Wild Heat (Wilding Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (17 page)

When Terra came to, she was in a completely different place. Her stomach was still heaving from whatever Julius had injected her with, and her body felt like it had been completely drained of energy. She blearily opened her eyes.

She was in a small room, sitting in a chair, with Julius standing in front of her. When she tried to move, it was clear her arms and legs were tied to the chair. Her first instinct was to shift out of the restraints, but she couldn’t. Just like before, her wolf was simply…
gone.

A shiver ran through her.

“No, you won’t be able to shift,” Julius said with a smirk. His arms were crossed, and he was leaning against a closed door. “At least not for a while. The drug will see to that. A little gift, courtesy of my dearly departed friend—the one you called Agent Smith. I figured it would make the interrogation a little easier if I weren't chasing you all over the room.”

God, what was happening?
“Why are you doing this?”

“I thought that would be obvious by now,” Julius sneered. “I guess the brainy part of the gene pool didn’t land on your side.” All the gentility was gone.

A cold shudder shook her body, ending in an icy trickle that landed in her stomach.
She was alone in this.
Kaden may not even know she was gone… he certainly wouldn’t know where to find her. Her mate wasn’t going to save her.

Death had finally caught up with her, after all.

“What do you want to know?” she spat at Julius. He mentioned something about interrogation; there had to be
something
he was after.

“I want to know who the white wolf is.” Julius said this like it was completely obvious what he was talking about, not some vague nonsense. He opened his mouth to say more, but he was interrupted by a knock at the door behind him.

He scowled and turned to open it. A rough-looking man in black tactical gear stood outside the doorway. He toted a massive gun, plus he had several more weapons strapped to his sides.

“Sir, the mayor is on the line,” the man said.

“I’ll call him back,” Julius said sharply. “Don’t interrupt me again unless we’re actually being assaulted.”

The man ducked his head and quickly closed the door.

Julius trained his hungry gaze on her again.

Oh God.
What was he going to do to her?

“Nothing’s going to distract us now, Terra. I almost didn’t think we’d get here today… your handler from the Seattle Police Department was unusually competent at his job. Which could end up being very unfortunate… for him.”

“Leave Kaden alone!” The words just gushed out of her, but she wished she hadn’t said anything, not with the way Julius’s eyebrows lifted.

“Is that right? I see… you’ve been banging the security guard.
Typical.
Little sexy wolf vixen seducing every human that comes along her path.” He sauntered closer to her.

She leaned back in her chair to get away from him, but she had nowhere to go. Her face wrinkled up in disgust, but she didn’t say anything more—Julius still thought Kaden was a human, and it was better for him if it stayed that way.

But she prayed he would come for her. He was her mate, or at least he was supposed to be. But her fuzzed-out brain couldn’t imagine how he could find her.

She’d been so foolish.

“But let’s get right to the point, shall we?” Julius said. “How about you simply tell me the truth—who is the white wolf?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” And that was mostly true. Julius couldn’t know about Kaden being a white wolf—was he talking about Noah? She didn’t think anyone knew about that, either, at least outside of the packs. Julius was chasing some kind of rumor or ghost about this mythical white wolf he was obsessed with…

Except now she knew who Julius was—
the Wolf Hunter.
Or at least, one of the Wolf Hunter’s followers. Julius had practically made a shrine to the Wolf Hunter in that crazy-obsessive room filled with her pictures and pictures of her family.

“Come on, Terra,” Julius said, his voice rising in anger. “You’re not that stupid.”

She frowned, but she was genuinely confused. “You want the white wolf, but I don’t even know what that is. I was coming to
you
to find out!”

He drew back and frowned at her. “You were rather eager to come by and find out more about the white wolf, weren’t you? But then again that’s part of your family lore, isn’t it? Or should I say, the family
shame?”

He was talking about her grandfather’s brother—the white wolf that broke up the Wilding pack.

“What do you know about that?” she asked, eyes wide. If he knew that, what else did he know?

“As you saw from my wall, I know quite a bit about you and your family,” he sneered. “I kept thinking that the white wolf would come to the rescue of his darling children and grandchildren as I blew them up one by one…
but no.
Apparently, he’s just as much of a bastard as I suspected. So in the absence of some kind of flushing out, as was my original intention, I’m having to resort to
this.”
He gestured to her, tied up in the chair.

“You think I know where my grandfather’s brother is?” she asked like he was crazy. Because he clearly was. “He broke up the family two generations ago. We haven’t seen him since.”

Julius rushed forward and braced his hands on the chair arms on either side of her. She jerked in her chair with surprise, but there wasn’t anywhere she could go with her hands and legs firmly tied down.

Julius’s face was far too close to hers. “Yes, do tell me about how he broke up your family.” She could feel his hot breath on her face. “Permit me a little
schadenfreude
at the Wilding family’s dysfunctional mess. But what can you expect from a man—or should I say
wolf
—who broke the basic covenant of the pack by sleeping with his alpha’s mate? It’s a beautiful irony, I must admit.” He eased back from her, looking amused again. “Tell me what you know, Terra Wilding, and I’ll consider letting you live.”

She gave him another look like he was crazy, but she couldn’t see any reason not to tell him something that he clearly already knew. She just couldn’t say anything about Noah or Kaden or any of her family who were alive now. “You seem to know the story already. My grandfather’s brother slept with his mate. It broke up the pack. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all in the past.”

Julius’s eyes narrowed. “But it’s not all in the past, is it? There are more white wolves, alive today… not least, the determined Grace Krepky. She was the one who, shall we say, awakened my understanding of the situation.”

