Chapter 62 Maddy
MADDY
The next few days would only add to my anxiety.
I was sure of it. Waiting the hour for Luis to give us an update had been bad enough.
Now we had to wait for them to travel to the next safe house.
Then we’d have to redo what had just happened.
I was not looking forward to that. After everyone had left, and the house was empty, I decided I needed to get my mind off it by practicing my partial shift.
Nico came down from his office a few minutes after everyone was gone and found me sitting in the living room staring at my hand.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he plopped down on the couch.
My fingers turned to claws, then back to my fingers. I’d been able to do that consistently since first doing it out by the creek, but I wanted to go further. I shook my hand and glanced at Nico. “Working on shifting.”
He gave me an appreciative smile. “You’re doing really great. I saw you doing that in the office earlier. What do you want to try next?”
“Well, I want to do my whole hand.”
“Give it a try?”
Taking a deep breath, I glanced down at my hand and concentrated.
My mind reached out and tentatively touched my wolf’s, and I told her it was okay.
I visualized what I wanted and stayed calm and open to her.
After what felt like an eternity, a buzzing tingle ran through my hand, and I opened my eyes.
My entire hand and halfway up my forearm was a wolf’s paw. Fully covered in hair, bigger than a typical wolf, but otherwise, exactly what you'd see on an animal in the woods. “Holy shit,” I said, on the verge of freaking out.
“Calm down,” Nico said. “Just take a breath and relax. It’s okay. This is part of who you are. It’s something you’re doing. It’s not something that’s being done to you against your will.”
He was right. I needed to stay calm. Still, it was hard to explain how weird it was to see part of your body completely change and look unlike anything it had ever looked like before.
Sucking in a heavy deep breath, I steadied myself.
Nico leaned forward and gently took my paw in his hand and ran his fingers along the fur. The feeling was strangely soothing.
“It’s a regular wolf’s paw,” Nico muttered to himself.
That was a weird thing to say. Was I supposed to have a horse’s hoof or something? “Why do you say that?”
He looked at me, shaking his head. “I just wasn’t sure if you’d shift into a wolf or a werewolf. When you only did your fingers, it looked like one, and this is the other.”
He was right. I’d been wondering about that.
Would my first true shift be simple, or would I be something that was strange even in the shifter world?
My birth mother’s letter made it sound like my father had only ever been able to shift into a werewolf, and it was part of why he’d tried to stop shifting altogether.
I pitied him. He must have been incredibly strong mentally.
To have Edemas’s reincarnated wolf inside your mind had to have been much more difficult than what I was going through.
My wolf had been a young girl, a child really, when she died.
That’s what I had in my head. David Samuels had an angry, powerful, and enraged former king inside his mind.
It had to have taken a toll on him. There’s no way it hadn’t.
Nico and I worked on it a bit more the rest of the day, but it was exhausting, and we finally took a break. Luis texted that they were en route to the other safe house, which didn’t help my anxiety. I wanted this all over, but I also didn’t really want to go through all that it entailed.
We had a little over a week until the next full moon.
In some ways, it seemed to be taking forever to get here.
In others, it seemed like it was coming in the blink of an eye.
I was happy that we’d been able to locate Abi, but we still had to lay eyes on my parents, make a plan, and then implement it—all of that in less than two weeks? I wasn’t sure we’d pull it off.
I couldn’t stop picturing that video of my mother getting electrocuted with that shock collar. Abi was mostly unhurt, but who knows what would happen the closer we got to the full moon? My resentment and anger at the royals was getting more intense with each passing day.
“Do you think you’re getting closer to shifting?” Nico asked as we picked at our lunch.
“A little. My wolf seems a little calmer and more at ease, but there’s still a lot of nerves and anxiety.”
Nico gave me a concerned look. “I just hope we get there soon. It would be nice if your wolf could stop fighting it. I’d love to know exactly what we’re getting into.”
“You and me both. You have no idea how stressful this is.”
“Shit, I almost forgot,” Nico said, grabbing a newspaper that was sitting off to the edge of the table. “I saw this a while ago. I think it explains why they chose the next full moon as the deadline.”
He handed me the paper, which was open to the life and sciences section.
There was a headline about the next full moon being a super moon.
I glanced through the article. It explained that it was when there was a full moon that passed as close to Earth as it possibly could.
I looked up after reading it and frowned at Nico.
“Do you think this is part of their plan?”
“It has to be. If you don’t shift before then, there’s no way your wolf would be able to resist the pull of a super moon.
It’ll drag her out. I think the royals want that.
