Page 131 of The Alpha's Protective Mate

“Stay here?” Ricky shakes his head. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“I insist.” Charlotte grabs his arm. “This is my mate’s house. You can stay here if I say you can. I’ll show you to your room.”

Watching Charlotte lay claim to me so blatantly makes me smile. As I watch her walk away, I know she’s going to be okay. In the end, she just needed to take care of somebody other than herself.

I let out a long breath and turn to look at Mano. She is standing beside me, stretching. “I don’t know what kind of magic you cast on her to bring her back to me, but thank you.”

Mano rubs herself against my legs in response.

******

My meeting with Terrence, the new leader of the Neo Clan, goes about as well as it could. He’s looking into the situation with the drugs and plans to put an end to it. He’s cordial to me, but it’s obvious he’s acting this way so I don’t stop Charlotte from seeing him. However, I’m very confident in my mate’s feelings for me. She already told me about the deal she made with Terrence in the park. I don’t know if she has told him about everything her father did to keep them apart, but I know she will eventually.

She’s meeting him today at the cafe. Jazz is going to be there.

To my surprise, Jazz was quite accepting of this whole other world that has been existing parallel to her human world. I have to wonder if it’s because of a certain mild-mannered vet whom she has begun to invite to the cafe for coffee.

Ricky ultimately did agree to stay with us, and his presence has done Charlotte a world of good. She’s still grieving Angie’s loss, but she’s returning to her old self bit by bit.

This evening, Adam has called a meeting of the Alphas at my place, and Morris arrives first. My thoughts are distracted, wondering what Charlotte is doing, when I hear the front door open and close.

Adam joins us in the kitchen. “Well, I managed to compile the report. Not a total waste of time, in my opinion. You’re going to want to look at this.”

He tosses me the report, and I catch it in midair. “Anything interesting?”

Adam hands Morris the other copy. “You could say that. This drug that we’ve been chasing down originated in Europe. Versions of it, anyway.”

I flip through the report and see that Adam has highlighted the impacts of each variant. “This has been going on for close to a decade in Europe,” I mutter.

“Yes.” Adam brings out his laptop. “But you’ll notice that the drug used here seems to be more refined than its counterpart in Europe. I managed to get into contact with the Silber Mond Pack in Hessen, Germany. They just relocated there and are willing to talk to us tonight.”

He turns on his laptop and sets up the video call. After a couple of minutes, a man flickers to life on the screen. With blonde hair and blue eyes, he’s handsome, but he looks worn out. His English has an accent as he greets us.

Adam makes the introductions. “This is Johannes Mond. Johannes, this is Robert Montgomery and Morris Wolfguard. They are the Alphas of the two wolf packs mine has allied with. We don’t want to waste your time, so could you please share with us what you mentioned in your email?”

Johannes nods. “I’m the leader of one of the last surviving wolf packs from Tallinn, Estonia. There used to be seven packs in the country. We are traditional; our territories were in the surrounding mountains, but we shared the city of Tallinn as a common territory. We also shared the city with the vampires. Until a decade ago, we had no problems with the vampires. We had our separate businesses and were cordial with each other. It was an ideal situation.” His expression grows tense. “Then began the problems with the drugs. Our youngsters are allowed to drink within shifter territory, but they were never allowed any sort of drug, mostly because human drugs make our kind ill. We are lenient with our juveniles. We wanted them to foster a good relationship with the allied packs, so they would meet in groups, drink, party…but only within pack territory. We didn’t know about these new drugs till one of the juveniles wandered onto the streets of Tallinn in mid-shift, half-transformed. We did damage control, tried to get him to shift back, but he didn’t make it.”

I glance at Morris. His hands are intertwined, his brows drawn together. Morris lost a good number of people from his pack due to this half-transformed state. I stood with him as he buried those young bodies, his eyes filled with a broken grief. Now, I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looks at me.

Johannes is still speaking. “Over the next couple of years, the drugs grew more advanced, with horrifying side effects, but the one thing that remained consistent was that the shifters who took the drug, knowingly and unknowingly, were forced into a half-transformed state that was irreversible. There was nothing our healers could do. The drug they were consuming was toxic to our animals. We now refer to the events as Phase One, Two, and Three.”

His voice is calm, but the amount of anger and pain in his expression is immeasurable. His eyes are those of someone who has seen such horrors that the trauma is deeply embedded within his soul.

“Phase One was when they introduced the drug and we lost precious children. In Phase Two, the deaths were drawn out. It was almost as if the juveniles’ wolves were fighting it. Our healers couldn’t even give them peace in their final moments. We couldn’t figure out where our children were getting these drugs from. We knew they weren’t ingesting them willingly. At that point, we hadn’t linked the vampires to the problem. They had been extremely helpful to us, you see, offering their best medical personnel, facilities. What we didn’t know at that point was that they were taking samples of the blood of the infected juveniles for their purposes.”

Nobody interrupts Johannes. It’s evident that speaking of this is not easy for him. Having to admit that he failed his most vulnerable pack members is painful. I don’t blame the Alpha, but I know how easy it is to blame oneself.

I watch the man pause to collect himself, and he picks up where he left off. “The third phase was the worst one. We discovered that the juveniles were being poisoned by the school’s water supply. The vampire clan in our area had links to this school. The drug had no impact on humans, only on our kind. This discovery was made by accident, and it was soon followed by another. We found out that in the third phase, the vampires were able to control the affected wolves, who no longer died. They lived, trapped inside their bodies, their wolves broken and enslaved. Something in the drug made those wolves freakishly strong.”

Johannes looks away from the screen, and everyone is silent. He has turned the chat on mute, and somebody hands him a stack of papers. He speaks to the person for about a minute and then returns to us.

“Sorry. Moving to another area isn’t as easy as it sounds. The children aren’t taking it very well. It was usually my mate who handled such matters, but she’s—” He lets out a shuddering breath. “Forgive me. What was I saying?”

“The affected wolves who took the drug were being controlled by the vampires,” Adam reminds Johannes.

“Yes.” He blinks as if to clear his mind. “Five packs were wiped out. None of us were expecting this. The intent of the vampires was clear: they planned to subdue us and enslave us. In their view, we had always just been animals, and they wanted to become the apex predator. The city was thriving because of the businesses we brought to it, and the vampire clan resented that. They used our own people to kill us. We had to fight back. But the only way to kill the drugged shifters was to remove their heads. We did it with heavy hearts. We were weakened in numbers, though, and the vampire clan was getting ready to launch another attack, so we left in the middle of the night. It’s only been a few months since we came to Germany. The last decade has destroyed us at the hands of the vampires. We don’t trust them with anything anymore. We’ve kept away from the clans here.”

I clear my throat, wishing I knew what to say to this man. “I’m sorry about what you went through. We’re facing a similar issue. The drugs have been showing up here for a couple of years now.”

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