Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (9 page)

‘I’m Leona,’ she
said in a flat voice. The human screamed around the ball-gag, tears streaming
down her filthy gaunt cheeks. Marcus laughed.

‘Do you remember
how you used to do that Leona?’ he asked in an amused voice, his eyes sparkling
before turning back to the girl and frowning. The human screamed a little
louder, pulling against her bonds. Marcus’s mouth thinned before raising his
hand and cuffing the girl to shut her up. She slumped forward onto the bench,
her dirty silver-blonde hair shielding her from view. Marcus pushed her back
gently like he didn’t want to hurt her more than he already had. ‘But I broke
you of that habit, didn’t I, dear?’ Marcus added, looking up at Leona as if
they were having a private conversation.

‘Are you going
to Change her?’ Connall asked, circling the girl and smelling her hair.

Marcus turned to
him, his eyes shifting from green to orange. His wolf’s eyes remained as
Connall touched his girl. A growl broke out from between Marcus’s clenched
teeth, stopping Connall. He smiled lazily at his alpha and backed off.

‘You wanted to
see me, Marcus?’ Leona asked, busying herself by pouring a cup of coffee from
the pot and trying to pretend that her alpha wasn’t going to be torturing that
poor human soon.

‘Yes, I did. Did
everything go to plan last night?’ he asked, distracted. She turned around,
putting the black granite bench top at her back. Marcus was running his fingers
through the runaway’s silvery hair now, rubbing it between his fingers,
seemingly oblivious to who was in the room with him. She could smell his lust
building every time he raked his fingers along her scalp.

Leona brought
the cup to her lips, taking a careful sip of the hot coffee and averting her
eyes. ‘Yes.’ Her stomach twisted again at her admission.

‘Good,’ Marcus
purred. ‘Did you do exactly as I asked of you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perfect!’
Marcus beamed, trailing his hands over the human girl’s head now like he was
patting a dog. The girl exhaled sharply as she came around, blinking fast and
looking at the kitchen like she was just seeing it for the first time. Leona
could see the realisation that she hadn’t just dreamed all of that settle onto
her face—boldfaced panic replacing it. ‘Ah, you’ve woken up,’ he said gently to
the girl, stroking her cheek with one long fingernail.

The girl was
making soft whimpering sounds now, fresh tears streaming from her eyes. Marcus
looked up at Connall and Leona, smiling malevolently. ‘I’ll be downstairs if
anybody needs me,’ he said in a cool, silky voice. Marcus slid from the stool,
potato-sacking the girl over his shoulder. When the door slid shut, a shudder
rolled down Leona’s spine.

Connall sidled
up next to her and sighed. ‘I know. It’d be great to be able to join in,
wouldn’t it?’ He was looking longingly at the door when he spoke.

Leona dumped her
coffee cup into the sink. ‘No,’ she snarled, marching out of the house.

*

After Rhett dropped Indi off at
work, he’d gone back to the farmhouse to check in with his uncle. It had only
been two days since Eaton had been taken, but to Rhett and his uncle, it felt
like two months of living in hell.  Rhett found Antain in his office, his head
bent over a satellite image of Dayton-Hollis—Dragos pack territory. The Helheim
pack shared half of Buxton with them, but Marcus’s pack house was in
Dayton-Hollis.

‘Uncle,’ Rhett
said, lowering himself onto the couch along the wall opposite his uncle’s desk.
Antain looked up. His eyes were bloodshot from the lack of sleep, and he had
heavy purple circles under his eyes. And even though Rhett, Vaile and Sabel had
tried to tell him to get some rest, he still wouldn’t. ‘Have you heard anything
yet?’

‘No, nothing.
And it’s driving me crazy not knowing how she is.’

‘Have you been
able to get a bead on her?’ Rhett asked, resting his elbows on his knees and
leaning forward. His uncle shook his head roughly, exhaling.

‘I can’t get
through to her. They must be keeping her sedated.’

All mated wolves
had this ability to feel their mates. Strong emotions came through the loudest,
and when Eaton had been taken while loading up her car with the week’s
groceries, Antain had felt her shock, pain and fear. It was his wolf that
hadn’t been able to handle the news. That’s why he’d shifted so violently and
with a strength that no other wolf in the pack could possess.