Terra drew back again. “I don’t understand.”

Julius’s dark blue eyes lit up. “It’s really quite simple when you connect all the dots. There’s a white wolf roaming our city. He’s extremely powerful. And he likes to fuck around with human women. It’s possible that he’s not simply a wolf, but also a witch—which only means that his powers are even more extensive. And he’s been sleeping with them for a long time. Decades to be precise.”

Terra pressed her lips tight—she wasn’t saying anything more, nothing that might lead him to Kaden.

“Grace was my first clue that he was still around,” Julius said. “You see, she’s rather young. Much younger than my thirty-two years, which means that the white wolf was still fucking around Seattle as recently as twenty years ago. The only question is—is he still here, and if so, where?”

Terra frowned. What did he mean, younger than his thirty-two years? “Are you saying… wait, you knew about the white wolf
before
Grace came out?” Was he saying what she thought?

“Maybe you’re not so stupid after all,” Julius sniffed. “Yes, I was aware of the white wolf’s antics before our representative-hopeful came on the scene.” He stepped back…

…and then he shifted.
Into a white wolf.

“Holy shit.”
Terra’s mouth hung open.

Julius shifted human again, suddenly standing before her, completely naked. His trim, tailored clothes were lying in a heap on the floor. She didn’t miss the way his erection was slowly growing… and it made her throat suddenly run dry.

Julius sauntered over to her, not hiding his nakedness at all. In fact, he seemed to want to flaunt it in her face. He leaned his hands on the chair again, coming sickeningly close. “Holy shit, indeed.” His voice was a restrained laugh.

She leaned away, disgusted, and prayed he didn’t plan to do anything repulsive with that body of his. Like touch her with it.

“I’m not interested in fucking you, Terra, if that’s what you’re thinking.” His words were belied by his oily and lecherous voice. “Although maybe there’ll be time for that before were done. What I want is something much more exciting—revenge.”

“Revenge on who?” She couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice… or the fear.

“On my father.”

His father?
Maybe his father was actually her grandfather. Maybe he was Kaden’s father. Either way, it didn’t matter. Because she didn’t have any answers for Julius.

And, because of that, she was sure that this time… death would finally catch up to her.

Kaden was tired of waiting.

Terra and that asshole, Julius, and been in his little collection room for way too damn long.

Kaden pounded on the door. Waited. Pounded again. Nothing.

Fuck this.

He dug out his cell phone and called Terra’s. It rang and rang… and then went to message. He pounded on the door again. It was possible the cell phone reception wasn’t getting through the thick stone walls of this place, but there was no way the room was so locked-tight soundproof that they couldn’t hear him pounding.

They were ignoring him.

Whatever juicy information Terra was getting about white wolves, he didn’t give a damn.

Their time was up.

He searched for the number of the manager of the facility and dialed.

When someone picked up he used his most
I’m a cop, don’t fuck with me
voice. “This is Officer Grant from the Seattle Police Department. I’ve got reasonable cause a crime is being committed on your premises. I need access to Unit Ninety Three.
Immediately.”

“I… um…” The woman’s voice on the other end was high and panicked.
Good.
“I’ll be right there, Officer!”

She hung up.

Kaden timed it, and she it only took two minutes to get there, but he was going out of his fucking mind in the meantime. He even shifted his hand and tried to slice his way through the door, but he didn’t have whatever badass claws Noah was talking about, and underneath the stately carved wood, the door was solid steel. At least an inch thick, maybe two. He was getting nowhere, but he still clawed the shit out of it. He was tempted to rip into the control pad, but he might jam it up, and that would just make things worse.

A short, hunch-shouldered woman scurried in through the storage facility door, her little sensible shoes making no noise on the granite flooring.

“Oh!” she said when she arrived at his side and looked at the door with a wide-eyed stare. “What happened?”

“Open the door, Ma’am,” he ordered, his voice full of growl.

She almost jumped out of her skin, then scrambled to tap out the override code. The door clicked open. Kaden shoved her side as gently as he could manage and barreled into the room with his weapon drawn.

It was empty.

At least, the room was empty of
people
—there was a whole fucking rats-nest of crazy, though. Pictures of people and wolves filled every inch of the wall. Videos played on large screens. He only had to take one look at those to recognize them.

The Wolf Hunter.

“Fuck!” He couldn’t believe it. Fucking Julius was the Wolf Hunter—or at least as bat-shit crazy as that maniac—and now he had Terra.

Kaden whirled on the mousy manager, who was quivering by the door. “Is there another way out?” There had to be. He’d been watching the door the entire time. They sure as hell didn’t leave the way they came in.

The woman nodded frantically and pointed a shaky finger toward the far end of the room. Kaden sprinted over and found a door in the wall, nearly hidden by all the photos plastered on and around it.

“Open this up!” he shouted.

She did, but there was nothing to see—just another hallway, and at the end of that, a door that led outside. Once Kaden spilled out into the sunshine, he realized… they could be anywhere. They had at least a twenty-minute head start before he started banging on the door.

Shit.

A cold darkness clamped down on his chest, the same feeling of panic when he found her missing the first time.
He’d lost her.
For a long, scattered moment, his brain clouded with fury and terror.

Then he pulled his shit together.

That asshole had taken his mate, and he was going to get her back.

He sprinted back to his car, shutting down his emotions—he could deal with those later—and trying to engage his brain to figure out what do to next.

He couldn’t go to the department—they would just laugh. And probably reassign him to another case. They sure as hell weren’t going to help him.