Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Will

Blair had let us go. Against all odds, Alexis and I made it out of the facility without any trouble. That got me thinking. Why would someone like Blair, someone who had every reason to kill the two people who had been making his life a living hell, let them go when they had walked into his headquarters like lambs to the slaughter?

I knew the answer in an instant, but I was far too enraged at Alexis’s stupid decision to go and confront Blair to think more about it. However, with it in my mind, it kept me from unleashing my anger on her.

Blair was weak. That was all there was to it. He might have put up a brave front in front of us earlier, but he was trapped in a place he didn’t want to be in. There was no other way he would have let us go. With his experiments failing, his soldiers dying, and his resources depleting, Blair was preparing for something big, adhering to the “go big or go home” credo.

All those soldiers patrolling his headquarters, and all that display of secrecy and firearms, it was just a façade. The real Blair underneath all that was grasping at straws.

“Will? How long are you going to be quiet?” Alexis asked from behind. Ever since we’d walked out of the facility, I’d been giving her the silent treatment, walking five paces in front of her. I knew that if I spoke, I would unleash all the anger that I’d been holding back. It had come back after all this time, that unresolved red ball of rage burning in my chest.

It made me recall all the times Alexis had been reckless before. There was that one time when she had walked into Blair’s office for a job interview, and he had kidnapped her. Then, after I had ‘died,’ she had ditched Fiddler’s Green and sought sanctuary in another city while our enemies pursued her. She would have died that day, too, if I hadn’t attacked the assassin feigning as her lover. And, of course, there was that time when she let herself be captured by Maurice. If it wasn’t for our bond, I’d have never found her back then, either.

Maybe the resentment made me think like this, but I was beginning to see a pattern of recklessness that Alexis was prone to follow. I couldn’t hold back anymore. I had to say something, or else the veins in my forehead would burst.

“What were you thinking?” My voice was considerably calm, given how I was truly feeling. It was only a matter of time, though. The injuries I had sustained were not healing as fast as I had anticipated, leading me to think there was something more to the soldiers than met the eye. Maybe, Blair had tampered with their physiologies in a way that I was not immune to physical injuries as I once was. It could be that he had gotten his hands on his father’s research. He could have used my blood to make these soldiers effective against me.

“I was trying to be diplomatic, as I said, Will,” Alexis said, sighing. She did not get to sigh and show signs of exasperation after what she had just done. She was in the wrong.

“Diplomatic? Are you dense?” The pain from the injuries, combined with the anger that had been bubbling underneath the surface, finally caused me to give in to my hectoring nature, the one that I had kept at bay for months.

“Excuse me?” Alexis’s face was mortified with shock, her eyes strained, and her forehead furrowed. “What did you say?”

“Oh, so you’re hard of hearing now too? Is that why you misunderstood me when I explicitly told you earlier to stay put in the commune? Are you so reckless that you would deliberately go out of your way to jeopardize your life? Do you have such little regard for your safety? For my feelings? I thought you had grown up, but clearly, I was mistaken. Underneath everything, you’re a little girl who does not know better!”

“Will,” Alexis’s voice was breaking off. “Why are you saying all of this to me?”

“Because the last time I checked, you had gone off to find Blair’s secret headquarters and had the fucking audacity to barge in there without reinforcements, without a game plan, and without common fucking sense!”

The gashes that those soldiers had torn into my skin were burning now. My whole body felt like it was set on fire. I could feel that it wasn’t just the injuries that were making me feel this way; it was all the rage that was finally unleashed like Pandora’s Box, finding channels in my body to agitate. I really needed to calm down before I did something irreconcilable.

“You are not being yourself,” Alexis said quietly. She took a few steps back, standing even further apart from me than she already was.

“Are you fucking serious? Blair has been our number-one enemy for the longest time. Do I need to remind you that he almost killed me once? All the atrocities that he’s committed? What made you think that going to him and talking it out was a reasonable option?”

“Because I am afraid, Will! I do not like admitting it, but I am afraid of what’s going to happen to the commune, to the town, and to you if this whole thing doesn’t end anytime soon. People will die. There’s a war coming. I only did what I did so that I could avert it. Wouldn’t you do the same if you had the chance?”

“The time for averting it is long past, Alexis!” I snapped at her. “If something terrible had happened in there, and if we hadn’t gotten out as miraculously as we did, who would have been to blame for that? And you disobeyed my orders. Do not forget that I might be your mate, but I am your Alpha above all else!”

“Some Alpha!” Alexis snapped back and stormed off.

