Dire Wolves of London

by Carina Wilder

  “Traitor!” She tried to yell, but her vocal cords were too strained, too useless to let the words out with any force. The syllables emerged in an ugly, venomous rasp. “You’re a goddamned traitor!”

  “No, I’m not,” he said softly. “I’m not, not to you. If anything, I’m a traitor to those who work here. Sinead, you need to listen to me before you put us both in more danger.”

  He moved closer and held his phone up to the side of his face, illuminating his features starkly so that she could see his eyes clearly for the first time. They flashed a light, impossible blue. The eyes of a Dire Wolf. Fierce, feral.

  Sinead finally understood why she’d felt protected in his presence. She could feel the surge of energy in the room, wrapping in soft ribbons around her mind and body.

  She inhaled deep, daring to take in his scent. She could smell him now on the air. But better still, she could see him. Every line of his face, every aspect of him. A beautiful dream who had walked into her worst nightmare.

  The man had learned to mask his true nature. He was a rogue, a spy. A double agent.

  A pulse of electricity seemed to light the air between them as she stared into those strange eyes of his, seeking out his hidden déor. But she couldn’t quite find him; he was concealing himself well. Aside from the initial flash, the Dire Wolf refused to show himself.

  His human side, on the other hand, was on full display.

  He looked about thirty-five. His hair was dark brown, his eyes intelligent and sympathetic, narrowing as he looked at her, as though he was trying to figure her out just as much as she was attempting to decipher him. Dark brown hair, close cropped at the sides and back. His lips were full, kissable, though the last thing she should have been considering was kissing anyone. The stubble on his cheeks made her want to claw her fingernails along his skin, to feel the sensation of resistance and roughness. To taste him with her fingertips, if she couldn’t do it with her lips.

  He was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on, and something told her that it wasn’t mere desperation that led her to that conclusion. He was simply extraordinary, and somehow fate had brought him to her.

  For the first time in days, she felt her Lioness stir to life inside her, waking to have a look at the Wolf shifter who might just find a way to save her life.

  “I’m listening,” Sinead said, tears welling in her eyes. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  The man’s lips curled into the slightest hint of a smile, which faded almost immediately, no doubt forced away by the seriousness of their situation. “My name is Brigg. I’m a member of a pack who will offer you protection, as will the Dragons’ Guild. But first, I want to get you out of here,” he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “I have a plan for it. But you need to go along with me, do you understand? You need to be my accomplice. They cannot know what I am, or they’ll throw me in here as well. They need to think I’ve convinced you to cooperate; that we’ve struck up a deal but that I need you with me, outside of this cell and this building. Do. You. Understand?”

  She nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

  5

  When Brigg had pulled the cell door shut behind him, he nodded silently to the nearest guard and yanked his cell phone out of his pocket.

  He had no intention of making a call, and in fact there was barely a signal in the dank depths below the task force’s headquarters. But he needed the excuse to stand still, to let the battle raging inside his chest calm before he made his way back up the corridor towards Collins’ office. Otherwise there would be no holding his Wolf back. No stopping the hellfire that was about to explode from his chest.

  He pulled his head up and looked around at the guards who kept watch over the cells. Each of the men was a silent, complicit monster. Following orders mindlessly, unquestioning, while powerful beings suffered agonizing fates mere feet away from them.

  Anger roiled inside Brigg, for the men’s cowardice, for their pathetic lack of strength. They didn’t, for one second, question the very morality of their duty. Didn’t consider the fact that shifters were the greatest allies that Britain had ever seen. Their kind had kept London safe for decades, defeating the unseen forces who threatened humans. They were the shadowy sentinels who had kept blood-thirsty creatures at bay. But now at the first sign of trouble, London had identified them as the enemy.

  Even as he fumed about the injustice of their plight, though, another emotion stirred Brigg’s insides.

  One even more powerful than anger.

