by Odessa Lynne
“Oh.” Gerald’s nod was jerky and abrupt. “Good. Good.”
Eris’s gaze seemed overly fixed. “Is that what you want?”
Gerald shook his head.
“Good. It’s safer if you don’t. I need to…” His words trailed off, his forehead furrowing.
“You said we didn’t have any need for secrets,” Gerald said. His voice wavered but he was determined to overcome his concern for what seemed to be happening and take advantage of an opportunity that might not come again. “Tell me something.”
Eris shook his head, closing his eyes momentarily. When he opened them, some of the haze seemed to have cleared. “Yes.”
“Do you love him? Do you love your alpha?”
It was a question Eris seemed unprepared for. His face twisted with confusion and his gaze lingered on Gerald. “He is alpha. I would die for him.”
“But is it because you love him, or do you fear him?” A tickle at Gerald’s nose made him sniff again, but it didn’t help. He gave up and raised the hem of his t-shirt and wiped.
Eris continued to stare at him. “I have to tell Alpha you’re sick.”
Gerald let his shirt fall down over his belly again. “No, wait. Just one minute. Tell me more about Tanis. I want to know everything.”
“Your questions are better asked of him.”
“You just told me we had no need for secrets and then you refuse to answer the simplest question.”
Eris huffed a soft breath. “He is the eldest to come off the ships.”
“Like forty or, or I don’t know, fifty? He could probably be fifty and I wouldn’t know it. You guys don’t—”
“Eighty.”
Gerald’s mouth opened.
“Approximately, in Earth’s years. Give or take, as humans often say.”
“No fucking way. That’s just—that’s—” He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He squeezed his thighs, then hissed when his injured muscle throbbed.
“He is eldest.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Eris narrowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I’m not—that’s not what I meant. I just can’t believe he’s that old. What about his kin?”
“He is eldest. They are next eldest. Four from one and each one has a chance of siring the next generation of Diviners.”
“That’s huge, right? That means something important.”
“It’s the prophecy. This was Alpha’s last opportunity to breed. He won’t breed again. Not now.”
“Because? Ah. Because of me.” Gerald knew that. But that was only true if— “God. He thinks I’m his true mate.”
Gerald would never be allowed to leave. Ever. Devon had explained that a true mate was like a marriage that could never be revoked, like a destiny that couldn’t be avoided, like a—
A life sentence.
“I’m hoping it’s for the rest of your goddamn life.”
Devon had said those words in anger, but maybe—maybe there’d been more to the sentiment than revenge. Maybe he’d hoped Gerald would find what he’d found and turn—
But the hell if he was going to do that. He wasn’t a traitor. He couldn’t do it.
“This place. Tell me about this place.”
Eris’s expression closed, the light in his eyes snapping bright. “Enough of these questions. Alpha needs to know you’re sick and injured.”
“He calls this home, but—”
“That’s because this is home. Your home now. Everyone will eventually accept you, when he lays a path for you in the prophecy.”
A weight Gerald didn’t want to feel lodged in his stomach. “He belongs here, doesn’t he? These are his people. Your people. ‘As Alpha does, so does his beta.’ His alpha is here.”
“No more questions.” Eris turned to leave, his movements harsh and abrupt, but then he hesitated. “Stay here until someone comes for you. Leif and Raleigh aren’t safe for you right now.”
Gerald swallowed, nodding.
Eris left, and the door closed behind him.
Gerald dropped his head back against the wall, his chest tight, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat.
Tanis wasn’t a spy, at least not for the wolves Gerald knew, not like Gerald had hoped, but Tanis was still his mate, and now—now Gerald knew something he shouldn’t know, and there was no way he could leave Devon and the others unaware of what he knew without it destroying him.
Sunny believed in doing what was right and just, that was just the way he was.
But Gerald would have to do it, because he knew in his heart Sunny couldn’t.
Chapter 23
“Eris tells me you think I’m old.”
Tanis’s voice brought Gerald’s head up, startling him awake. He hadn’t meant to doze, but obviously at some point, he’d slipped from hazy thoughts and unsettled planning into the deeper trance of sleep.
He started to stand but Tanis put his hand on Gerald’s shoulder and held him in place.
“Don’t move.” Tanis put a small vial full of liquid to Gerald’s mouth. “Drink.”
Without thought, Gerald swallowed. He almost gagged but he choked it down. Once he’d finished downing the full vial, the taste lingered on his tongue.
He shuddered. “That was disgusting.”
“It’ll stop the infection from running rampant in your system.”
Gerald blinked a few times, feeling heavy-headed. The throb at his temples intensified. “I think I have a cold.”
“I’m afraid what you have is much worse than a cold.” Tanis knelt close. He put his mouth to Gerald’s ear. “Someone has set in motion a plot to eliminate the humans who’ve migrated into our sphere of influence. By the time we create the cure for your illness, many of you will have already died.”
“Are you serious?” His words weren’t as forceful as he expected. A heaviness in his chest kept him from trying again.
“I’m afraid so.” Tanis rose and used his inhuman strength to pick Gerald up.
