TWENTY-FOUR

Ethan

WE'RE MAKING OUR way downstairs to the basement to listen to what the three rogue shifters have to say about Billie's parents. The Den are cleaning up from the late lunch.

Marcus has made sure to have every light on down here, and we're keeping the door to the upstairs open so Billie's more at ease. The guys will be heading over to the actual Den for a celebratory gathering with members and people from the neighborhood to recognize Jimmy for winning the title last night. We were all supposed to go, and I guess a lot of the members were looking forward to seeing Billie. But with everything that's happened and who we have down here, we all decided to stay. We've yet to decide on whether to have The Den sign an NDA or a royal decree. They've agreed to go with whatever option we choose.

All of us, with the exception of Billie, have already been down here, and she's taken aback by what she sees. The beta toxin Jax delivered has worked its way out of their system. Enzo called the garage he works at and had them meet him at Castle Island to tow his bike back, and they also supplied him with some chains and locks, which we've put to use.

Clyde is still in wolf form healing and locked up in a large dog crate Marcus had from the one dog he had as a kid. I don't know what happened or why he only had one, but the normally playful and happy guy became somber and full of longing. Randall the mustachioed shifter is sitting calmly in a chair with his hands wrapped in chains behind him locked around a post. Owen, the alpha, is gagged and wrapped in at least a hundred pounds of chains around a support beam, his ass on the cement floor. He's been less than cooperative, and the fucker has a bigger mouth than Xander's father.

"Whoa," Billie mutters, shuffling her way over to Assad, who's standing guard over the three shifters. "You've got them chained, cuffed, and caged."

"They did try to kill you today, love," I growl, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her upper chest, pulling her into mine. She readily leans back, letting our bodies warm and meld. Neither Jax nor I have had a chance to be with her in any real private or intimate way since the events of this morning. We almost lost her today. Images of the blood and her mangled neck, arm, and hand are still fresh in my mind. The blind rage I felt when I landed on the alpha focused into my shoulders, arms, and fists as they rained punch after punch down on him. One corner of my lips ticks up seeing that his face is still a puffy, broken mess.

My arms tighten around her chest, and my head bends down to nuzzle her hair. I mostly smell her, but I've also been getting whiffs of Xander coming from her since I arrived back here. When I met his eyes in question earlier, he grunted and nodded in confirmation, nothing else. He's been quiet, unusually quiet. It's clear he and Billie need to figure out how they'll work together with him as her alpha. Jax and I grew up within pack culture; Billie did not. Hell, Billie didn't even grow up in shifter culture; she grew up with humans. We know this is a lot for her to take in, and we've been moving slowly with regard to her accepting and understanding what it means to be a shifter, what it means to be bonded, and what it means to be part of a pack. After this weekend, it's obvious a slow introduction isn't going to work.

Billie rests her head further back on my chest, giving me more access to her neck while her hands move to hold on to my forearms. My lips trail kisses over every inch of her tender skin they can reach, and the feeling of her breath rising and falling under them quenches some of my need for connection with her. We both close our eyes and take hold of this brief moment to remind each other we're still here, together. I nip her ear lightly and then release my hold, moving to her side, arm slung over her shoulders.

" Si ," Assad grunts, reminding me that we're not alone. "They were like this when we arrived, and it seemed fitting." His eyes move to Randall, tilting his chin to him. "This one here seems to think he has information on your parents."

Billie moves out of my hold to stand before Randall. Clasping her hands behind her back, she regards him for a few long moments. He's calm. Has been calm since he came out of the beta toxin. He's answered all our questions and has done everything we've asked.

He's watching Billie with interest and caution. He swallows and comments in a scratchy voice. "I'm glad to see you've recovered from your injuries."

Billie takes the elastic out of her hair and runs her fingers through her damp tresses while she casually observes him. "I'm a little confused." She pauses and creases her brows. "Um... what is your name?"

"Randall. My name is Randall," he replies, coughing dryly.

"Right," Billie clips. Pushing and twirling her hair into a tighter bun than before, she explains in a tired voice, "I'm a little confused, Randall, because based on what happened and what you and your friends said"—with hands on her hips, she hitches a shoulder— "I was under the impression you wanted me dead."

Randall nods. "Yes, I can see why you would think that, and I won't deny that when we feel like our lives"—his gray eyes become steel when they trail to Xander— "or our livelihoods are threatened, we will fight to the death to stay alive."

Billie follows his gaze with brief interest until her exhaustion has her shuffling over to slump against the concrete wall near him. Crossing her arms over her chest, she yawns "And you felt like your life or livelihood was threatened when my human friend and I were on his bike riding around Southie this morning?"

Randall's hard stare softens when he readjusts his position as much as the bindings will allow, and focuses back on Billie. A droll laugh tumbles from his chapped lips. "If anyone's life was at risk from his riding this morning, it was yours. Your friend rides like a madman."

