Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
C hristophe
“What is this you’re doing now?” Chael asks, again hovering over me while my fingers fly across the keyboard of the laptop he’s brought for me to work on today.
“I’m cross referencing the first names I told you with the dates of activity in the locations you specified.”
It’s been three days since Ashley visited me. I had to be sedated for an entire day afterward. When they tried to wake me a few hours after giving me the sedative, I continued to writhe around in pain.
Dr. Drake suspects the effects of seeing Ashley and the associated pain last for anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours.
I had an overnight stay at Dr. Drake’s clinic.
“Weak!”
The voice of my biological father penetrates my thoughts. It’s what he would call me whenever he saw me show any emotion that wasn’t complete stoicism.
“Weak! Just like your mother. No wonder I’m doomed to be the omega of this fucking pack.”
He’d say the words right before an open-palmed slap landed across my face, sending me halfway across the room.
“Hello?”
I twist my head to look over my shoulder at Chael. I’d lost myself to the past for a moment there. When I allow my gaze to meet Chael’s, he turns his head away from me.
He’s done that ever since I’ve awakened in the hospital. Never fully looking at me. Ignoring the tightness in my chest, I ask, “Sorry, did you ask me a question?”
“How long should this take?”
I think over the amount of time it’ll likely take to cross reference names with specific locations throughout the states from New Mexico, Colorado, and as far north as North Dakota and Minnesota.
Running a hand through my hair, I turn back to the screen. “We don’t have a lot to go on. Only first names, which are likely pseudonyms, and locations of the suspected guards. It could be a while,” I confess, hating to admit it, though.
An idea pops in my mind. “If you give me an idea of the names of some of the NSA’s staff or even?—”
“Forget it,” he says so sharply my wolf crouches back inside of my chest.
A sense of loss moves over me. I don’t have much to go on to help track these bastards down. I only ever heard first names while I was in that place. A few times I caught the initials on a piece of clothing, but who knows if those are accurate.
“What about Serafina’s father?” I ask, knowing that I probably shouldn’t press the matter, but needing to. I’m not doing this for me. It’s to keep Ashley safe. And I’m more than willing to put myself in harm’s way—even with the brother who hates me—in order to do so.
I never even found out his name, Serafina’s father. We didn’t speak while we were inside of that cell. Not the way Ashley and I talked. But I recall the guards taunting him with the length of time he spent in that tortuous confinement. Years.
Chael faces toward the wall, arms folded across this massive chest. He doesn’t look at me, but I can make out the tightness in his jaw.
He’s either thinking my suggestion over or trying to rein in his disgust at being in my presence.
“He was in that place a lot longer than I was, and probably longer than any of the other handful of shifters who survived. If you let me speak with him, we might be able to put our heads together to come up with some names.”
“Hunter Crimson is very sensitive right now.”
“Is that his name?” I interject. “Hunter Crimson?” My eyes widen. “As in, he’s from the Crimson pack?” I blurt out. I remember coming across some blog posts online that spoke of the Crimson pack, a supposed mythical pack.
“Aside from short walks here and there, he doesn’t leave his house. And no,” Chael nearly roars, “you are not going to his house. Only Mother Moon knows what kind of reaction you’ll have to seeing him. Since they used Ashley’s face against you, they may have done the same for all of the prisoners.”
He says the last part more so to himself than to me.
Yet, pain bursts across my chest.
“Weak, weak, weak!”
The taunts of my first father haunt me with the reminder that I’m not strong enough to be of any real help. If I had been stronger in that place, they wouldn’t have been able to use my own mate ? —
No, not that word.
They wouldn’t have been able to use her or anyone against me.
Slowly, I turn back to the screen, which continues to run a series of ones and zeroes. Unease and restlessness dance across my chest. So much so that long hairs pop up along my arms and upper back.
I toss away the special glasses I wear when staring at a computer screen for long hours and pinch the bridge of my nose.
Settle down, I tell my wolf. He’s been anxious ever since I awakened from the medically included coma.
“What’s going on with you?”
The clipped question pulls my eyelids open, which I hadn’t even realized I closed. A quick stare down at my hands sees them fisted against my thighs. The tension I was just feeling has doubled.
“My wolf,” I say through clenched teeth.
My wolf was never pushy or overly aggressive, but lately he’s been making his presence felt more and more.
“He wants out for a run,” Chael snarls.
I try to swallow the lump that forms in my throat. “I-I’ll settle him down,” I say, though not knowing how I’ll do that.
Chael doesn’t reply.
Instead, he drags his heavily booted feet across the wooden floorboards to the front door.
“Mike,” he barks out as he yanks the door open.
“Alpha?” Mike, who’s been standing on guard outside of the house since this morning, comes running up the stairs.
“I have to go into town, grab Chance.” Chael pauses to look over his shoulder in my direction. “You both are going to take Christophe’s wolf out for a run.”
My wolf perks up. My muscles bulge in anticipation of the promise of an oncoming shift. I struggle harder to keep him contained. My wolf fights even harder to get free.
I barely hear Chael as he gives off more orders to Mike and to myself.
“Chance will be here in five. Only around the perimeter of the commune. No farther. And no one is to leave his side. Is that clear?” Chael asks Mike in a demanding tone.
