“How big is it now? Do you know if any of the old timers are still there, or their families?” Sabrina asked.
The girls needed to find someone, something that was going to help them, they really didn’t want to return to their pack and tell them they discovered nothing to help. It would suck.
Sabrina watched the snowflakes hitting the windshield and grimaced, the forecasters had been wrong, sunny and warm, right. The temperature had dropped; they could feel it as they rose in altitude.
“Snow,” Mak grinned and looked up at the sky. “Looks like we are going to get there in the nick of time. This time of year anything can happen.”
“Great,” Trina said from the back seat.
Sabrina held onto the wheel as the snow began to fall faster. Then she felt a tingle, something she had never felt before and she looked in the rearview mirror to see if Trina was feeling the same thing. Her friend’s face was blank as she stared out the window, which meant she wasn’t feeling it. Damn it, what the fuck was going on? She glanced at Mak who was humming to the music, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world and she frowned. Seriously, what the fuck? The hairs on her arms stood up more and she shivered a little.
One mile the sign finally read, and by that time Sabrina was ready to come out of her skin, she had no clue what was going on but she was ready to shift at any moment. She could feel it coming and was helpless to control it. Trina and she were both bear shifters. Turning into a brown bear while driving was not going to be good. Sabrina sucked in a breath and she felt Trina put a hand on her shoulder. Her friend knew something was going on but she still looked unaffected, it was only her.
“Are you alright?” Mak asked with concern.
Sabrina jerked her head in a nod and then almost cried with relief when she saw the turn, which showed a gas station and the beginning of the town of Drake. They had made it, thank God.
She pulled into the station without speaking, put the hover cruiser in park, and got out quickly. Sabrina took a deep breath of the near arctic air and shivered but held her human form. She didn’t want to shift here, it was too public, but she would run if she had to, there were trees right by the parking lot.
Trina was suddenly next to her and she whispered in her ear, “What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Sabrina whispered back. “I feel like my bear is ready to jump out of my skin and just run. I have never felt like this before.”
“We need to see if there is someplace to stay, get out of the public eye, and call Calli and the others. Maybe Cherri knows what is going on.”
Sabrina nodded and Mak stood next to the car studying them. He finally walked to them and smiled. “I will be on my way now, thanks for the ride. You asked if there was someone here from the old days? There is, the mayor of the town and then most of the people are all family of the original descendants of the town. It is one of the things they pride themselves on, also the houses they are building are mostly for families moving back into the area who had left.”
“Thanks,” Trina said and then asked, “Is there a hotel or something around here?”
Mak grinned and nodded. “Two blocks over, one hotel, I am sure they have a room for you both. I hope to see you around.”
“Yeah,” Sabrina said and held out her hand. “Us too.”
Mak shook their hands and then walked to the front of the gas station. Sabrina and Trina went to the cruiser and got in, by the time they got around to the street, there was no sign of Mak. Neither woman noticed, nor cared, they were on a mission, and he was a stranger.
Chapter Two
Vivi stood over Ari again and stared at him. Finally, her mate had come in, Victor was standing with her, and she sucked in a breath and finally spoke the words she had been dreading to say aloud.
“What if they are all gone?” she whispered.
Victor put an arm around her. “They aren’t, we would have felt it, and you know it and I know it. Besides, do you think for one second our mate would die on us? He wouldn’t dare. He knows you would haunt him in the next world.”
“But it has been so long since they contacted us. Now Ari being in that awful place, where the hell are the others? They should have been trying to get him out,” Vivi argued.
“We don’t know anything yet, Richard and Brenda are doing their thing and Shelly and Paul as well. Right now, we need to wait until Ari wakes up and then find out what happened. If we make a move beforehand, it will mess things up and we have worked too hard to get this shit done. We voted on this remember, we can’t go back on it now,” Victor whispered.
“Promise me, if something happened to him you will make sure they pay,” Vivi said and Victor took her in his arms and hugged her tight.
“I don’t have to make that promise, because if someone has taken our mate from us, there will be no place in this world he or she will be safe. I will hunt to the ends of the earth in order make them pay.”
Vivi bit her lip and then nodded. “When are they going to figure this out, I don’t know how much longer we are going to be able to keep this up.”
Victor sighed. “We don’t have much longer, they already have nine, they only need three more to be discovered, trust me, we are close. When they are all together, it will lift the spell. Then we will be able to do what we have to do in order to make this right.”
“Calli is gonna try to kick our ass,” Vivi smirked.
*****
“So Sabrina and Trina are in Drake, Colorado, where the Denver Pack Training Camp was. They checked into a hotel. Get Cherri, something is going on,” Calli said to Rissa who was standing on the table playing catch with the dogs, Billy B was hers, he was one of three dogs in the compound, real dogs. Calli, Cherri, and Rissa all had one, and they all adored them. “Damn it, Rissa, seriously, get Cherri.”
Rissa rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, yeah, everything these days is like rush rush rush, the world is ending and all that shit. You know, I think we seriously need just a little vacation to gather ourselves back together and get this shit going. Right now, all of this shit is seriously driving me nuts.”
