Page 11 of Racing the Storm

I took pity on him and forced myself to breathe before I answered. “I don’t enjoy flying. I’ve only done it once, and it makes me nervous,” I told him. That much wasn’t a secret. “I’ll be fine, though. I don’t need your help.”

He sat back, looking unconvinced, so I closed my eyes to avoid watching his concerned stare. I didn’t want to trust any of them. I didn’t want to feel safe—like I had some ally in the pack of the enemy. That was how powerful Wolves lost all control.

I knew better than to believe every human thought we were animals—that every human agreed with what the rich and powerful had done, but this man was every bit the villain we had been fighting. This man had let his brother be captured, experimented on, and now left him one of the top Most Wanted in the country.

And maybe Ivan was a victim, too, but I couldn’t trust he’d use any leverage to get back into his father’s good graces.

“Where are we going?” I asked once the plane started to level. The noise dimmed a little, though not enough for the humans to overhear.

Ivan bit his cheek so hard it caved in, then he let out a breath and shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

Well, at least it was an honest answer. “Fine. How long until we get there?”

“Twelve hours,” he said.

With the speed of a jet, I assumed it was somewhere in Europe, which would make sense. There were a few countries that had declared ultimate neutrality when it came to the war between Wolf and human. No place in the world had been unaffected when Wolves became known, but too many had refused to step in even with lip service protest at what had been done to us.

We were not going to be flying anywhere that would give me leverage, but at the very least, it might offer some means of escape.

At least three hours passed before anyone spoke again. Most of the guards were either sleeping or on their phones, and I could see Kasher’s head lolled to the side and his eyes closed. He looked weak then—a frail old man who was barely hanging on, and it rekindled my belief that he was doing all of this for his own reasons.

To save himself, maybe, from human fragility and disease? Or to seek immortality?

We were hardly that, but our lifespan was more than double a human’s, and to some, that would feel like forever.

I glanced at Ivan for maybe the thousandth time, and this time, he stared back. His lips worked like he wanted to say something, then he let out a breath and leaned forward, keeping his voice still low enough that only I had a hope of hearing him.

“How is Misha?”

My eyes widened, deciding to dig in my verbal claws as deep as I could. “The brother you abandoned?”

He winced, but nodded. “I…he’s alive, isn’t he? My father’s convinced, but I…” He licked his lips, then swallowed thickly. “I worried he didn’t make it after the escape.”

“You worried that we killed him,” I filled in for him, and I saw the guilt rising in his eyes. “You worried that we were just as vicious as you humans are so desperate to believe we are, and we punished him for the sins of your father.”

Ivan sat back and turned his gaze to the window. “Can you blame me? After everything we did to you?”

At that, I did laugh—a low, quiet rumble in my chest, and he glanced at me before turning away again. “We wouldn’t have killed him, though a few of our council members advocated for it,” I confessed. There was no point in lying. “Some of them still think whatever your father did to him is a weapon he can use against us.”

Ivan rubbed his hand down his face, then leaned forward again. “I didn’t know my father had taken him to the labs.”

I snorted, not quite ready to believe him, and even if I did, I wasn’t sure he would have tried to stop the old man. “He was lucky to survive. I think you know that from everything you’ve seen your father do.”

Ivan closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. “I prayed every night that he was strong enough. Stronger than the others.”

“He was,” I confirmed. There was no point in torturing this man. “He is. He’s not human anymore.”

Ivan let out a small, distressed sound. “Is he like you?”

“Enough that he’d be thrown into whatever pit your people want us all to die in,” I said with a shrug. “But he’s also mated to our Head Alpha, which your news has been reporting.”

Ivan nodded, his face a little pale, but he didn’t look disgusted, which surprised me. “I wasn’t sure if that rumor was true. I just…” He shook his head as he trailed off. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again. We were never close. He was so much younger and so…” He stopped with a small, almost fond grin that startled me. “He was so smart and a little strange. My father hated it, but I hoped he’d grow up his own person.”

“Unlike you?” I asked.

I caught the stench of humiliation from him before it faded. “I have no excuses, and I’m not going to pretend like I always knew that he was wrong. That I was wrong,” he amended.

I said nothing, glancing away from him because I wasn’t quite sure what he wanted from me. To throw me off, to get past my guard?

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