Page 13 of Racing the Storm

MIKAEL

Crossing the border was easier than I had anticipated. I kept my mirror shades high up on the bridge of my nose and didn’t hesitate to hand over the bullshit passport claiming I was a registered human. I didn’t breathe again until I was back on the road, and then I let myself feel the quick, pulsing waves of panic as I threw Nadya’s information into the GPS and began making my way toward her hideout. I’d never met her, but I’d worked with her enough over the last few years that it felt strange I didn’t know her face.

I’d met her husband more than once though—fighting for months on end with Yasin by my side. I remembered the ache I felt when she called me after the treaty and told me he’d been taken and eventually killed. I felt helpless at the time, as powerless and impotent as a human because both governments were working against us to keep it all silent. A part of me never believed enough of us would be willing to rebel, and even now, I wasn’t sure they’d resist if we began to lose our hold on power.

But I had to have some faith, because that was the sort of Wolf I’d always been. I knew too many who rushed into battle believing they wouldn’t survive. And far too many of them had become self-fulfilling prophecies. I was tired of burying people—those I knew, total strangers, Wolves serving under my command. I was just…

Tired.

We were all goddamn tired.

An hour and a half into the drive, I was finally approaching the coast, and I hit a sandy road where the GPS quit working. From Nadya’s instructions, I knew that meant I was less than half an hour away, and eventually—along the wide expanse of nothing—came the ocean. Then, not long after that, the little house that stuck out like a sore thumb with nothing around it.

But I could sense there weren’t any threats out there. The Gulf sat to the left, desert to the right. There was a city not far from there, full of tourists and vacationers, and I wondered what it would be like to have a life where you could embrace leisure—even for a short while.

I didn’t let myself dwell on it, though. Nadya promised me time to track Danyal, then a way to get over the Atlantic since she was as sure as I was that they weren’t keeping him on this continent. My heart began to ache again at what could be happening to him—at what I might find when I arrived.

I’d been a fucking moron when it came to him, but then again, I’d never been the smartest when it came to my heart. I let the death of my mate ruin me for the one person who could get under my skin even deeper than Galen. And it wasn’t fair to Danyal.

But I knew, in this moment as I rolled to a stop in front of the little house, if I got a second chance with him, I wouldn’t squander it. If he’d let me, this time, I’d keep him.

Taking a breath, I hopped out of the truck and grabbed my bag from the back. I walked up slowly, knowing Nadya was scenting me, and I wanted to give her time before barging in. I stood on the little porch and waited, and eventually, the door opened.

She looked everything and nothing like I had imagined. She was at least a foot shorter than I had pictured her, and I couldn’t help but love how utterly disarming she was. Her slight build would paint her as an easy victim.

But her training and power would cull any human or Wolf who got too close.

She was wearing light linen to combat the pressing heat, and her soft blue hijab blew in the wind as she gave me a nod and stepped aside for me to enter. “Sorry it’s not very welcoming,” she said as she shut the door and locked it behind her.

I glanced around, finding a prayer mat in the middle of the living room floor, a couple of coffee cups on the kitchen table, and a massive computer set up along the far wall with data I couldn’t hope to understand scrolling across three of the screens.

“It’s exactly what I pictured,” I told her, and she laughed as she swept past me and rolled up her mat. She slipped it into a bag and hung it on a hook, then dragged her palms down the front of her pants like she was nervous. “Thanks for letting me stay here. I know it’s probably not great for you.”

She grimaced but shrugged and moved to the kitchen, reaching into the fridge for two bottles of water. “I’ve had to compromise a lot lately, but it’s worth it. If we can get the people who took Danyal…”

“And who killed your husband,” I said quietly. “I’d do it for Yasin alone.”

She swallowed thickly, and her smile was weak, but it reached her eyes as she handed off one of the bottles. “He liked you. I was happy to work with whoever Kor sent, but I’m glad it was you.”

That settled something in me, and I gestured to the computers as I took a long swallow. “Are you getting a lot done?”

“Enough, but the power out here’s weak, and it’s taking forever to decrypt these files.” She moved to the desk and set her hand on the chair. “I don’t think we’re going to find much more than we expected. It’ll be enough to put Kasher under a microscope. It might even be enough to shut down all of the public labs, but…”

“But we both know there’s more than that going on,” I finished for her.

She nodded, her eyes flaring a little, and I understood her pain and frustration. “So far as I’ve been able to track, Alexei Kasher’s been stateside. I managed to get a lock on who I think is his father, and he was on the move yesterday. He and a small entourage boarded a private plane bound for Nice.”

“Nice?” I repeated. “As in…”

“As in the Côte d’Azur,” she said. “I have the plane tracked, so I think I can pinpoint their location down to a few square miles, maybe more if I’m unlucky.”

I let out a sharp breath and shook my head. “That’s a lot more than I was expecting. Have enough people told you that you’re a damn genius?”

Her smile was a little wider this time. “Plenty,” she said, then her smile faded. “You’re most likely going to be on your own though, and from what I can tell he’s got Wolves with him.” I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t worried about that, but then she went on. “Feral Wolves.”

I couldn’t help my shudder. It was a condition so rare to our people, it was almost unheard of. It was the scary stories parents told their Alpha teens—something that could ruin them if they didn’t learn control. But it wasn’t something that actually happened.

Mindless, slavering beasts, primed to be put under control and enslaved by a sociopathic master. There were old folktales about human emperors using feral Alphas in the colosseum, but there had never been any evidence of them.

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