Chapter 55 — Bree

My hands are bleeding by the time the truck turns off the highway into a narrow, rough road. I’ve refused to listen to the voice telling me over and over that there’s no hope, that there’s nothing I can do. I refuse to believe that all I can do is wait while Hugo and Gage spring a trap around Rainn.

I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to Rainn.

I am creating the future, Hugo had said.

He’s a madman, and so is Gage.

The truck slows and descends what feels like a rough ramp. Then we’re surrounded by pitch black. Hugo opens his door and climbs out. The driver follows, and soon I hear the door to the rear of the truck opening. Someone climbs in. It’s too dark to see who it is, but I kick my bound legs anyway. My shoes hit a hard shin, and I hear a grunt, then rough hands grab hold of my legs and pull, easily tossing me on the rough ground next to the truck.

Stones tear into my skin, and I cry out in pain. A light comes on, and I see the driver jumping out of the truck holding Emily-Rose and Sheri by the scruffs of their necks, deaf to the muffled sounds they make under their gags.

I still can’t believe he’s human, that Hugo has injected him with something that gives him this much strength.

I don’t want to think how many humans will gladly see their world crash and burn for just a taste of this kind of strength. I hate to think that Hugo is right. If he gives the worst of humanity what they want, they will help him enslave the rest.

A rough hand grabs my legs, and I see Hugo cutting my bindings with his knife. He pulls me to my feet. “Come on, princess.”

I glare at him but have no choice but to follow. The air smells stale and damp, like the inside of a cave. After a few steps, we reach a steel door, and Hugo unlocks it with a code, then we’re walking through a short, narrow passage. Another set of doors open, and we enter a room with sickly yellow light.

It's a lab. The first thing I see is a cylindrical glass tank filled with yellowish liquid. Suspended in the liquid is something with a body of a man and the head of a wolf. The eyes are open and staring. Dead.

I look around in horror. There’s a wolf chained to a table, but it’s limp, mouth open, tongue lolling.

“That’s a mooncursed,” Hugo tells me. “Rare monster of legend.” He laughs cruelly, then turns to his goon, who’s still holding Emily-Rose and Sheri. “Frank.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Put them in a cell,” Hugo instructs. “You can ungag them.”

Frank tears off their gags, making no attempt to be gentle. Emily-Rose pulls in a breath and screams. Hugo lifts one hand to strike her, then changes his mind.

“No one can hear you here, human,” he says, sounding almost amused. “No one who cares.” He catches sight of Sheri’s swollen hand and lifts one hand. Almost immediately, a man in a dirty lab coat appears.

“Heal that.”

“I’d rather die than let you use your cursed medicine on me,” Sheri hisses.

Hugo ignores her. The man in the lab coat injects something into Sheri’s hand, ignoring her struggles. In mere seconds, the bruising, discoloration, and swelling disappear, then Frank nudges them to a cell with a glass door, opens it, and roughly pushes them inside. Now, I see there are more of those doors, with people held inside the cells. Prisoners, I guess. The so-called packless wolves he makes my pack hunt for him. In one cell, I see three young girls I recognize from Falling River. They’re crying.

I start toward the cell. “These are kids,” I yell.

Hugo grips my hand tighter. “I blamed their disappearance on you. But I enjoy running tests on wolves who haven’t shifted in a long time. The women from Falling River are useful in that regard.”

“All your stupid rules are just a means to your evil ends, aren’t they?” I say bitterly.

He ignores me. “Come on.” He pulls me forward. “You haven’t seen the best part yet.”

At the end of the lab, there’s a final cell, but it’s much larger than the rest, made with a sturdy glass that looks very dense. Inside, a large fur-covered thing is groaning in pain.

“It hasn’t been this calm in months,” Hugo says. “Three months and a few weeks, to be exact.”

I stare at the creature. It’s much larger than any wolf should be. As I watch, it bounds to the opposite end of the cell, moving so fast it’s a blur. It runs into the glass and stops, then groans again.

“What is this?” I whisper, even though I’m sure I don’t want to know the answer.

“A weapon,” Hugo says, sounding proud. “More wolf than wolf, more shifter than any shifter. It can run so fast it straddles this world and an alternate world. Like the pack race of the wolves.” He looks at me and shakes his head. “You wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Because you kept us ignorant and isolated.”

He only shrugs. The creature groans again and I wonder how long it has suffered under Hugo’s cruelty. “Nobody knows how to make the serum that creates mooncursed anymore,” Hugo says. “We searched for the formula for years. Finally, we found a mooncursed and lured it here, then spent months trying to extract the formula from its blood. We were making progress until the woman came.”

“The woman?”

“She tricked us,” Hugo continues. “Asked to meet and while we waited for her, she brought her pack right here and destroyed all our work. Destroyed the formulas, the records, all the research. She condemned our scientists to death and killed them.”

“Because they were torturing shifters.” I imagine Rainn’s mom destroying all Hugo’s evil work. “I’m glad she killed them.”

“You won’t be so glad when you know how the story ends.”

“I already know.” I swallow. “You murdered her and her entire pack.”

“Me? No. By the time I got here, everything was gone, but I found a vial of serum they’d missed. I didn’t know what it would do to me, but I was willing to take the chance it would make me strong enough to make her pay. I almost took it, but luckily for me, someone was snooping around that night. He showed up at the wrong time, and I injected him instead. He killed them.

Someone was snooping around that night.

Someone.

With a sound almost like a scream, I turn to lock eyes with the creature in the cage. It’s looking at me, with eyes that even now, after ten years, are so familiar, my heart feels like it’s bursting.

I hear my mom’s voice telling me how my dad suspected Hugo of hiding something from the pack, how he followed Hugo to the forest to find out what it was and never returned.

It can’t be.

“Dad?” I whisper.

Hugo snickers. “Our unwilling weapon. Hard to control, but that serum in its blood has been a gift. We can’t replicate the serum itself. We’ve tried. But we’ve used its blood in other ways. Now, we have enough material to make an invincible army of wolves and humans.

“Dad,” I repeat, tears filling my eyes. I touch the glass and the low groaning starts again.

“It’s been hard to control with you so far away. I guess there’s a part of it that still loves you and knows when you’re close. That’s why we’re going to keep you here.”

I turn to face him, tears in my eyes. “You’re a monster.”

“No.” He nods toward my dad. “That’s a monster, and it has work to do in the forest tonight.” He cocks his head as if in thought. “Do you think I should kill your mate or capture him? Maybe we can learn something about the powers of alpha blood if we bring him here to experiment on him. Maybe I’ll turn him into a weapon.”

“You won’t get away with this. The other packs…”

“We’re counting on the other packs finding out this time,” he replies. “We’re ready for the war to begin. That’s how we’ll claim this world for ourselves.”