Page 5 of Redeemed Wolf (Grim Wilds #4)

Chapter 5

Silas

If I’d thought the first week had been boring, things were about to get worse. I’d been moved from my station with Melissa to the main desk, and silly me, I thought that would be more exciting somehow. But now, I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Just when I thought I could needle some more information out of her about what she’d seen. I didn’t even get to stretch my legs every 15 minutes anymore. All I did was sit in front of a bank of computer monitors, watching security feeds. Occasionally I would check employee ID badges as people arrived for work, but every time I tried to engage in conversation, I got little more than a suspicious glare before they disappeared down the hall.

I wonder if they’re going through that secure door…

When a delivery driver had me sign for a package, I took a risk and gave the box a little shake to see if I could figure out what was inside it, but it must’ve been packed tight because it didn’t even rattle. There was a biohazard sticker on it, so I didn’t really want to handle it, but I figured the driver hadn’t even been wearing gloves, so it was probably sealed inside, whatever it was. It wasn’t heavy, and there was a faint chemical scent coming off it, like formaldehyde. Tissue samples maybe? I hated to imagine where they might’ve come from—or from whom?

The possibilities crawled under my skin and refused to leave.

Run , my wolf prodded irritably. He’d been getting stir-crazy trapped inside me.

I growled under my breath. I already told you, we can’t go for a run , I explained to him again. They’re watching us, and we don’t want to give them any reason to lock us up and run experiments on us. They might cut us open to see what makes us tick.

My wolf settled down at the imagery I conjured, of us cut open, flaps of flesh pinned wide, flayed and gutted. He didn’t like the position we were in, but at least he understood it. He was just as bloodthirsty as I was to take these monsters down—for good.

Even though my wolf remained silent for the rest of the morning, I could feel him pacing the recesses of my mind. It made my own limbs itch to move, and that was probably why, when my lunch break rolled around, I found myself walking the halls instead of sitting in the breakroom, drinking murky coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.

There was no sign of all those people I’d signed in this morning, so I allowed my hunch to carry me toward that specific locked door. I needed to find a way through there. I was no hacker. I didn’t have a code, a card, or the right retina to scan, so I had to work with what I got.

Right as I rounded the last corner, the door was swinging open, and in that faint whiff of air, my senses lit up. Wolves, but that wasn’t all. There were other kinds of shifters behind that door, and they were terrified .

Dr. Taylor stepped through the door, closing it behind him and ensuring that it was locked. He was wearing a white lab coat and hospital scrubs stained with a rust-colored splatter.

“Hey, Eric,” I called, jogging up to him as I tossed any survival instinct I had to the side.

He frowned, turning to me. “What are you doing back here?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Looking for you, actually.”

“Is that so?” He walked toward me, suddenly all smiles, then directed me away from the door with a hand at my back. “Should we go get a coffee?” he asked, clearly trying to divert my attention.

I would allow it for now. “Sure.”

Felix was in the breakroom when we arrived, but as soon as he saw Dr. Taylor, he closed the book he was reading with a snap and cleaned up his lunch mess, suddenly finding somewhere else he had to be. As charming as Eric was, everyone could sense that underlying danger. How could they not?

I poured us both a coffee, then I sat across from him at the table. “So… how are you settling in at Apex?” Eric asked, though it was obviously not an innocent question.

I debated what to tell him. This was taking a huge risk, but I was getting nowhere fast, and there was a sense of urgency to this mission. Jude’s siblings were here somewhere, I could feel it, but they might not always be.

Folding my arms and leaning across the tabletop, I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Let’s cut the bullshit for a second, shall we?”

Eric’s lips twitched, as if he was tempted to smile. He mirrored my position, leaning on the table. “Okay, let’s.”

“I wasn’t entirely honest during my interview the other week.” I shrugged sheepishly.

He tilted his head to the side, curious but tense. “Oh?”

I sighed. “Look, it was no coincidence that I moved here to Fairhome and applied for a job here. The truth is that I’ve been looking for you for a long time—or someone like you, anyway. After my little… accident ,” I said, tracing a finger down one of the ridged scars that traveled the column of my throat so there was no confusion about what I was talking about, “I needed answers.” I gritted my teeth. “No, that’s not right. What I needed was for someone to pay.”