  As he began to walk towards the staircase at the end of the long corridor, his head swam with thoughts of the beautiful woman he’d left behind in her prison cell.

  The image of her face had already branded itself on his mind, on his heart, in perfect, exquisite detail. He couldn’t ignore what she’d done to him, how his cock had sprung to life the moment he’d picked up her scent on the air; a scent that couldn’t be masked by even the dankest prison. He couldn’t ignore what she was.

  Sinead had been foggy and fuzzy-minded at first. She hadn’t grasped all that was happening between them. Whether because of the drugs or something else, she probably hadn’t seen that it was fate that had drawn them both into that small, dark cell, face to face.

  But Brigg had seen it. He’d sensed it in the air between them, in her voice, in her scent. He’d felt it deep in his soul from the moment his eyes had met hers. But he hardly dared think the words. To presume that she could be his destined mate seemed insane.

  The thing was, he wasn’t presuming. He simply knew it, and so did his Dire Wolf. The realization was the only thing granting him any modicum of calm right now as he lifted one foot in front of the other and forced himself towards Collins, avoiding eye contact with the foolish guards who inspired such rage inside him.

  Easing along foot by foot, he forced away his anger by thinking of her sad eyes. Dark brown, flecked with golden reminders of the Lioness who dwelled silently inside her, they had sparkled in the dim light with a luminosity that only a shifter in distress could reveal. If eyes were the window to the soul, her soul was complex and wonderful. A tangle of mixed emotions and confusion. She’d looked so lost, and he’d wanted nothing more than to wrap her up in his arms and to comfort her, to tell her that he would break her free if it was the last thing he did in this world.

  But holding another person was no simple matter, not for Brigg. He never touched anyone, not unless he was left with no choice. He couldn’t. Touch for him was a strange, intimate toxin, a sensory explosion that few people could understand. To touch Sinead would have been to open a door into her soul, to violate her by walking directly into her mind.

  No. He would never touch her. Not unless she asked him to.

  The only time he grabbed hold of anyone, in fact, was in the moments when he needed to seek answers from criminals. To uncover the location of their victims, to see their crimes, to read their deepest, darkest secrets. Brigg had few qualms about violating those who killed and maimed. They deserved the invasion.

  But Sinead didn’t.

  Even if he couldn’t read her mind, there was no question that he had to get her out of there, and soon. She was weak. Perhaps not physically, but mentally. He could see that the prison had worn her down. He had to get her to a place of freedom, of comfort, where she could breathe again. A place where he and Cillian could get to know her, but more importantly, they would be able to help her.

  She would never see the inside of a cell again, not on his watch.

  But getting her out of this hell-hole required a plan, and Collins would have to be on board in order for it to work. Which meant that Brigg needed to manipulate the bastard a little.

  He climbed the narrow spiral staircase towards the director’s office, breathing slowly in a final attempt to calm himself. It wouldn’t do to have the director see him agitated; the fucker needed to think he had nothing m
ore than a passing interest in the prisoner. He was going to portray himself as an objective, cold-hearted investigator, just doing his job.

  A job that just happened to involve the most desirable woman he’d ever seen.

  “The meeting went well,” he said when he’d stepped into Collins’ office. “The shifter is willing to make a deal. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Me?” said the man, looking up from some paperwork, a pair of reading glasses balanced on his red nose. “Whatever for?”

  “To negotiate, I presume. She’s agreed to help us, which is good. Like you said, she could be very useful. But she says she can’t do anything for us if she remains locked up. She’ll wither in there. It’s not natural for a Lioness to live underground.” With the last words he felt his throat dry out, his emotions fighting their way into his chest in spite of every effort to curtail them. But he pushed them back and swallowed hard. Professional, he told himself. Be a professional, indifferent tool, like the rest of them.

  Collins raised an eyebrow. “It sounds to me like she’s charmed you a little, Brigg. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were looking for an excuse to take her home with you.”

