For a moment, Wes forgot to breathe.
He swore again. This was bad, so bad. For the Grey Wolves, for humanity…
His thoughts turned to Naomi. Those monsters roamed her property.
Traditional vampires only ever turned a human intentionally, as the process involved sharing their blood, then burying the “human” for three days before it rose again, a time-consuming process the fangers rarely bothered with. It was advantageous to keep their numbers down. The smaller their covens, the more human resources were available to them.
But this could change all that.
“The Wild Eight is allowing the master vampires to unleash the half-turned among them in their territory, testing them out on livestock”—Colt eyed Naomi knowingly—“before they turn their sights toward the real target. All the master vamps have to do is give the orders, and these monsters do their bidding like damn trained dogs, even from a distance. The Wild Eight is building numbers to team up against the Grey Wolves, just as Kyle told you. It’s their intention to partner with the vampires to take out the Grey Wolf Pack.” Colt pointed to the screen. “And these half-turned vampires are their surprise weapon.”
“What about me?” Naomi asked. “How do I fit into this?”
Colt shrugged. “We don’t know. Other than that your lands lead directly into ours. It would be a strategic advantage in an attack.”
“And what about them wanting Wes’s life?” Naomi asked.
Colt shook his head. “Wes is a bonus. Not the end goal.”
Wes fought back another string of profanities. It had been bad enough that the Wild Eight had betrayed their kind and partnered with the vampires, but now this? Without the Grey Wolves supporting the Seven Range Pact and the Execution Underground’s sanctions, the vampires and the Wild Eight would run rampant. That would create an all-out war with mankind.
And now he’d managed to get himself cast out of the Grey Wolf Pack. He must really have a death wish, the way he’d been disobeying Maverick recently. There was no way his alpha would be able to spare him again, so even if he held up his vow to keep Naomi safe, there would still be a reckoning. Yet there was no other way to ensure her protection. He’d need to provide Maverick with the proof he sought to have even a chance of returning to the Grey Wolves. Even then, it might not be enough.
Wes’s brows drew tight as he stared at Colt’s darkened silhouette beside him. “No one does anything for free. What’s your role in this?”
“You may be disobedient, but you’re loyal to the Grey Wolves. We know the Wild Eight are housing some of the half-turned vamps, but we don’t know where. Bring Maverick proof of the threat, and restore yourself to the Grey Wolves in time for battle. Who better than a former enemy to tell us how his old packmates will strike? I won’t lose troops for Maverick’s pride. I trust you’ll do the work necessary.”
So it was a strategy game. A major strategic move. One worthy of a cunning high commander and warrior, born and bred. Colt lived up to every bit of his title.
“And if you ever speak a word of this to Maverick, to anyone”—Colt stepped closer, something cold and calculating flashing in the wolf’s golden eyes—“I’ll kill you myself.”
Wes would stay silent, but he dared the commander to try.
With nothing left to say, Colt slipped down the alley, heading back in the direction from which he’d come.
“Colt,” Wes called after him.
He paused, glancing back over his shoulder.
“I never would have thought you’d disobey Maverick.”
Colt’s lips drew into a thin line, not a smile but a look of amusement for the otherwise stern commander. “I admire Maverick. But my loyalty to the Grey Wolves extends beyond him as packmaster.”
Having had the last word, the Grey Wolf high commander turned and left, leaving Wes and Naomi just as stunned as the moment he’d arrived.
* * *
“All I have to do is hold the flashlight.” Naomi repeated the words to herself on a whisper as if they were a mantra, trying to keep her hands from shaking. She stood behind Wes outside the Wild Eight warehouse, holding up the Maglite so Wes could pick the lock. She braced her elbows to hold the light steadier. “Don’t you have night vision?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “Not enough to pick a lock this small when I’m in human form.”