She doesn't even try to hide her amusement with his accurate assessment of Enzo's riding, letting out a low laugh.

Licking his dry lips, he blows out a long breath. "We felt threatened when you and your mates discovered us last night. We know we're not supposed to be doing what we've been doing, but there's no other place for us to go. The shifter world"—his gaze narrows on Xander again before he shakes his head and exhales— "has not been welcoming or kind to us for a very long time." With eyes locked on Bille and with brows raised, he proclaims, "I did not want to kill you. Clyde was mad about the fight, but death was not part of his initial thoughts this morning." I notice he doesn't say anything about the intentions of their alpha. The edges of his gray eyes turn down, and he begs, "Please, remember I tried to help. I tried to help get your friend out of there. I tried to save someone who seemed important to you. I'm not a bad person. I'm just a survivor." Billie is tugging on her ear as she listens to him. He tilts his head to one side. "Surviving is something I'm sure you know a little about, Wilhelmina Agnese Mahoney."

"Right," Billie mutters with a dip of her chin. Yawning, she pushes off the wall and scans the room like she's looking for something.

"Here," Xander says, walking over to an interior corner wall where there are several items stored on homemade standing shelves. He grabs a red folding camp chair that's leaning against one of them. Unfolding the chair, he sets it up so she can see all the shifters but is still far enough away that they won't be able to get too close.

"Thank you," she says softly with watery eyes on Xander, as if the small act of attentive kindness is hard for her to accept for some reason. She sits down in the chair, and Xander bends down at the waist to cup one side of her face. Brushing his thumb over her cheek, he gives her a peck on the head before moving to stand directly behind her, arms crossed over his chest, eyes on the shifters. When I've been down here with him, they've all looked at Xander with a deep hatred, that seems too extreme for what happened last night, yet none of us have pushed for them to explain.

Billie slides further down in the chair and rests one ankle on the opposite knee. Placing her elbows on the armrests, she interlaces her fingers so they're hovering over her lap. It's a very informal position. "Let me tell you something, Randall." She yawns. "Almost dying from blood loss, having your adrenaline spike to insane levels and then drop, dealing with the emotional and mental turmoil from the fallout of it all, followed by eating your weight in sandwiches, chips and pickles... well, it can tire a person out."

Giving her a slanted grin, he snorts. "I can understand that."

Billie nods. "I'm sure you can in some way. Tell me what you know of my parents, and the circumstances of your knowledge."

Heydar walks over to Billie and hands her a folder. I know it contains the information on Randall and Clyde that Alessandro was able to find from his sources as well as what was provided by our elders and the council. Billie's face pinches in wariness. She's looking at the folder like it's poisonous or something. Using only two fingers, she places it lightly and ever so cautiously on her lap, as if it were a defective jack-in-the-box that could go off at any time, and then brings her attention back to Randall.

He looks from the file to her. "You're not going to open it?"

Billie rests the side of her head on her palm and quirks a brow admitting. "Tell you secret, Randall. I bloody hate paperwork." A sound I've never truly heard before comes from behind me. I turn around to see the twins. The massive royal bodyguards, Heydar and Assad, are laughing behind their hands with twinkling eyes locked on Alessandro. Alessandro is also hiding his mouth behind his hand, but his cheeks are pink, and the corners of his shimmering eyes are crinkled as he refuses to meet his bodyguard's stares. Unsure of the inside joke, I return my attention back to Billie. She scrunches her nose at the folder. "Whatever is in here won't change if I read it now or later. I'd rather hear from you, about you, about your knowledge regarding my parents and myself, not read it from a file."

He shakes his head and snickers. "I wish we'd met under better circumstances."

Billie puffs out a breath. "We met how we met. Where we go from here is still up for debate."

He nods and leans back, resting his head on the post, easing some tension in his shoulders. "My parents died when I was eleven years old. House fire. My dad was a wolf-shifter, and my mother was a lynx-shifter. We lived in Maine. We did not live in a pack." He gulps. "According to my mom, the wolves in my father's pack were not open to a lynx being part of his pack."

I keep my eyes trained on Randall, as does Xander and Jax. We remain stoic on the outside, listening to Randall tell a similar story to mine and to Billie's. Inside, my thoughts swirl with doubts and concerns about the pack and our relationship. Where did he grow up? What pack was his father from? Ours is the closest—was his father part of our pack before we were born? My spiraling thoughts are interrupted as he continues.

