Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler

Chapter 21

As he slowly woke, Trey couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was time to get a new mattress. Because this one was uncomfortable as hell. Like he was sleeping on a damn rock. The pillow was comfy, though. Not to mention smelled absolutely scrumptious.

His eyes fluttered open, confusion hitting him as he caught sight of his old friend Kyson strapped to some kind of rack across the room. Less than a second later, the memories came rushing back and Trey was up and charging the lightweight metal door of the cage, claws and fangs extending fast. There was no way in hell that grating would keep him from reaching his friend. Then he’d find that vita and deal with her once and for all.

“Stop!”

The words were so urgent that Trey’s boots slid across the concrete as he pulled up short of the door. The scent that Trey had thought merely part of a dream turned out to be real and he spun around to see Samantha sitting on the floor, looking absolutely terrified but, thankfully, alive. The sight of her took his breath away.

He saw the heavy leather collar around her neck before he took a step in her direction, and the rage that filled him made a savage growl rumble up from deep in his chest. He reached out, intending to shred the damn offensive thing off her with a single swipe of his claws.

When she backed away from him with fear in her eyes, it was like a ton of bricks had been dropped into the bottom of his stomach. That was when he realized his fangs and claws were out and he’d partially shifted, and that in his anger, his eyes were glowing frigging neon yellow.

And Samantha could see it all.

Trey jerked his hands back, trying to force his fangs to retract so he could tell Samantha that he’d never hurt her. Then he’d tell her how sorry he was, that he should have told her that he was a werewolf earlier, and how he wasn’t the monster she must certainly believe him to be.

Then he heard the soft buzzing coming from the collar and saw Samantha’s body stiffen. Her face went deathly pale.

“You can’t touch the collar,” she hissed in a painful gasp.

Her eyes slid to the side and she looked into the room beyond. Trey followed her gaze, finding the stocky man from his apartment with the beady eyes and the wide shoulders standing outside the cage, a smile on his face and a little black box in his hand.

“That’s right,” the man said. “Don’t touch the collar and don’t touch the door. Or your girlfriend pays the price. Though I’m not too sure she’ll want to be your girlfriend anymore. Not now that she knows what you are.”

The man turned away from the cage, his finger brushing over the top of the little black box in his hand. Samantha immediately slumped sideways, her body relaxing and a sigh of relief slipping out. Trey was immediately at her side, catching her before she could collapse all the way to the floor. He threw a glare at the man across the room, making sure the asshole could see Trey’s hands were nowhere near the collar.

Trey paused for a moment to take in his surroundings, confused and concerned in alternating degrees by the creepy medical equipment, the big vat of red goo with the heavily scarred teenager inside, a living, breathing Kyson strapped to a rack on the far side of the room, and an exhausted young woman on the floor next to him. He couldn’t see her entire face, but Trey was almost certain the woman was the woman who had a thing for Kyson, Shaylee Bright. He couldn’t fathom how she’d ended up here. Then again, he had no idea how any of them had ended up here.

Wherever here was.

It was only when he looked back at Samantha and where his hand was rubbing little circles in the middle of her back that Trey realized his claws were still extended. So were his fangs. He’d been so freaked out that he hadn’t even considered shifting back.

“So you’re a werewolf?” she said softly as she gazed up at him, not looking quite as freaked out as he expected her to be.

Still, the question caught him off guard so badly that all he could do was sit there and stare, head spinning as his mind tried to come up with something coherent to say. Finally, when nothing rational would come, he gave up and simply nodded, surprised when she didn’t skitter to the far side of the cage.

“How long have you known?” he asked, finally getting himself under control enough to banish his fang and claws.

“I’ve known that you and your SWAT teammates were hiding something big from the rest of the world for about two years now.” She gave him a small smile. “But the werewolf thing? Louis dropped that particular bomb on me a few hours ago, after his minions dragged your unconscious body into the room. I have to admit, it’s a secret I would have rather learned from you. But if I’m being honest, I can’t complain too much since I’ve been keeping a lot of secrets from you, too.”

He’d suspected as much. But since he’d been hiding things, too, he couldn’t hold it against her.

Trey sighed, knowing it was time for a full confession. Unfortunately, there were a few other things they needed to talk about first. He tugged Samantha closer, moving them back toward the crappy mattress near the wall, carefully pulling her into his lap. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the guy with the collar remote eyed them suspiciously. Trey kept his hands where the man could see them, not wanting to give him a reason to push the button on the remote. The thought of Samantha getting hurt because of him made him want to throw up.

“Look,” he whispered softly. “I know we have a lot to talk about when it comes to the secrets we’ve been keeping from each other, but could you maybe bring me up to speed first? I’d really like to know who that man with the remote is, where we are, and how you ended up here. And if you happen to know how the hell Kyson is alive when we both saw the paperwork declaring him dead, that would be nice, too.”

