Relentless (21 page)

“Then why are you so against your son and me being together?”

He glanced back toward the sofa where Eric had suddenly stood.

“She doesn’t know?”

“No,” Eric said sharply. Now that he was standing, I could see him. He took a step in our direction.

“Shall I tell her?” his father asked.

Eric took several more steps toward us. “No, not now, not like this.”

Brodin got to his feet so fast his chair tilted and would have fallen over if Noah hadn’t been near enough to catch it. He stood face to face with Eric, grasping his son’s shirtfront.

“You are my son, and this cannot happen, and you know it. You will act like my son and not like some lovesick pup.”

Eric’s face was taut with anger, and his mouth opened. From the corner of my eye, I saw Noah tense. Then Eric pressed his lips together and said nothing.

“I will tell her,” his father said calmly.

He pushed Eric away from him and returned to stand next to my chair.

“You will never be allowed by your pack or mine to mate with my son or to become Fenryrian because of who your father is.”

“I don’t know who my father is.” My stomach rolled. Eric was right, not like this. I didn’t want to find out who my father was like this.

“Your father is Vincent Unger.”

I’d spent my whole life wondering who my father was. To find out he was someone I knew, and a very important werewolf, was almost more than I could comprehend. My heart hammered in my chest, and when I spoke, the words seemed to quiver with its beating. “You’re lying. They would have told me.”

“Why would they tell you?’

“I…” No answer came to my mind.

“There’s no reason to tell you, and you’re safer if no one knows you’re his child. I don’t even think he knows. Your mother’s family held on to that secret in hopes of protecting you from us.”

“Will you kill me now? Because of who I am?” The words came out much more calmly than I felt.

Brodin stared at me for a moment. “Probably.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath from Eric.

“As you can see, my son will not be happy about that. But it will be for the best. I suspect you have many talents we could use. However, I would never trust you. Today it might not matter, but your father, if he knows about you, will try and keep you Lycernian. Besides, you have the heart of a Lycernian, his heart. Whether you like it or not. You will always be your father’s child, and the ancient, untainted blood of the Lycernians will always call to you. Thus, I think, you must die.”

Brodin had moved to stand in front of me, and now he wrapped his hands around my upper arms and lifted me from the chair. “You will go back to your friends for now. I don’t have time to deal with you, and we need to get any information we can from all of you before we kill you.”

“You’re going to kill all of us?”

An ugly smile split his face. “Of course. Those scientists have to go. They will figure out how to end the virus if we don’t get rid of them. But first we’re going to get the research about the virus-resistant DNA from them.  We want to know how it works so we can stop it from happening. Just in case anyone can ever perfect that treatment.”

Behind me, Noah shifted again, and I realized he’d moved close to my chair. Brodin looked up at him. “Take her out of here.”

He rushed me toward the door, and I tried to look back at Eric, but I couldn’t see him. Then we were in the hall, and Noah was dragging me along, the guards walking quickly to keep up with us.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” he said in low voice. “No one needs to know about your father. No one, you hear me, not even your friends. It will be safer for you.”

“He’s really going to kill us, isn’t he?”

“He’s going to try.” Noah’s grip on me tightened.

“There’s no escape.”

We were in front of the cells, and the guard punched a code in the lock and pushed the door open.

Noah shoved me inside.
Be ready.

The words rang in my head, and I knew immediately what they were and where they came from. Noah glanced back as he went down the hall and arched an eyebrow. I gave a slight nod of my head to make sure he knew I’d heard him. But be ready for what?

I made my way to the cot I’d lain on earlier and fell onto it. Lana and Brynna hovered over me.

“What happened?” Lana asked, dropping to the edge of my bed.

I shook my head.

“What did they say?”

“I met with Brodin.” My words were slow and calm, though my insides churned. Finally I looked up at them. “He’s going to kill us.”

Brynna straightened and took a step back. “What?”

“You’re wrong,” Lana said. “He’ll bargain, maybe get money.”

“I don’t think he needs money. He thinks we’re gifted werewolves who could be used against him one day. Lana and Daryl are working on something in the lab that could destroy their virus.”

Lana shot to her feet then. “How do you know that?”

I looked toward Daryl. “He told Jared. It doesn’t matter that we know, because they know.”

Lana glanced angrily at Daryl and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We’re not the only ones who are working on that.”

“Just the only ones doing it successfully.” Robert’s voice came from across the room. “Not that it matters. The only Fenryrian we knew about who was immune to the virus died years ago. We’ve been working with preserved tissue samples and mostly developing theories. Unless we can find another resistant Fenryrian willing to help us, we won’t ever succeed.”

“He’s right.” Lana paced in front of me. “Who knows if one even exists anymore. I’m sure if the Fenryrians know of such a werewolf, they’re probably trying to find a way to override that genetic anomaly and mutate the virus until it will infect even those who might be immune.”

“So why kill you?” I said to Lana and glanced at Robert.