Eaton was the
gentlest of all the Helheim wolves. She was nurturing and kind. She was the
mother Rhett had when he couldn’t remember his own. And if Marcus had done
anything to take Eaton away from him and his uncle, Rhett would have his head.

Rhett looked
around the room, his eyes gravitating to the sideboard where his uncle kept his
whiskey. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked.

Antain followed
his gaze. ‘At the back of the cabinet I have a bottle of thirty-year-old
Glenfiddich. I think a situation like this calls for something a little more
mature.’

Rhett nodded,
opening up the doors and moving around a few bottles before finding what he was
looking for. He poured himself and his uncle a glass of whiskey, setting
Antain’s glass down in front of him before taking up the same position on the
couch as before. The whiskey went smoothly down his throat. ‘Where’s Sabel?’

Antain pinched
the top of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, tightly squeezing his eyes
shut. ‘Sleeping. He’s been stuck to my side since I shifted back, refusing to
eat unless I did, refusing to sleep unless I did.’ Rhett raised a dark eyebrow.
Antain smiled wryly. ‘I went to my bedroom to lay down, and when I looked out
in the hallway ten minutes later, I found Sabel asleep in the wing chair he’d
dragged out into the hallway from his room. I take my opportunities when I see
them.’

‘He’s going to
lose it when he finds you gone,’ Rhett murmured, looking down at the amber
liquid in his glass. Even though he hated Sabel, Rhett had to agree that he did
a damn good job as Captain of the Enforcers. ‘What about Vaile?’

‘Working. There’s
been a suspicious murder, and you know what he’s like with his detective work.’
Rhett nodded. ‘And Colton is at college,’ Antain added before Rhett could ask.

Rhett’s teeth
clenched. ‘At a time like this?’ he asked, his words coming out in a hiss.

His uncle’s
brown eyes slid to gold for a second. ‘I told him to go. We don’t have any way
of knowing how to get Eaton back unless we can do some recon.’

‘So, what are we
waiting for?’

‘I was hoping
that some of the other alphas would have been able to shed some light on this
situation. I called Dorian and Charles, but they haven’t been able to tell me
anything.’ Antain took a sip from his squat glass, placing it back onto the old
water ring on his desk. ‘They hadn’t even heard that she’d been taken.’

‘I’m not
surprised. We certainly haven’t told anyone.’

‘Yes, but I
thought Marcus would be gloating over what he’d done.’

Rhett shrugged.
‘Dorian and Charles hate Marcus just as much as we do. Why would they listen to
anything he has to say?’

‘True,’ Antain
conceded, taking a deep sip from his glass.

Rhett licked his
lips. ‘I hate that we’re waiting. It’s been two days since she went missing. We
have to make a move. We
have to
send out a team to do recon. I can go.
I’ll go right now—’ Rhett said desperately, standing up to put his glass on top
of the sideboard.

‘No,’ Antain
said firmly, bringing Rhett to an abrupt stop.

‘But—’ Rhett
said. He was suddenly interrupted again when the office door burst open
unexpectedly. Both he and his uncle glanced up. Sabel stood in the doorway, his
chest pumping from running down the stairs and through the house in search of
his alpha.

‘Sabel,’ Antain
said smoothly, ‘I’m quite alright. Have a seat.’ He gestured to the space next
to Rhett. Sabel’s gaze travelled to the couch; a sneer pulling up his top lip.
Rhett’s spine straightened.

Ignoring the
free space, Sabel sauntered over to the chair sitting directly opposite Antain
and dropped into it—obscuring Rhett’s view of his uncle. A growl Rhett couldn’t
stop trickled from his throat. In response, Sabel looked over his shoulder at
Rhett, his eyes chartreuse-green and vicious. 

‘How was your
nap?’ Rhett asked snidely. Sabel bristled, turning back to his alpha without
giving Rhett an answer.

‘How long have
you been in here?’ Sabel demanded, shrinking back into his seat a second later
when Antain’s powerful gaze fell onto him. ‘I’m sorry. But when I woke up and
found you missing, I …’ Sabel broke off his train of thought suddenly.

‘About half an
hour. Rhett has been with me most of the time. We were just talking about doing
some recon to get information.’

‘Screw recon.
Let’s just go in and kill them all. Marcus only keeps Connall and Leona in his
house. The rest of his enforcers live in houses around the city. By the time
they reached Marcus’s, we’d be long gone.’