“Yes, Alpha,” Mike dutifully replies.
“And under no circumstances whatsoever is he allowed to be within one hundred yards of anyone else. Just you two. Do you understand, Mike?”
Mike’s dark brown eyes drift over Chael’s shoulder to look at me, still seated at the table.
I look away from him.
“Yes, Alpha," he replies.
“Fine,” is all Chael says before he marches back toward the table, lifts the laptop, shutting it and then unplugging it from the outlet.
Without another word, he exits the front door.
The tightness in my chest remains, and my wolf, if possible, grows even more restless. My omega wolf, sensing the tension in his alpha, wants to comfort him or at the very least go on a run with him to help ease it.
The wolf inside of me doesn’t realize we are the reason for his tension.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, I’m behind my house with Chance and Mike.
Chance glances up at the sky, reading the time. “Sixty minutes,” he says, drawing my attention back to him.
“You have sixty minutes. That should be long enough to do one full run around the commune and back. Clear?” he asks.
I nod without thinking. All I can hear is the buzzing in my ear. My wolf has me sniffing at the air, as if searching for something.
Or someone, my subconscious informs me.
I shake the thought away. We don’t have the right to look for anyone.
When I meet Chance’s eyes again, they’re narrowed. It’s then I come to realize that I’d shaken my head no to the question he asked me.
“We’re clear,” I reply out loud. “Only once around the perimeter. No meeting anyone else,” I add just so he knows I’ve got the rules. By now, my wolf is practically throwing himself against my ribcage to get free.
“Alright, let’s …”
Chance’s words trail off as my wolf doesn’t even give me time to disrobe. The shift has me tearing through the T-shirt and worn pair of jeans I kept in the closet.
He’s primed and ready to stretch our legs and go out for a run, but my wolf waits for our two betas. He’s not built to defy orders. The natural instinct of my wolf is to stick close to whoever the strongest wolf is at the moment.
Right now that’s Chance.
If only my human had followed my wolf’s instincts.
I push out a heavy breath and wobble my head left to right to dislodge that thought. No time for regrets now. What’s done is done.
Chance looks back at me and makes a barking noise, telling me to stick close. My wolf instantly takes off behind Chance. Mike brings up the rear. I know they’re surrounding me, possibly thinking I would use this as an opportunity to try to get away.
The thought doesn’t even cross my mind. I’ve accepted my fate.
I don’t allow myself to get lost in self-pity. Instead, I take in the scenery around me. For seemingly the first time, I take in the rust-red colored mountains that surround the commune. It’s late afternoon, which means the sun is starting to set behind the mountains. The sun’s light throws off a stunning array of orange, magenta, and purplish hue of the few clouds that outline the mountains.
My wolf lifts his head and inhales. Fresh, early-summer air hits my nose. Yes, it’s a little dry but my wolf’s tongue lolls outside of my mouth, as if he’s smiling. The ground beneath our feet, though harsh and rocky, enlivens us somehow.
In the distance, I can hear birds high in the trees, chirping and singing as their form of communication with one another.
This is the first run my wolf has been on in more than a year. Given it’s been around ten or eleven months that I was locked away, and before that I rarely went on pack runs in the last five years or so.
I hadn’t realized how deeply my wolf yearned to get out for a run. I’d stuffed him so far down, almost pretending that I wasn’t even half-wolf.
Chance, still ahead of me, makes a sound close to a bark and then juts his head to the left, signaling for me to follow him into the forest that cuts around the back of the commune.
I remember the area well. The area is forested before a small field opens up that looks down on the majority of the commune.
As I follow Chance, I take in the familiar sights. That is, until something stops me.
I come up so short that Mike’s wolf almost slams into me. He makes a shrieking sound before veering off at the last second, avoiding the collision.
Mike nor his surprise are my main concern as my wolf, still heaving from running, trots over to what looks like a grave site. The closer we get, the harder my heart begins racing.
It is a gravestone.
This wasn’t here the last time I was in this place.
What’s even more surprising, isn’t the fact that the gravestone is there, but the name on the stone.
Ashley Nightwolf.
As soon as we read the name, a pain unlike anything I’ve felt—which is saying a lot—starts in my chest. Like a star bursting wide open, it spreads throughout the rest of my body.
My wolf raises his head and lets out a wail that I suppose neither Chance nor Mike had ever heard before. They both rush to my side, nudging me with their massive wolf heads to get me to, I don’t know, move along.
All I can think of, though, is the name on the tombstone.
Ashley.
My Ashley?
Is she gone?
Didn’t we just see her a few nights ago? Did I harm her in my pain-filled insanity? Is that what happened?
My wolf’s mind has taken over, thinking she’s gone. All that’s left is his natural instincts taking over.
My wolf digs at the ground with sharp claws. What he’s digging for, I don’t know. Evidence that this isn’t true, possibly. That she is still here. I can’t see her, but this, this can’t be true.
Ashley still has to be alive.
Even the nudges and communications from the beta wolves on either side of me don’t get my wolf to calm down. He’s completely lost it, still wailing in pain while also digging, scraping, and clawing at the ground.
No! No! No! is all that rings through both of our minds.