I didn’t have it in me to go after her. She needed to sit with her failure for a while and know how much she had screwed up. Because of her, our entire stance was compromised. Blair might have let us go, but now he knew that the pack wasn’t as strong as he’d initially thought.

I couldn’t help but think that, somehow, everything had gone according to Blair’s plan. It took a bit of deduction on my part, but what I perceived was this: Blair must have created a new batch of serum to inject into his soldiers. This particular serum was imbued with my blood, rendering me un-immune to it. That’s why these injuries probably were taking a long time to heal. He had wanted a visual demonstration of that. That’s why he’d let so many of his soldiers die. To him, this was nothing more than one expensive science experiment.

I looked around the forest and saw no signs of Alexis. My Jeep was parked up the road where I had left it. I needed to get back home and consult with the pack’s healer to confirm my suspicions about these injuries.

As I drove back to the commune, I could not help but feel remorse for the way I had let my old nature dominate me. It had not been my intent to berate Alexis like that, and yet I’d done exactly that. Could this factor also be attributed to how the soldiers had affected me in the fight?

It would be a shame if, after all this time, I ended up back at square one. All that hard work, all that character building, everything that I’d done for the commune, for the city, and for my mate turned to dust.

I could not let that happen.

***

“Yep. These injuries are going to leave a scar, for sure,” the healer said.

“Where’s the other doctor?”

“Oh, him? He’s gone to pursue his post-doctorate in Memphis. Besides, we pack healers never hold the position for too long. It’s like a curse with us. I’ve only been here a week, and who knows how long I’ll be here, huh?”

“Well, you’re a lot nicer than the other doctor,” I said.

“Eh, that’s because I finished medical school in Minnesota. The people are so polite there; it rubs off on ya!” the healer said, taking a closer look at my injuries. “And fortunately for you, I have an interest in hematology. We can get down to the root of this problem in just a few minutes.”

“Dr. Munroe, I am beginning to like you. You’re efficient,” I said.

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Will. I’ve always liked you.”

“But we’ve never met before.”

“Sure. We’ve never met before. I was a little kid, and my dad, Morgan, told me stories about the brave werewolf who saved the entire Grimm pack by moving us to America. You were my hero. Hell, with all the shit unfolding around us, you’re still my hero.”

“You know what? Dr. Munroe, if you can find out what’s wrong with me, you’ll be my hero,” I said.

“Right you are,” Dr. Munroe said. He pricked my finger and squeezed it, causing a massive blood droplet to form at the tip. He then took a swab and rubbed the blood off, applying it on a glass plate that he put under a microscope.

For the next five minutes, he didn’t say anything, which made me more suspenseful. But after a long pause, he looked up from the microscope and shook his head.

“Will, there’s grave news,” Dr. Munroe said, putting aside his stethoscope and looking at me morosely.

“I’ve already been in a grave once before, doctor. I’m not afraid of dying. Tell me what it is,” I said, clenching my fists.

“These soldiers that you fought…were they different from the rest?”

“Yes. They were a lot more aggressive, and all their moves were synchronized, making it very challenging for me to take on all of them at once. Did I mention that they sort of died at the same time?”

“That may be because of the mutagens in their body. But from what I’ve inferred from your blood sample, these soldiers have affected your DNA. This sort of anomaly is only possible in one case, and that is if these soldiers were imbued with your blood, rendering you weak against it,” Dr. Munroe said. “So those injuries will take a lot longer to heal.”

I knew it. Dr. Munroe had confirmed what I’d already suspected. Blair had taken his father’s research and had made these soldiers with the specific purpose of bringing me down.

“What can be done?” I asked.

“For now, rest. Rest is all you can do. You have to let these injuries heal the old-fashioned way. In time, I will bring my surgeon friend from Bangor and have him see the scars. It’s going to be some basic epithelial surgery that can fix those scars up in no time.”

“No. Don’t do anything about the scars,” I said. “A wolf bears the scars he receives. It is the way of the warrior.”

“Suit yourself, but for now, don’t go looking for any more fights.”

“Could there be a correlation between these injuries and my anger flaring?”

“Let’s just say that your old DNA was mixed up in these soldiers to make them stronger against you in a battle. When they attacked you, it woke up dormant parts of you that you had been controlling for some time now,” the doctor said.

“And how do I get those parts to be dormant again?” I asked.

“I am afraid,” the doctor said, shaking his head once more. “I do not have an answer for that.”

That only left one more thing for me to do.

I needed to seek Alexis and apologize for how I had lost my cool with her.