He sighs and drops his gaze. “He attacked the alpha’s family in their home. There is no leniency for traitors.”
I flinch at that word.
“I wish there was more we could do,” he says, and I almost believe he means it.
We step into the concrete chamber and the door slides shut behind us. No defining features distinguish one wall from another, apart from the glass square in the center of the wall to my right. The light in here is weirdly yellow, casting a sickly glow across the single window, and there’s a strong industrial smell, like metal and dirt, and strangely I can’t sense the presence of any other wolves above or below me.
Jasper steps to the window, which I see now is not a portal to the outside but rather a partition between this and a small room on the other side. A gamma wolf in uniform sits behind the glass reading a magazine and chewing gum.
“Jasper Apollo, son of Alpha Jericho,” Jasper says to the man in the window. “I request access to the prisoner Omar Martinez.”
The guard looks up, unimpressed. “Reason for the visit?”
“The alpha wishes me to interrogate the rogue, for personal reasons.”
When Jasper drops Jericho’s name like a hot tamale, the guard stiffens up in his chair. “ID?”
“I’m the alpha’s son,” Jasper says, a little pouty.
“It’s just a precaution, sir. Even the alpha himself has to show ID.”
“Fine.” Jasper pulls out the same fob he used to open the door and swipes it over a black pad in the bottom right corner of the window. The guard turns to a screen, casting a blue light on his pale face.
“Very good, sir.” He glances behind Jasper at me. “And this is?”
“Maximilian Remus,” Jasper says proudly in a way that makes my stomach do a little flip. “My mate.”
“He got any ID?”
Jasper glances at me hopefully, and frantically I pat myself down, searching for the wallet I know is in my left jeans pocket. I pull out my school ID and hold it up for the guard to see.
“It’s all I have,” I say. “Will this do?”
“That’s fine,” the guard says. I exhale with relief. “Prisoner 18157215 is in cell D-17 on floor minus-four. Take the elevator straight down. Your visitation time is thirty minutes, you will be notified when that time is up. You’ll need to return here and register your IDs again to leave. Understood?”
“How is he?” I ask, before Jasper can say anything. “Is he being treated well?”
The guard gives me a bored look, like he couldn’t give two shits. “The prisoners are treated equally and within the precautions set out under the Prisoners’ Rights Act of ’87.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, stepping closer to the glass.
“It means he gets fed three times a day and fresh sheets every seven days. Other than that, I really don’t care.”
“You’re a real hero,” I mutter.
“Your visitation time has begun. Return here in thirty minutes or we will have you escorted out.” The guard shifts his attention to Jasper. “And that goes for your whole party.”
Jasper moves to step forward to hand this guy his ass, but before he can the guard smashes down on an unseen button and the wall to our right slides open, the concrete making an earsplitting scraping sound as it drags across the floor. Behind it is the inside of an elevator, all metal and chrome. The guard has already turned back to his magazine, so deciding it’s not worth it, I take Jasper’s arm and pull him inside. The elevator door slides shut behind us and we are swiftly lowered into the depths of the packhouse’s basement.
The elevator clanks to a stop and the door behind us grinds open. The temperature down here is hotter than outside—the air no longer has the sterile scent of the entry room, instead it’s thick with wolf sweat. All the layers of concrete must be to block out the wolf energy that’s pulsing through the walls down here.
It’s darker than I imagined. I thought the packhouse prison would be well lit, with decent ventilation and guards prowling everywhere. But instead I feel like I’m in the industrial basement of a warehouse somewhere on the outskirts of the city. The walls are plain cinder-block brick, with patches of damp where water is leaking from the pipes that run overhead. The lights must be super low watt, and only dot the long corridor that stretches out ahead of us every few feet.
“This is a prison?” I ask Jasper, who is staring down the hall with an unpleasant look on his face. Clearly he doesn’t come down here all that much either.
“You thought it would be cheerier?”
“No, I…I just didn’t think it would look like this. They really keep people here?”
