Page 6 of Lost Wolf (Exiled Omegas #2)

Six

Luke

“You sure this is the right place?” Macy asks as she puts the SUV in park and leans forward to peer up at the large two-story house. “It looks a little… fancy.”

If I hadn’t typed the address Doc gave me into the GPS myself, I’d have my doubts too because Keir obviously wasn’t kidding when he said the Smyrna pack had money. The house isn’t overly flashy, but it’s definitely bigger than anything we have in Sweet Water.

A knock at my window startles a growl out of me, and I spin toward the dark-haired man standing in the driveway beside the SUV, my lips pulling away from my teeth.

The man outside the vehicle is older than me, maybe in his late twenties with dark hair and eyes. I study his face, eyes narrowing. Even though I only met him briefly and didn’t pay much attention to him at the time, I’m pretty sure this guy must be Doc.

Here goes nothing .

Doc takes a step back as I plaster a smile on my face and exit the SUV. The guy’s face only brings up vague memories, but he looks enough that like his older brother to make this uncomfortable. Zachariah Stevens was a sadistic psychopath who karma finally got in the end.

But Keir said Doc was okay. Well, that he’s not an abusive asshole, anyway.

I straighten my shoulders and hold my hand out. “You must be Doc.”

He blinks at me, glances down at my hand, then tilts his head to the side in a gesture of submission. “Alpha.”

I barely hold back a sigh. I get enough of this stupidly formal crap with Linda. The last thing I want is to deal with it here too.

“I think we can dispense with the formalities,” I say. And get this over with.

Doc’s brows draw together. “But… that’s your title.”

“Yes,” says Macy, stepping up beside me, chin up so she’s looking down her nose at Doc—quite a feat since she’s a few inches shorter than him. “It is.” She glances at me, giving me a sightly exasperated look and a minute shake of her head.

Julien’s pack doesn’t hold to these kinds of formalities for the most part, but Macy thinks it’s important that I stick to tradition as much as possible. It “appeases the older pack members” in her opinion and makes them more likely overlook my young age and to accept other changes. And she’s probably right.

Maybe my second is more of a diplomat than I give her credit for.

I drop my hand and acknowledge Doc’s submissive gesture with a dip of my chin. “This is my second, Macy.”

“Welcome.” Doc bobs his head in her direction, then his gaze slides to me. “I’m not sure what the protocol is here. Before… my brother didn’t have an official second.”

She gives him a tight smile. “How about you just take us to this shifter you called about? We can worry about figuring out the formalities later.”

“Of course,” he replies, bobbing his head again. I expect him to lead us inside, but instead he gestures to the left and walks around the side of the house.

Macy and I exchange a look, and I jerk my chin toward Doc’s back, raising my eyebrows. She shrugs and nods, moving to take position in front of me. I can’t sense any sort of large grouping of shifters here, so everything’s probably perfectly fine. Still, the two of us stay alert, our gazes darting around the yard, ready for any sort of ambush.

There’s a narrow paver stone walkway leading to a smaller building near the edge of a group of trees on the left side of the house. The structure looks like a shed of some kind, but a very well appointed one, and I’m reminded again about what Keir said about this pack’s finances.

The Sweet Water pack could be considered land rich since all of us live in a compound on a single hundred-acre piece of property, but, hell, this “shed” might be nicer than some of the pack houses in the lower part of the Sweet Water compound.

Doc pulls a set of keys from his pocket and sets to unlocking the door.

“Why do you have him locked up out here?” asks Macy, frowning. “Is he dangerous?”

Doc purses his lips. “He was very worked up. I had to drug him just to get him out of the wildlife center and…” He gestures toward the shed. “I had no way of knowing for sure whether he was feral, so he needed to be secured.” Doc’s gaze darts to me, then away. “Putting him in one of the kennels in my lab area was the only way to do that.”

“You put a shifter in a cage like an animal?” Macy asks, her voice going hard.

“I didn’t have any other choice.” Doc’s lips twist with irritation and he shakes his head as he pushes open the door and clicks on the light inside.

The interior of the small building is deceptively large. Most of the space appears to be, as Doc said, a lab that’s filled with science-type stuff I don’t recognize. In the far right corner there’s a small cot, a mini-fridge, and a microwave, indicating Doc might spend a lot of time in here. Lengths of chain link fencing make up two kennels in the opposite corner and there’s a bank of three cages—all empty—along the wall across from the kennels.

My wolf perks up and a strange instinct draws me toward the occupied kennel and the small form huddled against the wall inside. The shifter’s coat, though filthy, appears to be completely white, a very uncommon color for a shifter, and there’s a small, shaved area on one of his front legs and a larger one on his right hind quarters.

I glance at Doc, tilting my head toward the shifter and raising my brows in question.

“His rear leg was fractured. The wildlife center put a cast on him and was giving him IV fluids,” he says. “I took the cast off before asking him to shift so it wouldn’t interfere.”

“Any idea where he was before all this?” I ask, moving closer to the kennel. The wolf doesn’t stir, even as I reach the fencing and curl my fingers through the chain link. “From his current condition, I doubt he was much better off even before his injury.”

Doc shrugs. “The vet at the wildlife center thought he might have been kept as a pet, though not one who was well cared for. He doesn’t have enough evidence of scarring or other injuries to make them think he was used for fighting.”

I study the wolf again, my stomach twisting. “But with shifter healing…”

“Exactly.” Doc nods, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I’ve heard a couple rumors about a dog fighting ring operating in the area. That’s another reason I thought finding out who he is and where he’s been might be important.”

