Chapter 5

Chapter

Five

MIKAEL

C rossing the border was easier than I had anticipated. I kept my mirror shades high up on the bridge of my nose and didn't hesitate to hand over the bullshit passport claiming I was a registered human. I didn't breathe again until I was back on the road, and then I let myself feel the quick, pulsing waves of panic as I threw Nadya's information into the GPS and began making my way toward her hideout. I'd never met her, but I'd worked with her enough over the last few years that it felt strange I didn't know her face.

I'd met her husband more than once though—fighting for months on end with Yasin by my side. I remembered the ache I felt when she called me after the treaty and told me he'd been taken and eventually killed. I felt helpless at the time, as powerless and impotent as a human because both governments were working against us to keep it all silent. A part of me never believed enough of us would be willing to rebel, and even now, I wasn't sure they'd resist if we began to lose our hold on power.

But I had to have some faith, because that was the sort of Wolf I'd always been. I knew too many who rushed into battle believing they wouldn't survive. And far too many of them had become self-fulfilling prophecies. I was tired of burying people—those I knew, total strangers, Wolves serving under my command. I was just…

Tired.

We were all goddamn tired.

An hour and a half into the drive, I was finally approaching the coast, and I hit a sandy road where the GPS quit working. From Nadya's instructions, I knew that meant I was less than half an hour away, and eventually—along the wide expanse of nothing—came the ocean. Then, not long after that, the little house that stuck out like a sore thumb with nothing around it.

But I could sense there weren't any threats out there. The Gulf sat to the left, desert to the right. There was a city not far from there, full of tourists and vacationers, and I wondered what it would be like to have a life where you could embrace leisure—even for a short while.

I didn't let myself dwell on it, though. Nadya promised me time to track Danyal, then a way to get over the Atlantic since she was as sure as I was that they weren't keeping him on this continent. My heart began to ache again at what could be happening to him—at what I might find when I arrived.

I'd been a fucking moron when it came to him, but then again, I'd never been the smartest when it came to my heart. I let the death of my mate ruin me for the one person who could get under my skin even deeper than Galen. And it wasn't fair to Danyal.

But I knew, in this moment as I rolled to a stop in front of the little house, if I got a second chance with him, I wouldn't squander it. If he'd let me, this time, I'd keep him.

Taking a breath, I hopped out of the truck and grabbed my bag from the back. I walked up slowly, knowing Nadya was scenting me, and I wanted to give her time before barging in. I stood on the little porch and waited, and eventually, the door opened.

She looked everything and nothing like I had imagined. She was at least a foot shorter than I had pictured her, and I couldn't help but love how utterly disarming she was. Her slight build would paint her as an easy victim.

But her training and power would cull any human or Wolf who got too close.

She was wearing light linen to combat the pressing heat, and her soft blue hijab blew in the wind as she gave me a nod and stepped aside for me to enter. "Sorry it's not very welcoming," she said as she shut the door and locked it behind her.

I glanced around, finding a prayer mat in the middle of the living room floor, a couple of coffee cups on the kitchen table, and a massive computer set up along the far wall with data I couldn't hope to understand scrolling across three of the screens.

"It's exactly what I pictured," I told her, and she laughed as she swept past me and rolled up her mat. She slipped it into a bag and hung it on a hook, then dragged her palms down the front of her pants like she was nervous. "Thanks for letting me stay here. I know it's probably not great for you."

She grimaced but shrugged and moved to the kitchen, reaching into the fridge for two bottles of water. "I've had to compromise a lot lately, but it's worth it. If we can get the people who took Danyal…"

"And who killed your husband," I said quietly. "I'd do it for Yasin alone."

She swallowed thickly, and her smile was weak, but it reached her eyes as she handed off one of the bottles. "He liked you. I was happy to work with whoever Kor sent, but I'm glad it was you."

That settled something in me, and I gestured to the computers as I took a long swallow. "Are you getting a lot done?"

"Enough, but the power out here's weak, and it's taking forever to decrypt these files." She moved to the desk and set her hand on the chair. "I don't think we're going to find much more than we expected. It'll be enough to put Kasher under a microscope. It might even be enough to shut down all of the public labs, but…"

"But we both know there's more than that going on," I finished for her.

She nodded, her eyes flaring a little, and I understood her pain and frustration. "So far as I've been able to track, Alexei Kasher's been stateside. I managed to get a lock on who I think is his father, and he was on the move yesterday. He and a small entourage boarded a private plane bound for Nice."

"Nice?" I repeated. "As in…"

"As in the C?te d'Azur," she said. "I have the plane tracked, so I think I can pinpoint their location down to a few square miles, maybe more if I'm unlucky."

I let out a sharp breath and shook my head. "That's a lot more than I was expecting. Have enough people told you that you're a damn genius?"