“To be sure. Besides, another immune werewolf could be out there or could be born tomorrow, and they don’t want us to find it.”

I sighed and fell back across the cot. There were steps in the hall again before I could close my eyes. I leapt to my feet as a guard opened our door, and two others came in to grab Lana.

“Wait! Where are you taking her? Stop.”

They ignored me. Once they had her in the hall and our door locked, they opened the door to the other cell. The guards held their guns on the guys as one grabbed Daryl and dragged him from the room. Jared and Myles were both tense. They kept still, though. They didn’t want to risk being shot by the dart and thus be unconscious for hours. Unfortunately, Robert wasn’t thinking as clearly. The guttural cry that escaped him told me immediately he’d transformed; I didn’t even have to see him to know. The front half of his wolf body made it through the door, the dart bobbing in his shoulder. Before he could reach any of the guards, he dropped to the floor in a heap. The guards dragged him back into the cell, and Myles threw a blanket over him. His body shuddered, and he returned to his human form.

“Could you bring some clothes for him?” Myles shouted after the guards.

They didn’t respond. We all stood in shocked silence.

“What do you think they took them for?” Jared bent over Robert’s inert figure as he spoke.

“Something to do with the research, I guess,” Myles answered.

Jared straightened. “Then why not take him?” He pointed to Robert. “He knows as much as both of them, if not more. Definitely more than Daryl.”

Myles shrugged. But we didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Within minutes, the guards returned with Lana, led by Brodin. He stood in front of the guys’ cell shaking his head. He turned to the guards.

“You idiots. He’s the scientist we wanted. Not the other one. It’s her and the one you’ve tranquilized that I need. Now it will be tomorrow before I can do anything. Put her back. And bring him some scrubs for when he wakes up. Can you do that without screwing up?”

He stalked off while Lana was put back in the cell with us. They hadn’t brought Daryl back. Lana hurried over to the partition, her hands knotting around the bars as she fell to her knees. She glanced up at Myles who stood halfway between her and Robert’s body.

“He’ll be fine,” Myles reassured her. “He’ll sleep for a while.”

“What if it affects his mind?” she whispered.

He came and knelt beside her, touching his finger to hers, still locked around the bars. “He’s strong, and so is his mind. He’ll wake up and be exactly as he was before.”

She nodded wordlessly.

I wondered if Lana could hear the tension in his voice. Maybe she wasn’t paying attention. I met his eyes over her head and tried to school my face into something that didn’t give away what I was thinking. He wouldn’t appreciate pity. But that’s what I felt. He and I were both in a fix, in love with someone who would never feel quite the same way about us. I must not have masked the sympathy well enough, because he turned away from me with a disgusted look.

Ten minutes later, a guard returned with scrubs and dropped them through the bars.

Brynna rushed forward.

“What about Daryl? Where’s the boy you took? Are you going to bring him back?”

The guards didn’t even bother to look at her.

“They won’t bring him back.” Everyone in both cells stilled and looked at Lana who was still kneeling on the floor staring at Robert.

“What did they do to him?” There was fear in Brynna’s voice now.

Lana’s head bent lower. “They didn’t do anything to him. He and his father are working with the Fenryrians. They told me just now. The Fenryrians didn’t know about the genetic work before Daryl came to Dromen as a student. They sent him to find out what we were working on, and I led him straight to the most important thing we had. I…”

Myles went back to her, reaching through the bars to touch her face. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know. The council told you to work with him.”

Her words came out with a sob. “I told him everything, and he was one of them. It’s my fault we’re here. That all this happened.”

Myles’ hand closed over her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. It’s their fault for taking you. We’ll be fine.”

“They said they’ll kill all of you if I don’t help them. Alexis said Brodin’s going to kill us anyway.”

“Don’t worry about what Alexis said.” He gave me an angry glare. “You do whatever they ask you to do, okay? It’s how you’ll stay alive. They need you and what you know, so work with them, you hear me?”

She nodded, and Myles let his hand slide down her arm to hold her hand. She let go of the bar then and gripped his hand so hard I could see her knuckles turn white.

“He said there were factions in both our packs. I guess that’s what Daryl and his father are.”

Myles looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

“When I met with Brodin, he said that there were Lycernians who were more like the Fenryrians. He said these people helped them get information. I guess that’s what Daryl and his dad did.”

“I don’t believe it.” Myles rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “Factions.”

“He said these factions existed on both sides. That the Fenryrians had groups who wanted to live more like the Lycernians.”

“I’ve never heard of any factions,” Brynna said.

I shrugged. I wasn’t going to try and convince anyone. All I could tell them was what I’d been told. Right now, whether or not there were factions really wasn’t important. Not unless one of them knew about us and was going to come racing to our rescue.