I blow out a breath. The last thing I need is to be dealing with some kind of shifter fight club, or worse, humans using shifters for dog fighting. If either of those things is the case, this situation might quickly become way more than I can handle on my own.

I lean closer to the fencing and take a deep breath, letting my senses filter through the different scents layered over the small wolf. The strongest one is disinfectant or something, unpleasant, but not unexpected. The scents hidden underneath the chemical stink, however, make my lips twist with disgust.

Metal and sickness and fear.

And only buried under all that horror is the scent of shifter, faded and weak, enough to identify him as one of us, but nothing more. Not even enough to confirm his designation.

The one good thing is that I don’t sense anything that would lead me to believe he’d recently been in any fights. I relay that information to Macy who’s scowling at Doc.

“I’m still waiting to see why you had to lock him up,” says Macy in a dry voice.

Doc shoots her an annoyed look. “Shifter or not, a frightened and injured animal is nothing to mess around with. It was for both his protection and mine. I couldn’t very well bring an unknown shifter into the house and put him in one of the bedrooms. Besides the fact he was liable to hurt himself, I had no idea what his motives for being in this territory might be.”

“His motives?” Macy rolls her eyes. “I think it’s pretty obvious that however he got to Smyrna, it wasn’t voluntary.” She turns her attention to me, her voice going softer. “Can you help him, Luke?”

“Probably,” I say.

Doc gives me an odd look, but then shrugs and unlocks the door to the kennel. I slip inside, crouching on the cement floor next to the small wolf.

One of the wolf’s eyes cracks open, briefly showing off a sliver of vibrant jade before sliding closed again. My heat skips a beat as sudden feeling of certainty rushes through me. I’m not sure what is it or how I know, but there’s something special about this shifter.

I reach out, resting my palm against the wolf’s flank for a second before gently stroking my hand down his side. His fur is almost brittle and his ribs are uncomfortably prominent, but his heartbeat is strong and his breaths even.

When my hand drifts toward his hind quarters, he attempts to curl into an even tighter ball, and I pick up a vibration in his chest that might be a growl. I bring my other hand closer to his nose so he can smell me, but the low growl continues and there’s no hint of the natural submissive instincts most shifters have when faced with an Alpha.

I pull away and cast a glance over my shoulder at Doc. “You were right to call me. He’s so lost in his wolf that I don’t know that he even recognizes me as an Alpha.”

But none of that matters now.

I reach toward the wolf again, placing my hand on his side and stroking his fur as I try to calm him. “Shhh,” I say. “Whatever happened to you, you're safe now.”

The wolf doesn’t respond, not even to open his eyes again, but the subtle growl stops and his muscles relax slightly.

“We’re here to help you,” I say. “But you have to shift.”

No response and no indication he’s attempting to shift.

I swallow, my gaze darting to the two expectant shifters behind me. The truth is, I’ve never actually forced a shift. In fact, the usage of my Alpha powers has been few and far between. Drawing on the energy of the pack when everything has been so unstable has been something I’ve tried to avoid.

There’s no other choice here, though. I picture Randall in my mind, remember the feeling of his voice and power rolling over the pack when he’d command us all the shift. He wasn’t the strongest Alpha, but he was experienced enough that the draw on the pack bond was almost nonexistent.

I close my eyes. “Shift,” I say, trying to mimic my memories of Randall’s Alpha command. Nothing happens, so I try again, this time putting more force into the word. “ Shift .”

This time it definitely works.

A shiver passes over the small wolf and he begins to shift, the process messy in a way I've never seen, as if he's fighting against it. His entire body twists and contorts, yelps of pain punctuating each loud crack as his bones reshape themselves.

The young man who slowly emerges is as skinny in his human form as he was in his wolf form, his limbs gangly and awkward as he curls in on himself, panting and shuddering. White blond hair covers his head, the strands uneven and snarled together and the scent of absolute terror wafts off of him so strongly, I almost back up.

But a strong urge to comfort him wells up in my chest, and I reach toward him, making a soft noise deep in my throat that’s almost more wolf than human.

The second my fingertips brush against his shoulder, he yanks himself away, shoving his back against the wall with an audible smack. He curls his arms over his head, his mouth opening and closing with a silent cry as tears track down his cheeks.

My wolf whines anxiously in my head for me to help him, but I don’t know what to do without touching him.

I drop my voice into a soothing tone, trying to put as much comfort into my words as possible. “It's okay. You’re safe.”

But, if anything, his fear ramps up, gaze bouncing around the room, eyes wide with blind terror. The young man’s frail body won’t be able to withstand this state for long, his heart beating so fast I’m surprised it’s not bursting out of his chest.

“It’s—”

He snarls and bares his teeth at me, then leaps, knocking me onto my ass as his body rams into the chain link. He bounces off the fencing and crashes to the ground, his shoulder hitting the concrete floor with a loud crack. He yelps and tries to get up on all fours, but his shoulder gives out—probably dislocated—and he slams into the ground again. This time it’s his head that smacks into the concrete and blood begins to pour over the side of his face where he hit the floor.

At the sight of blood, my wolf goes absolutely nuts. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to do something… to comfort to protect to do fucking anything at all, but it’s like I’m frozen in place. I have no idea what to do.

Macy yells something at me from outside the kennel. It takes a beat for her words to register: Put him back to sleep .

That will work.

Drawing on the pack bond and calling up the power for an Alpha command is nearly effortless this time. The young man stills almost as soon as the word “sleep” passes my lips, his muscle going lax and his eyes sliding closed as he slowly slumps to the ground.