Page 38 of Racing the Storm

“A Wolf,” I said aloud.

Arturo’s eyes had faded back to their soft, human brown, but I could see beyond that now—to what he was. An Alpha. “It wasn’t safe to tell you. I wouldn’t have told you at all if I hadn’t seen that man coming for my sister.”

I felt betrayal and anger rising in me, but also understanding. “How?” It was the only question I could form. How had they managed it?

“We’ve always been like this,” Arturo said after a beat. He fell all the way to his backside and stretched one leg out. “Many packs all over the world are just like us.”

I let that information sink in, my head spinning from it. “How did we not know? How did we never know?”

“Because we never told anyone. We lived apart from humans and Wolves,” Arturo said, shrugging.

I wanted to be furious at him, but I couldn’t blame him. If I could walk amongst Wolves and humans without them knowing I was an Alpha—that I was a Wolf—if the people I loved could have done the same, I wouldn’t have said a damn word. I would have taken the secret to my grave.

“How did they find your sister?” Danyal asked, his voice quiet and rough.

Arturo sighed. “One of our pack members had a still birth. She had been traveling on her own—she was two months early, and she went to the hospital because no one had ever been able to tell before.” He let out a trembling breath. “The baby’s eyes flashed orange at birth. An Omega.”

An Omega from birth. It was rare, but not unheard of—except, I supposed, for them with their hidden Wolf scent.

“She was related to you, wasn’t she?” Danyal asked.

Mari let out a small whimper. “Our sister. The youngest. Kasher lost track of her, but he was able to trace her to our farm. Men showed up in the middle of the night and took me from my bed.”

Arturo let out a subvocal growl, and if I hadn’t seen his shift before, I would have known just from that. “We searched for months, but we kept turning up dead ends until one of our hackers intercepted a transmission from Nadya. We were able to get a location on Mari, but she was too closely guarded.”

“And then Kasher moved her,” Danyal said.

Arturo nodded. “She wasn’t supposed to go with you.”

I took a step back, staring between them, and I realized there was so much information I didn’t have. So much had happened when I was on the road, trying to free Danyal from a situation he probably could have rescued himself from.

“Then your mate turned up,” Arturo began, and Danyal gave a sharp noise of protest.

“He’s not my mate.”

The words stung, no matter how true, and I felt Arturo’s gaze on me, though I didn’t look at either one of them. “I’m going to check out the other cave,” I said after a beat.

I turned on my heel, but I was unsurprised to hear Danyal follow me after a moment. I slowed my pace until he caught up, and I waited for him to speak because there was nothing I could say to save the moment.

“Did you tell him I was your mate?” he asked.

I shook my head. “He assumed I was.”

Danyal let out a soft laugh. “Why in the name of all the gods would he think that?”

“Because no Alpha would abandon his city to bring back a single Wolf,” I answered—because it was true. If it hadn’t been Danyal, I would have gone about this another way. I would have taken Kor’s place in Corland and allowed him to solve the problem of the missing Omega.

Danyal made a soft noise in the back of his throat, but he said nothing as we took the second tunnel, which led down a little farther, but had nothing else of note. There wasn’t an escape route, so if we were attacked from the front, we’d have to fight our way out, but it didn’t matter. For now, we were unfollowed. I could hear nothing but scurrying insects, a few bats, and the far-off stream of ground water.

“Do you think we’ll be safe here?” he asked.

I was surprised he didn’t demand more from me, but I was going to take the reprieve for what it was. “Not for long, but for now.”

He sighed, then nodded as we headed back toward the fork. “She’s going to have that baby in the next few hours. I don’t think her water broke, but it will.”

I passed a hand down my face, wondering how the hell we were going to get out of this with a newborn. “Kor is going to lose his absolute shit when he finds out about this.” I hesitated, then stopped him. We were just barely out of earshot, but I dropped my voice low anyway. “Will she take the baby and run?”

“If she’s smart, she will,” Danyal said. “This war is no place for a child, and unlike us, they can hide.”

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