The Bureau (A Cage for Men and Wolves Book 1) (13 page)

"Where is she?" Rainer's baritone voice shook its way up the stairs and Clover knew he was inside.

He was looking for her. Actively. With shaking fingers she snatched her branding kit from the floor, wrapping it up and throwing it into the back of the closet, quickly followed by her satchel. She couldn't let him see the room like this. Downstairs, muffled voices moved toward the back of the house where the kitchen chairs had been tipped over and the little pane of glass in the back door still sat unfixed. There was nothing she could do about that.

As she finished kicking the soaps, washcloths, and spare razors under the bed she heard footsteps on the stairs and suddenly remembered the reason she'd been sent upstairs in the first place. Her uniform laid scattered across the foot of the bed and the floor and she realized she wouldn't be able to change in time.

"You can't just barge into other peoples' houses." Elliot was shouting from just down the hall. She was impressed by the depth of his tone, which nearly matched his brother's now. Rainer's familiar boot tread didn't hesitate, though.

"I know you're hiding something," Rainer growled, "and I'm not leaving until I find it."

With no time left, and with her heart beating frantically in her throat, Clover did the only thing she could think of; she tore her worn clothes from her body, kicking them under the bed as they dropped to the floor, then scrambled under the blankets. She pulled the downy comforter over her bare chest just as the door flew open, Rainer ignoring his younger brother's violent pull on his uniform.

"I told you to lea—" Before Elliot could finish, both men came to a stop just inside the door.

Clover had known that Rainer was suspicious, so she knew he was expecting to find
something,
but a naked, deceptively debauched looking werewolf in his brother's bed was
not
it. For a long time the three stared at each other, Elliot's mouth hanging open in an expression somewhere between embarrassment and betrayal. Even Rainer's eyes had widened briefly.

"This isn't what it looks like." Elliot stumbled over his words.

Rainer and Clover both looked at him, but while Rainer seemed amused, Clover was not. He needed to shut his mouth, and if she'd been alone with him she would have shut it for him. This distraction from their actual plan was exactly what they needed, but Elliot refused to look at her, making it impossible for her to send him any kind of silent warning.

"You really expect me to believe that?" Rainer asked, his face contorted in what Clover assumed was supposed to be his smile.

"Yes!"

“Really? With your mussed hair and stretched T-shirt?” Rainer’s hand swept across his brother’s blond hair that stuck out at odd angles from where Clover had grabbed in in their fight. She may have also torn the neck of his shirt.

Elliot knocked his hand away, looking like he wanted to slam his brother into the door frame.

Clover’s throat was dry when she tried to interject. "I can expl—"

"Shut up!" The concussive sound of Rainer’s voice made Clover jump inside her armor of blankets. "You speak in front of me again, and I'll make sure even my brother won’t want to look at you," Rainer warned, deep and sincere.

Clover didn't need anyone to tell her that she'd gone pale, or what his threat implied. Memories of the beating she'd seen in the park so many years ago resurfaced again. She wondered if that girl survived, and what sort of permanent damage she'd suffered if she had. Unable to keep steady under his ice-cold stare, Clover looked at the blankets instead.

"That's enough, Dominic," Elliot insisted, though Clover could hear the faked bravado. "She's mine, and she's allowed to say whatever she wants."

There was a confused fluttering in Clover's stomach. She found something about Elliot standing up to this man, who they both feared, strangely admirable. Then she remembered she was still considered property, and while she understood that she was free to leave if she wanted—that Elliot was only pretending at her request—it still infuriated her. She'd never thought she'd have to convince herself of the same thing she'd tried so hard to convince Hannah of: Even a kind owner is still a villain.

"Get dressed," Rainer ordered instead of acknowledging Elliot's insistence that he had no right to order her around.

"Hey.” Elliot grabbed a fistful of his brother's uniform, demanding his attention.

Like a striking snake, Rainer's arm caught his brother by the throat, shoving him into the door frame before his voice had even faded. The suddenness and strength of the movement made Clover jump, a yelp escaping her before she could stop it. The room went still and Clover finally realized what Elliot seemed to already know—Rainer would feel no remorse over choking his little brother to death. She wondered if Elliot wasn't, in fact, more scared of him than she was.

Rainer, using his minor height advantage, looked down at Elliot in warning, and after a few moments of their silent struggle, Elliot broke the stare, turning his face toward the hallway, away from the bed Clover now felt trapped in. Keeping his grip on the already stretched collar of Elliot's T-shirt, Rainer turned his attention back to Clover, who felt any courage she had left begin to wilt under the stare that Elliot must have grown up under.

"Get dressed." His voice was quieter this time, which only highlighted the danger of disobeying.

Clover realized he wasn't going to look away. His message was clear. He was trying to humiliate her, strip her of those things that made her still feel independent. He was telling her that she wasn't even worthy of privacy to her own body. Being naked wasn’t something that usually bothered her—once you got used to waking up naked in a cage surrounded on every side by pack-mates once a month it became routine—but this man was not her pack-mate.

She could feel embarrassment coloring her face and she hated that he could see it. Then he smiled—a tiny quirking at the corner of his mouth—and fury rushed back into her body, stifling the worst of her fears.

Refusing to give Rainer even this tiny victory, she squared her shoulders and threw the blankets off herself, as though revealing some grand prize, then stood, keeping her own stony eyes locked defiantly with his. She'd cast her role as a slave aside with the blankets, and that was dangerous, but she would
not
let him use her own body as a weapon against her. His eyes flicked down her bare skin and she felt a nauseating shiver tear through her, the barely noticeable raising of eyebrows bringing furious tears to her eyes. She looked away long enough to snatch her uniform from the foot of the bed, then dressed herself, taking her time as if to tell him that she wouldn't succumb to his emotional harassment. Once she was covered, the wrinkles in her skirt smoothed with angry swipes of her hands, Rainer released his brother, that hint of amusement she'd seen gone.