Her smile was a little wider this time. "Plenty," she said, then her smile faded. "You're most likely going to be on your own though, and from what I can tell he's got Wolves with him." I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn't worried about that, but then she went on. "Feral Wolves."

I couldn't help my shudder. It was a condition so rare to our people, it was almost unheard of. It was the scary stories parents told their Alpha teens—something that could ruin them if they didn't learn control. But it wasn't something that actually happened.

Mindless, slavering beasts, primed to be put under control and enslaved by a sociopathic master. There were old folktales about human emperors using feral Alphas in the colosseum, but there had never been any evidence of them.

But it was no surprise to me that Kasher had managed to find a way to tap into our genetic code and undo who—and what—we were.

"You have to be prepared to take them out. No matter who they are," she said, and the darkness in her tone said that I wasn't going to like what I found.

But I was willing. If it meant getting Danyal and bringing him home, I'd do whatever I needed to. "Is that what Kasher did to Zane?"

Nadya looked at me for a long time, her dark eyes steady as they captured my gaze. "Yes. From the little footage I've managed to decode, it looks like he used a series of physical torture and injections on him. I'm not sure how much of him survived it."

My throat went tight. "And no updates…"

"Some," she said. "He went willingly with Orion, and he's been functional since they made it to Canada. Non-violent," she said even softer this time.

I blew out a puff of air. "So, there's hope."

"There is," she said. "But don't count on it, especially if you come across a Wolf who's been in Kasher's care longer than Zane. That was just a few weeks. Some of them have been with him for years."

I couldn't stop my claws from dropping, the desire to lunge across the ocean and rip Kasher's throat out almost overwhelming. It took several moments of catching my breath and trying to convince my heart to calm down before I could speak. "I'll kill him."

"I don't know many who'd stop you, but it might be best if he was taken alive," she said. "Alive, he's useful."

"Dead, and he can't do this again," I pointed out.

She nodded. "But he's already set up his successor, and every day, Alexei's popularity has been growing. Amongst the Wolves in the city too. Not just the humans."

I wanted to rage, to scream, to grab them all by their faces and force them to see the atrocities committed by that family—by all of the humans who had been in charge for too damn long. But I doubted it would make a difference.

If they were willing to be shoved into segregation, tortured, murdered, and still find a way to believe that they had our best interest in mind, there would be no making them see reason. We'd just have to overpower them.

But the reality was, Nadya was right. Dead, Kasher couldn't continue his own work, but he'd already set up a system that was primed and ready to begin another genocide. One that would see us all reduced to beasts. One that would have the humans stealing what power they could from us, and once they had what they wanted, they could dispose of us, and I doubted anyone would care.

Nadya showed me to my room, which was on the other side of the house from hers, and it was set up a lot more comfortably than I had been expecting. "It's not much," she said again, and I couldn't stop my laugh.

"I slept in my truck twice on the way here. This is luxury to me right now." I dropped my bag on the end of the bed, then turned to her. "I don't know how to thank you for the work you've been doing."

At that, her lips thinned. "Yes, Mikael, you do. You can do exactly what you've been doing and put a stop to all of this. You can free us."

I swallowed thickly, wanting to tell her that I didn't have the power. That my strength was limited, and I was nothing but a war-torn mess on the inside. But I realized, so was she. She might not have been on the front lines, but she'd seen power and devastation just like the rest of us.

She'd lost everything to these humans.

The least I could do was make sure no other Wolves would suffer the way we had.

"Has it gotten easier?" she asked as she backed a step out of the room. When I lifted my brow, she let out a small sigh. "Galen."

I expected to feel a wince of pain, but instead, there was just that slow burn of grief I didn't think I'd ever lose. "Sometimes. Sometimes it's just a dull ache."

"But other times, it's like you're bleeding out?" she said—and it sounded like a question, but I knew it wasn't. "I know I should move on and find someone else. I know he wasn't the one —whatever that is. It's what I'd be telling someone in my position."

"Is that what you'd tell me?" I asked her.

She gave me a knowing look, and I realized I'd spilled to her once or twice about Danyal in our long, late-night phone conversations where it was too easy to tear little pieces of myself and offer them to a faceless stranger who had suffered the loss of a spouse just like I had. And she was the only Wolf who knew.

"Have you spoken to him at all?"

I dragged a hand down my face. "I took the coward's way out. He thinks I don't remember him."

"He deserves better than you."

The words were vaguely cruel, but I knew she only meant them as the honesty she always gave me every time we talked. "I know. I'm hoping he'll take pity on a fool like me the moment I reach him."

She said nothing else, giving me a last nod before shutting the door behind her, and when the silence settled around me, I sank to the edge of the bed and let out a shuddering breath. It would be a miracle if I could find Danyal. It would be more than that if I could get us both out alive.

But I was willing to try.

And, at the very least, I was willing to die before letting him go.