“Go on,” he urged, leaning further in, his expression turning greedy.

“It was no wolf that attacked me that day—no natural-born predator.” I pulled my lip back in a vicious sneer. “That creature was a freak of nature, not meant for this earth. First he was a man, then in the blink of an eye, a monster stood before me. I swore his eyes glowed red. I should’ve died that day, and I would’ve if I hadn’t gotten a lucky shot and killed him first. I sent that demon back to Hell.” I reached across the table and grabbed his forearm. “Do you believe me?”

“I do.” Eric’s eyes had taken on a glint of fanaticism. “Not many men have lived to say the same… but I have survived a similar attack.” He placed his other hand on top of mine and gave a comforting squeeze. “Tell me how you came to be here.”

“I’ve tracked these mutations from coast to coast, all the way up to Canada and back. On the west coast, I joined up with a group of other hunters for a time, like-minded individuals looking to make a difference, and one of them said they’d heard about a group of scientists who’d managed to get their hands on a few, that they were breeding whole litters of test subjects. Is that true?”

He hesitated, no doubt wondering how I’d stumbled onto my information. My story had holes big enough to drive a truck through, but he was hungry for what I could give him. Eventually, he nodded, seeming to come to a decision. “It is true.”

I glared straight into his eyes, unwavering. “I. Want. In.”

“Into what, exactly?”

I jerked my hand back, my leg bouncing under the table. “Whatever you’ve got for me! I’ll do anything. I know I’m no scientist, never even went to college, but I’m strong and fast, and I’ve gone up against these things before. I know what they’re capable of. If you need discreet security behind the scenes, I’m your man. Enforcer? Someone to do your grunt work? I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.” I was feeling a little desperate, but it seemed to feed into the story I was painting.

This close to him, I would’ve been a fool if I didn’t consider another possibility. I could kill him here and now, slash my claws across his throat and watch him bleed to death. It would be so easy. From this distance, I couldn’t miss, his pulse thrumming beneath his skin acting like a beacon. I could take his security card, pluck his eyeball from his skull to use for the retina scanner… but that wouldn’t take into account the code needed to get past that door—or the camera pointed straight at me, its red light blinking in warning, saying stop, stop, stop .

My rage was hot and heavy, it was nearly the only thing I could see…

Stop . My wolf’s bite seared me like a red-hot branding iron, clearing my thoughts.

My wolf, who’d been so antsy and irritated all day, pacing and desperate to take action until I thought he would burst from my skin, was now firm with his order. He was steady, resolved. Unwavering. Stop , he said again, and that one word loosened the fist around my heart.

He and I, we were in this together, and I had to believe we could survive.

Eric, clueless to the internal battle going on before his very eyes, his life hanging in the balance, smiled slowly. “You want in?”

“I do,” I said, nodding.

“Why don’t you come with me, Silas. I think it’s time you get a proper tour of the facility, and I’m sure I have some work for you to do.”

This was it, the moment we’d been working toward. My blood sang with adrenaline, going straight to my head. It was nearly impossible to keep a straight face, but I imagined it was only normal for a psychopath to smile. Someone like him, like who he thought I was…

“This used to be our secondary facility,” he was saying as he led me back the way we’d come, back to the secure door. “Apex Labs started as barely more than the dream of a great man, Dr. Gray. Robert had believed that the human genome held secrets in its code, variants that would lead human evolution into the future.” Eric’s eyes flashed with childlike fervor. “He’d started his first lab when he was fresh out of university, in his garage at home, with nothing more than a mini fridge, a microscope, and a secondhand thermal cycler. When he had his first breakthrough and decided it was time to recruit some help, he’d rented some space in a storage locker, and then from there, they moved to an old warehouse. There were plenty of billionaires looking to fund a curious mind like his. The real breakthrough, though, was when he got his hands on his first specimen.”

My throat clenched, and thankfully, he didn’t expect me to answer. He was busy swiping his card, inputting his code—he tilted his body to block my view. He was right to be untrusting. Then he leaned forward to put his right eye in front of the lens.

The door opened with a click, the light over the door flashing green.

