Shifter's Revenge (Alpha Lineage) (18 page)

“Damn spy’s.” she hissed out. Angry and thoroughly
embarrassed, Kera felt her eyes shift quickly as a growl escaped her throat. “You’re listening to us?”

Rick’s shoulders tensed and he spun around from the task at hand and ran to the security feed. He typed in a few codes and the screens went black.

Kera took a step forward and Maddox’s hand shot out to stop her. She dogged it and came up behind Rick. Her hand whipped out and spun the man around by her grip on his shoulder. “You will turn off every device in our rooms.” She hissed.

Rick, who was naturally red toned, turned a bright shade of pink. “I-I was only f-following orders.” He stuttered. “No one h-has heard… except m-me.”

Kera’s cheeks heated as her fears were realized. He had heard her and Maddox making love. She felt violated. “Delete it.” she commanded.

“That isn’t possible.” Donavan said from behind her as he walked clipped steps toward her.

“Now.” she hissed, ignoring Donavan’s approach.

Heavy boots hit the concrete floor quickly and Donavan cursed in anger. “Not happening.”

“You want us to work together you tell him to do it.” Nick said to Donavan.

Maddox came up beside her, his face a mask of fury. “Rick,” he spoke calmly but violence edged his voice. “
What I do behind closed doors with my mate is not any of your business.” He turned to Donavan and muttered, “yours either.”

“Shit.” Donavan hissed. “Delete it. Disable the video and audio in their rooms.”

“And anything you find outside the rooms.” Kera murmured.

Maddox wound an arm around her tense shoulders and pulled her against his chest.
I was careful.
He breathed in her ear.
Next time I will make sure I disable anything with a frequency.

Kera’s heart shuttered in relief,
surely you don’t plan a next time when you’re so angry with me.

There will always be a next time, Kera.
He leaned down and bit the cord of her neck.
You are mine. That doesn’t mean I won’t get angry and say something stupid.

Kera snorted,
is that an apology for calling me a liar?

Only if you promise with me that we won’t omit things in the future.
His eyes found hers as he spoke.
I promise not to keep things from you again.

Kera closed her eyes and sucked in a breath,
I promise to keep you up to speed and give you the chance to provide input before I make any more decisions.

Maddox blew out a relieved breath against her cheek. His arm tightened around her before he spoke again.
Thank you.

“Rick, we have visual.” The overhead speaker flared to life with a deep baritone voice. “Satellite images were able to pick up the shift in weather and our cameras have been synced to show as much of the event as possible.”

Rick paused what he was doing with the security cameras and turned to the large screen.

Maddox put his hand on Rick’s shoulder to stop him. “Are you done erasing what I asked?”

“N-no but,” Rick looked to Donavan and blanched when he saw Nick holding him in place.

“Finish the w
ipe.” Donavan ordered curtly. “There’s no reason to keep them out of the investigation.”

“Sir,” Rick acknowledged him by going back to erasing blocks of time from the audio in their room.

Kera watched the screen pull up fragmented pictures of their battle with the Arizona Man. She saw Nick fly from out of nowhere and hover in the screen for a moment as unseeing hands seemed to wrench his body from side to side. 

Maddox cursed foully as he watched Nick’s wolf form
writhe in pain as his bones were snapped by invisible force. He flinched at the gruesome image and pulled Kera closer to his chest. In the battle he had seen flashes of both their injuries but watching the event unfurl before his eyes when he could do nothing to help was another thing.

The bite of lust that had consumed him moments ago was now a bitter taste in his mouth. Kera’s savage attack came on screen larger than life. He heard himself growl as he continued to try and get close enough to the being in the field to disable him. He remembered the scent of her blood invading his senses but the reality of what happened to her slammed into him. He saw the smoke billow from her body after the bolt hit her. He saw the blood stream down her back from a wound that started on her chest.

“Jesus.” Donavan whispered angrily. “How did you survive?”

“Magick,” Kera told him. “That’s why I need the book. I don’t know enough about what my mother did for me to understand why I am able to heal just by touching Maddox. There has to be a reason.”

“Kera,” Maddox breathed in her ear, “should you be so candid with these men?”

She twisted in his arms so she could see him, “You want me to lie to him?”

Maddox shook his head. He didn’t know what he wanted. “How do we know they won’t betray us? If they know that you heal by touching me then if they ever wanted to kill you, they would make sure I was far enough away that I couldn’t get to you in time.”

Her eyes widened at the prospect. Color drained from her features. “I didn’t think…” she took a breath. “I’m sorry.”

