Page 11 of Redeemed Wolf

He frowned, turning to me. “What are you doing back here?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Looking for you, actually.”

“Is that so?” He walked toward me, suddenly all smiles, then directed me away from the door with a hand at my back. “Should we go get a coffee?” he asked, clearly trying to divert my attention.

I would allow it for now. “Sure.”

Felix was in the breakroom when we arrived, but as soon as he saw Dr. Taylor, he closed the book he was reading with a snap and cleaned up his lunch mess, suddenly finding somewhere else he had to be. As charming as Eric was, everyone could sense that underlying danger. How could they not?

I poured us both a coffee, then I sat across from him at the table. “So… how are you settling in at Apex?” Eric asked, though it was obviously not an innocent question.

I debated what to tell him. This was taking a huge risk, but I was getting nowhere fast, and there was a sense of urgency to this mission. Jude’s siblings were here somewhere, I could feel it, but they might not always be.

Folding my arms and leaning across the tabletop, I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let’s cut the bullshit for a second, shall we?”

Eric’s lips twitched, as if he was tempted to smile. He mirrored my position, leaning on the table. “Okay, let’s.”

“I wasn’t entirely honest during my interview the other week.” I shrugged sheepishly.

He tilted his head to the side, curious but tense. “Oh?”

I sighed. “Look, it was no coincidence that I moved here to Fairhome and applied for a job here. The truth is that I’ve been looking for you for a long time—or someone like you, anyway. After my little…accident,” I said, tracing a finger down one of the ridged scars that traveled the column of my throat so there was no confusion about what I was talking about, “I needed answers.” I gritted my teeth. “No, that’s not right. What Ineededwas for someone to pay.”

“Go on,” he urged, leaning further in, his expression turning greedy.

“It was no wolf that attacked me that day—no natural-born predator.” I pulled my lip back in a vicious sneer. “That creature was a freak of nature, not meant for this earth. First he was a man, then in the blink of an eye, a monster stood before me. I swore his eyes glowed red. I should’ve died that day, and I would’ve if I hadn’t gotten a lucky shot and killed him first. I sent that demon back to Hell.” I reached across the table and grabbed his forearm. “Do you believe me?”

“I do.” Eric’s eyes had taken on a glint of fanaticism. “Not many men have lived to say the same… but I have survived a similar attack.” He placed his other hand on top of mine and gave a comforting squeeze. “Tell me how you came to be here.”

“I’ve tracked these mutations from coast to coast, all the way up to Canada and back. On the west coast, I joined up with a group of other hunters for a time, like-minded individuals looking to make a difference, and one of them said they’d heard about a group of scientists who’d managed to get their hands on a few, that they werebreedingwhole litters of test subjects. Is that true?”

He hesitated, no doubt wondering how I’d stumbled onto my information. My story had holes big enough to drive a truck through, but he was hungry for what I could give him.Eventually, he nodded, seeming to come to a decision. “It is true.”

I glared straight into his eyes, unwavering. “I. Want. In.”

“Into what, exactly?”

I jerked my hand back, my leg bouncing under the table. “Whatever you’ve got for me! I’ll do anything. I know I’m no scientist, never even went to college, but I’m strong and fast, and I’ve gone up against these things before. I know what they’re capable of. If you need discreet security behind the scenes, I’m your man. Enforcer? Someone to do your grunt work? I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.” I was feeling a little desperate, but it seemed to feed into the story I was painting.

This close to him, I would’ve been a fool if I didn’t consider another possibility. I could kill him here and now, slash my claws across his throat and watch him bleed to death. It would be so easy. From this distance, I couldn’t miss, his pulse thrumming beneath his skin acting like a beacon. I could take his security card, pluck his eyeball from his skull to use for the retina scanner… but that wouldn’t take into account the code needed to get past that door—or the camera pointed straight at me, its red light blinking in warning, sayingstop, stop, stop.

My rage was hot and heavy, it was nearly the only thing I could see…

Stop. My wolf’s bite seared me like a red-hot branding iron, clearing my thoughts.

My wolf, who’d been so antsy and irritated all day, pacing and desperate to take action until I thought he would burst from my skin, was now firm with his order. He was steady, resolved. Unwavering.Stop, he said again, and that one word loosened the fist around my heart.

He and I, we were in this together, and I had to believe we could survive.

Eric, clueless to the internal battle going on before his very eyes, his life hanging in the balance, smiled slowly. “You want in?”

“I do,” I said, nodding.

“Why don’t you come with me, Silas. I think it’s time you get a proper tour of the facility, and I’m sure I have some work for you to do.”

This was it, the moment we’d been working toward. My blood sang with adrenaline, going straight to my head. It was nearly impossible to keep a straight face, but I imagined it was only normal for a psychopath to smile. Someone like him, like who he thought I was…

“This used to be our secondary facility,” he was saying as he led me back the way we’d come, back to the secure door. “Apex Labs started as barely more than the dream of a great man, Dr. Gray. Robert had believed that the human genome held secrets in its code, variants that would lead human evolution into the future.” Eric’s eyes flashed with childlike fervor. “He’d started his first lab when he was fresh out of university, in his garage at home, with nothing more than a mini fridge, a microscope, and a secondhand thermal cycler. When he had his first breakthrough and decided it was time to recruit some help, he’d rented some space in a storage locker, and then from there, they moved to an old warehouse. There were plenty of billionaires looking to fund a curious mind like his. The real breakthrough, though, was when he got his hands on his first specimen.”

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