Calli rolled her eyes. “You are already crazy, get Cherri.”
“Fine,” Rissa muttered and then opened the door to the control center they had made and yelled down the hallway. “WHORE! YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED BY THE OH GREAT AND MIGHTY ALPHA BITCH.”
Calli turned and put her hands on her hips and flared at her best friend and Beta, she was seriously going to kick her ass. She was totally disrespectful on a good day.
Cherri glided into the room with a grin and said, “Next time you get a checkup, expect for it to be painful, bitch.” And Rissa giggled.
They were like this, all of them, it was the only way they could remain sane. They seriously needed to find a better stress reliever.
“What’s up?” Cherri asked and Calli held out the phone to her.
“Sabrina and Trina are in Drake, Sabrina is having a hard time not shifting, and she said there is something weird going on. She isn’t sure what triggered it. Also they had a hitchhiker, she says there was something weird about him.”
Cherri nodded and took the phone. “Hey, babe, what is exactly going on?”
She listened for a few minutes, then looked at Calli and Rissa with a grin and said into the receiver, “Babe, your mates are close, if I were to have to guess, they are in the town you are in and either you passed them somehow or you are in close proximity to them.”
“The hitchhiker?” Cherri said and shrugged. “You would have known if he was your mate.”
They spoke for a while longer and then Cherri hung up the phone and looked at her friends. “Someone is fucking with us.”
“How do you figure?” Calli snorted.
“Did she tell you about the hitchhiker?” Cherri asked.
“Yeah, she said she thought she knew him, something was familiar, I asked her the same thing, if she thought he was her mate, but she said no. She didn’t get t
hat feeling from him at all, it was more like she knew him, like a déjà vu,” Calli said.
Cherri nodded. “That is what she told me too, now I think we need to look at some things though. I have been talking to Dec and Nik about it. We have all, for some reason or another, been drawn together. Even when we were young, think about it. Yeah our parents were friends and we were thrown together a lot, but we developed a relationship like theirs. We didn’t let anyone else in when we were younger, it was us three, hell, until we met Kiki, I can say we haven’t had any other friends, then we added Pilar, Sabrina, Trina. We all fit, you know when we met them it was like we knew them, and now they are saying that about this guy, Mak. I am just saying we need to look at some things differently.”
Calli frowned and then looked at Rissa who was shaking her head. “What?”
“Fuck no,” Rissa snapped and grabbed Billy B and held him to her closely. “I am not going to go around sniffing people to figure out if I recognize them.”
Cherri frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Remember when we were in high school and that one chick who pissed you off and we had to track her? You made me shift and follow her scent, I am totally not doing that.”
Calli snickered and said, “That was funny as shit.”
“Yeah,” Cherri laughed. “We told everyone you were our new pet.”
Rissa snarled. “Yeah, everyone called me Fluffy for years, bitches.”
*****
Kade looked at Gio and Hope and frowned, they knew what they were asking was dangerous and a bit off the wall, but they had little other choice, they seriously needed to do something at this point.
“You want to go back to the facility they held Vivi and the others in, and you want to see if they have the books stored there. But you want to go alone, no backup?”
“They will know if a group of us are coming, by now the security has got to be high and there is no way we will be able to get a whole crew in there,” Gio said and looked at Hope who was just staring blankly at Kade. “Hope?”
She turned to him and frowned. Every time she was around him, she felt something, it was strange and she didn’t get it, apparently, he felt something too because he avoided her at all costs since she had shown up. At first, she ignored it, now she knew he had to be feeling the same thing that she was, and he had no clue what to do with it.
“I know you,” she whispered and Kade jerked back and stared at her closely.
“You do,” Kade said slowly, both knew they were not talking about the present, they were talking about the past, the two knew each other from some time before, but neither could pinpoint it.
“How?” Hope whispered.
“I don’t know,” Kade admitted. “I just know I do.”
Gio frowned and looked at Kade, then Hope and said, “Someone want to clue me in here? I have no clue what you are talking about and I kinda feel like this is something important I should know.”
Both were silent, Hope turned to Gio, and shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, I can only say the only time I feel this weird feeling is when I am around Kade, and it doesn’t make sense. It is not like a pull, you know like the mating pull. It is more like something is telling me that Kade and I know each other well, like I should recognize him and trust him.”
There was a knock on the door, it opened without anyone saying anything, and Vivi walked in. “We need to talk. Ari is awake. I have already called everyone to meet in the conference room, it is urgent.”
The trio nodded and followed her down the hallway into the meeting room they established when they first came to the area. It was large and the way things were taking shape, it needed to be, Kade decided. He had done research on his own, and the New Council and the Senate were huge, they would be as well since they needed to do things similar, it felt right at least to do it that way.
Calli was sitting at the front of the room in her seat, his was right next to her, and the rest of the members of the Drekinn Council were now sitting as well. Cherri, her mates, Pilar, her mates, Kiki and his mates, and Rissa and her mates. Hope and Gio took their chairs, with an extra one sitting right next to them empty, waiting for their mate.