  “Charm me? She’s done nothing of the sort,” the Dire Wolf shifter replied, steering his eyes to a work of art on the other side of the room. If he looked at Collins right now he risked betraying his inner animal. Speaking of the Lioness was stirring his emotions, heating his insides too quickly. The massive Wolf inside him was too close, too present. “I simply think she’d be more useful outside the prison than inside.”

  “You do realize that she’s not actually a Lioness,” Collins said, his tone scoffing. “She’s a creature with a mutation that turns her into one on occasion. Some screwed up gene that makes her dangerous. We mustn’t sympathize with their plight. They’re not human, remember. They’re sodding freaks.”

  “Yes, well, however you want to describe her, her instincts are honed for hunting, not for living in a hole in the ground. Even so, I don’t believe she’s a danger to society. She wants her life back, and I think we should consider letting her have it, provided she accommodates our needs for a time.”

  “So what’s this proposal of hers, then? Are you actually saying you want me to let her out into the world, given what she knows about what we’re doing here? You realize, of course, that even if I do, she’ll never have her life back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her job, her flat, her belongings. They’re all gone. All record of Sinead’s existence has been wiped off the map. She is now a person—a shifter, rather—without identity.”

  Brigg stiffened, fighting back his déor once again. So, the fuckers had disappeared her. She was now a ghost, a creature devoid of significance to anyone. They’d stolen from her. Ended her.

  “Isn’t that a violation of her rights?” he asked.

  “Rights? What rights? She’s not a human. She has no more rights than a dog.”

  Brigg bit down hard on his tongue, trying to keep his rage from spilling out in a sea of words. “Well,” he said, doing his best to calm his voice, “of course I’d be a fool to suggest that you simply let her walk out of here and run free.” Much as I’d love to do exactly that. “I do, however, think that you should surrender her into my custody. Let me use her in locating the shifters’ leaders. Let me take advantage of her instincts. I can manipulate her, employ her as a hunting dog of sorts. It will be an…amusing…sort of experiment.” He almost hated himself for saying the words, even if they were his only hope of getting the Lioness to freedom.

  Collins’ puckered his lips as he contemplated the idea before letting them curl up in a wicked smile. Apparently he liked the idea. “Well, I must say this isn’t what I was intending. She’s got the potential to be dangerous, as I’ve said. I was planning, if anything, to assign her to one of the mercenaries at our disposal,” he said. Mercenaries? thought Brigg. That doesn’t sound like something Scotland Yard would approve of. “Either that or let her rot. But if you really think this will work, it’s worth a shot.”

  “I do. And for the record, I’m not concerned that she’ll hurt me. Besides which, I’ve been known to handle my weapons well. You should know that if you’ve read my files.”

  “Yes, I know it very well. They say you have the best reflexes of any shooter the Yard’s ever seen.” Collins studied Brigg again for a moment, that strange, curious glint in his eye that made the shifter uneasy. “Fine,” he said. “I suppose we all need to learn how to handle the freaks. Perhaps some of them can be trusted, even. She’ll be a guinea pig of sorts. Besides, there’s another little experiment I’d like to try out on her.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s what I call the “Three Ts. Tested, Tagged, Tracked. Eventually all shifters will be chipped so that we can locate them if they get up to no good. We can start with her.”

  “Ah, I see. But what exactly do you mean by ‘tested?’” Even as Brigg asked the question, the answer came to him.

  “We’re going to run blood tests on any suspects. You know, to confirm their genes, if we’re not certain to begin with. I won’t be surprised if orders come down from on high eventually to do door-to-door swabs of every family in London. We’re going to rid this city of the vermin once and for all.”

  Brigg’s spine braced and nausea flooded him when the words hit the air. Collins was talking about something that stepped awfully close to genocide. He didn’t see the shifters as even half-human; to him they were parasites, best taken out, cleansed from the earth.

