Chapter 28 Niko
NIKO
“What do you mean he was a full-blooded wolf?” Nico asked.
“Uff, for Americans, you not good at the hearing. I say what I say. David Samuels was a full-blooded wolf.”
“How is that possible?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Bogdan took a deep breath and winced at his leg again, trying to find a more comfortable position.
“You know the story of Edemas, yes? That he sent away two children? A boy and a girl?” We all nodded.
We remembered the story. Bogdan nodded. “Good, yes. He split the babies up. Both were pureblood. Both alpha. The boy he sent to a pack of wolves that worship Edemas. They were almost like a cult. Fanatics. They ensured the boy only had children with other wolf shifters. None”—he paused for emphasis—“of his offspring were alpha. Not one ever. None of his line carried the werewolf gene. Edemas wanted his progeny to survive, but mostly because he wanted an uprising. A resurgence of the werewolf to rise up and cast down the new royals and avenge him. No alpha? No uprising. Simple.”
“What about the girl?” I asked.
Bogdan shrugged. “Girl is girl. Much harder to track lineage. Last name changes. Women, especially in the past, were sent away for marriage more often. Hard to trace. The boy? We killed all of his line.” He looked pleased with himself after mentioning the last part.
“You think it’s something to be proud of that you all butchered babies and children?” I growled, my voice icy and cold.
Bogdan looked confused. “But is abomination. All must be wiped out. No descendants, no werewolves. You must see.” He nodded toward me. “It is why she cannot be allowed to live.”
Felipe tapped the man’s bad knee with the barrel of his pistol, eliciting a scream of pain. While he screamed, Felipe shouted to be heard. “You’ll want to stay on the story, big guy. Any more talk about Maddy, and I’ll personally put a bullet into your crotch.”
Bogdan got himself under control again, nodding and wiping sweat from his forehead.
“Yes. The royals got too comfortable. We all assumed that the girl had died or that her line had run its course. We were wrong. She had created a family with a human man. Their children created their own families.” He made a spreading motion with his fingers.
“You see? But the blood was diluted with each generation. No longer a threat. Or so the royals believe. A great-great-granddaughter of Edemas’s child found a man.
They fall in love, they mate. The man? He is wolf shifter.
The boy that was born? He is not an alpha, but he has the strongest blood link to Edemas.
Rumors come that a boy is showing signs of resurgence of the Edemas werewolf line.
The couple go into hiding, knowing the royals will come for them.
” Bogdan raised an eyebrow. “What better hiding place than a whole new world.” He raised his arms and gestured around us.
I nodded. “They came to America to hide.” It made sense. Run as far as you can.
“Yes. They hide, and for a time are successful. The boy that was born began his own bloodline. His son grew to a man and met a shifter woman.” Bogdan, despite his injury, grinned.
“This is where story gets good. We only discovered this after blood tests. The pair were actually related. Very distant cousins. Both carried the blood of Edemas in their veins. The odds are millions to one that this should happen. They had a son, a single child. He was not an alpha, either, but never before, in three hundred years, had the blood been so pure again. He was unable to shift, of course, but he still had power in his blood.” He looked at me and waggled his eyebrows.
“Have you figured out who that boy was yet?”
Maddy nodded. “David Samuels?”
Bogdan grinned at her. It wasn’t a nice grin. It was dark and filled with malice. I didn’t like it.
“Your father. We came for him. He had to be killed. He was not alpha, but there was a chance he could have a child of his own. That child could be alpha. A fear…that was true.” He continued staring at Maddy. “I can smell it on you. You are alpha?”
None of us gave him the answer, deciding it was better to keep him in the dark.
Maddy was an alpha. She could open the vault, and she could become a werewolf if she drank Edemas’s blood.
Not just a shifter like we’d thought, but a full werewolf.
A being so powerful that they had ruled over all the shifters of Europe.
A being so powerful, thousands of people had spent centuries trying to ensure it never came to pass again.
The prospect terrified me. I could only imagine what was going through Maddy’s head.
“My mission has failed,” Bogdan said, grimacing in pain. “I am a failure. Know this, she-beast. We will never stop. You must not be allowed to rise.”
His arms were unbound because we hadn’t considered him a threat.
His leg was destroyed so he was in too much pain to shift.
He had no weapons near him, but he still made one final move.
He flicked his wrist, and a tiny blade that Felipe hadn’t found snapped out from beneath his sleeve.
It was too small to have done any damage to us, but he didn’t plan on attacking us with it.
Instead, he drew the blade across his own throat.
I screamed as the fan of dark red blood burst out of his neck.
“Oh, holy fuck!” Felipe screamed and jumped back away from the arterial spray.
I grabbed Maddy and turned her from the sight. I was too late, though. She’d seen. I watched the way Bogdan’s eyes had bulged as the blade split his skin open. The man convulsed a few times and gurgled one last wet death rattle before going still.
It was something I’d never forget for the rest of my life. It hurt me to know that Maddy had seen it and would think about it for as long as she lived.
I sat her in my office while Felipe and I hauled the body deep into the woods out back and buried it. Maddy didn’t speak. She seemed stunned or in shock. I couldn’t even think what to say to bring her out of it.
