Page 58 of White Wolf

Philippe called to his assistants: “Bring me the alpha.”

Sasha’s hand spasmed on his wrist.

Nikita glanced over at the empty table, its buffed steel surface gleaming under the lights. His pulse accelerated, from its anxious thump-thump to an irregular patter like raindrops. His breath hitched.Alpha. “What are you talking about?”

Philippe ignored him, holding his book with both hands, watching the door to the lab expectantly.

Sounds of a scuffle out in the hall echoed down the corridor, growing louder.

Nikita looked from Pyotr, to Feliks, to Ivan, to Kolya.

Ivan looked the most alarmed Nikita had ever seen him, hands balled into fists at his sides.

Kolya rested one hand on the butt of his gun.

“You won’t need that,” Philippe said, offhand, without even turning his head. “I can assure you the beast is contained.”

“Beast,” Nikita started, and then the lab assistants brought it into the room.

A massive, shaggy white wolf.

“Shit,” Ivan breathed.

Yeah. Shit.

The animal was alive and awake, thrashing and growling in the assistants’ arms. Its legs were bound tight, his face muzzled.

Sasha lifted his head, hand sliding off Nikita’s. “Oh,” he said, low and broken, impossibly sad.

Nikita hadn’t grown up in the wilderness, but he knew just what Sasha meant: it waswrongto see an animal so strong and graceful bound up in chains. His fur dirty and dull. His gold eyes blazing through the gaps in the muzzle. Nikita had seen wild wolves running alongside the train in Siberia, fleet shadows across the snow. They weren’t meant to be indoors like this, chained and lugged like a prisoner.

“What are you doing?” Nikita demanded as the assistants laid the wolf out on the empty table, pinning it down with elbows and forearms. “Why do you have a wolf? Answer me, damn it!”

Beneath his hand, Sasha was trembling.

Philippe turned to them, sighing, growing impatient. “Captain Baskin, if you could please just stand back and–”

“Answer me.”

Philippe blinked. His face smoothed over. Behind him, the assistants wrestled with the wolf. “Captain,” he said, calm and rational, “did you really think there wasn’t going to be a moment of unpleasantness in this process? You’ve accompanied me from Moscow, to Tomsk, and now to Stalingrad. You’ve gone along more or less cooperatively, but now, at the moment of conception, you want to show your anger? Like a child who finally realizes it’s going to hurt when the doctor resets his broken arm?”

They stared at one another.

“I promise you that Sasha will not be harmed. He will be strong and healthy, and impossibly powerful,” Philippe said. “Or are you worried for the wolf?”

Nikita felt cold sweat gathering behind his ears, sliding down the back of his neck.

Sasha squeezed his wrist, drawing his attention. “It’s okay,” he said, repeating Nikita’s words of moments before. “I’m alright.” He tried to smile.

“Captain Baskin, if you please,” Philippe said.

He swallowed hard, a lump of sickness rising in his throat. “I…”

What would you do to restore the empire?Monsieur Philippe had asked him.

Anything, he’d answered.

He could see that exchange shining in the old man’s eyes, daring him, asking him again.Did you really mean that? Or will you let personal feelings get in the way? Maybe you aren’t much of a White after all…

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