Blake stares out the windows, mouth set in a firm line as he watches the passing scenery with a silent intensity. The longer we drive, the more his anxious energy seems to grow, his shoulders climbing closer to his ears and his jaw tensing. Coming back here obviously isn’t easy for him. I just hope we’re able to find the information we need with this trip and won’t have to make another, possibly more confrontational, trip later.
Twenty-Three
Blake
Wecrestthefinalhill and a squat concrete building comes into view. This is it. We’re here.
My stomach twists with nerves and memories wash over me as the truck creeps closer to the place where everything changed, where my life turned into a nightmare. The structure ahead of us is plain, the nondescript exterior not so much as hinting at its awful purpose as the place Wanda kept the “troublemakers”—the drugged and collared shifters she sold—while they were waiting for transport.
Rockcastle’s Alpha Mate, or maybe former Alpha Mate by now, never liked me much, especially once her mate, Earl, started payingmore attention to me, started acting like he was grooming me to take over as his successor instead of Wanda’s beta son.
Dad died not long after Ollie was born, and I was only ten when mom died, leaving me in charge of protecting my six-year-old little brother. She never explained exactly what the danger to Ollie was, though. I’d like to think she thought I was too young to be burdened with the truth, but she never worried about shielding me from the ugliness of the world before then, so I have no idea what she was thinking.
And my naivety and ignorance of the stakes meant I walked both me and my brother right into trouble.
The first few years after mom’s death, Ollie and I lived in one of the tiny, dilapidated shacks on the edge of Rockcastle territory. As long as we completed our chores and didn’t start any trouble, we were mostly ignored and left to our own devices. It wasn’t until my first shift at thirteen when my alpha designation became undeniable that things really started to change.
There weren’t many alphas in my generation. In fact, the only other alpha born to our pack in the last two decades supposedly disappeared as a child. Knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure Wanda had a hand in Jonathan’s disappearance, but I can’t prove it.
And back then, I didn’t care.
The Alpha took me under his wing and, for the first time in my life, I was treated like I mattered. Like I was important.
Mom had doted on Ollie, but she never had much time for me, so all the attention from the Alpha—the praise and flattery—went straight to my adolescent head. I’ll be the first to admit I quickly became spoiled, entitled even, and I didn’t pay nearly enough attention to what was happening around me.
If something didn’t directly affect me, it didn’t matter to me. But isn’t that the case with most teenagers, especially alphas? They think they’re the center of the world.
So blinded by my overinflated ego, I never thought to question any of it.
Not why Earl treated me better than his own son.
Not why he “gifted” me with a small, two-bedroom house near the main part of the compound for my fifteenth birthday.
And not why he was always asking after Ollie.
I should have known better. I should have seen it, should have known what Earl was really after: Ollie and the alpha heir a male omega could provide. In my defense, Wanda didn’t realize that either. She thought I was trying to take her beta son’s place as Earl’s heir, an idea Earl encouraged, intentionally or not.
Earl bided his time, waiting until Ollie was old enough—in Earl’s mind anyway—to give him what he wanted. I was twenty,Ollie sixteen, when Earl finally made his move. I’m not sure what his plan was beyond me getting killed and him being there to console my brother, but he probably should have clued his mate in since she’s the one who, in the end, fucked everything up.
Earl sent me out to investigate some manufactured problem on the outskirts of the territory and had some of his buddies lying in wait to ambush me. His plan might have worked if not for Wanda.
I never made it anywhere near the ambush because Wanda drugged me, locked one of her special collars around my neck, and shoved me in a cage. A lot of time after that is a blur, the memories scattered and disjointed, and I don’t know how Ollie came to be here when the humans showed up to cart me off.
He was standing on the incline directly ahead of where I am now, watching the humans load me into the back of a truck. The drugs had mostly worn off, and I hadn’t been forced to shift yet, but I was still collared,powerless.
So, I did the only thing I could: I yelled for Ollie to run.
But he didn’t, instead he froze in place as one of the humans smiled, getting his tranquilizer gun ready and joking about getting two for the price of one.
My wolf pushed forward with a roar, and I used an Alpha command for the first time, screaming for Ollie to shift in the hope that being on four legs might give him an advantage. But it I forgot hehadn’t had his first shift yet and using an Alpha command to force it would be painful, disorienting… and slow.
Ollie shifted into a beautiful white wolf, but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid the dart that hit him in the shoulder. I watched in horror as he took only few halting steps before his legs went out from under him and he collapsed. One of the humans went up to retrieve him, dragging his limp body down the hill as I raged and screamed.
The humans finally shot me with another tranquilizer dart to keep me from bashing myself against the cage bars. The next time I woke, I was already in Vegas, a hazy memory of the dirt and leaves embedded in Ollie’s white fur haunting me.
A hand brushes against my forearm, jolting me out of the past, and I spin on its owner, teeth bared and a growl rumbling in my chest as the memories threaten to bleed into the present.
“Blake?” The hesitance—and hint of fear—in Neil’s voice is like a knife in my gut. My growl cuts off, and I flinch away from him, shoulders hunching as I push my back against the passenger door of the truck.