"They were true-mates. He wouldn't give her up for anything or anyone, so he left the pack to start a life with her. A year later, they had me. We were happy for a long time." He pauses and closes his eyes. "I was away at wilderness camp when the fire happened. A wolf-shifter claiming to be my uncle came and took me away from the camp. I had told the camp director that he wasn't my uncle, but he didn't listen, and I got the sense he knew and didn't care. It was like they had made a deal or something." He tilts his head back down, hiding his pain behind slitted eyes. "I was drugged. When I woke up, I was in a cage, in a basement-like room with several other cages around me. Some filled, some empty. That was fifteen years ago." He licks his lips, and Billie's eyes narrow in on the movement.

Groaning, she pushes herself up and out of the chair, then drags her feet across the floor to a table where a pack of water bottles sits half full. Picking one up, she unscrews the cap and walks over to Randall. "Want some?" she asks, showing him the bottle.

He nods, and she holds the bottle up for him to drink from. A little water dribbles from his mouth, and she laughs. "Dude, sorry, I don't normally help others drink from a non-squirt bottle."

He keeps gulping down until about half the bottle is gone. He gives her a nod and smiles. "No worries." Recapping the water, she returns to her relaxed position in the camp chair.

"Look," Billie states. "I have empathy for what you've endured, and I do want to learn more and hear more from you. I'm assuming there are things we can verify later. But what I really want to hear about is your knowledge of my parents. No disrespect to what you've been through, just my attention can only hold for so long, and this has already been a shit show of a day."

Randall sucks his wet mustache into his mouth and nods. "When I was there for about a year, one of the so-called scientists came into the area where several of us were being held. He was extremely excited, asking the guards to prepare a cage for a new subject. One of royal blood, a fox-shifter. The guards asked about it, and the scientist said a Wilhelmina Agnese Mahoney-Volpella would be coming in, six years old. Both parents of royal blood." Billie remains motionless, breathing in and out of her nose, focusing on Randall. Xander steps closer but does not touch her, merely giving her his presence while allowing her to maintain her calm, unperturbed facade. According to the bond, she's feeling the opposite of calm.

Randall sighs. "A few days later, the same so-called scientist came back fuming. The fire caught too fast, and they were unable to extract you before the whole house went up in flames. They searched but couldn't get to every room before the fire spread rapidly. They had also pushed too much gas into the house and were unable to wake your parents up to ask about your whereabouts."

"How'd you connect the girl from fourteen years ago to me now?" Billie questions in a stilted voice, tugging on her ear.

Randall tosses her a lopsided grin. "The Mahoney, a.k.a. the Meg and Leap. We watched it on NESN. Clyde was going to be fighting Jimmy soon, so anything on him we watched. But, um... I didn't make the connection until last night, and confirmed it today. Didn't know the soccer player on TV was a shifter. Then when we got your scent, and it was fox. The memories came back."

Billie yawns again. I check in with the bond. She's completely wiped out, which not surprising. Tilting her head to rest on her hand with eyes on Randall, she muses, "Ideal outcome, Randall. What would the ideal outcome be for you after everything that's happened today, considering your current situation?"

Randall tips his head in the opposite direction of Billie and observes her for a moment before replying. "To be released from here, hide among the humans as before, and for no repercussions from our actions to affect you or anyone close to you."

"Your ideal outcome is to live a life in hiding?" Alessandro questions, stepping forward.

Randall shrugs or tries to in his bindings. "It's been a hell of a lot better than the years before that."

"When did you leave the lab?" Billie asks.

"We didn't leave," he growls showing the first real break in his calm demeanor. With hot anger in his steel eye, he snaps. "We escaped. Four years, two months, and thirteen days ago."

"Still counting days," Xander surmises, raking his fingers through his hair. "I know what that's like. Counting days means you're afraid to believe you're free from the abuse you've sustained. The threat is still out there." He crosses his arms over his chest and grunts. "It's not an ideal way to live, Randall."

"Like I'd listen to anything you'd have to say," Randall snaps, glaring at Xander. "I'd love to remove the threat, to no longer have to look over my shoulder, to not have to hide who we are. But that option is not available to me." He looks to Clyde and then Owen, his alpha. "To us."

Owen is trying to say something through his gag, and I walk over to remove it. Eyes glowering, he growls through saliva-covered lips and spits out. "This goes to the top! The wolves in charge, they're leaders of packs!" His dark eyes land on Xander, and he snarls. "One looked very similar to you, and I'm fairly confident at least one of them is on the Shifter High Council."

"Was it him?" Billie inquires uncrossing her legs and leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees. Her eyes scanning each one of the shifters, she hitches a brow. "One of you answer me. Was it him, or did this person just look like him?"

Owen's splotchy cheeks puff in and out with his panting breath while staring daggers at Xander and Billie, refusing to answer. Randall thumps the back of his head against the post and rolls it from side to side, groaning. "Looked like him, but it's not him." Inhaling an uneven breath, he relents. "Last time I saw him he was much older and well. . ." He takes several sniffs "The scent is completely different." Gazing at Xander, one side of his lips tips up into a crooked smile. "Not to sound like I'm hitting on you, but you smell way better than him. His smell was"—his face pinches in distaste— "like a bad car accident."