Maddox leaned in to kiss her forehead even as the anger in his voice remained. “We’ll figure it out, Kera. I won’t claim to have all the answers, but we can put our heads together and decide what to tell the soldiers from here on out.”

She glanced over at Nick,
Maddox followed her line of vision to see his cousin nod in agreement.

He hated to make her distrustful of humans but that was how he lived. He spent years on his own, secluded because of that distrust. Part of it was fear. The other part had been ingrained in him from a very young age. Starting the day his mother left.

“Can you get a better angle of the intruder?” Nick moved closer to the screen to stand beside Donavan. “This storm made it almost impossible to pick up scent, visual or audio while we were so close to him. If we can see how he got there or possibly find out if he was hiding out in those fields for a length of time before he attacked then we have a better chance of picking up his scent from the undisturbed area. We’ll need to do it tonight. The longer we wait the more chance something could contaminate the area. Your men out there picking through the debris are bad enough.”

Donavan snorted, “Those are highly trained individuals. Your nose might be strong but it doesn’t compare to the lab. Your blood is all over the place out there. I’ll need a sample directly from you to verify which physical evidence came from you and your animal forms. I’ll have a lab tech draw samples from you, Kera and Maddox after we’re done here.”

Maddox felt his chest rumble in an angry growl. His training was automatic years ago when he looked at his father like he hung the moon and could do no wrong. Any drop of blood was burned and the area was
always
cleaned before he left. Nick and Andrew had done so with Hannah. His father and Daniel had taken care of the men who died in the battle to save Kera and stop his uncle Rayland by burning their bodies in a hunting lodge.

He felt a knot form in the pit of his stomach. If any of these scientists found out what his father had in dealing with their blood, he wouldn’t put it past them to turn rogue and use the antibodies for the “greater good”. It was only because there were only so many shifters in this part of the world that his father hadn’t done the same thing.

At least that is what Maddox told himself.

“No.” Maddox responded quickly to Donavan’s
order. “Your lab finds anything you report it to Jason. He is a scientist and he will sort through the blood for you.”

Kera went still beside him, but he kept his eyes on Donavan. He sensed the anger starting to form in the room.

“That isn’t how we do things around here.” Donavan spoke in a low and dangerous voice. “We are fully prepared or we die. This isn’t some charity case that you can come in and take over. We brought you here and we can just as soon kick you out. There is nothing you can say that will make me agree to keep my men in the dark.”

“Your men are already in the dark.” Nick replied smoothly, unruffled by Donavan’s anger. “If you want expert advice and quick results you use your resources wisely. We are a resource not one of your men. If you chose not to utilize the resource then you are an idiot.”

Kera sucked in a breath and stepped forward.

Maddox tagged her around the waist and pulled her to his side. “This man didn’t go after your men so I’m inclined to see this as our problem. You may have had a run in with him years ago but our presence brought him out of the woodwork. I’m sure you can guess that there are more people out there willing to let this slide so they can put us under the microscope instead. I won’t let that happen. We’ve done something unheard of. Kera put herself out there and introduced you to a world you’ve only seen the corner of. The whole picture is worse. If you want to be in this, and I think that you get me that regardless of if you want to be here or feel like you have to be here, then you take what I’m saying seriously. I’m standing here because my woman wants to help. Nick is standing here because he has chosen to side with me instead of his father, instead of my father. None of us are standing here because we want more blood spilt. We do this our way or we are out of the way. I can take this from here with you or without you.”

Kera’s hand clenched in his shirt, he looked down to see her mouth had gone tight with anger. Her eyes shot to his and the anger in them was overshadowed with fear. He cursed under his breath and tightened his arm around her back.

“I lost my brother.” Donavan said tightly.

Maddox moved his eyes from Kera to Donavan in respect of what he was sharing. “He joined first. I was a navy seal. Nothing prepared me for his death. It would have been different, I suppose, if he had died fighting for our country. But he didn’t. He died chasing down a lead on a sick fuck in Arizona who was abducting women and dumping their bodies days, weeks or months later in the desert for the wildlife to pick apart and dispose of. When he died the media reported that the team had been caught in a tornado and debris ripped through his body. He didn’t die immediately. He bled out. He suffered in a freak storm and the public never knew that a monster had murdered a good man.”

“And the women were never given rest.” Nick murmured tightly.

Maddox noted the cold anger in his cousin’s eyes. It wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last. Nick had demons in his head. More than anyone in the family did. His life wasn’t easy, even before Hannah’s death.

“Oh my god!” Kera breathed.