Trey thought she might complain, considering the fangs and claws he’d been flashing not thirty seconds ago. But all she did was throw a quick look at the dumbass with the remote for the collar, then leaned in closer. The move made it nearly impossible to miss how good she smelled. Damn, he couldn’t believe he was thinking about how distracting her scent was at a time like this.

“That might be difficult since I barely understand it myself,” she said softly. “For starters, the guy holding the remote is Rogi. He’s basically the muscle who gets rid of the body parts and does anything else Louis tells him to do. And yeah, before you ask, Louis is the Butcher by the way. He stumbled across a way to resurrect the dead, starting with your friend, Kyson. But he only did that so he can perfect the process before trying it on his son, the kid floating in the tank full of red goo.”

Trey opened his mouth to ask the first of dozens of questions, but she continued before he could.

“There’s more,” she said. “The resurrection process apparently didn’t take, at least not completely. Kyson’s body is slowly dying, part by part. Shaylee says it’s because Kyson has no desire to live…at least not like this. Louis has been amputating parts off Kyson as they fail and replacing them with the pieces he’s taken from his victims, some of whom he’s been stealing from the institute’s morgue. And oh yeah, he’s been setting Hugh up to take the fall for all of this. When I stumbled across the trail and thought Hugh was the Butcher, I went to talk to Louis, not realizing he was involved. That’s how I ended up down here. We’re in the basement of Louis’s Westover Hills home, by the way.”

“Damn,” Trey whispered, trying to wrap his head around everything Samantha had told him. “Louis is the Butcher? I never saw that coming. And resurrecting the dead? If Kyson wasn’t right here in front of me looking like something out of a horror movie, I never would have believed it.”

Samantha leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder as well as she could considering the heavy collar around her neck. “Trust me, I get it. I’ve seen some of what Louis has done to Kyson and I’m still having a hard time dealing with it. It’s a lot to take in.”

“And Shaylee?” Trey asked, motioning toward where the woman still sat on the floor near Kyson, looking utterly exhausted. “How did she get involved in this?”

Samantha moved her face just enough to look over at the woman, sighing softly. “She had the bad luck to be living in the woods near the Trinity River body dump location and saw Kyson. Rogi grabbed her and they’ve been holding her as leverage against Kyson ever since. They’ve done a number on your friend, Trey. Louis claims he barely remembers anything about his old life, but he loves that woman with everything he has left.”

He groaned. “This is so screwed up. Kyson’s whole life has been one long uphill battle of pain and struggle, from his so-called family to the war, to the years he spent trying to recover from his injuries, and then being homeless. Even after death, it seems he still can’t catch a break.”

“Unfortunately, it probably isn’t going to get much better anytime soon,” Samantha said. “From what Nadia told me, Louis is planning on using your werewolf DNA to improve Kyson’s healing abilities to stop his body from rejecting the transplants. After seeing Louis’s methods, I’m guessing that means another round of painful experiments for Kyson.”

Trey realized that answered one of the questions he hadn’t gotten around to asking yet—why they hadn’t killed him in the first place. He was about to ask how Louis had figured out what he was when it occurred to him that Samantha had mentioned Nadia. In all the craziness, he’d completely forgotten about the vita.

“How is Nadia involved with Louis?” he asked, sniffing around for the overly sweet smell he’d come to associate with the vita lamia and finding nothing. “We only picked up her connection to the Butcher case late last night, then spent the rest of the time looking for her. We thought she was the one who’d kidnapped you.”

“You sound like you already know more about her than I do,” Samantha said. “I didn’t know she was involved in this at all until she walked in the door shortly after Rogi and Kyson brought you here. I’m not sure what it means, but she said something about feeding on you. She implied that when Louis is done with you, she gets to have you. In fact, she compared you to wagyu beef. And…um…you may not believe this, but her eyes changed and got all big and buggy when she threatened me earlier. I’m assuming Nadia’s something like you, but different.”

Trey couldn’t help but laugh a little, even if the part about Nadia wanting to feed on him was totally disgusting. “Like me, Nadia is a supernatural. But that’s the only thing we have in common. She’s something called a vita lamia. It’s a kind of vampire that feeds on a person’s life force—their energy. So yeah, we’re different.”

He could practically hear the wheels turning in Samantha’s head as she processed what he’d told her. He had to admit, she was taking all of this exceptionally well. Maybe he should have taken Connor’s suggestion and told her what he was sooner.

“So, my coworker is a life-sucking vampire.” Samantha pulled back to look at him. “And you’re a werewolf.”

