“If anything weird happens, call us immediately,” I say for the tenth time this morning.
The annoyed look on Tara’s face doesn’t budge as she closes the door. I stand on the porch, staring at the wood, and thinking how it would be best for me just to stay here with Addison. I don’t want to let her out of my sight. Not after everything she told us yesterday morning.
It breaks my heart knowing that she had to go through something so terrifying, and she had to do it all alone.
The people who hurt her are going to pay for this. They’re going to regret ever putting their hands on my mate.
Cole claps his arm around my shoulders and drags me away from the porch to the car. “Don’t worry. We have enough shifterspatrolling our territory that if anybody sets as much as their pinky toe on the perimeter, we’ll know. Nothing bad’s going to happen today.”
I nod my head like I am conceding to this, but I know that as long as I’m gone, I won’t stop worrying. After Addison gave us the details, Declan and I went to his office and did a little research on Dr. Hendricks. It took quite a bit of digging, but we think we found the right person. He lives a few hours from here. However, the business he works at, Axiom Biomedics, has no known location. That in itself tells me there’s something secretive about it.
So today, we are putting our boots on the ground and trying to figure out where Addison came from.
I climb into the passenger seat and Cole into the back as Declan puts the keys in the ignition to leave. We drive in silence for the first fifteen minutes, all of us thinking about the different possibilities of how this could unfold.
Today is supposed to be about recon. Gathering information. Preparing ourselves for what’s to come. In the back of my mind, I know the moment I set eyes on Dr. Hendricks, it’s going to take everything in me not to jump out of the car and rip his throat out.
“If you don’t calm down, I’ll have to take you back to the house,” Declan warns me, looking over at me cautiously. “They’re going to pay for this. But we have to be smart about this.”
“I know.” I grit my teeth and close my eyes to try to think about something happier. I think about the way it felt having Addison in bed beside me last night. How desperately she wanted to feel good again, like I made her in the morning. How amazing it feels to finally know my mate and to be one step closer to closing the bond with her. Cole is in the back seat, looking at an iPad with the Axiom website open. “Whatdoes any of this even mean? ‘Axiom has made great strides in recent years to pioneer new medical technologies for human resilience.’ Sounds like it’s just fluff. Provides some information about what they do, but doesn’t go into detail. They have far too many secrets to share them with the world,” Declan says, a sharp edge to his words.
With everything that Addison described, all of us knew right away what we were looking at. Most people don’t know about shifters. We’re a secret to the public, but a select few have been made aware of our presence. Those people are often envious of our abilities and want to exploit them.
So these facilities pop up, and they capture shifters when they’re young and study them. All the experiments Addison detailed made it clear to me that they wanted to know how to make and manufacture shifters. Either that, or some sort of drug that enhances human abilities.
The implications of what that could be used for are endless. It could be used for private militias, federal armies, you name it. Without the rules and society we shifters have, that power could be very dangerous in the wrong hands. And they don’t care about whom they hurt to uncover that.
We finally arrive at Dr. Hendricks’s house before sunrise. We have no idea where Axiom is and what time he leaves for work, but if we can follow him, we can uncover quite a lot. All three of us keep our eyes on the door. Cole has a camera, and he is careful to take as many pictures as possible.
Just after even o’clock, the front door opens, and a middle-aged man with slicked-back blond hair and a tall, lanky figure walks out with a briefcase in hand.
“That’s our guy,” Cole whispers, snapping a few photos.
My blood boils. Seeing him in the flesh forces a flash of one of Addison’s memories to the front of my mind. I can see him standing over her and smiling as he injects her with the serumthat she said made her entire body burn. Some men get off on their cruelty, and with how she described it, it seems like he did.
I’ll make him regret that.
Declan puts a hand on my shoulder as if reading my thoughts. I look at him, and he shakes his head subtly.
I didn’t even realize my hand was on the door handle until then. I pull it away and rest it in my lap.
Dr. Hendricks gets in his car, and we follow him for about half an hour until he pulls up to a long dirt road. We turn off the headlights and wait just a moment to follow so it won’t be obvious.
Eventually, a sprawling building appears in the distance. It’s tall with metal doors covered in locks and bolts. Armed guards stand in towers and patrol the ground around the tall, barbed-wire fences.
With the locks on the door, it’s obvious they’re not trying to keep people from going inside. They’re keeping the people inside from going out. Cole takes a few discreet photos from the car, quietly getting out and walking around for better shots before climbing back in.
We make a decision not to go any further. These people are dangerous, and even though we are a strong three, we are no match for twenty men with automatic weapons.
“Text Kyran and tell him to send his clan to our meeting house,” Declan says as he pulls out of the dirt road and heads back toward home.
Neither Cole nor I asks questions about it, but we know that summoning a meeting between our pack and the bear clan will raise an alarm. It also means that Declan is worried.
The drive home drags on forever, and by the time we walk to the meeting house, a crowd is already waiting. Kyran is there with his clan, trying to explain what’s going on.
Declan doesn’t say anything when he walks in first, flanked by Cole and me. The others follow, and when the commotion finally dies down, Declan stands and begins. He explains it all. He doesn’t spare a detail, and I’m almost surprised.
I watch everyone’s faces intently as they piece it all together. People are horrified, saddened, and angry. The whole gamut of emotions. When he’s done speaking, there’s a din throughout the room as everyone talks among themselves.