Vivi, Shelly, and Brenda, along with their mates, were also there. Kade nodded to them and then took his seat.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “What is going on?”
“The man we rescued, Ari, he is awake,” Vivi said slowly and then looked at Victor and the others who nodded. She bit her lip. Calli tensed next to her, she had never seen her mother be hesitant like at all, never.
She leaned forward and held her breath; something big was going on because even when her mother had gotten in a beat down with the neighborhood tramp who tried to flirt with her father, she had never showed any hesitation or remorse. That is what she was seeing in her mother’s face, and it was unsettling.
“Mom,” Calli whispered and Kade took her hand.
“Okay, just gonna say this fast and then you can all deal with it,” Vivi said.
Everyone nodded and waited and finally Vivi swore under her breath and at least that made Calli feel a little better, she was acting more normal.
“Ari was from our pack,” she started and everyone nodded, they knew that, Vivi took a deep breath. “Some of our other pack members are still in the facility. Ari was caught with more than fifteen other shifters who are currently being held there. He said they are being tortured and experimented on. They are keeping their abilities suppressed with some drug they have, so they can’t shift or use their magic.”
Calli sucked in a breath, her mother’s pack? They were the Alphas of their pack she had always been told, what the fuck was going on? Everyone she knew who was in the pack previously was here, with them in their compound, they had arranged it.
Kade must have been thinking along the same lines and he looked at Victor and said, “You are the Alpha, how could you not know some of your pack was gone.”
Calli watched as her father took a deep breath and said, “I am not the Alpha.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Calli, Rissa, and Cherri were sitting with their mouths open.
“Wait…what?” Rissa said and Simon closed his eyes, he knew what was coming.
“Ris…” Brenda said holding her hand up and then it happened. Cherri, Calli, and Rissa all stood up and Cherri and Calli moved to Rissa quickly, containment was the key always; their best friend did not handle surprises or lies well at all. Kiki moved to the door, which was closed, and he locked it, making sure that Rissa wasn’t going to be able to escape.
“No,” Rissa said quietly. “I am fine. I just want that repeated, ‘cause it sounded like she just told us the pack we belonged to our whole lives was not the pack we thought. Which would mean that everything we were taught was bullshit. The pack is the family, the pack is the law, the pack is our lives, and the pack we thought we belonged to does not exist, is that what you are telling us?”
Vivi, Shelly, and Brenda looked at one another, they knew what they were telling them was going to create a shitstorm, mostly because they were still not going to be able to tell them the full truth. But they had to tell them part of it, because Vivi and Victor had talked about it, and they decided it was time for them to explain at least part of the situation.
“No, I am not telling you the pack you belong to doesn’t exist, it does, we are the same pack you always thought we were, Victor and I are both leaders of the pack in absentia of the Alphas, they appointed us right after the Wars.”
“So you were the Betas?” Calli asked confused.
Vivi bit her lip sand shook her head. “No.”
“Then what the fuck were you and what the fuck is going on, none of this makes a damn bit of sense,” Rissa said and turned to her friends. “I told you so. I told you when we started this, it was going to turn into a clusterfuck because someone was pulling strings that we didn’t know. Well lo and behold it is our fucking parents. Th
e betrayal runs deep here. And I for one, am not going to fucking deal with this shit a moment longer, either you tell us ALL of the truth or I am going to sick Simon, my murderous mate, on your ass and you will be sorry.”
Simon rolled his eyes and whispered, “Babe, you really need to get over that.”
“You were a psycho, or so we thought, seriously, how do you get over that?” Rissa snapped. “Besides, it comes in handy when I want to threaten someone, we have all seen you in action and, honey bun, you are fierce, and it is sexy.”
Brenda stood. “Do not disrespect your Alpha.”
Rissa frowned. “Calli is my Alpha, I have not said one word to disrespect her, other than her ass looks a little fat in those jeans, ‘cause they are getting tight.”
Calli snapped, “Stop saying that.”
“People, back on track. Explain, Vivi,” Kade snarled and pulled his mate back knowing that Rissa wasn’t going to go off the handle yet.
“I can’t tell you the whole truth,” Vivi stated and held her head up high. “There is too much at stake to do that yet, it is not time. When it is, you will know why we did what we did in order to protect you. Right now, the information you need is that members who are important to you, and us, are being held in captivity and being tortured and used for research. That is unacceptable. We need to get them out and find out exactly what the hell those assholes are looking for.”
“So more deception remains, but you expect us to do something without knowing the facts?” Kade asked.
“Knowing the facts aren’t an issue, knowing we have people in danger is,” Vivi retorted and Victor finally spoke up.
“Ari explained what was done to him, he is willing to talk to you and tell you exactly what happened. However, because he is drifting in and out of consciousness this could take a while, that is time we do not have. The longer these people are in there the more likelihood someone will be killed, trust me we can’t afford to lose any of these people or we will be in danger of losing the battle with the Prentiss Agency. They do not know who they have right now, and we need to stop them from finding out.”