Jared picked up the scrubs the guards had left and put them on one of the cots. It would be some time before Robert needed them. Right now, he was breathing heavily beneath the blanket. The idea that he was lying there naked with only a thin covering would have seemed weird to me a year ago. But since finding out I was a werewolf, nakedness seemed like a common thing. When you might burst out of your clothes and transform into a huge wolf at any time, you had to get used to being without clothes.

Jared spoke softly to Myles. He left Lana to help Jared hoist Robert onto one of the beds, settling the covers around him. His chest was visible, and it surprised me a little to see how muscular he was even though he wasn’t as large as the other two guys. He was taller and leaner but still beautifully made, and I wasn’t really surprised that Lana had fallen for him. They shared a life in the lab that the rest of us couldn’t begin to understand. Though I guess we all shared a life in the field neither she nor Robert would ever understand. The other two boys settled onto their own beds.

Since Robert was down and we couldn’t do much else, sleep was the best thing for us. Brynna and I went to our own cots, and I pulled the thin blanket over me, watching Lana, who still knelt on the floor. Slowly she got to her feet and made her way to her bed. Myles was watching her, but she didn’t seem to notice. The muscles of his face twitched, then he grimaced as if in pain. He caught my eyes on him and frowned then rolled over with his back to us. Lana turned at the creaking of his cot. She stood next to her bed for a moment before slowly sitting down. I saw her swipe a tear before she slid under the covers and buried her face in the pillow.

Across the room, Jared was shaking his head. He mouthed the words “told you.” Rolling on my back, I stared at the ceiling, wondering how we would ever get out of here. I’m not sure what had made us think it would be easy for us to get to Lana and Daryl. We had been unbelievably wrong.

I don’t know how long I’d slept, but the sound of movement in the cell next to us woke me, and I sat up in time to see Robert shuffling to the bathroom wrapped in the blanket and clutching the green surgical scrubs to his chest. He never looked up. In the cot closest to me, Brynna lay on her side awake.

“What a mess,” she whispered.

I didn’t know if she meant the mess all of us were in or the mess that had once been Myles and Lana, the perfect couple.

“You know that guy, the one with the red hair, Noah.” I said.

“Is that his name?”

I shifted so I could see her better. “Don’t act like you don’t know. You two have seen each other before.”

She nodded slowly, her eyes slightly glazed. “I have seen him,” she said softly and pointed to her head. “Up here.”

“What? That’s crazy.”

“You travel around in spirit form, and you think because I’ve seen this guy in a dream I’m crazy?”

“I don’t mean you’re crazy, I mean it’s strange, weird.”

Brynna’s right brow twitched upward.

“All right, all right. I guess what I really want to say is why? Why would you see this guy? Was it some kind of vision? Were you awake?”

“I’ve seen him in dreams, several of them. I don’t know why. I’ve never seen him before in person. Not until now. When he looks at me, I think maybe he’s seen me, too.”

“He certainly looks at you like he knows you, or maybe he just looks like he’s amazed to see you.”

Brynna tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned forward. “What does it mean?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You can travel and even telecommunicate. I just thought you might have an idea. I can’t explain it myself.”

“Well, I sure can’t.”

I studied her for a moment. “What if it means you can see things in your dreams?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Like, see the future?”

“Well, you did see this guy in your dream, and now here he is. Surely that’s some kind of special werewolf talent, to see the future.”

“I cannot see the future, Alexis.”

This time it was my turn to arch an eyebrow at her. “You just did.”

Brynna lay back in her bed, and neither of us said anything else. I didn’t know if seeing the guy in her dream equaled seeing the future, but it was close. Lana was standing next to the cell partition again. When Robert came out of the bathroom, he went to her, and I held my breath, hoping they wouldn’t kiss or something equally devastating to Myles. They didn’t. He stopped short a few inches from the bars, and they spoke in hushed tones. Out in the hall, a rattling noise broke the silence that had reigned for hours. Guards rolled a cart in front of each cell and opened the door to set out Styrofoam trays and cups. Apparently even if Brodin was going to kill us, he was going to make sure we were well fed until he got around to it.

I opened my box, and my stomach growled at the sight of the huge burger, fries, and brownie. I sat on the edge of my bed and started eating. Halfway through the burger, I realized no matter how hungry I had been, I wouldn’t finish it. I held the plate up, and Jared came to the partition. I handed him the half-eaten burger and kept my box with the fries and brownie.

“That’s gross,” Brynna said.

“What?” he asked indignantly.

“You’re eating after her.”

“I’m hungry.”

“It’s still gross.”

Jared returned to his cot to finish off his own burger before starting on mine. “Whatever, Brynna. You probably think it’s gross to kiss a guy, too.”

“I do not think that,” she shot back at him.

“Then what’s the difference in eating someone else’s food?”

“There’s no difference if you’re kissing that person. Are you kissing Alexis?”

“Wait just a minute,” I intervened. “You two leave me out of this discussion.”

“No, I’m not kissing Alexis.” He paused slightly. “Yet. I am going to eat her food, though.”