She clamped her lips shut and waited. A moment later, a small click indicated Wes had jimmied the lock open. He quietly placed the metal lock on the ground, pulled the door open, then signaled for Naomi to turn off the light. She clicked it off, and they slipped into the darkness of the building.
Wes’s hand brushed against hers, gripping her palm to lead her deeper into the building. Even with the adrenaline of their break-in pumping through her veins, somehow, the touch felt intimate in a way it wouldn’t have days earlier. The memory of those hands caressing her most intimate skin was still burned into her.
Wes led her down several hallways, treading lightly. The hairs on the back of Naomi’s neck stood on end, and sudden uneasiness bubbled in her stomach. She trusted her instincts implicitly. Something wasn’t right.
After one more turn, Naomi tugged on Wes’s hand. He stopped and leaned toward her.
“Where are the guards?” she whispered into his ear.
Wes didn’t respond, but she felt the gentle lift and drop of his shoulder. He’d told her the place was likely to be heavily guarded, yet so far, they hadn’t seen even one guard.
When they reached the large, open floor of the storage warehouse and were still in the clear, Wes nudged her. “Turn on the flashlight until I can find the light switch. Don’t be scared.”
She clicked on the flashlight, and a catlike hiss sounded from the far side of the room.
“They’ll have it chained up. Don’t worry,” Wes grumbled. He seemed too focused on finding the light switch to pay much mind to the vampire.
As Naomi pointed her light in the direction of the noise, a sharp gasp tore from her throat. She stumbled back against the far wall, nearly dropping the flashlight as she went. Red eyes glared at her in the glare of the flashlight. She’d known they were coming to gather evidence that such a creature existed, yet the reality shocked her.
“I can’t find the damn light.”
Gathering her wits about her, she repositioned the flashlight, intending to point it toward where Wes was searching the wall. As the path of the light crossed the half-turned vampire, she paused. The monster hissed again, shielding its red eyes with its hands.
“Wes.” Naomi barely managed to choke his name out, horror gripping her voice.
A second later, Wes found the light switch. Fluorescent lighting flickered on throughout the room, illuminating the unleashed, untethered vampire.
Naomi screamed as Wes charged the beast head-on, meeting it midleap. What the vampire possessed in strength and speed, it lacked in technique and strategy. It was a bloodthirsty killing machine, but Wes was an elite fighter.
Naomi’s breath stopped short as the monster overpowered Wes, pinning him to the brick wall. She didn’t think. Acting on pure instinct, she drew her blade from its sheath, aimed just as her brother had taught her a thousand times, and threw. The knife catapulted across the room, piercing straight into the vampire’s shoulder. The vampire reared back with a hiss.
It was the momentary break Wes needed.
“Turn away,” he yelled.
For once, Naomi complied.
She grimaced and flinched with each sound of her blade slicing into the vampire and its accompanying screeches until Wes finished the monster off and the screeching stopped.
Naomi kept her eyes squeezed shut as she struggled to regain the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and released a deep sigh, completing the sentence she’d failed to say earlier. “That’s why there were no guards.”
Chapter 15
It would be a swift and just death. That was all Maverick had ever promised him, and Wes trusted the packmaster to make it so.
“Are you certain about this?” Naomi’s question hung heavy in the early-morning air between them.
He sat mounted in Black Jack’s saddle on the edge of the ridge, Naomi beside him on Star. Wolf Pack Run glittered in the distance. Wes nodded without hesitation. He had made the decision as soon as Colt had delivered the news about the half-turned. He knew Maverick well enough to know the packmaster would settle for nothing less. The severed vampire head inside the duffel on Black Jack’s saddlebag would prove enough.
Among the Grey Wolves, only Maverick rivaled Wes in a fight, but inside the Wild Eight warehouse, had it not been for Naomi’s aid, Wes would have fallen prey to the unfettered strength and speed of the bloodthirsty vampire. Now he held the key to protecting the Grey Wolves. His proof would cement the votes they needed for the Seven Range Pact and their fellow shifters to go to war.
