Page 8 of New Blood

“Who the fuck are you? Get me out of here!”

“Looking for the key,” he replied, pissed about her attitude.

“On the wall, there!” she said, pointing to the opposite wall.

Ransom reached for the key, then picked up the clothes from the floor, before he approached the door to the cage. To his surprise, Eve retreated, watching him with suspicion.

She narrowed her eyes. “You with the vampires?”

“Are they the ones who locked you up?”

He didn’t need to hear an answer to know he was right and simply nodded before unlocking the door.

“I’m with the Werewolf Alliance. The vampires are gone.”

She let out a sigh of relief. “We defeated them. Thank God!”

She reached for her clothes, and he handed them to her before stepping away a few feet to give her some semblance of privacy to get dressed.

“No, we ended the fight. We made peace with the vampires. They won’t bother you anymore.”

Fully dressed now, she stared at him in disbelief, her forehead furrowing. “My father would never make peace with fucking vampires. Those bastards were attacking us!”

“Your father isn’t in charge anymore.”

Eve glared at him with open hostility. “You don’t seem to know who my father is. He’s the alpha. He decides what—”

“Like I said, he’s not in charge anymore,” Ransom interrupted, taking another step toward her now. He wouldn’t let this enticing but willful beauty run roughshod over him. “The Werewolf Alliance is taking over this pack.”

Her eyes widened. “My father and my brothers will never let that happen.”

Ransom inhaled a deep breath and with it the tantalizing scent of the female werewolf who could get his blood boiling if he allowed it. But he wouldn’t allow it. He needed to have himself under control.

“Your father is under arrest. As for your brothers…” He stopped himself.

Damn! If Eve had been locked up by the vampires, it meant that she had no idea that her brother Cameron was dead. Fuck! He didn’t want to be the one to give her the bad news. But he also knew it was best to come out with it in the basement, where nobody would hear her wails, her curses, and whatever other reactions she would display or things she could hurl at him.

“What about my brothers?”

Uneasy with the task before him, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Yet, he still hesitated, trying to find words that wouldn’t make him sound like a callous ass. He had siblings himself. He knew that losing one of them would be devastating, and he’d grieve deeply. Werewolf families were tight-knit and patriarchal, bound together by blood and the need to keep their secrets from outsiders.

“What are you not telling me?”

He snapped his gaze back to Eve. Her facial expression told him that she knew that the news he was about to impart was bad. He couldn’t back down now. Stalling any longer would be cruel on his part.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but your brother Cameron is dead.”

For a moment, there was complete silence in the dusty room. It was now that he could hear footsteps from above. Everybody was assembling to listen to what Jude had to say.

“You’re lying!” Eve cried out, anger flashing in her beautiful eyes, shining yellow, a sign that her inner wolf wanted to emerge. “No! No! Say you’re lying! Say it!”

With every word her voice grew louder, her tone more agitated. A wet sheen drew over her irises, and she blinked as if trying to wipe them away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his voice calm and low. “But Cameron is gone.”

“No!” she wailed.

Suddenly, she raised her arms and curled her hands into fists, pounding them into his chest with such force that he nearly tumbled backwards. It took a second for him to find his balance again, while she continued using him as if he were a boxer’s punching bag and she an MMA fighter. She was strong, which wasn’t unexpected. Werewolf females were just as strong as their male counterparts, and if the adage was true that the female of the species was more dangerous than the male, then Eve was living proof of it.