Chapter One #3
“We can only assume that it is. This person wants to help save a shifter named Garrett. It could be a coincidence since the name is pretty common, but it also might be your brother, which is why I’m calling. If this is your Garrett, you need to be involved.”
It would’ve been easy for Moore to decide to keep Franklin out of this. There was no way that Moore trusted Franklin, no matter how friendly he behaved. Franklin didn’t blame him, and he didn’t really care, to be honest. He didn’t need people to trust him. He just needed to find his siblings.
But he was glad for the opportunity he’d been given.
He had a home and support now, something he’d always gone without.
A lot of people in the village might not want him here, but it didn’t matter.
He was here, and Moore had just contacted him with news about his brother.
Franklin wouldn’t have found out any of this if he hadn’t moved in with the tribe.
“You should come over to my house,” Moore said. “We’re having a meeting. We’ve emailed back and forth with this person, and they’ve agreed to help.”
“Do we trust them?”
Moore snorted softly. “I don’t think that’s the right question to ask. Whether we trust them or not, we have to do something. We can’t let anyone go through what this person is describing in their email.”
Franklin swallowed. “Do I want to know?”
“Probably not, but you should. It can wait until you get here, though.”
Moore hung up, leaving Franklin to stare at the food on his counter. He wasn’t hungry anymore, so he put everything away, went to the bathroom to freshen up, then grabbed his phone and left the house.
The village was small, but he still had to walk to the other side of it to reach Moore’s house. He could feel people watching him, and normally, it would’ve hurt him, but right now, he didn’t care. Every single thought of his was focused on Garrett.
Franklin told himself not to hope. The person who’d emailed Moore might have gotten the name wrong, but even if they hadn’t, Moore was right. Garrett was a pretty common name, so that didn’t mean that they were talking about Franklin’s brother.
There was a chance they were. There was a chance this was Franklin’s Garrett, and if it was, it meant that Franklin had never been so close to getting his brother back.
The thought made his heart race. He’d been focused for so long on making this happen, but he hadn’t really planned on what he’d do once he did have the twins with him again.
He’d found a safe place for them to heal, but beyond that, he had no plans.
It looked like he might have to start making some.
He wasn’t surprised to see that a bunch of people had already arrived at Moore’s house when he got there.
Moore’s mate, Jolyn, waved him in and guided him to the living room.
Sure enough, most of the seats were already occupied.
Franklin recognized almost everyone, but his focus went to Moore almost instantly.
That meant that he could easily ignore that everyone else was staring at him.
“What do we know?” he asked.
Moore was standing next to the couch, talking to Rikar.
He didn’t tell Franklin to sit down. Instead, he turned to face him.
“The person signs their email with the name Reed. We don’t know who they are, but they seem to know quite a bit about Garrett and the facility he’s possibly being kept in.
” He hesitated and glanced at Rikar. “From what the email says, we don’t have much time. ”
That didn’t sound good. “Has something happened to my brother? Is he hurt?”
“I only know what was said in the email, but it doesn’t seem like it.
He’ll be forced to do a demonstration of his ability, though.
I don’t know what that ability is, which means I don’t have details, but from what Reed explains in the email, it means that your brother will most likely be sold off by the end of that demonstration. ”
Which meant that he’d be taken away from the lab he was in right now. In turn, that meant they’d probably lose him and wouldn’t be able to find him again.
Franklin couldn’t let that happen.
“What are we doing, then?” As much as he wanted to make the decision, it wasn’t his place.
That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t go against Moore’s orders if he didn’t like them.
His only goal was to recover his siblings.
He might have agreed to work with the mutants, but he wouldn’t hesitate to go back out there on his own if he didn’t feel like he had a choice.
“We’re contacting Reed again. We need more information. We’d like to know who they are. I’m also curious to know how they got this information, and of course, we don’t know if we can trust them. You’ll probably want to be part of the whole process, which is why I called you.”
“Hell yes, I want to be part of the process. Let’s contact this Reed and see what they have to say.”
* * * *
REED WASN’T SURPRISED to get a quick answer. He’d figured that someone would be monitoring the inbox he’d emailed, and he’d been right.
An email landed in his inbox just a few minutes after he’d sent his.
For a second, he stared at it, hoping it contained what he needed it to contain.
He couldn’t rescue Garrett on his own, as much as he wanted to.
Even if he used his ability as a mutant, there was only so much he could do on his own.
Helped by a group of other mutants, though?
They could save Garrett and every single person in this lab.
They could somehow stop the guards and the scientists.
It wouldn’t be the first time those people did something like that, and even though he was a little scared because of what they did and who they were, he didn’t have a choice. He needed them.
Garrett needed them.
Reed quickly read the email. These people had questions, which again wasn’t a surprise.
They wanted to meet in a public place, which would be best for all of them.
It meant that things wouldn’t get out of hand and that they probably wouldn’t attack Reed once they found out that he’d once worked for the Glass Research Company.
Well, hopefully.
It really depended on what public place it was, didn’t it? If it was on their own turf, Reed might be in trouble. There was no way out of it, unfortunately. If he wanted help, this was the only way for him to go about it.
They could hurt him, or worse. They could want revenge. They could capture him and lock him up, and he wouldn’t be able to help anyone.
It wasn’t like he was helping anyone from where he was, though.
He’d been gathering as much information on this particular lab as he could, and he fully intended to take it and every other lab down, but he couldn’t.
For now, information was all he had to offer.
Would it be enough for them to trust him? To at least let him go free?
Reed would find out soon enough, and wasn’t that scary?
He sucked in a breath and answered the email as quickly as he could.
He didn’t have a choice. If he wanted to help Garrett and redeem himself for what he’d been forced to do, he had to save people instead of hurting them.
He had to save Garrett. That poor man had been through enough, even though Reed had tried to make it as painless for him as he’d been able to.
Unfortunately for both of them, Reed had quickly become an asset for the lab rather than just another scientist. In their eyes, he’d been no better than Garrett.
Reed didn’t care what they thought about him or his ability, and he didn’t care how they treated him, but he did care how they treated everyone else.
He’d known this was wrong from the beginning, but he’d felt he didn’t have a choice, and that hadn’t changed after he’d become a mutant.
If anything, it had shown him that he really didn’t have a choice.
Until he’d escaped.