  “You should think about keeping her sedated,” Collins added casually, apparently too consumed by thoughts of the Lioness to notice Brigg’s pallor. “We’ll have the pharm give you the pills. You can mix them in with her food or force them down her throat. Hell, I don’t care how you administer them. They’ll help keep her from shifting—though I have something else in mind for that, as well.”

  No fucking way am I giving her pills, Brigg thought. But you don’t need to know that. “May I ask what, exactly?” he asked.

  “You’ll see. That is, if I can get this little experiment of yours approved.”

  “Approved? I thought you were the director.”

  “I am.” Collins smiled sheepishly. “But you know as well as anyone that there’s always someone higher up on the food chain. Now, give me a few minutes, would you?”

  Collins let out a huff of air and pushed himself to his feet, waddling towards the door that led to the main hallway. “I’m glad you’re eager,” he said, turning back to Brigg. “God knows, I have zero desire to deal with this shite. If you ask me, they should all just be incinerated. Coddling them, negotiating with them—it’s a bad precedent. Best to find the savages and kill them.” With that he left the room and shut the door.

  Brigg grabbed the edge of Collins’ desk, his fingers gripping hard until he could hear the wood begin to splinter. Rage was shooting like flame through his blood, his Wolf so near the surface that he could smell him on the air.

  Incinerate. The fucker had actually used the word, as though the world had learned nothing from history. His solution to dealing with people who weren’t quite like him was to destroy them, to wipe them off the earth.

  Calm down, he told himself as he forced his fingers to relax and pulled his hands back. Lose your mind now, and you give the whole game away. Sinead loses. We all lose.

  Brigg seated himself and tapped his index fingers together under his nose as he contemplated what he’d seen in the basement of this awful place. There were others—many of them—in need of his aid. Once he got Sinead free, what the hell was he to do for them? The Dragons’ Guild was powerful, but they couldn’t exactly break their way into a high-security, underground prison and release a pile of prisoners without serious repercussions. They’d be giving the authorities ample reason to declare a state of war against their kind, which was the last thing anyone needed.

  He’d have to give all of it some serious thought. T
hey would need allies. As many as they could possibly muster, and some of them would need to be human. Nothing stymied human plans like others of their kind rebelling against them.

  “She’s all yours as of tomorrow morning,” the director declared loudly as he strode back in, yanking Brigg away from his thoughts. “The paperwork is being filled out as we speak. But if you have any problems whatsoever, you are to contact us immediately. I don’t want this going sideways. You’re more useful to us alive than dead, Brigg; you could prove a valuable asset to us.”

  “I’d rather not be dead, to be quite honest, so at least on that matter we’re on the same page.”

  “Good,” Collins chuckled. “And for God’s sake, don’t make a mess of this. If, in the end, the woman proves a useful ally, we can talk about negotiating her permanent release.”

  Permanent. The smallest ray of hope penetrated Brigg’s chest. “I believe she will be a very useful ally indeed,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll be by first thing tomorrow.”

  Without making eye contact with Collins he rose to his feet, stepped into the hallway, pulled the door shut, and walked towards the building’s exit.

  6

  Cillian had been sitting in the car for what felt like hours, dividing his time between listening to podcasts and staring out the window. This was hardly the life of a Dire Wolf shifter; he felt like he was on the dullest yet most stressful stakeout that anyone had ever endured.

  There had been no word from Brigg. No text, no call for help. No sign that things had gone badly. Then again, there was no sign that things had gone well, either.

  Whatever was going on between the task force’s walls remained a mystery.

  It was 3:30 by the time his eye caught a reflection of Brigg striding towards the car, yanking his collar up around his jaw. His expression was stern and serious. Whatever he had to say, it probably wasn’t good news.

  “What happened?” Cillian asked when his pack mate had squeezed his tall frame into the passenger’s seat. He didn’t want to admit it out loud, but he’d been worried. His bond with Brigg was strong, and if something had happened to the other man, he and his Dire Wolf would have suffered for it.