“Shall we?” he said, his too-white smile making him look a little predatory himself. He held his hand out, gesturing for me to go first, and I stepped through the door ahead of him, even as my instincts screamed not to turn my back on him. The back of my neck prickled, hair standing on end.

The light was dimmer here and had a reddish hue to it. I blinked a few times, trying to adjust to it, but it was hard for me to focus. Everything was blurry around the edges. The air stank of piss and shit and adrenaline, and that weight around my chest pressed hard , making it nearly impossible to draw a full breath. I clenched my fists, feeling the dangerous prick of my claws against my palms. Do not draw blood, not here , I scolded myself firmly.

I jumped when the door slammed shut behind us, and the lock gave an ominous click. I looked over my shoulder and past where Eric was standing, to see that there was thankfully no code or card needed on this side to get out. Thank the gods for fire codes.

“It’s cold in here,” I said, my breath puffing out in a faint white cloud.

“We’ve had to get a bit ingenious,” he replied, pulling a pair of thin gloves from his pocket and putting them on. “It’s about taking advantage of their weaknesses, both their human and their animal halves. We keep the subjects nearly naked, so that their human halves struggle to keep warm, and undernourished to keep them weak. It takes them more energy to shift to their animals, so when they are deprived of calories for an extended length of time, they’re trapped as humans.”

“Okay, and then what’s with the weird red light?” I asked, pointing up.

“Wolves see best in yellow and blue spectrums, but red…” He let me fill in the blank. That must’ve been why I was having trouble focusing on the details.

“Huh, that’s a neat trick.”

He frowned at my lackluster reaction, but I couldn’t dredge up any more excitement than that, not with this creeping sickness spreading through my insides, turning my stomach. “So… can I see one?” I asked, leading the conversation, hoping he would follow.

His face remained a still pond, not a ripple to be seen as he brushed past me and carried on down the hall. “Let’s see how you do with a few tasks first, shall we? Some of that grunt work you volunteered yourself for.” He flashed a smile at me over his shoulder, a tad condescending, and I laughed along with him, even as bitter self-loathing coated my tongue like bile.

I didn’t like who I was becoming here. I missed my sarcastic, jaded self, always quick with a teasing insult. Here, everyone around me just kept shoveling shit, piling it on top of me, and I had to open wide and swallow it all, then say, “Please, may I have some more?” I felt weak, submissive, but I reminded myself that I wasn’t either of those things. I was a badass Alpha wolf, and these humans were only alive because I granted it to them.

“Down that hallway are the holding cells,” Eric was saying, and I eagerly glanced down the hall—looking for what, I couldn’t say, because the hall was empty, the doors all locked, labeled only with numbers as far as I could tell.

As we continued on, my attention was drawn to the bright white light bathing the hall ahead of us. It was warmer here too, the muted sound of exhaust fans in the background. We came to a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and on the other side, a stainless-steel counter lined with expensive-looking equipment. I recognized the microscopes and perhaps some fridges, but that was where my knowledge ended.

“What is all this?” I asked.

Eric set his hand on my shoulder in an almost fatherly gesture, the heat and weight of his touch nearly too much to handle in my keyed-up state. I had to fight not to shrug him off. “This… is where the magic happens,” he said in a reverent purr, close to my ear. “First, we collect samples of blood and tissue from our test subjects. We have one team working specifically on trying to tease apart the strands of DNA, using Dr. Gray’s research as a starting point.” Sliding his hand from my shoulder to my back, he pressed me forward, guiding me down the length of the window, pointing to various white-coated scientists. “We have found that instead of the usual double helix, with base pairs, as seen in human DNA, shifter DNA contains a third chain, creating a stable triplex formation. My theory is that these strands of DNA actually separate into two different DNA strands depending on which form is dominant at the time, but once the samples are removed from the body, ensuring there is no dominant form, it reverts to the combined triplex.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, scanning the room for anything I could use. “Sorry, Doc, you might as well be speaking Greek to me.”

He laughed heartily. “I like your blunt honesty, Silas. It’s refreshing.” He slapped my back once before stepping ahead, where he pointed to bring my attention to the other side of the lab. “Well, see if you can keep up with me on this. My other lab team is working on splicing shifter DNA with that of humans.”

I stilled, taking in what he was implying. “What, like manmade shifters?”

