Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
E mery
The shaking my body undergoes worsens the nausea that emanates from my stomach. It takes a couple of tries to peel my eyelids open. Though my vision is blurry, I make out the metal bars in front of me.
I almost yelp out when the car I’m traveling in goes over a particularly rough patch, making the car bounce.
Inhale and look around a bit more. I’m in the back of Chance’s truck. I attempt to rise to my feet but my body feels like lead. My paw scratches against another metal bar. That’s when I realize I’m still in my wolf form.
And I’m locked inside of some sort of cage.
Despite the heaviness and nausea, I fight to lift my head to look around. A whine spills from my mouth when I see a second cage over my shoulder. Chance is inside. He’s unconscious and in his human form.
The memory of him falling to the floor with a hard thud comes rushing back to me.
Chance! I call to him through our connection. But my tone sounds weak. He doesn’t respond or even stir as if he heard me.
Chance! Please help me!
Again, nothing.
“I hear something,” a male voice says.
My father.
I turn my head to look toward the front of the truck. The window of the truck bed is open. Immediately, I lay my head back down and close my eyes. Someone hits the cage with some sort of rod.
“Hey!” Another male voice. “Are you awake?”
I keep as still as possible.
“Nothing. They’re out cold.”
My heart tightens when I recognize the second male voice. It’s Dr. Lee. The family physician who my parents took me and Ashley to our entire lives. The same one who prescribed us those fake iron pills for years.
No. No. No!
I repeat it over and over. It can’t be. If Dr. Lee is with them, then that means…
“Are you sure? What about him? He hasn’t shifted or anything, has he?” A female voice. I know it well. It’s my mother.
I hear wrestling from the back of the truck. I slit one of my eyes open enough to see the doctor lean out of the back window to reach over my cage.
He shakes Chance’s cage. There’s no reaction.
“No, he’s still in his human form,” the doctor says in such a calm, remote manner that if I didn’t know any better, I’d believe this was a run-of-the-mill, everyday occurrence for him.
“And he’s unconscious?” my mother asks.
“Nearly sleeping with the dead.”
That almost causes a howl to rise all the way up my chest and out of my throat. I force my wolf to clamp my jaw shut. Even as the pain lances through my chest.
“Did you have to hit him with two darts?” Dr. Lee asks as he settles back into his seat in the back of the truck. Though he leaves the window open, allowing me to hear the inside conversation.
“He’ll be out for a while and I’d rather have him awake when I begin my experiments.” He clicks his tongue.
“Do you see how big that thing is? He had David by the throat. Who knows what that wild beast could’ve done to him?”
The shrill in her voice underscores the disgust for Chance. Dr. Lee, however, chuckles.
“I told you not to engage until we got them here. And you never told me about the gray streak in her hair. That’s a rare occurrence among their kind. It means she’s a storyteller.
“I’ve been waiting to get my hands on one of those for years. She might be able to tell me what the old writings in the texts I have mean.”
What is he talking about? I wonder.
My mother sucks her teeth. “That awful, ugly gray hair.” She clicks her tongue, and it doesn’t take much to imagine her shaking her head in disgust. A look I’m familiar with from my mother.
“We tried to control her,” my father says, regarding the doctor’s previous comment. “But then Emery went running through the house searching for Ashley.”
“Right before she turned into that… that… thing! ” My mother pushes out a harsh breath. “I can’t believe I had to look at that animal. I don’t want to see it ever again once we drop them off at the lab.”
“You won’t, honey,” my father soothes.
“And we’ll have the money you promised us?” my mother asks.
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Lee replies. “After all of these years, I will make the final six-figure payment to your overseas account.”
I can’t make sense of any of this. Nothing is making sense and all I keep hearing is the repulsion in my mother’s tone.
For the remainder of the drive, I do my best to remain still to not alert them that I’m awake. I have to figure out what is going on, and more importantly how to get me and Chance out of this.