"Tar and rubber," Billie offers.

"Yeah," Randall agrees with a cautious bob of his head. "Perhaps a little burnt even."

"Gross, and it totally lingers," Billie adds with a bleh .

"Exactly, shit stayed and gave me a headache," Randall comments more at ease.

Bille shakes her head and raises her brows. "Well, if we're thinking of the same guy, none of us here are fans of him and"—I can tell she's forcing herself not to look at Xander, not to expose too much— "you're not the only one who's life he's fucked up. You're far from the only one to suffer pain at his hand or by his command." Billie adjusts in her chair to turn and look at me, eyes pleading. I step over to her and squat down, slinging my arm around her shoulders while placing several kisses along her temple and cheek. She does the same to me before resting the side of her head against mine and addresses Randall once more. "Ethan and I are both orphans. As you know, I escaped and managed to evade the horrible fate you and your pack-mates had to endure. I'd rather not have any other kids out there lose their parents, especially not those to be used in experiments. I have no idea how this will all play out. I can't have my human family put in any more danger than they already have been because of your pack's presence in the human world."

"If you didn't intervene, none of this would have fuckin' happened, girlie!" Owen spits, his face red with his hot anger.

Billie is up and out of her chair in a blink of an eye. I follow her. Her eyes glow as she takes hold of Owen's chin and shoves his head hard against the pole. He shouts out with pain. "My family was in danger!" She snarls in his face. "A human against a shifter who has a healer in his corner is far from a fair feckin' fight, dickwad! We didn't stop the fight. Clyde still had his shifter strength. You've led him to believe taking a beating and healing was the way to a title instead of fucking training. Our intervention didn't cost him the title. Lack of training, poor leadership, and shifter ego is what cost him the title." She shoves his head into the pole again, this time with a resounding clang as his head bounces off it from the force. Coming to standing, she takes hold of my hand. Hers is shaking with rage and exhaustion, and I cup my other hand over both of ours.

She gazes at all three shifters for a long moment, nibbling on her lip. "I would think about what you want to happen from here on out. Not just tomorrow but ten years from now. You have information. You have experience that could help save others that are being held like you were. You could possibly prevent other children from becoming orphans. You have value." She leans into my chest, and I wrap my arm around her. "But—" She giggles in a maniacal way. I'm pretty sure it's one of those too-tired and overwhelmed-beyond-comprehension giggles. "I assure you, I'm not in charge here. I'm new to this world, and I have no desire to be in charge." Swinging her gaze between Alessandro and Xander, her lips pull down in a frown, and her voice drops. "I'm sorry that this has all come down on us, and in particular the both of you. I'm sorry I'm so new to the shifter world and that I must lean on others as heavily as I am. But like Micky said, it's happened. What it means and how it plays out is up to us." Her gaze slides to Randall. Standing taller in my embrace, she arches a brow at him. "I'd prefer all of this shit to actually mean something one day—a turning point or the start of something good growing from something bad." She turns to Owen and scoffs. "But if that's not possible, I'd like to at least feel comfortable in knowing my family is protected. You three know they're humans, and knowing about shifters is a no-go for humans. Therefore, you're a threat to my family."

Billie tugs on her ear and glances at Alessandro, Heydar, Assad, and Xander. "If... if they choose to help out, if they want to try and make a future for others better than their pasts"—her gaze rolls over Randall and Clyde— "then I would suggest not leaving them in an environment so similar to the one they've already had to endure." Her eyes grow soft as she stares at Clyde's wolf. "They've spent enough time in basements and cages already. The start of a new life shouldn't begin how the old one ended." Both Randall and Clyde's wolf exhale breaths they've been clearly holding in. She turns back to Xander. "Can I go upstairs for a little and lie down?"

He comes over to her and brushes a few loose strands of hair off her face. "Of course, il mio cuore . Go up with Ethan and Jax. I'll stay here and see what we need to do with this."

"I'll stay as well," I add, even though what I really want to do is lie down with her in my arms. "Jax has been down here all day, not to mention shifting and fighting this morning. I had a break earlier, and I'm not leaving you."

She turns in my arms and presses up on her tiptoes to give me several kisses on my cheek and lips. "You okay?" she whispers, eyes searching mine.

"You're alive, my love. I'm better than okay," I murmur. "Alive but in need of some rest." I pat her bum, and she drops down on her heels.

Jax steps up to her with open arms. "Come on, Rocky. Let's go snuggle hard on the couch and try to figure out why Marcus has so many freakin' bodywashes."

She walks into his embrace, and he picks her up into his arms, her legs binding around his waist. She giggles against the crook of his neck. "Sounds good."