‘Are you sure
about that?’ Antain countered. ‘How can we know that? How would we know if he
hasn’t beefed up security now that he has her? Surely he’ll be expecting that
anyway.’

‘But—’ Sabel
began, but was quickly cut off.

‘I won’t risk
Eaton’s life for a hunch, Sabel,’ Antain snapped, a rush of his power flooding
the room for a second before he reined it in again. ‘No, what we need is a
plan,’ Antain said, looking up and catching Rhett’s eye. ‘We need to find out
exactly what we’ll be up against. We don’t even know if Eaton is being held at Marcus’s
place. He could be holding her somewhere else.’

‘So how do you
propose we proceed?’

‘Sabel, I’m
sending you out to check it out. It’ll be dangerous work, but you’re the only
wolf I trust with this job.’

‘
Antain
,’
Rhett pleaded, trying hard to keep his emotions locked down. Why was his uncle
giving Sabel this job after Rhett swore to get her back? Antain gave him the
“stop” motion with his hand. Sabel grinned back at Rhett again; his eyes
flashing maliciously.

Sabel turned
back to Antain. ‘When will I leave?’

‘When Colton
returns from classes today. I don’t want you going out alone. Do
not
jump the gun on this one, do you understand me? You wait until Colton returns
in a few hours.’

‘Yes Alpha.’

‘That
was
an order Sabel, in case anything was unclear. Do not leave without Colton at
your side.’ Rhett heard him swallow audibly before he nodded stiffly once more.
‘You are to do recon only. Do not engage with any Dragos wolves. Do not even
let yourselves be seen. Keep your ears and eyes open. Gather information and
return to me. I need you to find out where Eaton is being detained. And you,’
Antain stopped. Rhett looked up.

‘Uncle?’

‘Get back to
Indi. I don’t like you leaving her unattended. If you can, bring her back here
so we can keep a better eye on her. No doubt Marcus will be making attempts to
abduct her while we’re busy coming up with a plan of attack to get Eaton back.
In fact, I’m quite sure that’s the reason he took her in the first place.’

Rhett nodded,
his heart pounding painfully in his chest. Why hadn’t he thought of that? ‘Yes
Alpha,’ he replied. He drained the whiskey from his glass and left.

Vaile’s day was running together
into one blur of murder, blood, bodies and Grey. He’d been awake since two that
morning with the exception of an hour’s sleep which had been seriously
disturbed by more thoughts of Grey. He couldn’t believe it was still only
Friday.

He looked out
the snow-encrusted windscreen, staring at the road signs they passed; only
three more miles until they reached Buxton University. BU was split into three
campuses spread all around town. Luckily for him, all the campuses were on Helheim
land, which made his job ten thousand times easier.

He exhaled
slowly, his eyes sliding shut for a moment. They jerked open suddenly—the sight
of the carving in Aaron’s chest burned into the back of his eyelids. Grey had
known that he recognised it. She knew and he had no idea how she did. The best
he could do was fumble with denial, knowing how un-fucking-believable it
actually sounded. But Grey had let it go, for which he was grateful. She didn’t
need to get mixed up in vampire business.

The symbol that
had been carved into the kid was a symbol the vampire’s used. If his
interpretation of it was correct, it represented the serpent, and there was
only one vampire who had an affinity to the serpent: Eirawen. That bitch was
behind the murder and mutilation, but now he had to figure out how some
nineteen-year-old not-quite-Goth kid fit into her plan, because from where he
was sitting right now, he couldn’t see how he could.

‘This is our
exit,’ Grey said. He glanced over at her. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat
in the car. Some of her hair had fallen from the knot she kept it in at the
back of her head, and he struggled with everything he had in him not to tuck it
back behind her ear. Instead, he grunted something unintelligible and flicked
his indicator on to turn.

The north campus
of Buxton U was a series of double-storey brick buildings set into the natural
landscape. Between the buildings were clusters of trees, their branches slowly
being weighed down by the recent dumping of snow. Vaile parked his unmarked in
a disabled zone and got out. They headed towards a large, square community
bulletin board in the hopes of finding a campus map. Vaile scraped some frost
from the glass and found what he was looking for. He studied the map for a
minute before looking up to get his bearings. When he found the administration
building, he and Grey walked through the slush on the footpaths towards the
closest building to them.