I shrug one shoulder and Raquel gives me a slight nod. She presses her lips together and strides through the doorway, head held high. The security guard encourages me to follow with a light tug and we enter the maze of bland, gray hallways and blank doors beyond, the noise from the casino floor cutting out as the door shuts behind us. Bright fluorescent lights line the ceiling, a shock to the senses after the moderately dim casino, and I have to squint my eyes against the burn until they adjust.
“Move it,” says the security officer, tugging on my arm as he leads me down one hallway, then another. We change directions enough times that I’m completely turned around and probably couldn’t find my way out of here even if the security officer spontaneously disappeared.
Eventually, we turn a corner to find an elevator, the doors sliding open as we approach. My gaze darts to small black box mounted in the corner of the ceiling that can only be a camera. The fact that someone appears to be tracking our progress through the maze of blandness does not bode well for any sort of escape attempt.
Unease twists in my stomach, and I force myself to breathe evenly, pushing my nerves down as much as possible. Yeah, thingslook bad—really bad—but getting worked up over it now isn’t going to help. I need to keep a clear head and watch for a way to get out of this.
Inside the elevator, there aren’t any buttons to select a floor, only what I think is a card reader of some kind. The security officer tugs at a plain black card attached to his belt and taps it against the gray rectangle on the wall. The elevator jolts into action, descending at a speed that pulls my stomach into my throat and makes poor Raquel look downright green. Thankfully, the sickening sensation doesn’t last long, the elevator slowing to a gentle stop at its destination before the doors slide open and the security officer continues tugging me along on our forced march.
This level is even starker than the one above, the floor made of gray concrete and the hallway lined with what appears to be metal doors. The lights flicker, giving the whole place an ominous edge like some sort of underground bunker.
The security officer heads to the very end of the hallway, stopping at the last door. He again pulls out his access card, tapping it against the reader to the right of the door. There’s a loud clang—a lock disengaging if I had to guess—and then the security officer pulls it open with a grunt.
I eye the door. It’s at least six inches thick, and given how much effort the guy is putting forth to open it, extremely heavy. In otherwords, complete overkill for containing a human and more than likely designed with shifters in mind.
Not good.
Again, the security officer gestures for Raquel to enter before him. She glances at me nervously, biting at her lower lip, before going inside what I imagine is some kind of cell. I move to follow but the security officer holds me back.
“Not you, pup,” he mutters, giving me a pointed look as he pops thepon the last word, and any hope I had that they might still mistake me for a human dies with that single syllable.
Raquel opens her mouth as if to protest, but I shake my head. They seem to realize she’s human and believe her ignorant of the shifter world, so it’s better that we’re separated. Her brows draw together, but she stays quiet as the security officer shuts the cell door, the lock clanging back into place seconds later.
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry. “So… where are you takingme?”
The security officer scoffs. “Where do you think?”
“To see the Alpha,” I say, resignation heavy in my voice. Because where else would they take a shifter prisoner?
His only response is a snide chuckle as he guides me back to the elevator. This time we go up instead of down, but the speed of the ascent is no less nausea inducing. The trip is shorter than thefirst one, so we must be somewhere in the middle of however many underground levels there are to this place.
The elevator doors slide open to reveal a single long hallway leading to a set of double wooden doors. This floor is nothing like the blank canvas of the halls above or the prison-chic below us. Thick carpeting, decorative crown molding, and artistic lighting makes the space seem closer to the entryway for a gentleman’s club—the social kind meant for rich guys, not a strip club—than a subterranean hallway.
The security officer marches me down the hallway, releasing my arm only long enough to grab his access card and press it against the sensor on the wall a couple feet in front of the double doors. A little light at the top of the reader goes from red to green, and there’s a quiet click as the doors swing outward to allow us entry into whatever lies beyond.
The space on the other side of the doors appears to be some sort of lounge with scattered groupings of chairs and couches. Abstract art pieces decorate the walls, and there’s an unattended bar in one corner, glass shelving filled with bottles lining the wall behind it.
The security officer leads me across the room to another door, again using his access card. He releases my arm and pushes me in front of him as we go through the doorway and enter an opulentoffice. An oversized desk made of dark wood sits in the center of the room, bookshelves lining the walls on either side.
Behind the desk sits an imposing man—a shifter—dressed in a black suit with thin gray pinstriping. He exudes power and has his gray-specked brown hair slicked back in a very mafioso-esque way, so I’m going to assume he must be Cormac Doyle, the Alpha of the Las Vegas pack.
If things had been different, and I’d become an official member of the pack after my first shift as I was supposed to, I still probably wouldn’t have ever met Doyle face-to-face like this. Unlike packs in smaller cities or more rural areas, the Las Vegas pack is scattered with no set pack activities or gatherings. As far as I know, only the Alpha’s inner circle even meets regularly, something I think is pretty common in the few big-city packs.
Doyle watches me with a predatory stare as the security officer who bought me here pulls me closer, and I take one of the two chairs facing the desk. The Alpha rests his elbows on the surface of the desk and steeples his fingers as he studies me with narrowed gray eyes, his gaze an almost physical weight.
The strange silent standoff goes on for at least a minute, Doyle’s gaze focused solely on me. I’m not sure what he’s expecting, but I’m not opening my mouth just to stick my foot in it. I might be reckless sometimes, but I’m not dumb.
As the silence draws out, Doyle taps his index fingers together, then leans back in his chair, folding his hands over his abdomen. “Most people would be groveling for forgiveness at this point.”
When a few seconds pass without me responding—I mean, what would I even say to that?—he nods, almost as if in approval, and straightens in the chair. He reaches across the desk, sliding a file folder over the surface toward him before flipping it open and scanning the contents. Then his gaze falls on me again, a wry twist to his lips that I can’t interpret.
“My security clocked you as a shifter the second you walked through the doors, you know,” he says, dipping his chin toward the open folder. “And this report was on my desk within thirty minutes.” He smirks at my continued silence, then looks down and starts reading aloud. “Neil Cahill, son of Ian Cahill and Margaret Brennan, both deceased.”
He glances up at me, studying my face. “Your birth was registered with the pack, though you’re not a member since you didn’t go through the official application process after your parents died”—his eyes dart back to the contents of the folder—“when you were fifteen.”
My stomach roils, but I clench my jaw and press my lips together, refusing to give him a reaction even though I’m pretty sure I know what’s going to come out of hismouth next.
Doyle doesn’t disappoint. His brows rise and he gives me an exaggerated look of surprise. “It says here your father killed your mother in a drunken rage and then was attacked by some sort of animal. At least that’s what the police report says.” He pauses for effect, leaning forward. “What really happened?”
