A Place to Call Home (Hollow Crest Wolf Pack Book 3) Page 4

  My ploy worked because Dr. Green visibly relaxed again. “I understand, Lori,” he said kindly before shooting Grayson a sharp look. “Your pack master should be taking better care of you.”

  Grayson tensed as if he was ready to attack. “Grayson, don’t,” I urged with the pack bond. “Let me do this.”

  Grayson’s hands clenched the arms of the chair but didn’t respond to the professor’s barb meant to bait him into action.

  “What’s our next step?” I asked cautiously. “We can’t leave Corey with the human authorities.”

  Dr. Green didn’t look affected by my statement, so I tried to frame my concern in a way that he might care more about. “Corey definitely can’t go to prison – it could expose all of us for what we are.”

  “Normally, we would simply have him killed and eliminate the problem that way,” Dr. Green said smoothly as if murdering our pack mate was as simple as throwing a failed experiment in the trash.

  Horror and anger battled within me, but I had to stay cool. “But this isn’t a normal situation,” I said hopefully.

  “Indeed,” Dr. Green said cryptically. “Your pack hasn’t fulfilled its debts to me, and I’m unwilling to release you from your contracts early.”

  “Lori doesn’t have the same contract,” Grayson reminded him. “She can leave anytime she wants.”

  Dr. Green looked amused. “And leave the rest of you here?” He turned to me. “What do you say, Lori? Do you want to try your luck out there on your own without anyone’s protection?”

  I raised my chin. “I’m not afraid of being alone, but I won’t abandon my pack when they need me.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Green said with a pleased purr. “Corey will be brought to the university once he’s released from law enforcement custody. In exchange, he’ll cooperate with some benign testing I need. At least one of you is required to be on the university premises at all times going forward. You may pick a representative or rotate if you choose, but not all of you will be leaving tonight.”

  “I’ll stay,” Kannon volunteered with a nervous look at Grayson. “Lori’s going to need both of you by her side.”

  Grayson shook his head. “You’re graduating high school this year, and I don’t want to hear any arguments.” He turned his dark gaze to me. “That goes for you as well, Lori.”

  “I’ll stay here,” Wyatt said softly. “Corey’s my brother.”

  “We’ll rotate,” I said firmly. “So the burden doesn’t fall on just one person. Corey’s going to need all of us.”

  Dr. Green clapped his hands together and stood before anyone could object to my proclamation. “Excellent decision.”

  Grayson cleared his throat. “And Corey?” he asked gruffly.

  “Pierce will work on the situation with Corey,” Dr. Green assured him.

  Grayson leaned forward. “He’ll work on the situation, or he’ll have Corey released?”

  A smile flitted across Dr. Green’s face. “Corey will be released from the sheriff’s custody once we become involved.”

  “In what time frame?” Grayson pressed.

  Dr. Green tilted his head at Grayson with respect. “You’re getting better at this.” The professor turned to me. “Lori, I’m sure you’d like him back as soon as possible?”

  I nodded cautiously. Now the professor would ask for something in return. The lamia never helped us without strings attached.

  Something dark flashed through Dr. Green’s eyes, and I swallowed nervously. “I’d need your cooperation with something I’ve been working on,” he said with what would have been a friendly smile if I hadn’t already known something terrible was coming.

  “I’d like to see if I can eliminate your human side and increase your magical abilities to be more similar to a full-blooded wolf shifter,” Dr. Green told me.

  My heart stopped for a second, and the world tilted around me. How many times had I lamented the fact that I wasn’t a full wolf? I’d always been slower to heal, weaker, and unable to shift as easily as my pack mates. What would it be like to be a powerful wolf?

  Grayson stepped in front of me. “That sounds dangerous.”

  Dr. Green gave him a friendly smile, but there was still something dark lurking in the depths of his eyes. The unspoken danger was enough to snap me out of my daze.

  “When things sound too good to be true, they usually are,” I told Dr. Green in what I hoped came across as an assertive tone. My heart was beating a little faster than usual, and a million different thoughts were buzzing through my mind.

  “I simply want to rebalance the magic that flows between your pack bonds,” Dr. Green assured Grayson. “I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge Lori a small amount of your magic since you already share so much with each other?”

  I saw Grayson hesitate, and I knew that was the one thing Dr. Green could have said to make him reconsider. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe Dr. Green was making this offer for my benefit, but I was intelligent enough to realize he must need my cooperation for whatever he had planned. Had this been the purpose of his game all along?

  “What’s the procedure for that?” Wyatt asked coolly. “And has it been tried before?”

  “We’ll need to use a mix of magic and genetic technology,” Dr. Green said with a gleam in his eyes that again revealed his inner mad scientist. “I’ll be injecting Lori with a modified DNA sample and use magic to infuse it into her cells to rewrite her genetic code.”

  Kannon shook his head. “Can you try it on me first?”

