He glanced at me, and his jaw tightened. “All right. Because it will worry you if I don’t, I’ll tell you Alec’s story.” He stood and walked around to sit at his desk, as though he needed both the distance and the physical shield. Then he placed his elbows on the surface and spoke in a detached tone. “Alec didn’t change early, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was textbook, full-infection wulfleng, which was likely why I missed it.” His mouth pulled straight. “He passed the training with flying colors, not a hitch or hiccup. He seemed so balanced. We had problems finding his anger triggers. I worried that he wouldn’t have enough emotion to carry him through the shift.” He fell silent, his brows shadowing his eyes. “We all use emotion to take us through, even the experienced wulfan. Anger works best—it’s easiest to evoke and lasts the longest. The trick is once the change is over, to let go of the fury. Or the wulf takes control.”
Chris turned his head to look out the large window beside him. “The first moon came, and Alec changed without a problem—into a damned good-looking wulfleng. I taught him how to move and run with his new body; he adjusted so well that after a week, I let him go home. I had no idea he was a ticking time bomb.”
Watching him, I realized Chris had a tell when he was stressed—the skin around his eyes tightened, and if you looked closely, the eyelids trembled ever so slightly.
With a deep breath, he continued. “After he left here, he lived in an apartment in Winnipeg. His life came together, and he’d make the trip out here a few times a month to run with us. Everything was fine for the first three months.” He paused again, his eyes unfocused. “Along with enhanced vision and strength, wulfleng acquire sharp hearing. You know what the walls are like in some apartments.” He looked at me. “One night, he heard the man a few doors over abusing his young son.”
My expression must have portrayed my disgust.
“Yeah. Well, Alec broke through the door. I think by the time he killed the father, he was full wulfleng—anyway, clearly the wulf was in control. He left the son unharmed and jumped through the third-story window. It was only pure luck that the only witness was a traumatized seven-year-old.”
He shook his head. “If Alec had regained control, I could have helped him. This isn’t Texas, and I would have given him a chance to explain. But something inside him had snapped. I got wind of what had happened from the city enforcers, so I tracked Alec through Winnipeg and west of the city. He left a trail that was hard to miss: a dead homeless man, a stray dog, and six sheep. Killing without purpose, he attacked anything he bumped into. I found him cowering in an abandoned building.” Chris paused, and I almost stopped him. I could piece together what had gone down, and I didn’t want to hear it. But I remembered Josh saying that Chris needed to talk and figured I could stand it. The man didn’t have to be helping me.
Chris rubbed a hand over his face. “I remember his expression, the madness in his eyes. I shifted to human and tried talking to him. I thought me being human would help him come back.” He looked straight at me. “I’ll never know why he attacked. Maybe he retained enough sense to remember what he’d done and didn’t want to live with murdering two humans. Maybe his own memories had shattered his mind.” He shook his head. “I didn’t see it coming. I trusted him. Even though I can shift like lightning, and I did, he almost tore me in two. Josh thinks Alec meant to kill and missed, but I think he had sufficient opportunity, if he’d truly wanted to. As it was, he slit me wide open before I put him down.”
I remembered the long claw marks across his body and shuddered. No wonder Josh worried. It wasn’t an uprising that almost killed Chris—it was one of his own.
“Good thing I’d told Jason where I was. He runs the Manitoba enforcers,” Chris continued, sounding grim. “He found me unconscious, in wulfan form, bleeding to death. It was touch and go for a while. I couldn’t shift back to human for a week. I needed the wulf’s strength, shifting to human would have finished me.”
Chris’s eyes swung to me, and the shadows had returned. But he wanted me to hear this. “After Alec died, Jason did some digging. He discovered Alec had been sexually abused as a young boy, by an uncle. His aunt—she was the one Jason spoke with—walked in on it one night. She stopped the abuse, but the uncle was never prosecuted. Cancer took him a few years after.” Chris scrubbed a hand through his hair, a gesture I now associated with frustration. “Alec must have buried the memories deep, because they didn’t emerge during the training. Not a glimmer, or I would have seen it.”
He fell silent for a moment, then pinned me with his dark eyes. “That’s why you have to deal with your secrets. The wulf will always find them, you can’t hide from him.” He measured me with his steady gaze.
I nodded and glanced at Dillon’s drawing. I had issues, no doubt. But now that Chris knew about them, he’d help me. My eyes fell on Chloe’s portrait, and I realized how confused my feelings were. My instincts were to protect, and yet—I didn’t trust her. She could tie me in knots. The thought gave me pause. Like she does Dillon?
“I’m not sure I believe Chloe,” I said, the words out before I’d considered them.
Chris’s gaze sharpened. “Peter believes she’s helping Dillon because she feels guilty about what happened to him.” His expression said if I
