by Layla Nash
I gulped for air as he opened my door and raised his eyebrows. "Are you okay?"
"When you said mansion, I thought..." I shook my head but took his hand as I slid out of the car, eyes still glued to the stately building behind him.
Edgar laughed as he released my arm and opened the back door so the other girls could clamber out. "Well, it's a bit much for me, but Logan wanted enough room for all of us to live together, with our families, so he went a little overboard."
I hesitated before heading for the porch as Edgar carried both of the suitcases towards the door, uneasy with the idea of just walking into a house that size. Surely security would show up and question what I was doing there. Did I have to take my shoes off? Was I dressed up enough?
Edgar glanced back, raising an eyebrow when he saw I hadn't followed, but he waited until I caught up. "But I'm glad he got a little overzealous with the architect because now we have more than enough room to welcome new friends." He smiled at the other women, encouraging, and glanced up as a few more SUVs rumbled up the drive.
I opened my mouth to ask whether there was a side entrance we could use, something less intimidating than the pillared double doors with massive wrought iron scrolling, but froze as the doors flung open and a smiling girl appeared. Her red hair hung in long ringlets around her. She shaded her eyes as she searched the driveway and the approaching cars. "Is Atticus coming, Edgar?"
My heart stopped when I saw her. Sophia. It had to be her. I'd thought her dead or worse. My legs went numb and I lurched to a halt, unable to move. Bands compressed my chest. I managed to croak, "Soph?"
She froze, all the color draining from her face, and she spun slowly to face me. Edgar looked between us, expression suddenly guarded. The girl blinked, and her throat jumped as she swallowed. She shook her head, her entire body trembling as she looked at me. "Wh-who are you?"
"You don't remember me?"
The cars pulled up behind us and doors started slamming, a lot more people surrounding me. I couldn't look away from her. I'd wondered about what happened to her every day for the last ten years. And somehow she'd ended up with the Chase brothers, at home in their gigantic mansion.
She shook her head, still trembling, then went rigid. Edgar cursed, calling out, "Atticus!" as he dropped the suitcases and got between the girl and everyone else. The women from our SUV backed up, looking for places to hide, but I remained where I was. Sophia shuddered and suddenly collapsed into a snow leopard. She yowled and her claws bit into the white wood of the porch, and I smiled. I hadn't seen her in a long time, either.
Chapter 8
Edgar swore as Sophia went into an uncontrolled shift for the first time in weeks, and got between her and everyone else. Well, he got between her and Ivy, less concerned about the others. It seemed Ivy recognized her, and maybe Sophia remembered Ivy. Either way, his suspicions about the evil doctors looked confirmed. He prayed Atticus got there quickly, and a roar behind him made Edgar close his eyes. He needed Atticus in human form, not as a lion.
But the lion paced past him without a second look or moment of hesitation, and nuzzled the panicking snow leopard on the porch. Edgar exhaled, though he didn't look away from where Sophia stared at Ivy. "Okay. Everyone inside. My office. Carter, if you would call Natalia and have her show the ladies to their rooms? Ivy, wait here with me for a moment."
And he was glad he put his arm out to keep Ivy back, though she seemed inclined to go up and pet the snow leopard, as Sophia bolted for the vast grounds around the mansion. Atticus grumbled and chased after her, his tail lashing the air, and Edgar scowled as Benedict strode past and into the house. Particularly since Benedict waggled his eyebrows at Ivy and nodded at where the snow leopard dodged Atticus's efforts to pin her down. "Their idea of flirting. Cute, isn't it?"
Ivy frowned at where they ran, then sighed. "I'm glad she's okay."
Edgar caught her elbow and tugged Ivy toward the house. "Before we get into how you know her, let's get out of the cold. Atticus will bring her in shortly, I'm sure, and we need to get Logan and the others involved in this conversation."
Her expression went blank and she withdrew a little. Her gaze went distant. "Very well."
Edgar wanted to swear and hit something, but instead he only led the way through the mansion towards his office. Ivy hung back, hesitating near the door, then followed him, though every line in her body screamed her discomfort. He wondered what caused it — him, Sophia, the house, his brothers... He pushed away the thought as he shoved open the door to his office.