That moon will have a shifter or werewolf at its strongest. Even I’ll feel it.
That strength will be in their blood. I think they want to take your blood that night so it gives them the highest chance possible to open that vault. ”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said.
“Right. These people have spent centuries kidnapping shifters and using their blood, then discarding them when they aren’t strong enough. They’ve murdered innocent children. There is nothing they won’t do. It has to be for the treasure that’s supposed to be hidden there.”
“What about the vial of blood? Isn’t that the main thing they want?”
“I’m sure they probably want to destroy it, yeah, but the treasure has to be the true endgame. It belongs to the actual descendants, but that doesn’t matter to them, of course.”
Sure, they wanted the treasure, but there had to be more to it than this.
The royals were already incredibly rich and powerful.
What was a little more money when you already had billions?
No, they wanted the vial. My mother’s suspicions had seeped into me.
The things I’d read inside that envelope had filled me with a sense of impending doom.
Something sinister was on the way. Something that involved that small container of blood.
I needed to get my mind off all this for a little while.
“Can we go check on my bar?” I said.
“Now?” Nico asked in surprise.
“Yeah. I just want to make sure things are okay. I miss it, and I haven’t been by since we shut it down.”
“As long as I go with you, sure. I don’t want you going anywhere alone in town right now.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t feel safe on my own anyway.”
“Let me grab my stuff, and we can go.”
As we drove to the bar, my thoughts drifted to my staff.
I’d spent so much time worrying and fretting about Abi that I hadn’t really had the chance to think about how they were doing.
I’d continued to send them paychecks every week, so they were being taken care of.
I was sure they were enjoying the paid vacation, and I knew this was all temporary.
Still, I loved the bar and the people who worked there.
Unable to help myself, I glanced at everyone we passed, wondering whether they were agents of the royals.
They probably thought they had a boot on our necks, so the chance of them actually trying something right now was low.
They needed me, so I was physically safe, but there was no reason they wouldn’t try to kidnap me again.
Having Nico by my side made me feel much safer.
A wave of sadness hit me as we stopped in the parking lot. I got out of the car and looked at my place. It looked dead and lifeless. It hurt my heart, and I promised myself things would change one way or another.
“I’m gonna go in and check around for a second.”
“Need me to come in?”
“No, I won’t be long. Just stay by the door. If I need you, I’ll text you.”
Nico seemed anxious about letting me go, but he didn’t argue.
I walked up the steps and unlocked the door.
As soon as I stepped in, I relaxed. It was almost like coming home.
I was happy to be there, but it also filled me with sadness.
Abi wasn’t here. She always helped me open.
We’d spent so many hours here. The smell of the wood floors, the sweet-sour smell of spilled alcohol, and the scent of cooking grease from the kitchen mixed together.
I smiled as a strange nostalgia came over me.
The smile that formed on my lips died as a new scent came wafting in, canceling the rest. The smell was both new but strangely familiar, and it absolutely shouldn’t have been here.
I yanked my phone out and sent Nico a text.
I would have called out, but if anyone were in here, they’d hear me shouting.
Within seconds of me sending the text, Nico burst through the door. His head swiveled as he tried to see whether every shadow was a threat. He came to me and put an arm around me protectively.
“So you smell it?” I asked.
Nico sniffed at the air, then nodded. “I do. I think it’s coming from the back. It’s stronger toward your office.”
Nico eased me behind him as we walked to my office.
He moved slowly, cautiously. Even though the scent was faint, there was no telling what was back there.
Every step forward was like a step toward the unknown.
My office had always been one of the places I felt safest. Now, the wooden door held a fear of the unknown.
My wolf was pacing inside my mind. She was as anxious and nervous as I was.
Nico reached out, his fingers brushing the doorknob.
I had the strangest urge to yank his hand back as though he was going to burn himself.
Clenching my jaw, I stopped myself from doing that.
He spun the knob and pushed the door open.
Instead of a dangerous enemy, a monster, or poison gas, all we saw was my empty office.
It was a bit anticlimactic. I frowned as I glanced around, sure something had to be hiding in there.
Nico stepped through the threshold and turned in a circle, checking every corner. He looked at me and gave a little frown. “You came in here before you texted me?”
“Huh? No. I only made it to the main room out front.”
His frown grew deeper, and he looked around the room once more. “That doesn’t make sense. When’s the last time you were in here?”
What the hell was he talking about? I shook my head, trying to remember. “It’s been weeks. The last time I was in my office was when we came to shut everything down. I haven’t even been in the building since then.”
“Then why does this room smell like you? Not just like you, but like you were just in here not long ago?”