Page 51 of Depraved
I sink down to the floor of the ballroom and bend my knees up in front of me. I place both my elbows on my knees and cover my eyes. I barely hear Pluto’s footsteps when he walks away. I’m too caught up in the cyclones wheeling through my head.
I survived a bomb. I survived the impossible. But what’s the point? If I can’t find my place, my rank, get some goddamned vengeance, and then live out my days with Elena—then why the fuck am I still here?
14
ELENA
“I’m no Nancy Drew,but this doesn’t look like the right place,” I stare up at a dilapidated warehouse. It’s not even nice enough to look like one of those rehabbed, hip, industrial-chic places. It’s dingy and gives me the heebie-jeebies—not the kind of locale a single beta girl would want to hole up.
Down the road, I can hear a forklift beeping and some warehouse workers yelling at each other as they deal with pallets. Metallic and gasoline scents permeate the air, which makes my wolf cringe. In fact, the only good thing about this area is that it’s on the edge of town, backing to some trees.
“Oh, it’s the place all right,” Black’s just as self-assured as always as he climbs out the driver side of our rental car. I have to wait for him to make his way around—for security reasons, he says. It makes me want to roll my eyes because he wouldn’t let any of his elites come with us … no, they’re always sent off to sniff around other parts of the Dark Night territory when we go to question the women from Thomas Stone’s past. So his idea of security is lacking, in my opinion.
I blow out a breath, trying to prepare myself to be friendly and polite to someone who’s probably going to be rude as shit if past experience is anything to go by. “I could never make it as a diplomat,” I grumble as I undo my seatbelt and Black opens my door.
“Luckily, packs don’t operate on democratic principles, Luna,” the alpha says pointedly, enjoying the daggers I glare up at him for using that term.
“I told you to stop that.”
“And I told you that you cemented your place in the pack the night you sorted out Mason and the pack accepted your ruling.”
“Yeah, well, you tricked me into that. I had no clue that’s what was going on.” Stupid goddamned pack politics.
Black just gets a smug smile on his face, and I kind of want to punch him. Maybe not hard enough to break those perfect teeth, but he’d look really good with a split lip for a little while.
I focus on my violent annoyance instead of the fact that he looks hot as hell in a t-shirt that’s far too tight and low-slung loose-fitting jeans. He doesn’t deserve to be ogled after using that word.
I turn and focus on the warehouse in front of us. “Why would a single beta girl want to live in a dump like this?”
“Dump?” I turn and look behind us to see a brunette in her mid-twenties. Her hair is in a French braid, and she’s wearing overalls, carrying a greasy white paper bag that smells like it contains freshly baked donuts.
My stomach makes me immediately regret my word choice because those donuts smell delicious. I doubt she would’ve offered me one anyway, given our typical reception on this trip, but now I know there’s absolutely zero chance.
Black says not everyone in the southern annex is hostile towards the Lobos and the takeover, but every place we’ve visited so far seems to prove him wrong.
This woman’s expression doesn’t look too far off from the others. She looks annoyed to see us, or at least Black. But her expression turns a little bit curious when it circles back around to me.
She addresses me rather than him, which is unusual and makes my shoulders tense up a bit. A lot of shifters scent my rank and dismiss me outright, those that aren’t lusting after an omega, anyway.
But not Brittany May. She faces me dead-on and says, “You’re gonna wanna get out of Dodge soon. I’m hearing whispers about you in all the wrong places.”
A warning that doesn’t sound like a veiled threat. That’s refreshing, though I have heard the same thing said at least a dozen different ways over the past several days; it would be nice to get a proper greeting for once. “I’d love to get out of town, trust me. I don’t think we’ve met a friendly soul here. But unfortunately, we need a little more info on Thomas Stone first.” Since she’s no doubt heard we’ve been sniffing around anyway, I go the direct route.
“What are you offering for said information?” Her stance widens, and she crosses her arms, donut bag dangling from her hand.
“Well, what do you want?”
Her eyes size me up as she tries to gauge how serious I am and what she might be able to squeeze out of me. Little does she know, I’m pretty much a Florida orange right now. She could squeeze and get a whole lot of juice. “Welding studio set up in Colorado. Complete with a loft apartment. Exclusive gig to redo the alpha’s gates.”
“Done,” Black interjects before I can say a word. “Except, instead of the gates for my mansion, I want you to create a whole goddamn fence for the new pack house just outside of Denver.”
Her eyes light up, but her expression remains hard as she tries to play it cool. “Your pack house has a fence?”
“The new one will.”
“You sure you can put your money where that mouth is?”
Black yanks his phone from his jeans pocket and dials. He doesn’t greet the person on the other end of the line. He simply says, “Go to the shifter registry. Southern Annex. Look up a Brittany May. Welder. Just outside Jonesboro. I need to find a bank account and wire her five grand. Label it down payment.”