Gerald half expected Tanis to throw him over his shoulder, but that wasn’t what happened. Tanis cradled him tight to his chest and carried him back into the room with the bed.
He eased Gerald onto the soft blankets and tucked them loosely around Gerald.
“Rest until I come back. Raleigh will check on you later.”
Gerald didn’t have to be told twice. Whatever had hit him that morning had hit hard.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but he dozed again, and sometime between wake and sleep, the heaviness in his chest had intensified and he’d started coughing and shivering under the warm blankets.
“Hey, Sunny, wake up.”
Gerald opened bleary eyes. A wavering form stood next to the bed. He focused and realized it was Lamar. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to get you. We’re getting out of here.”
Gerald tried to sit up. “Where’s Tanis?”
“He’s with the others, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
“What the—” A tight cough stopped Gerald from continuing and he let himself fall back on the bed.
“It’s the 2060 flu,” Lamar said. “No one ever figured that one out. It’s a killer.”
Gerald pulled his hand away from his mouth. A few pink flecks of blood dotted his palm. Not enough to make him panic, but enough to set off a deep sense of foreboding.
He turned his cloudy gaze to Lamar. “What did you do?”
Lamar put his hands up. “Oh, no. I didn’t do this shit. I’m just taking advantage of an opportunity. Not even a little interested in killing half the world’s population by letting that fucker loose again. Jay’s down. I don’t know if he’ll be getting back up. But just in case, I’m getting the fuck out of here while I can.”
Jay. Gerald knew that name. Jay was involved with the renegades, but he was also connected to the wolves fighting against the wolves’ first alpha. “That’s when you went off the sats. You went unde
r with the renegades and then… nothing.”
“Something like that,” Lamar said. “But we don’t have time for—”
“We have time.” Gerald clamped his hand around Lamar’s wrist, not as weak as he’d let Lamar think. “I’m not going anywhere with you without something that makes me feel good about it.”
“Look, we have to go now. That wolf who was watching you could come to at any minute. He—”
“Human,” a very familiar voice snapped. “Enough explanation.”
Lamar looked across the bed.
Gerald turned his head. “Tanis?”
Even as the wolf said, “Tanis isn’t here,” Gerald knew he wasn’t looking at Tanis. The wolf had the same long hair, the same eyes and nose; he was in fact identical in every way, but he wasn’t Tanis.
Lamar jerked his chin. “That’s P’tin.”
“Peyton?”
“Close enough.”
Gerald looked at the wolf, the pounding of his head a dull ache that was just getting worse now that he was sitting upright. “You’re the one—”
“We haven’t met. I am Paetinishikid.”
“So what about the wolf who’s watching me? What did you do to him?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with. We have to go.”
“Fuck that. I’m concerned. What did you—”
The wolf grabbed him by the throat.
Gerald jerked back, knocking his head against the wall because he moved so fast. Lights sparked and claws pricked flesh, and he saw a flash of black so suddenly in the center of his vision he thought he was going to pass out.
“Submit!”
“I do, I submit.” His voice cracked and he had the need to sniff against the running of his nose, but he didn’t dare move a muscle. His heartbeat felt thready and fast, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of the population-destroying influenza virus making a home inside him or the fear that this particular wolf had no concern at all for the crushable nature of Gerald’s windpipe.
The wolf—Peyton—leaned forward and took a strong sniff of the damp sweat at Gerald’s underarm.
“You reek of Paetaniskeille but your human scent still draws me in.” His red-gold eyes moved to Lamar. “It’s too strong. They’ll find us too quickly. And if I succumb, the consequences will be severe.”
Questions beckoned, but Gerald wasn’t going to ask them. Oh fuck no. Tanis had told him to always submit. Always. It was the will of his alpha.
At that particular moment, Gerald wasn’t seeing a downside to that order.
The only thing he could do was have faith that Tanis wouldn’t let him go without a fight.
Lamar reached for Gerald’s arm. “We have to go. I don’t know if I’ll get another chance.”
“Then we will go,” Peyton said.
* * *
Blood had been spilled. That was the only thing that seemed to stick in Gerald’s mind over the next several minutes. Raleigh was on the floor in the outer room, his head turned to the side, and Gerald couldn’t see anything wrong with him, but dark blood had been smeared across the floor and along the visible side of his face.
“He isn’t dead,” Lamar said. “Stop worrying.”
“I’m not worried,” Gerald said.
But the fuck if that was true. He was worried. He didn’t know what was going on, he felt like shit, and he had a really bad feeling about what was coming.
Lamar hustled Gerald out of the room and down a bright corridor and then several more. Gerald tried to remember the directions of the turns but his pounding head tripped him up and once he lost track of one turn, he couldn’t recover.
Several turns after that, the corridors became dark and empty, and the cold frigid. No one wandered the halls and no one joined them. The smell was as cold as the floor beneath his bare feet.
Peyton stopped in front of a door that opened for no apparent reason into a dark room and Lamar gestured for Gerald to enter ahead of him. Cots and gear lined the walls but the thing that grabbed Gerald’s attention right away were the thick coats and gloves and boots draped over a box.
Lamar moved straight to the boots and reached inside one of them. He handed Gerald a pair of thick wool socks.