All eyes shot to the screen and Maddox cursed. Rick had moved the video feed from the attack to a smaller computer and was sorting through the images to get a lock on the man who attacked him. The large screen now showed live feed of the soldiers and scientist who were collecting evidence from the crime scene. Instead of going about their business they had been confronted by the pack. Vial’s and plastic bags full of debris and dirt were piled into the middle of the site and Daniel was quickly setting a bonfire next to it. It seemed the cleanup crew had arrived.

“I don’t believe this.” Kera fumed. She paced Maddox’s bedroom and noted that even after a shower and putting on her own clothes
, rather than the black sweats that were provided at the compound, she wasn’t any more ok with what had gone down.

She looked up as another set of footprints barreled down the hallway
, past the door and through the house, to Jason’s office.

This is where Maddox had been for the past few hours after Jason torched half the field and ordered them to get in the SUV. That had happened when they had followed a livid Donavan from the
surveillance room and out onto said burning field.

Kera wasn’t a part of the family and therefore was not allowed to sit in Jason’s office and ream him for promptly
breaking the alliance Maddox, Nick and she had with the N. Division not twenty four hours after it was made.

It was ridiculous really. Kera had been in control over her life (as much as she could be with a beast living inside of her) for five years and now that she was finally getting answers she was not in control of anything.

She wanted to dash off again but that wasn’t going to happen with a guard at her door and a heavy piece of furniture in front of the hidden door in Maddox’s bedroom.

Yep, that’s right. Maddox had made sure that if she tried to leave, the noise she made trying to do so would alert someone this time.

Not cool.

With all this time to think, Kera had come up with absolutely nothing she could do without the help and support of the pack. They didn’t trust her and had made it apparent. Maddox had already showed signs that he disagreed with her “tell all” attitude with the soldiers (namely Donavan).

So where to go from here? She was untrained, unskilled and had spells whisking through her mind like she was the fountain of all Magickal knowledge.

She thought back to what her mother had told her and snorted
in disgust. Jason wasn’t the person to help her. He had shown her that when he abandoned the soldiers and then came back to impede the mission.

Kera knew in the depths of her soul that she was given the abilities to not only doing good things with her life but she now had something to live for. Maddox may be set on her becoming his mate and keeping her safe, but Kera figured she could have both. There was something to fight for, something to live for other than self gratification.

She may have started by thinking she wasn’t worthy of Maddox but know she knew that she really felt like she wasn’t worthy of her gift. It had been taken away once and thinking back on how that made her feel, she concluded that there was more to this magick and shifting than what was happening.

Jason led the pack. He kept them secret and she exposed that. The soldiers weren’t going to let that go. They had shown that by capturing them.
They had also shown trust by standing together and allowing Maddox to create a combat scenario that could have put them in harm’s way. The fear and courage they showed during the mock battle had been ingrained in Kera’s brain. It gave her courage in the face of her own fears.

More heavy boots came down the hall. This time, Maddox opened the door and clipped shortly, “Pack up your things. We’re getting out of here,” he leaned over and pulled a bag out from under his bed, then straightened and finished with a simple command, “now.”

Shocked by his actions, Kera obeyed. She pulled open the drawers and flung her clothes onto the bed. She felt her heart begin to race as she went to the closet and retrieve her suitcases out so she could shove her clothes inside.

A herd of shifters thundered down the hall toward them, Jason in the lead. He stopped in the doorway and squared his shoulders. “You leave and you don’t come back.”

Maddox looked up from what he was doing and quickly dismissed his father. “Heard that before,” he muttered, “didn’t bother me last time and doesn’t this time.”

“Take this lesson with you
, son,” Jason spoke through his angry clenched jaw, “she left you before. You cannot rely on what is happening now. Your mother left both of us. She never came back. You think that can’t happen to you just remember that her mother left us too. You leave you should expect serious blowback in your future. You leave and I can’t protect you anymore.”

Maddox’s eyes flashed a white-blue Kera had never seen before. The anger whipped around the room like a physical thing. “After the shit you just said in your office you think I would spend one more second in your house, under your roof
, so that I could become just like you? I thought Rayland was a greedy fuck but you blow him out of the water. This thing you want to base your life around is bullshit. I don’t care about who has claim to it or how you keep it in your control. I care about Kera and her safety. I care about men and women fighting against things that they don’t have a chance against. I don’t care that you are pissed that mom left because you lied to her or that Kera’s mother left you because she knew you were so drunk off power that when your own brother tried to share it with you, you flipped out and caused Laura to leave.”

Kera sucked in a shocked breath and Maddox turned to her, eyes flashing in anger.