The word hung in the air between them and Trey’s heart stopped a little. This was the moment he’d been dreading and now that it was here, he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He’d gone up against bad guys trying to kill him more times than he could count, but he’d never been as terrified as he was right now. If Samantha rejected him, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle it.

Somewhere inside, his inner wolf howled.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he said softly. “But I promise you I’m not the monster you think I am.”

Samantha recoiled, stiffening in his lap. “I don’t think you’re a monster. I could never think that!” She reached up to cup his jaw. “You’re the kindest, sweetest, most gentle man I’ve ever met. You have something in your blood that makes you unique. That’s all. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

Gazing into her blue eyes right then, Trey believed every word she’d said. Just like that, the stranglehold of fear around him disappeared—if the sigh of contentment his inner wolf let out was any indication, it was as relieved as he was. There was still the subject of soul mates to talk about, but they could explore that later. At the moment, knowing she cared for him was enough.

He smiled. “If I didn’t think that jackass with the remote would zap you, I’d kiss you right now.”

Samantha grimaced, darting a glance in Rogi’s direction. “Since we can’t do that, why don’t you tell me how you became a werewolf? Did you get attacked and bitten while crossing the Yorkshire moors of Northern England or something?”

“Yorkshire moors?” He lifted a brow. “That’s oddly specific.”

She gave him a sheepish look. “Sorry. An American Werewolf in London is the total sum of my knowledge on the subject of werewolves. If not England, then where?”

“Afghanistan,” he said simply. “But I wasn’t attacked and bitten. That isn’t how it works. Some people have a gene in their DNA that turns on if they go through a stressful, traumatic situation. A switch is flipped, and poof, you get a werewolf.”

“A gene. Of course. The ambush you and Kyson lived through?” she said, though it really wasn’t a question. “The one where Kyson was so badly injured.”

“Yeah.”

She chewed on her lip for a moment. “What happened to you?”

The way she said the words made it sound like she really didn’t want to know.

He swallowed hard. “I got shot multiple times in the back. If I didn’t have the werewolf gene, I would have bled out.”

Her blue eyes glistened with tears. “I for one thank God you do have it. If you didn’t…” She shook her head, unable to finish.

“I know.” He let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered how things would have been different if Kyson had turned into a werewolf that night instead of me. Would he have gotten this charmed life I live, while I ended up in a homeless shelter?”

Samantha reached up to cup his jaw in her hand again. “I won’t pretend that I’ve ever had to deal with anything like what you and Kyson went through, and I won’t claim to know him as well as you, but I can’t believe your friend would want you to blame yourself for how his life turned out. You moved to Dallas simply to be close enough to help him. You did everything you could.”

“And he ended up killing himself anyway,” Trey said quietly, realizing how bizarre it was to say that when Kyson was alive and strapped to a table not twenty feet away. “Doesn’t that mean I didn’t do enough?”

“No.” Samantha slid her hand down to rest it over his heart. “It means that life is complicated, and no matter how hard we try, sometimes it doesn’t go the way we expect. Then again, maybe everything that’s happening right now is life’s way of giving you another chance to change the ending of the story.”

They didn’t talk for a long time after that, and as insane and dangerous as the situation might have been, it felt unbelievably good to have Samantha in his lap, her cheek resting against his shoulder.

“I’ve wanted to tell you the truth for a while now. About what I am,” he said softly. “But every time I tried, something got in the way. I know that sounds like I’m making excuses but revealing a secret like this isn’t easy. Especially when it’s not only my life that would be affected if that information got out to the wrong people.”

Samantha nodded her head against his shoulder. “I can understand that. But you have to believe I would never have told anyone about you or your teammates.”

“I know that now,” he murmured against her hair. “But you’ll have to forgive me for being a little doubtful before, especially since I stumbled across all the stuff you have tacked to the walls of your guest room.”

Pulling back from his chest, she looked up at him in alarm—and maybe a little embarrassment, too. “You went in there?”

He nodded. “That night after learning about Kyson. I came out of the bathroom and the door to the room was ajar. I’m not sure why I even looked, other than the fact that I know you’ve been interested in my pack and me for a while. It’s obvious you’ve been spending a lot of your free time checking up on us. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so scary. I’ve never had a stalker before.”

Samantha let out a little snort of laughter that brought another smile to his face, even in this screwed up situation.

“At first, I was simply curious,” she admitted. “There were so many strange things going on around you and the SWAT team that I couldn’t let it go. You might not know this about me yet, but I have a problem walking away from a good mystery. I guess at some point curiosity turned into obsession. I had to know what you were hiding.”

That answer hurt worse than Trey could have ever imagined. “Is that why you used that favor to get me to ask you out on a date?” he asked, hating how vulnerable the question made him sound. “So you could get closer to me and my pack and learn more about us?”