Ivy paused next to the large wrought iron cage up against one wall, frowning as she studied it and ran her fingers along the bars. "You have a cage in your office?"
"It's for Sophia, mostly." He went behind his desk to check some of the security cameras, relieved to see that Atticus had his snow leopard by the nape of her neck and was dragging her through the house. The rest of his brothers filed into the office and Edgar left the desk, gesturing for Logan to take the comfortable chair, before he nodded for Ivy to sit. She chose one end of the soft leather couch, her expression still distinctly lacking in emotion as she crossed her legs and watched him coolly.
She opened her mouth to ask something, frowning, but paused as Atticus the lion strode in, Sophia yowling as he dragged her into the cage and pinned her there. Edgar shut the cage door and slid the bolt home, and Atticus harrumphed a sigh as he lay down next to Sophia. Her snow leopard swatted him but eventually curled into his side as well. Edgar glanced around to make sure all of his brothers were there when Carter walked in and quietly shut the door to the office. When he was satisfied they didn't need anyone else to witness the conversation, he turned to Ivy. "Okay then. Can you explain?"
She sat there, alone but looking unafraid, and folded her arms over her chest. "If she's Sophia Fraser, I know her. Used to know her. We were... imprisoned together. Well, we were all held separately but in the same facility."
"The medical facility," Logan said slowly, his blue eyes locking on Edgar. Edgar's heart sank. More of the shifter kids stolen and experimented on.
Ivy glanced at him, a cold mask settling over her. "Yes."
Edgar studied the snow leopard in the cage, unnerved by the lack of emotion in Ivy. He didn't like seeing her so closed off. "Do you know what they did to her?"
Ivy studied her nails, though her voice went quiet. "Mostly. They were testing something for controlling shifts, so they could flip a switch," she snapped her fingers before going on, "and have someone shift. They tried it on her, but after they did it, her shifts were completely uncontrollable. I got used to dealing with her as a snow leopard, since she spent most of her time in animal form, toward the end."
"The end?" Carter sank into one of the club chairs, dwarfing the chair with his bulk but somehow looking less threatening, despite overwhelming the furniture. "Whose end?"
Ivy got a faraway look, then scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed. "I owe her my life, you know. The doctors eventually got sick of tranquilizing her, and she was too dangerous to just let roam around, even as a thirteen-year-old. One of us overheard them talking about putting her down. They wanted to harvest some blood or something, so they put it off, and that gave us enough time to plan."
Edgar was suddenly glad that Atticus was already in lion form, otherwise his brother might have gone through the roof with rage at hearing someone deliberately damaged Sophia and then planned to kill her to get rid of the problem. He waited for Ivy to go on, holding his breath.
She frowned down at her borrowed jeans, picking at a loose thread. "I'd wanted to escape for a while, and since I was the oldest, everyone looked to me on how we could make it happen. So I led them out of there. We barely made it. Had to kill a couple of guards, and a few of us were badly injured when they started setting off booby traps and things to slow us down, but we made it out of there. By then, though, Sophia was so sick..." She trailed off and watched the snow leopard in the cage as she pushed her paws into Atticus's
face, both of them purring. Ivy took a deep breath, finally lifting her gaze to Edgar's in challenge. "She was so sick we couldn't help her. She had seizures, she threw up all over the place, she couldn't eat or drink, and she was dying. I knew she was dying. We took her to a hospital and left her at the emergency room so they could save her, get her better. I went back the next day to get her, but she'd disappeared. I tried to find records for her at the hospital, but no one remembered seeing her or treating her or knew anything about where she might be."
Ivy looked away as her voice caught, and Edgar knew he didn't imagine the sheen of tears in her eyes. She wiped briefly under her eyes before going on. "I thought she'd died or the bad guys found her, took her back. I wondered, every day, if she was okay. If she somehow made it to some place safe and good, like we used to talk about."
"She did," Logan said, voice rough with emotion that never showed on his face. "It took a little while, but she did. She's fine."