Just before dawn, I came back in with Felipe, sweaty and tired. We walked over to the office, and while Felipe cleaned the blood, I called Luis. It would be almost lunch time in Norway. I was exhausted, and instead of holding the phone to my ear, I placed it on the table on speaker.
“Luis?” I asked.
“Yeah, what’s going on?”
“Is Kenneth there?”
“Hang on.”
There was a rustling sound and Kenneth’s voice came on the line. “This is Ken.”
Sighing, I glanced between Maddy and Felipe before going on. “Kenneth, did you know that David was a full-blooded wolf?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“What I mean is that not only was your father a shifter, but David Samuels’ mother was one as well.”
“No, that’s not true. David’s mother was a human.” Kenneth didn’t sound as sure of himself as he had before.
“Nope. We’ve just had a…let’s call it a conversation with an assassin the royals sent to kill Maddy. David’s birth mother was a shifter. Not only that, she was also a descendant of Edemas.”
“What? That…that can’t be. Dad would have told us.”
“Looks like your old man had a lot more secrets than you realized,” Nico said, chuckling humorlessly.
“Why, though?” Kenneth asked. “Why not tell his own children the truth?”
“I think your father was protecting David. Maybe he thought he might be the one to finally bring about Edemas’s revenge.”
“Jesus,” Kenneth hissed. “You might be right. Dad was always talking about Edemas in more of a happy light than most people do.” He paused. “We need to meet soon. How long until you and Maddy can get to Europe? Until you can, you need to get Maddy into hiding. Immediately.”
“We already have her in hiding at my place.”
“No. That isn’t safe anymore. Hide her some place they’ll never think to look for her,” Kenneth said.
“Why? What’s different now?”
“Look. If what you’re saying is true, then Maddy should have been a shifter since she was a kid.
I have no idea why her wolf has been dormant for so many years, but once the royals know their assassin wasn’t successful, they’ll increase the pressure.
You have to be more careful. Something bad is coming. ”
“Shit, Maddy, what’s wrong?” Felipe asked.
I spun in my seat. Maddy looked terrible. Her face was pale, and her eyes were unfocused.
She shook her head. “I… don’t…” She never finished the sentence. She slumped over. I barely managed to catch her before she hit the floor.
“Jesus, she’s so pale,” Felipe said behind me. “What happened?”
It was all I could do to stay focused. I needed to help her. My anxiety was almost too much. I’d made a promise to take care of her, and now was the time. “Felipe, call Doc. Tell him we’re on our way.”
The next hour went by in a haze. Maddy never quite lost consciousness, but she spoke like she was in a gauze-covered dream. Nothing seemed real to her. I couldn’t tell if she was hallucinating or maybe talking while in a semi-sleep state.
Doc worked on her and hooked up an IV, and I held her hand the entire time, Felipe paced back and forth at the other end of the room.
It all reminded me of that night when I’d found her half-dead on the floor of her bar.
I’d been right in that same room, holding her hand. The déjà vu wasn’t pleasant.
Sometime later, I felt a poke at my chest. I’d fallen asleep beside her bed. My head jerked up, and my eyes sprang open. Maddy was there, smiling at me. She looked so much better that I almost cried out in joy. I rubbed my eyes, reaching out to take her hand in mine.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Not sure yet. Doc took some blood to run some tests. You kind of fainted. I’ll be honest, you were a bit of a drama queen.”
She could see the sarcastic grin on my face and chuckled. “You know me. Anything for attention.” The smile slid away from her face as the memory of everything that had happened must have come back. “Nico, I’ve got a bad feeling things are gonna get worse.”
I tightened my grip on her hand. “Probably. But I’ll be here for it.”
Before we could say anymore, Doc walked back in. The look on his face told me that he’d found something he didn’t like. Doc pulled up a seat next to me and looked at us. “Your bloodwork came back, Maddy.”
She struggled to sit up straighter. “Okay?”
“So,” Doc began. “When you came in the first time a few months ago, after the attack, I took blood samples. You were unconscious and I needed to check for any diseases that might be in your system so I could treat you properly. The blood I took from you then and the blood I took today are almost completely different.”
Maddy and I stared at him in confusion. I shook my head. “What do you mean?”
He handed us a report. “This is a little hard to read, but look at the third column. It shows the red and white blood cell counts as well as platelet levels. The top line shows Maddy’s numbers from today.
White blood cell counts are extremely high, like a shifter.
That’s why we almost never get sick. The platelets are off the charts, which is the healing factor we have.
Makes total sense, right? Since Maddy has shifter blood.
” We both nodded, but Doc shook his head.
“That’s the problem. The blood from earlier shows that she’s completely human.
Cell and platelet counts are right on par with an average human.
Somehow, over the last few months, the blood has totally changed. ”
I furrowed my brow, not understanding. “Well, could it be that her wolf is awakening?”
“That’s the entire issue, Nico. Why the hell was her wolf dormant to begin with? You told me this morning her father was a full-blooded wolf. Even if her mother wasn’t, Maddy would have had strong enough blood to be a shifter. None of this makes any sense.”
As we talked back and forth, Maddy remained silent. All she did was stare down at her hands.
Glancing over at her, I saw she had a strange expression on her face. Some combination of guilt, embarrassment, and shame.
I cut off my conversation with Doc and turned toward her. “What’s wrong?”