The fact that she didn’t respond right away was all the answer Trey needed, and he turned to look away as his heart—which was still fragile despite the fact that she’d accepted his werewolf side—fractured a little bit more.

“In the beginning, yeah, that was part of it.” The words were so soft that he had a difficult time hearing them, even with his enhanced sense. “I realized I’d gathered as much information on you and your teammates as I could from a distance and figured that if I could get closer to you, I might learn more. When you and the other guys came by the institute, it just happened.”

“So all that time we spent together—slept together—was just a way to get more information so you could solve a damn puzzle?” he growled, the pain of her betrayal stabbing him like a knife. “Was breaking that coffee mug in your kitchen really an accident or did you contrive that entire situation so you could get a sample of my blood?”

Samantha lifted her head with a gasp, but she didn’t deny it. Before he realized what he was doing, he moved to set her aside on the mattress, instincts screaming at him to put some distance between them, even if the cage wasn’t big enough to allow that.

But then he felt a gentle hand on his arm, stopping him. When he didn’t bother to look at her, Samantha’s other hand came up to capture his jaw and slowly turn his face so he didn’t have a choice but to look at her.

“I’m not proud of it, but I started seeing you with mixed intentions,” she admitted. “Yes, I wanted to learn your secrets, but I also felt myself drawn to you and I couldn’t ignore the pull. Somehow, I thought I could both spy on you and steal your blood for a DNA sample while still being with you. But it all changed at some point. I know this is going to sound like a load of crap, but something happened after I started spending time with you. I found myself less concerned with your secrets and more interested in you. I know the idea of two people falling for each other this quickly is absurd, but that’s what happened. I fell so hard and fast it took my breath away.”

Trey’s heart beat faster. Even though she didn’t know it, Samantha was describing their soul-mate connection. Should he try to explain it to her? He had to admit he was hesitant. What if Sam decided she didn’t like the idea of an outside force controlling her emotions?

“I’m more sorry that you can ever know for what I did to you. I wanted to come clean about everything and tell you how I felt,” Samantha said, interrupting his thoughts. “But like you, every time I tried to say something, it seemed like events were conspiring against me. And then I got chloroformed and locked up in this cage before I had a chance to say I’m in love with you.”

Samantha’s heart began to thump wildly, echoing in his ears. She looked stunned, maybe even a little panicked, as if surprised by what she’d just said.

“I didn’t mean for it to come out quite that abruptly,” she said in a small voice.

Trey would have laughed if he didn’t think she’d take it the wrong way. So, instead, he dipped his head a little, catching her eyes. “You don’t have to try to explain this thing going on between us. I feel it. I’m in love with you, too. I have been for a long time. I was too scared to tell you how I feel because I was worried I’d chase you off.”

He had a second to see the look of relief on Samantha’s face, then she was leaning forward to kiss him, her lips soft and warm on his. He started to slip his tongue in for a taste when she suddenly tensed, her body going completely rigid as she let out a moan of pain.

Trey jerked back, snapping his head around to snarl at Rogi, even as he heard the hum coming from the collar around her neck. The ugly man had moved closer to the metal walls of their cage, the remote held higher in his hand.

“None of that now.” The asshat grinned. “Can’t have you biting your girlfriend and turning her into a werewolf like you. It might get in the way of what I plan to do with her when the doctor is done with you.”

Rogi gave Samantha another twisted grin, and Trey felt her shiver. He decided then and there that when he made his move to get them out of here, he was going to have to pay careful attention to Rogi. Something told him the man would go after Samantha the first chance he got.

Not wanting to risk Sam getting zapped again, Trey sat back a little, so the jackass with the remote could clearly see they weren’t up to anything. Rogi smirked and walked away again.

“How the hell are we going to get out of here?” Samantha whispered. “Rogi is watching us like a hawk, and it’s only going to get worse when Louis and Nadia come down here again.”

Trey shook his head. “I don’t know yet. We’ll have to play it by ear and be ready to make our move when the opportunity presents itself.”

He wished he could tell her that his teammates would provide backup, but while they were almost certainly out looking for him and Samantha, he wasn’t holding out much hope that they’d find them.

Samantha nodded, then glanced at Rogi with a worried look on her face. “What do we do until then?”

“We wait.” Trey gave her a small smile. “We could talk some more. At least that doesn’t get you shocked.”

“Okay, what do you want to talk about?” Samantha asked, leaning back against the stone wall of their cell but staying close enough so her leg was touching his.

There were about a hundred things Trey wanted to talk to her about—soul mates topping the list—but perhaps he should ease into that one.

“Maybe you could tell me about that blood sample you took from me and whether I need to worry about it coming back to haunt me later?”