"I'm glad." Ivy nodded, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at Edgar — waiting for the next question.
He didn't like her sitting alone, facing a line of his brothers as if she were on trial. He picked up one of the warm blankets he kept in the cool office and walked it over to her, easing onto the other end of the couch so he could be close to her. He frowned at where Benedict poked at some of his books, irritated at the lawyer's inability to keep his hands to himself, but Edgar faced Ivy as he spoke. "You were the oldest one there?"
"Yes. I was there the longest, too, although I suppose someone could have been there longer after I left. I tried to get everyone out, but they kept us all in different dorms, so I don't really know how many were left behind." Her lips compressed to a knife-slash, regret making her eyes darken.
"So how did you survive there so long without them deciding to off you?" Benedict juggled a few trinkets from the bookshelf, raising his eyebrows in challenge.
Ivy didn't take the bait, giving the lawyer a blank look, as if she couldn't figure out why he was there. "I was more valuable to them. Even when I acted up, they didn't threaten to kill me. They didn't try any of the really dangerous experiments on me. Just... took samples."
"Why were you more valuable?" Logan leaned on the desk, frowning as he studied her.
"My mother was a wolf, and my father was a wolverine." Her head tilted as she looked around the office, unseeing. "I can turn into both."
"That's impossible," Benedict said, shaking his head.
Carter sighed. "Anything is possible."
Ivy's expression hardened. "That's why they took me. Why they murdered my family. They knew I could turn into both, and they wanted to create more shifters who had multiple animals. The doctors wanted to figure out how to replicate me, maybe expand it into three or four or more animals. No one else could shift into different animals."
Edgar's heart sank as he looked at her, even as he desperately wanted to see what she looked like as a wolf and a wolverine. But those few words — they murdered my family — told him all he needed to know about her. Alone, captured, abused and tormented, experimented upon, and finally forced to escape to save a younger girl. He wanted to hold her, wanted to comfort her, and the lion fought to get closer. Just to touch her, to show her she wasn't alone.
But the silence stretched as the men struggled to comprehend what she said, what she meant. It was too horrible to really understand. Children taken from their families and... Edgar shook his head. It couldn't be true.
Ivy looked around at them, then rubbed her temples with a short, pained laugh. "It was a breeding program, guys. They wanted to breed super-shifters. Not just multi-shifters, but the biggest and baddest hybrids. Combine the strength of a bear with the speed of a cheetah and the balance of a leopard, the pack mentality of the wolves and the determination of badgers. They wanted super-shifters. Weapons."
Logan shook his head in immediate rejection of the idea, lurching to his feet. "That's not — that's not possible. It's not. It's unbelievable. That couldn't have been going on under our noses; it just isn't possible."
Edgar wished he was right, but when Edgar watched Ivy, he knew she spoke the truth. And his heart ached to think of the price she paid, all the unknown pain she'd suffered through, as well as the mysteries in Sophia's past. He covered his eyes with a hand so he wouldn't see the snow leopard, asleep against Atticus's massive paws.
Ivy sighed, sounding resigned. "It was a breeding program. And it got a lot worse."
Edgar wanted to stop her. He didn't know if he could hear any more.
Chapter 9
I waited for them to react or say something, or even just to blink, but no one moved. Even Edgar couldn't look at me. I wondered what went through their minds after I'd admitted what I'd been in, and part of me rebelled at the amount of detail I'd given. I barely knew these men, and certainly didn't know them well enough to start confessing Sophia's secrets as well as my own. I glanced at the snow leopard in the cage, uneasy with the way the lion watched me.
It seemed like an eternity until the one behind the desk took a deep breath. "What did you do after you escaped? Sophia has been free for some time."
"Ten years, give or take." I ran my fingers over the buttery leather of the couch, wanting to curl up on the soft cushions with Edgar. My cheeks heated at the thought. There was no damn reason to think about snuggling with him. I cleared my throat and pushed away the memories, tried to believe I told a story about someone else or repeated the plot of a crappy B-grade movie. "We tried to stay together as a group, but we were too damaged, I think. Some wanted to go find their families and packs again, and some of us didn't have anyone to return to. So we went our separate ways."
