Chapter Four
“She’s pretty,” Graham said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Is she your mate?”
Rocco glared at him.
Graham raised his hands, and in doing so rattled the chains. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I was not supposed to talk or do anything.” Graham sighed. “Does this mean you’re going to kill me?”
“Killing you would be a kindness.”
Graham clicked his tongue. “I have a feeling some people would disagree.”
“How long have you been like this?” Rocco asked.
“I don’t know. I lost track of time. I lost track of a lot of things. It takes a lot out of you, being experimented on. Going through these changes you never thought you would ever experience. The full moon rising, feeling like it’s making your blood boil. Wanting steak so badly that you’re willing to eat it raw rather than throw it on the barbecue for a couple of minutes.” Graham smirked.
“I eat my steaks well done,” he said. Actually, he loved it when it was pretty much burnt to a crisp, but he knew some of the guys liked it when there was still juice pouring out.
He rubbed the back of his head, knowing the guys were approaching.
“You didn’t answer me before.”
“About what?” he asked, not wanting to listen to whatever this man was talking about.
“Your woman, she’s your mate, right?”
Rocco frowned. He didn’t trust any of the things Milton had created. This man had admitted to working with Milton, and as far as he was concerned, that was bad fucking news. Very bad news, because it meant Graham was aware of what he was studying, regardless of what he said.
“For a guy who only thought he was extending the life of dogs, you sure seem to think you know a lot about us,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“I’ve had no choice but to learn what was going on.” Graham shrugged.
“How many other packs have you come from?” Rocco asked.
“None.”
“I don’t believe that. You cannot know about mates or some of the shit you do, without having encountered packs.” He didn’t know how many packs worked like the Poison Wolves, if any. Each pack was unique to their circumstances.
He looked at Graham, knowing there was more to this guy. Elizabeth hadn’t been much help with anything. Milton had worked hard in keeping a lot of people out of the loop regarding his experiments. He was getting angrier by the second as he looked at the man before him.
“Look, I know you don’t believe me, and trust me, I wouldn’t believe me either, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is the truth.” Graham pressed a dirty hand to his chest. “I feel it in here. It’s how I know your pack is coming. It was how I was able to locate that damn rabbit.”
“Why now?” Rocco asked. “You’ve clearly been dealing with this for some time, and yet, you’re just now coming to figure shit out.”
“I don’t know what Milton gave me. I don’t know what he did to me. I do know it had nothing to do with extending the life of fucking dogs, and trust me, I freaked out when I learned that.”
“You expect me to believe you loved a dog?”
“Buster,” Graham said. “He was a German shepherd, and I had him for twelve years. He was everything to me, and yes, he had chased off a couple of girlfriends, because he was a pain in the butt, but he was my dog, my best friend, and so what, I may have treated him like a son or a best friend, and not a dog, but he was my fur baby.”
Rocco saw he was getting upset. He couldn’t help but wonder if Buster was some kind of regular dog name, as one of Amelia’s dogs was called Buster as well.
“The day he died … I will never forget that day … the feel of his fur, the hopelessness I felt, because I wanted more time with him. I wanted everything with him, and I didn’t get it. I didn’t get a damn thing with him.” He took a deep breath. “It’s in their eyes, that moment, when it’s like they tell you it’s their time. At least maybe we comfort ourselves when that happens.”
Graham sounded … normal. He didn’t have time to ask more questions as Alpha, Boyan, Draco, Enzo, and Ryker all arrived at the cages.
Rocco gave him a rundown of what happened after Boyan had left to go and get him.
“So, this is what a pack looks like?” Graham asked, and he still hadn’t gotten to his feet.
“Graham?” Alpha asked.
“That’s my name and I’m guessing you’re the one in charge.”
Rocco looked at the other man, and he wasn’t like some of the other humans that had come to them. None of this made sense to him. Some of them had lasted a couple of months, a few hadn’t even made it past one full moon. There was no consistency. According to Elizabeth, it would make sense as Milton didn’t waste time on one track. The moment it looked like his ideas were failing, he changed it up, moving to something and someone else. A different concoction of whatever potion he was brewing. The man, apparently, didn’t have a patient bone in his body, and he didn’t waste time. He discarded people as quickly as he experimented on them. Some of them had been desperate to make quick money, allowing Milton to experiment on them.
Rocco didn’t like this, but as Alpha took over the questioning, his thoughts drifted to his mate. Rose shouldn’t have been here, and he shouldn’t have spoken to her that way. She didn’t know how many people he had seen go through this change, not able to make it, seeing the fear in their eyes. He wasn’t being cruel in saying they needed to die. He was trying to be kind, and stop them going through that pain.
They’d not killed a single person, but they had been cleaning up the mess, or at least Rose had been cleaning it up. Alpha hadn’t wanted to bring her in, but they started to wonder if they were not thorough enough in cleaning away the blood, it might be infected, and they didn’t know the ramifications of that.
He stepped outside the cages, needing some air as his wolf was getting impatient. Fighting these urges was next to impossible, with Rose so close. Even now, although she had left, he smelled her, and he wanted her. That feeling wasn’t going away anytime soon.
He gripped the back of his neck and tried to focus. He tried to do anything but think about the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty that had filled his world.
“Are you okay?” Draco asked, surprising him.