His grin widened, and he nodded. “That is exactly right, Silas. What do you think of that?”

“Why would you want—” I’d begun to answer, when the lab’s glass door slid open, letting out a scent that was almost familiar—slightly sweet, but with an acrid undertone, like burnt sugar—and it set my teeth on edge. I clenched my jaw with a clack of teeth and allowed my gaze to travel to the man who set foot out of the lab.

I knew those hazel eyes, more gray than green, the straight bridge of his nose, the full lips, but his jaw had squared off with age since the picture I had of him was taken. The stats ran through my mind as if I were reading them straight out of the file. Carter Parr, 22 years old now, born to Jesse Parr. Brother to Amelia, Isaac… and Jude. I could see the resemblance to Jude when I looked, but it was superficial. As an omega, he wasn’t built as broadly, his features more delicate. He was several inches shorter than I was.

Carter’s eyes met mine, just a brief snag before he looked away, and that pressure I’d been feeling in my chest increased tenfold. It was like taking a hit to the sternum from a sledgehammer, forcing the air from my lungs in a whoosh, and my wolf… went feral . He was all slavering jaws and gnashing teeth, and I froze, worried the snarl might’ve been out loud.

It was a good thing Eric had turned to see where my attention had shifted, or he might’ve seen the way my face crumpled in agony. Instead, he smiled. “Carter, did you need something?”

“Yeah, I have those test results you wanted to see.” He passed a tablet to Eric, which he pulled off a glove to flip through on the touch screen.

They were talking, but their words meant nothing to me. I was too busy trying to catch my breath. Carter was here, and he wasn’t locked up. He looked healthy, his complexion glowing, well-fed, cared for. This was the furthest from what we’d imagined for him. He was walking around free, wearing a lab coat, and… working with Dr. Taylor?!

None of this made sense!

My wolf yipped and growled inside me. What the hell is your problem? I snapped at him, but he was beyond reasoning with. Maybe he sensed that Carter had betrayed us all. For a single panicked second, I worried Carter would turn to Eric and announce that I was a wolf. That would be the end, I would be dead. But the thing was… when he’d looked at me, there was no recognition from him at all. It was like he didn’t even recognize me as a fellow shifter. And when I breathed him in, pushing past that burnt acrid tang coming off him, I didn’t sense his wolf anywhere inside him. He was just… empty. Hollow.

For all intents and purposes, Carter was human.

“Yes, great, I think this looks really promising,” Eric was saying as he nodded and handed the tablet back to Carter. “Next, I want you to try different combinations with the samples. See if there’s a variation in cellular reaction between the alphas and the omegas, or even if we could try splicing different species together. Wouldn’t that be something? The possibilities are endless.”

“Sure, I can do that. I’ll start a new file and have preliminary results to you by the end of next week.” Carter had already started to turn, ready to leave, and I panicked a little. What if I didn’t get another chance like this?

Before I could think it through, I’d already taken a step in, and both men turned to look at me, confusion in Carter’s eyes, alarm in Eric’s. “What are you—” Eric began, his hand twitching toward his holstered gun beneath his lab coat.

“And who might you be?” I purred, all suave charm, trying to play it cool like I was flirting. “I thought I’d met everyone here, but I’m sure I would remember meeting you. My name is Silas.” I held my hand out to shake, but Carter just stared blankly at me. Then he glanced down at my hand.

After a moment of all three of us locked in an awkward standoff, two things happened at once. Carter moved like he was actually going to shake my hand, but before he could make contact, Eric had stepped smoothly between us.

“That will be all, Carter,” he said over his shoulder without looking away from me, his glare subarctic.

Carter sighed and gave the tiniest eyeroll. “Right. Talk to you later, Dad.”

That one word was like an electric shock. “Dad?” I choked out, my wide-eyed gaze locking on Eric.

He gave me a tight smile. “That’s right, Carter is my son. You will have no need to interact with our lab techs, is that understood?”

“I hear you loud and clear,” I said, though nothing had been more confusing than it was now. “Didn’t mean to overstep, sir.”

Eric hummed, before he turned to continue the tour. I was just glad he hadn’t shot me.

I was so clueless about what game they were playing here, and how was I supposed to cheat when I didn’t even know the rules?