Even if the Grey Wolves were able to win the impending battle with the Wild Eight and the vampires, any such fight would cause casualties the likes of which the Grey Wolf Pack had not seen in centuries. Though Wes had been their enemy, Maverick had spared his life for no reason other than to give him a second chance. The Grey Wolves had taken him in, showing him hospitality and loyalty in ways his own pack by birthright never had. Even if it didn’t buy him his way back into the pack, giving Maverick the proof he needed was the right thing to do. He owed the packmaster that much.
Even if it cost Wes his life.
Part of him accepted his fate. Hell, every day these past few years had been an extension on what he’d already deemed a death sentence. Now Maverick would finish it. Wes only hoped the reckoning would come after the war. In the battles to come, they would need every wolf.
“Are you certain about this?” Naomi asked again.
The only thing Wes was certain about was his need to keep her safe. She’d sworn fealty. Returning her to Wolf Pack Run would bring her back under the protection of the Grey Wolves.
“There’s no other choice.”
Wes nudged Black Jack with the heel of his boot. The horse gave a responsive grunt, turned around, and ambled in the wrong direction—on purpose. Wes spent the next several moments struggling to get the horse to move in the right direction until finally Black Jack obeyed with an annoyed huff as if to say suit yourself. When the horse’s hooves finally came to rest on the shriveling late-autumn grass, several of the Grey Wolf guards already stood at their sides, pulling Wes and Naomi down from the horses with rough hands.
“Hey! Get your filthy paws off me,” Naomi snapped. She slapped and kicked at the Grey Wolves tugging her from Star’s saddle.
Wes didn’t resist. He dismounted and placed his hands behind his back. The silver handcuffs around his wrists seared with a burning hiss.
“Let go of me!” Naomi shrieked. “We didn’t do anything!”
“Release her.” Maverick echoed her words. “She’s no concern of mine, and she’s under pack protection.”
The grip the guards held on Wes’s arm tightened as Maverick’s dark gaze turned toward him. The guards released Naomi. Gathering her wits about her, she stared at Maverick, then Wes, as she waited for Maverick to release him. Slowly, a dark realization crossed her face, her eyes growing wide.
“You lied to me.” Her words escaped on a whisper, full of pain and hurt.
The betrayal that clung to her words hurt Wes more than the silver at his wrists ever could. He wanted to say he’d done it for her, to protect her in the only way he could, but it would have been a lie. He had done it for her for all those reasons, but it had been for himself as well. His conscience would accept nothing less. He couldn’t be that monster again, not for her, not for anyone. Wes met Naomi’s gaze, trying to convey everything he struggled to say in a single look, but she was having none of it. She turned her wrath and hurt toward Maverick.
“And you,” she hissed. “He’s one of your pack. He gave up everything for you, so you could teach him to be a better man, and this is how you treat him!”
“Disobedience will never be tolerated among the Grey Wolves,” Maverick shot back. “Take him away,” he ordered the guards.
A rough tug pulled on the cuffs at Wes’s wrists. Though the pain of the silver seared through him, he didn’t fight their lead.
“No!” Naomi shouted. She rounded on Maverick, stepping forward until she was jabbing an accusatory finger into the werewolf packmaster’s chest, not an ounce of fear in her eyes. “He may have lied to me, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you lock him up without hearing him out! Not after everything we’ve been through.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Take her with him. You can release her when she’s blown off some steam.” Without another word, Maverick turned and stalked back toward the compound.
The guards reached for Naomi, grabbing at her arms even as she slapped them away, charging after Maverick. To their credit, they didn’t hurt her.
“No, you have to listen! Listen to me,” she called after Maverick. Within seconds, the guards held her, pulling her toward the dungeon. She fought against them until Wes shot her a warning gaze that caused her to still. She calmed but still said loudly, “I can walk there myself, damn it.”