Spinning around, he looked at the other man. He was used to the overgrown beard, hair pulled back into a ponytail, and his clothes seeming to be several days old.
“Yeah, man, I’m fine.”
“Look, I know you want to kill them to show a kindness, but this could be something else. There might be hope.”
“How can you talk about hope when the humans did what they did to your mate?”
Draco shrugged. “My mate was hunted down by humans. Not all humans are hunters, Rocco. Not everyone is the same, and I’d hate for someone to view us all as such, wouldn’t you?”
Rocco shook his head. “I think this is a mistake.”
“Do you want to turn your back on all of this? Is that it?”
“I don’t want to turn my back, but I don’t want to keep seeing the look in their eyes when they know it’s not going well.”
“Then do what I do,” Draco said.
“And what is that?”
“Look away. Then, you don’t see their fear, and they don’t see that you know it’s the end for them.”
With that, Draco walked back into the cages, but Rocco felt that was some morbid kind of shit. He let out a puff of air, and then made his way back toward the cages, waiting for whatever would happen next.
All the time, he couldn’t get Rose out of his mind.
****
Rose curled up in the armchair, and the small glow from the lamp cast enough light for her to read. It was dark outside, and she knew it was about time she went to bed. She was exhausted and couldn’t help but wonder if she was going to get a call to come and clean up messes.
Graham was not an unusual case, at least not to her. The guys had been happy with the progress with other humans, and she’d left for the day, only to be called back hours later when it had taken a sudden turn. It was one of the reasons she tried not to get close to anyone. Graham was the first one she had spoken to. He’d looked so calm in that cage, and yet she had known he was trying to keep it together so he wouldn’t lose his shit.
She couldn’t help but feel for him, for all of them.
Rose’s eyes started to close, and only a sudden knock at her door brought her out of her sleep. This had happened a few times, and once again she felt overwhelmed. Had Graham died?
She closed her book, placing it on the coffee table in front of her, bundling up the blanket, and making her way toward the main front door. Pulling it open, she saw Rocco on the front step, but he didn’t look grim. Instead, he carried a bouquet of flowers in his hand.
“Rocco?”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She opened the door a little wider, and she frowned as she looked at the flowers. They looked wild, as if he had picked them himself, not gone to Chantel, the florist in town.
“What’s going on?”
“The florist was … closed, but what do you expect, it’s late, and I wanted to give you these so I could apologize. I don’t know what flowers you liked, but then I saw the wildflowers growing in your garden, I put two and two together, and you know, figured you might like that.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He held out the flowers but she didn’t take them.
Rose needed answers.
“I … I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way today. I’m sorry. I’m just … I’m so fed up with this shit, you know. It’s hard. They all come, and when they find us and we understand what is going on with them, it’s like we’re their miracle cure, only we’re the furthest from that.” He released a breath. “And then we have to see it through until the end, and that’s hard.”
She looked at him and the flowers. Part of her knew she should tell him to get lost, but she didn’t want to in that moment. Instead, she reached out and took them. “Thank you.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Rocco said.
“And?”
“Would you like to go to the Poison Bar?” Rocco asked.
Rose frowned. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Yes.”
This time she lowered the flowers, focusing her attention on him. “What is going on?”
“I want us to go out, get a drink, talk.”
“What happened to neither of us telling anyone that we’re, you know, mates?” she asked.
Rocco gripped the back of his neck, and his face scrunched up. “Yeah, I, ugh, I don’t know what to say about that.”
This time Rose was amazed and couldn’t help but laugh. “Wow, so, we both come to the realization that we’re mates and our wolves want to connect, and that means we’re mated. You freak out and tell me in no uncertain terms will you ever settle down with one woman, or one wolf, that I am not enough for you, that you are embarrassed to even be mated to me because I’m a little reclusive for you. To make matters worse, you come to me with all the crap that is going on with this Milton doctor and his little experiment, to clean up your mess, and now you want to go on a date, and your only answer is you don’t know what you’re doing or what to say about it?” Rose was truly amazed.
“Okay, now that you say it like that, it sounds really bad.”
“I say it exactly how it sounds. Wow, you don’t see it, do you?”
“I do see it, and yes, it sounds bad, and there is no way I’m getting away from it, and I totally get that. I’ve not been the best … person in all of this, and I am truly sorry.”
She shook her head and then slammed the door in his face. Only, she took several steps, intent on never going back to that door, but her wolf didn’t like the way this was going. Spinning around, she walked back to the door, opened it, and glared at him.
“Pick me up tomorrow at seven, and don’t think for a second this is me forgiving you for everything you have done. I will not be doing that.” And she slammed the door back in his face.
“I’ll be here.”
Rose heard him mumble the words through the door, and she looked down at the wildflowers in her hands.
It was strange, because she knew how much hard work Chantel put into her bouquets and elaborate displays, but she loved these flowers. They were so beautiful. She leaned down, and they had a soft floral scent and smelled mainly of the forest, but also of Rocco. His wasn’t a smell she wanted to get used to.
This was so wrong. She knew she shouldn’t go on a date with him because he’d been a total asshole to her. He should be the last person she spent time with, but he was also the only person she wanted to spend time with.
“When did my life get so messed up?” It was in these moments that she missed her parents. They would have known exactly what to do.