The morning I parted from the last of them, when we looked at each other and knew we wouldn't see each other again, started my sinuses burning and a heaviness settled on my chest. I hadn't even liked her, really, but she was my last link to the program and I wasn't sure I could survive without someone else. I'd learned, since then, but the memory still hit me like a brick in the face. I shook myself, a little surprised to see that Edgar had edged closer on the couch, until he could touch my hand. I wouldn't admit it to him, but the comfort of his presence was all that let me continue. "I went back to the facility."
"You went back?" Benedict leaned forward in disbelief.
"Yes." I shrugged. "I didn't have anything, I didn't know where to go. I couldn't go to college or even get a real job, since I didn't want the bad guys to find me. I had to stay off the grid. But I wanted to know what they'd done and why, so I went back. The facility was sort of abandoned, just minimally guarded, and it looked like some human cops were trying to get in. The medical guards held them off, and when they were busy arguing with each other, I snuck back in."
"Now I know you're crazy," Benedict said under his breath, and Edgar shot him a dirty look.
I ignored him, so lost in the past I barely heard Edgar tell his brother to shut the hell up. I could still taste the smoke in the air around the facility as they incinerated records — what I hoped were records but feared might be people. It had been winter, snow falling softly all around, and I shivered for days afterwards. "I needed to know what happened and why. I had to know. I knew where they kept the records and the results of the experiments, so I managed to find my way there without being spotted. One of the interns was in there, shredding everything he could get his hands on. He flipped out when he saw me. Tried to dart me, then to shoot me."
Edgar's hand tightened on mine until my bones creaked.
I glanced at him, struck by a sudden thought. A guy like that, with an office as fancy as that one, and living in a house that big... "I could use a drink, if you've got something handy?"
Edgar didn't move but the calm brother, the one they called Carter and who believed anything was possible, retrieved a couple of glasses and a cut glass bottle from inside a giant globe. A globe. Weird. I waited until Carter splashed some whiskey into one of the glasses and offered it to me to go on, t
aking a sip to steel my courage. "I didn't kill him. I put him in one of the cages. He didn't like that, but that's no surprise, right? Nothing likes to be caged."
I hesitated as I looked at the cage in Edgar's office, where his brother and sister-in-law dozed, and chewed my lip. "I mean..."
"Don't worry about it," the oldest brother, Logan, said from the desk. He was methodically tearing pieces of paper apart, though no hint of tension showed in his face. He seemed perfectly calm, apart from the growing pile of confetti in front of him. "We don't like it either, but it was safer for her at the time. We can talk more about that later, if you don't mind. Please go on."
My eyebrows arched as I watched him, uneasy with the degree of control. He looked like he might go full-on beast mode at any moment. He could flip out regardless of what I said, and I was pretty sure from looking at the other guys that only Edgar stood a chance of putting him in a cage. I took a deep breath, but a gentle squeeze from Edgar convinced me to go on. "I took as many files as I could. I wanted evidence, but I also wanted to know what they'd done to the others. In case there was a way to tell them, or their families, or to right a wrong. Eventually. And then I ran. I studied everything I could to figure out what they did and why, and I came up with a list of nine guys were who responsible for everything that happened. All human."
I had to throw back the rest of the drink to keep going, needing the warm rock in my stomach to thaw my extremities. I'd never told anyone this. I still couldn't believe I was telling them. Edgar refilled my glass and drew me closer against his side, his arm draping over my shoulders in a comforting weight. I didn't mean to, but I leaned against him. And flushed, because his brothers watched without expression and I had no idea what they thought. I looked down at where the glass rested on my thigh, where his leg touched mine. "And since I had nothing else to do, nothing else to hold onto, I started searching for them. I searched for them, and I found them, and then I crossed them off the list. I was about to get the last one when that damn pack cornered me. I was sick, I didn't smell them coming, and then they told me I could either mate with one of the betas or they'd put me in the Auction. I tried to escape but I was still sick, still fighting something off. And then we were at the Auction, and you know the rest of that story."