“You are the way you are because he made a deal with Laura. Before she left they mixed magick with science and shared a piece of what made them different that humans with each other. My father got a little magick in return for giving Laura the ability to shift. When she couldn’t control the beast she shifted into she attacked him. It wasn’t her fault.” Maddox turned back to his father, “It was his. He knew she was leaving because my family forced her out. Every one of them tried to use her so they could control a piece of this power source.”

“The vortex.” Kera whispered.

“Yes.” Maddox growled. “All this for a damned source of power.”

“It isn’t what you think, son.” Jason latched on to Maddox’s arm and pulled him around to face him. “I’ve tried to explain and your hot head couldn’t settle enough to listen. There are
things neither of you understand. For Christ sake, you’re only twenty two and you think you know better than all of us. I’ve given you time away from the pack, just as you wished. But now is the time to band together. You think for one moment that I’m as fucked up as my brother then you have so little faith in the man that sired you. I’ve spent years fortifying the vortex so that others couldn’t take the power within and harness it for their own purposes. Laura helped with that. She became enthralled with the power and chose to leave so that she wouldn’t do something that would tarnish her soul.”

He looked at Kera but kept hold of Maddox. “And you, gallivanting across the states, helping the military on a whim, have endangered us all. How else do you think the elemental found you, Nick and my son? You practically advertized your power and ours for all that is out there. I understand that you may think it’s your right, your blood right, to do something worthy of your power. I know this because I’ve felt the same. We all do. My father, the Alpha before me, taught me every day to do what I can to help others but to realize that my purpose wasn’t to protect every human on the earth. It is to protect the most powerful source of energy
, and in doing so, protect everything and everyone from an even darker world than what humans create for themselves.”

“She said that we all feed from it.” Kera felt unnerved at the hostile energies pulsing around her. “If we didn’t then things would get out of hand.”

Maddox wrenched his arm from his father’s grasp and stepped a few paces back. His blue eyes looked almost black with anger. “I’ve spent enough of my life in the dark. I’ve uncovered things about this life that set my teeth on edge. You think for one moment that I condone the way you’ve lead this pack when Nick was being tortured and Andrew was being raised to be the most evil fuck of them all, then you can have your power source and protect it until the day you die. Leave that to someone else when you do. I’ll not be the Alpha who turns a blind eye to that type of shit.”

Jason blinked. “What did you say?”

Maddox tilted his head, reached for Kera and pulled her close to his side. “You had to have known.”

Daniel turned from the door and reached out and brought Nick forward. Nick stiffly moved into the room and closed his eyes briefly before he set his jaw and shook his head at Maddox.

Kera felt her heart drop into her stomach. She couldn’t know how it would feel to be the center of attention for something so terrible to have been done to you. “You said Andrew watched.” Kera whispered softly.

Nick’s eyes came to her, “You were the first to know.” He told Kera. “Maddox the second.”

Jason’s boots ate up the distance between him and Nick. His strong hand fell onto Nick’s shoulders and squeezed. “My brother do something to you, son.”

Nick clenched his jaw and let a whip of pain into the brown depths of his eyes. “I don’t blame you, I blame him. He said to make me stronger, more obedient
, he had to drive the fight out of me.”

“Christ,” Daniel bit out. “You used to be such a scrappy cub. I just
through you grew out of it.”

Nick laughed darkly. “That’
s what whips, chains and fucking hooks are for right. Teach a defiant cub to obey his master.”

Kera felt tears fill her eyes at the indifference Nick used to tell his story. She’d seen the room, been there when Nick told Andrew that he was just as affected by what happened. Andrew said he hadn’t used the tools on her. She hadn’t cottoned on to what that exactly meant.

“I didn’t know,” Jason tightened his hold on Nick’s shoulders, “If I had…”

“You should have known.” Maddox cut in. “It was your job to know.”

Daniel walked up to Nick and placed a hand on his back. “You do one thing for me, son.” He growled. “Get your fucking attitude back with a vengeance. I want to see that feral cub grow into a take-no-shit man. You do that and everything Rayland did to you was for not. You hide in your shell any longer and he gets a little more time to gloat in ruining you. You’re a threat to him and he knows it. Just like Maddox and Kera is a threat to him. Don’t keep this burden to yourself. You need to talk you find me, yeah?”

“Or me.” Jason urged.

“Yeah,” Nick murmured darkly before he let out a clipped laugh. “Should have told you a long time ago.”

“Got that right.” Another pack member called from the doorway. “We’ve let you pups stay out of the inner workings for too long. Jason, yeah?”

Jason looked back at Maddox and moved his eyes over to Kera. “Yeah.”