The guards marched them toward the compound and down into the depths of the Grey Wolves’ cellar, where an old dungeon remained, preserved from a time in their early history when the Grey Wolves had battled vampires and other shifters—before the Seven Range Pact, before peace, before their only problem was the challenge of the Wild Eight. As the guards threw Wes into a holding cell, slamming the silver doors shut behind him with a resounding bang, it occurred to him that their history was more relevant now than it had been in centuries.
They threw Naomi into the same cell with him. He supposed it was too much to ask of his luck that they’d put her in a separate cell. At least Maverick hadn’t chosen to kill him on sight. As the door slammed shut behind them and the guards disappeared, Naomi rounded on Wes, her anger radiating with all the heat of a blazing fire.
“You lied to me,” she accused him again.
He said the only words that were the truth. “I had to.”
“Horseshit. There was no ‘had to’ about it—” She opened her mouth as if she had more to say, but he cut her off.
“Would you have come here if I’d told you otherwise?”
The question caught her off guard. She gaped at him, struggling for a response.
“Where would that have left you?” he continued. “In the protection of the Execution Underground? Because last time I checked, you had blown that plan out of the water, and we both know that as much as you want to return to your ranch, it’s not as safe as Wolf Pack Run.”
If he thought she’d been angry before, it was nothing compared to the rage that flared in her eyes now. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You’ve been all too eager to place your life on the line since the moment you stepped foot on my ranch.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you’re so desperate to prove yourself the hero that you couldn’t give two shits about your life.” The words hit him like a blow straight to the heart. “Hardly a sacrifice when you’re so eager to give it up.”
The truth in her words pierced through him, shattering any hint of self-control or resolve he had. Because she was right. Because it was true. Because as much as he wanted to redeem himself, even his life would never be enough. His life was worth nothing. He was a monster, and he deserved every bit of pain he received. No matter how it came, his death would be just and warranted. From the day he had knelt at Maverick’s feet, expecting death to come swift and true, he had accepted that reality without fear. No sacrifice, no matter how final, would change that.
“Y
ou’re right,” he muttered before he realized the thought had fully formed in his mind.
Again, he caught her off guard. Naomi’s eyes widened, and she dropped that damn accusatory finger of hers. “What?” she whispered.
Wes repeated the words. “You’re right. Since the day I became a Grey Wolf, I’ve been on a quest for redemption I’ll never earn and forgiveness I’ll never deserve.”
“Wes—” Naomi’s voice softened, and she reached toward him. “That’s not what I—”
“No.” He stepped back, avoiding the gentle caress of her touch. “It’s the truth, and it needed to be said.” To remind him, to force him to remember exactly how undeserving he was.
“Wes, I can’t imagine—”
“No, you can’t.” He tore his gaze away from hers and turned to face the metal bars of the cage. He was a wild animal, more wolf than man. Hadn’t that always been what he needed? Not the freedom he’d fought for with the Wild Eight, but a cage to protect him from the darkness that lurked inside his own heart.
“You’re right, I can’t.” Naomi’s voice rang confident and true. “I’ll never begin to understand why you’re this way or the choices you’ve made that have allowed this darkness to consume you…”
The affirmation that she understood should have been a relief. Hadn’t he wanted her to see the monster he truly was all along? To protect her from him? To push her away in a way he had never wanted to and never would? He had longed for his past to do what he couldn’t, what he was too weak, too selfish to do. Yet somehow, her agreement sliced through him.
“…not unless you show me.”
The invitation shook him to his core. He should have refused. She already saw the darkness in him. She didn’t need the images of his darkened past burned into her memory as well. But somehow, knowing he was on the eve of his death, knowing that this was some of the last time he’d spend with her, and seeing the metal bars around him caging him in, he couldn’t escape the past any longer. Even as he’d confronted the Wild Eight, he had kept the memories at arm’s length. Now they all flooded back to him in vivid detail, a reminder of how truly unworthy he was.
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