"You have surprisingly disgusting taste," he said to Elliot as he turned to leave the room, calling to Clover once he was in the hall. "Bring coffee to the office, dog."

Despite her show of confidence, Clover wanted to throw up.

"What were you thinking?" Elliot hissed at her as she made her way toward the door.

"Shut up, he can hear us," was all she said as she left the room, passing by the door she'd once hidden behind.

It felt like an invasion of a sacred place to have Rainer, a man she'd thought would be a single, traumatizing event, getting comfortable in what had become her safe-house, particularly in the room where it had all begun. Through the door she could see him making himself at home, lounging in the large leather chair behind the desk, the soles of his metal-toed boots facing her. He watched her as she rounded the landing and made her way down the stairs. She didn’t look, but she could feel his eyes on her, and it made her quiver.

Once downstairs, she picked the chairs up off the kitchen floor, setting them properly on their legs. She could hear pacing footsteps upstairs and muffled voices, and once she felt alone, she sank into a wooden seat, clutching her stomach and trying not to scream. What had she done? Her instincts told her that what she'd done was right. She'd stood up to him. She'd made it clear that he couldn't bully. But she was supposed to be a slave. She was supposed to be submissive. Showing even
silent
defiance would only draw more attention to herself.

She could still slip out the back door—it would be easy. To just go back to her aunt and the tiny curtained corner that was just hers in their freight car. By the time Rainer noticed, she'd be with her pack again, and in a few weeks, when Elliot failed to change at the full moon, he'd realize she'd been lying. She wasn't sure how she'd expected her weakly stitched plan to go, but she knew it wasn't supposed to be like this, and now, with Jeannette's words added to the chaos spinning round in her head, she wondered if her family would even want to be found. What if they were happy? Like Hannah was.

She soaked up the silence of the kitchen then swallowed and forced herself to stand up again. If she wasn’t running away, then she would have to hurry to get the coffee that Rainer was expecting. As she fumbled with the machine, trying to mimic what Elliot had done that morning, she did her best to reassure herself. She knew her parents. Neither of them would to want to live, even for a moment of their lives, in bondage. She knew they would do just as much to save her if she'd been the one captured. As the smell of the dark roast filled the room, she tried to not think too hard on her father's chances of being kept in servitude, telling herself that he was clever and would have found a way to avoid termination, even with his defiant, strong personality.

She was glad the coffee maker brewed slowly, because she needed every second she could get to steel herself. Finally stuffing her doubts as far as she could into the corner of her mind, and pointedly ignoring the back door, she made her way back up the stairs, a mug of coffee in each hand. When she reached the landing, their voices became clear and she could make out their conversation through the barely-cracked door.

"If you're not careful you're going to keep driving him away, you know." Rainer's voice was more subdued now, a hint of what Clover might have thought was worry softening it.

"Don’t act like you want me to do what he says." Elliot’s voice was docile as well, but distorted by a sharp edge.

Clover wondered how young he'd been when he'd stopped dwelling on the outbursts of violence like the one she'd seen in the bedroom. She had no doubt that Rainer had lashed out at his younger brother like that before. It made her sad to think that he'd been conditioned to forgive such things so quickly.

"Well if you’re not going to take the position then you need to refuse it flat out. Make it clear to him."

“We both know that he won’t listen.”

“Then you
make
him listen.” Rainer’s voice was hard now, like he was clenching his jaw tight. “This is why you aren’t cut out for the position. You lack fortitude.”

“Fortitude?” The pure insult in Elliot’s voice made Clover wonder if all rich white boys used insults like this. “I think you’re confusing a fortitude with brashness. You need to remember that we’re not some giant garbage disposal here to get rid of werewolves. We’re a business. We have entire economic structures built on top of us that will collapse if we make the wrong choices.”

“You sound like your father.”

“That’s right, I do. Because he’s
my
father, not yours. Succession isn’t any of your business and even if I don’t take it, you’re hardly the person I would choose for the position.”

Clover’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead. She’d not expected such direct, harsh words from the young man she’d just seen cowering in front of his brother.

“You think you know how to handle these monsters? You honestly think that keeping them around like pets, like
bed warmers,
is appropriate? They’re an infection that will spread right under our noses unless we take care of them immediately. Succinctly and without exception.”

Clover’s eyes rolled so hard they hurt.
Seriously. Rich kids…

“It sounds to me like you’re confusing ‘fortitude’ with ‘blood-lust’.”

“Don’t give me that bleeding-heart bullshit, Elliot,” Rainer scoffed. "We knew you didn't have it in you to lead when you chose to be an evaluator instead of a
real
agent."

"I'm tired of hearing you two complain about my decision."

"Then what else should I complain about? Your new pet?"

"Just stop," Elliot said, the tension in his voice giving his brother something to strike at.

"Since you love keeping them around so much, I guess it was only a matter of time before you finally got one of your own."

“We’re finished.”

Clover heard the chair she'd seen Rainer sitting in creak as he stood, his hands slapping the top of the polished desk. “Endorse me for the position to Father.”

"We’re finished!”

Elliot's voice had a pitch of anger that Clover hadn't heard before. She wanted to see what that kind of anger looked like on his face, and before she could stop herself, she'd barged her way into the room. She'd caught them both off guard, effectively breaking the line of tension that ran between them. Doing her best to seem ignorant, she widened her eyes, looking between her enemy and the man who was playing her master.