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Iwoke up quickly as always, though this time I felt an unusual pain in my chest, right under the scar centered around my heart. The dream came back to me then, and I let myself wonder about its meaning. Why was I dreaming of killing wolves? Wolves besides the assholes in my pack, anyway.
I heard something shift in the tunnel. Water, maybe. Or a rat. For a moment, I held my breath, listening.
Silence.
Then I inhaled deeply, silently, scenting the air with my blunted human senses.
I was alone. I couldn’t hear, see, or sense anything in the darkness of the storm sewer. I kind of liked it, feeling cut off from everything. I’d heard people in big cities paid good money for that sort of experience, floating in tanks of water or something.
But I had no idea how long I’d been out. It could be morning, afternoon, or evening; there was no telling. I was still exhausted, but my nightmares made sure I never felt truly rested. I was hungry, but that was my normal state.
I crept closer to the entrance to try to make out voices. I wasn’t that far from the center of the compound, so I had to be careful not to make a sound. But as I got closer to the metal grate, I realized no one would have heard.
Outside was chaos, as far as I could tell. Everyone and their uncle was awake and tearing up the compound. From the light that was filtering in, it wasn’t long past sunrise.
A woman with a strange accent was cursing a blue streak, and her voice pierced through the general din. “What do you mean, you incarcerated my son? He is an Alpha Heir, and if you’ve harmed one hair on his blessed head, I will tear you Southern fuckers apart into pieces so small, you’d have to hire a thousand witches to reassemble your ugly asses.”
I was dying to meet this woman. I hoped whoever she was cussing out wasn’t higher ranked than her.
She kept going. “So you say he attacked you, Calvin. Well, I say he had a reason to—look at this cesspit you call a pack! Look at these children, starving. I might attack you now on principle.”
Holy shit. This woman was dressing down Alpha Callaway. I held my breath, letting each word soak in like rain in the desert. Hoping she didn’t start whimpering when he used his Alpha mojo on her. Or set his Enforcers on her for her disrespect.
“And your pathetic Enforcers are out of shape. By the moon, they wouldn’t pass a human military physical! You should be ashamed.”
Alpha’s voice came next, blustering, “Listen here, Margarette, you can’t come in here and talk to me like that. Your idiot son jumped me—” A sound of a hand cracking on skin shocked me. Had she slapped him?
Oh shit, she was going to be killed. I wanted to run out to save her, but I held still when I heard an impossibly low, gravelly voice. “You lay one finger on my wife, Calvin, and you won’t ever get to use that hand again.”
I had no idea what was going on out there, but I was dying of curiosity. I forced myself to breathe slowly. One thing at a time. Staying alive was my priority. Meeting some badass shifter woman would need to come much later.
If I survived this day. And won my next fight.
By midafternoon, I was so thirsty that I was considering licking the walls. Of course, I wouldn’t. The water on the ground was stagnant, and the seep was most likely from broken sewer lines. I was just weighing the relative hazards of dehydration versus intestinal illness when I heard something that made my blood go cold.
The sound of a bolt being slowly, meticulously loosened. Snakeshit. Someone had found me.
I scrambled as quietly as I could backward in the pipe. If they came down with flashlights, there was no escaping. The other end of the drain ended in a grate right outside the main hall of the compound. There was no way out of that one, either—it was welded shut.
I waited, my heart pounding in my throat, for at least a half hour. Then slowly, I crept back toward the opening. No one had come in, and when I got close enough, I saw the drain cover was still on.
Something glinted in the dim light that filtered in the wire mesh. Water. A bottle of water and two more energy bars.
Someone out there knew where I was. And whoever it was wanted to help me.
I reached out one trembling hand, hoping against hope it wasn’t a trap. Slowly, I grasped the water and the bars, and scuttled back a dozen feet.
And that’s when I heard it, a beautiful tenor voice singing in Spanish. Was it the sexy solo wolf, Joaquin? I wasn’t sure.
“Thank you,” I whispered. The voice stopped, and I backed up another dozen feet and ate and drank in the dark, praying that he hadn’t drawn attention to my hiding place.
I didn’t hear him again, but for some reason, I had the feeling he was still around as the day passed, watching. Protecting me.
When night fell, that feeling vanished. In the distance, I heard shouts, the sound of fighting, and I knew it was time.
Getting out was easier than getting in since whoever had left the water and snacks had also left the screws half done. It didn’t take long before I was at the edge of the compound, staring into the mass of bodies gathered there.
The energy was different tonight. There was a sense of anticipation, like a storm approaching. I supposed one had already arrived—the Conclave itself was such a change, and knowing our Alpha would have to at least pretend to follow basic rules of conduct at the event tonight gave me a small sense of hope.
