking at the limp body, taking several steps back in case it was a trick.
That’s when the blood started to leak from the back of Stephen’s head. He frowned and reached down for a pulse. He was still alive. Aiden had mixed feelings about that. Looking around he finally spied what had happened. The long piece of pipe had gotten jammed in the floor under one unit, and it was long enough that it stretched across the passage between it and another, like one half of an X-shape. When Aiden had tackled Stephen, he’d been low enough to go under, but clearly the back of his head had impacted on the bar, knocking him out.
Aiden smiled. That would keep him out for some time, but he needed to take it another step. Taking the long piece of pipe, he wedged it in really ti
ght between the two coffins. Then he grabbed the shorter piece of pipe. Holding that under his chin, he placed Stephen’s hands on the ground above his head, palms up, one atop another.
“This is for threatening Willow,” he growled, and then stabbed the piece of pipe right through the middle of both hands.
Stephen awoke with a scream, but Aiden was moving swiftly and expertly. He lifted the now-pierced hands from the ground, and with a grunt of effort he folded the shorter piece of pipe around the longer one, effectively tying Stephen to the wedged piece of pipe.
“Shut up,” he snarled and knocked the Alpha unconscious with a huge right hook.
There was no more time to waste. Aiden darted for the door, phone already in hand.
Aiden: Willow! They’re going to try and kill you. Get to safety! I’m coming.
His phone buzzed before he’d fired up the truck and he glanced at it, scrambling to read it once he realized it was from Willow.
Willow: AIDEN! Oh thank God your alive. They’ve locked me in my room. I don’t know what to do. Please hurry.”
He ignored the typo, deciding to forgive her for improper spelling based on the circumstances.
“I am a generous God ,” he muttered as the tires screeched, quoting a semi-famous movie from a decade earlier.
It often amazed others how he could remain so calm under pressure, often cracking jokes and being a general wiseass regardless of the situation. But that was just the way he was. The shittier things looked, the funnier he got.
At least, that’s what Aiden thought. Not everyone always agreed with him, but whatever. He got the job done. Every time. Just like he was going to do now.
“I’m coming, Willow,” he said, repeating the line out loud as the truck tore out of the parking lot, an oncoming car swerving and slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting him.
“I’m coming.”
Nineteen
Willow
Aiden was right.
It irked her to admit it, even to herself. But even more than that, it hurt . Because it meant she’d been wrong. Completely, utterly wrong. Not just about something, but about everything . The way that her father— NO. He is not my father. He is “Stephen”— the way Stephen had changed so completely and without any remorse had been a cold slap across the face.