“Put these on.” He waved his hand at the coat and gloves under the boots. “These are for you.”
“I can’t go,” Gerald said. “Tanis—”
“He’s coming for me.” Lamar started pulling on a pair of the heavy boots. “I’ve heard the rumors. I can’t stay here. He’ll kill me.”
Was that what this was about? Gerald glanced between Lamar and Tanis’s brother. Could he trust either of them?
He just didn’t know.
“Then go,” he said, “but leave me here.”
Lamar looked up from his half-bent position. “I can’t do that, Sunny. Your brother’d kill me if he ever found out I’d had you and didn’t bring you back.”
“I can’t go,” Gerald said. “I’m sorry.”
Peyton moved closer. “You don’t understand, human. You’re coming with us, whether you want to or not. That was the agreement I made with this one and that’s the agreement I intend to honor.”
Gerald rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, then bent and started pulling the warm socks over his icy feet.
* * *
The surrounding woods were lit brightly by a cold afternoon sun and its reflection off the glittering snow. Gerald trudged along behind Peyton and in front of Lamar through top heavy evergreen trees, his every step heavier than the last.
The cough had gotten worse, his runny nose so raw he could hardly touch it in the frigid air, and his chill bone deep. He was running a fever that made him feel too hot while the smallest breeze of air against his skin shuddered through him with all the subtlety of an ice cube down his back. And his thigh ached.
He wasn’t going to make it. If Tanis was going to find him, he needed to do it soon, because otherwise, Gerald was going to sprawl out on the next snowy bank he came to and go to sleep and just never wake up.
That’s how he knew how sick he was. Because he didn’t even care if that happened.
He tripped on his next step and fell into the crunchy snow with a startled “oomph.”
Peyton turned at the sound and hauled him back to his feet. “He’s too ill for this.”
“I can’t leave him,” Lamar said. “Can’t you carry him?”
“His scent, human. I explained this to you when you came to me for my help.”
The hood framing Lamar’s face was cinched tight. Gerald somehow hadn’t gotten his quite right and the stiff breeze made it flap against his cheek. The gloves were too thick for him to easily adjust it so he had no choice but to tolerate the cold drizzle of melting snow down the side of his neck.
He shuddered and his knees gave out.
Lamar quickly thrust his shoulder under Gerald’s arm.
“He’ll do no one any good dead.” Peyton’s voice sounded as harsh and cold as the biting wind. “Paetaniskeille will hunt both of us down and kill us if we let his mate die.”
“We’ll be able to treat him as soon as we get him back to the protectorate.”
“If you aren’t careful you’ll allow the virus into your population again.”
“It’s worth the risk.”
The realization about what was actually going on startled Gerald into action. He pulled away from Lamar, who made a grab for him, but Gerald moved quickly. He tripped backwards and landed on his ass, but immediately rolled away from Lamar’s clutching hands.
“I can’t do it,” he said, wheezing hard, coughing between words. “I can’t go with you. Too risky. Not giving this shit to anybody I know. Not doing it.”
“You’re going,” Lamar said. “Now let me get you the fuck out of the snow.”
Gerald was already crawling away. He blinked a few times, the snow in front of him a hazy trail of messy footprints. No way anyone could miss their trail. No way.
Who the hell needed scent wh
en they had footprints?
What was going on? Why didn’t this feel right?
Maybe if his head wasn’t pounding so fucking hard he could think straight.
Lamar grabbed him in a bear hug, yanking him backwards. Gerald fell back, and rolled again, but Lamar went with him and he ended up smushed flat, face down in the snow. He flailed for a minute and then just stopped and lay there, breath puffing white in the frigid air.
“I can get you into quarantine before you have a chance to infect anybody. It’ll be okay. But you have to come with me.”
“You’re lying. You’re a lying piece of shit. Tanis was right. I know what your plan—” The cough started again and snow plumed cold and wet into his face.
“My God, Sunny, you’re being paranoid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gerald managed to drag in a deep breath. “I’m not paranoid.”
Lamar staggered upright. “The hell you’re not! Now get your ass up.”
He dragged his hand through one of the perfectly formed footprints, knocking the packed snow loose. “Why aren’t you covering your tracks?”
“Because we don’t have time. Because every minute we waste is one more minute closer to having my spine clawed out by that goddamn mate of yours. That’s why!”
“Who did it, then? Who did it?”
“This? The same people who created those bullets we’ve been chasing after.”
“What bullets?”
“For fuck’s sake, Sunny, we don’t have time for this! I’ll tell you everything when you get better. But James needs to know some of this shit I’ve collected and I can’t get it to him stuck here in the goddamn middle of nowhere with Jay and these wolves.”
Lamar was assuming Gerald would get better.
Gerald didn’t know his history that well, but he knew the 2060 flu had killed too many people. According to Nana, he’d lost an entire branch of his family tree to it and he was alive because one of his ancestors happened to be friendly with a doctor who’d seen it coming.
The bunker was still in the family. It had come in handy during the first wolves’ heat.
Gerald rolled over, flopping onto his back. Cold snow crunched under him and the sun dappled through the trees and glinted off snow-covered branches.