“Are you guys done?” I snap at them, annoyed they aren’t focused on the task at hand. “Ransom, Ranger, take the upstairs.” I gesture to the metal spiral staircase across the room. “Dad and Remi, you guys go that way, and I’ll head down this hallway. Holler if you find him.”
I don’t wait for their replies. Instead, I turn away and move down the hall. I’m not sure what’s at the end of it, and I don’t know how many times I’ve accidentally walked into an ambush while hunting rogue wolves.
Usually, Sawyer is here to watch my back, but when we left, I wasn’t ready to have him join us. Somehow it hurts more that Sawyer went behind my back and helped Pru. Sawyer has been the one person I could really rely on for the past five years, and to have him betray me—I’m struggling to move past it.
When my ears suddenly pick up on the erratic heartbeat behind the last door, I wish I had him here as reinforcement. I pause outside the door and listen to whoever is on the other side. My wolf breathes in the air and picks up on the wolf scent that surrounds the nervous person who stands on the opposite side. I don’t hear or smell another person with them. I step back and ram my foot against the door with all my strength. The wood door splinters and flies open, slamming against the wall behind it before completely coming off its hinges.
A man with golden hair and bright green eyes that remind me of Pru’s stands in the middle of a room that looks like an office. He wears a nice dark-blue suit with a patterned tie hanging loosely around his neck. The smell of fear surrounds him.
Good.
“Are you William?”
“I—Who are you?” he stutters. “What do you want?”
“I want you to answer my fucking question. Are you William?” I growl at him while advancing farther into the room.
“Y–yes, I’m William. What do you want?” he repeats.
I grab the back of the rolling office chair and swing it around. “Take a seat, William. I have a couple questions.”
“Please don’t hurt me. I’ll give you whatever you want,” he begs as his skinny legs shake, and he drops into the chair. Watching how he cowers and trembles makes me question if he’s truly related to Genevieve and Pru. It’s almost pathetic how much stronger and braver they are than him.
“Good, because I’m not leaving here until I have the information I need.” I hear footsteps running down the hallway, and soon, my dad and brothers appear at the damaged doorway. “Found him.”
“He looks like Genevieve,” my dad comments when he looks William over.
“Genevieve? What does my sister have to do with this?” William demands. “I haven’t seen her since she was twenty—she ran off with some man. That was almost twenty-four years ago.”
“She died fourteen years ago when your employer hunted her down and slaughtered her.” I perch myself on the edge of the desk and glare down at him. William may say he doesn’t know anything about Genevieve and her death, but when I tell him she’s dead, there’s no surprise or remorse on his face. He just looks blankly back at me. “And now that same employer of yours has my mate, and you’re going to tell me where Nicolai is holding her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” William pales and shakes his head. “Yes, I work for Nicolai, but I don’t work directly with him. I haven’t seen him in months.”
“I don’t believe you,” I snarl at him. “Everything about you right now tells me you’re lying. Your pulse is fast, you refuse to make eye contact—you’re a horrible liar, frankly. So let me ask you again, where would Nicolai be keeping her?”
“I don’t know! I swear!” His voice shakes when he speaks. “I just do finance work for Mr. Volkov. I’m not involved with that side of the company.”
“That side of the company?” Dad steps forward and crosses his arms. “What exactly is Nicolai’s company?”
“It’s a medical supply company,” William explains. “I swear it’s a legit company.”
“You make sure it looks like a legit company,” Remi comments as she walks in with a tablet in her hand. “You should really password protect your tablet, anyone could pick it up and look through it.” Remi pauses and cocks her head to the side. “What is the breeding program?”
All the color drains from William’s face, and his eyes widen, but he doesn’t answer her.
I’m about to reach for his jugular and squeeze the answer out of him, but my father beats me too it. The alpha’s power that flows through my father’s body begins to radiate into the room. My siblings, being more submissive than I am, all take an instinctive step back, but I stand my ground.
“She asked you a question—what is the breeding program?” My dad bites out between clenched teeth.
“It’s a program to further our species’ advancement,” William coughs out. “We’re trying to strengthen the wolf shifter species.”
“What does that mean?” I question.
“It means we were tired of waiting for some prophecy about a white wolf to come true, so we took science into our own hands, and now we’ve created the first-ever crossbreeds. We weed out the genes that make each species weak and implant the strong genes into one embryo. You should see what we’ve created—they’re magnificent. They’re stronger than you’ll ever be, and every day we’re learning ways to make them stronger still.”
Some people believe the White Wolf Prophecy is pure fiction and believe it to be a fairytale more than anything. And then there are people like my mother who believe it will one day come true. I’m one of the people who have trouble believing it is real. While I think it would be great if the prophecy were true, and it could break the vicious cycle of our low fertility rates and slow