  Dr. Green cocked his head at Kannon. “I’m afraid you simply don’t have enough human blood in you for the procedure to work. Lori is the only one of you that would need to eliminate her human DNA.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “I’m happy the way I am.” I looked around at my pack to try and convince them I meant it, but deep down, I was tempted to take the risk. How amazing would it be to be able to shift whenever I wanted and not have to worry about getting stuck in one form or the other? What would it be like to not be considered the weakest of the pack? I’d always felt myself to be lesser than all the other wolves around me, and I’d learned to accept it. But what if I didn’t have to?

  Grayson and Wyatt accepted my statement, but Kannon looked doubtful. I’d confided in him about my insecurities on more than one occasion, and he knew how I felt about being part human. Dr. Green watched all of us, but his eyes lingered on me with a knowing look. He knew he’d just dangled temptation in front of me.

  “Think about it a little more,” Dr. Green suggested. “I’ll be completing a trial on one of my people this week, and I’ll be happy to share the results with you. We’ll discuss this again then.”

  “But we’ll have Corey back before then?” I asked. Dr. Green had already avoided answering Grayson directly several times. I didn’t want Corey to be stuck in limbo while Dr. Green waited on my decision.

  “Pierce will speak with the sheriff today,” Dr. Green conceded after a moment of deliberation. “But Corey will immediately become our guest upon his release.”

  Would Corey be happy with that? Definitely not. I wasn’t sure which was worse – life in a human prison or being Dr. Green’s live-in lab rat.

  I murmured my thanks to Dr. Green, but I was distracted when the door across from our group opened, and another pair of people came out. The male was a lamia, but it was the female with him that made me frown. She wore the same baggy white clothing as the girl who had looked suspiciously like Lynn, and she had the same glazed look in her eyes. The lamia gave Dr. Green a polite nod as he passed, but the female didn’t acknowledge any of us before she disappeared out of the second door that led to the hallway.

  “What’s through there?” I asked curiously as I pointed to the door that they had passed through. Something about that situation just felt off. Maybe it was because of my past that I was hypersensitive to any potential danger, but I had a creepy feeling that I couldn’t ignore.

  Dr. Green blinked in surprise at the questi
on. “Offices.”

  I tilted my head at the blatant lie, but Grayson nudged me. “Let it go,” he said with the pack bond.

  “Fine,” I agreed. “But you can explain when we get home.”

  Grayson sent me a wave of reluctant agreement, but I had a bad feeling about what was beyond that door. Were we making a mistake by agreeing to Dr. Green’s restrictions? Demanding that one of us be here at all times was a ploy to keep us from running. He knew that we would never leave a member of our pack behind while the rest of us escaped. If he had one pack member under his thumb, he had us all.

  “I’ll look forward to hearing the results of your trial later this week,” I told Dr. Green sweetly.

  I was surprised that Dr. Green had let my refusal go so easily, but I wasn’t about to question our good luck.

  “Blaine will be back in a moment,” Dr. Green said after a minute of texting on his phone. “I’ll leave you here, as I have a lot to do today.”

  We murmured our agreements, and Dr. Green gave us a wave before disappearing through the door. The police would free Corey, but the lamia had just woven their web a little tighter around us. Their strings were going to be even harder to cut. But even if we did get away from them, where would we go?

  Chapter 6

  Lori

  The lamia provided us a large suite at the university that had a living room, small kitchen, three bedrooms, and what Blaine had mockingly described as a ‘cozy breakfast nook.’ Expensive furniture, thick carpeting, luxurious bathrooms, and flat-screen televisions filled the rooms, but it felt like we didn’t belong there. My heart was heavy when we left Wyatt alone in the spacious rooms, but he had urged us to go.

  I paced back in forth in front of the couch here in the firehouse; I realized that this didn’t feel like home either. The firehouse wasn’t the safe haven I’d hoped it would be when I first moved in. The lamia watched us too closely, and the townspeople could turn on us at any moment.

  “Corey was released,” Grayson announced as he walked through the living room. “Wyatt’s settled in at the university, and Pierce is escorting Corey there now.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s obstacle one down, only twenty-five million left to go.”

  Grayson gave me a wry smile, but I could see the exhaustion around his eyes. “I’ll figure this out.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” I corrected him. I walked up to him and stood on my toes so I could give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. Grayson wrapped his arms around me and inhaled deeply. I could feel the tension in Grayson’s hard body as we embraced, and I tried to send him reassuring vibes through our pack bond. I laid my head on his chest and rubbed his back to help him relax. “You should get some rest; we’ve been up for two days straight.”

  Grayson grunted in acknowledgment and released me reluctantly. “My body is telling me I need sleep, but how can I relax knowing the twins are trapped at the university?”

  I cupped his face with my hands. “They’re safe there.”

  For now. I added silently to myself. Whatever nefarious plans Dr. Green might have for us, he wasn’t going to enact them tonight.

  “It’ll be good for the twins to spend time alone together,” I told Grayson. “They need to work some things out.”

  “True,” Grayson agreed reluctantly. “They should always have each other’s backs, no matter what disagreements they might have.”

  “Yup,” I said in agreement. “They’ll be okay.” As I said the words, I earnestly hoped they were true. Dr. Green still wanted something from me and had been working on cultivating a positive relationship with us for a while. If he hadn’t needed our cooperation, he could have easily ordered us to be kidnapped and locked up. Who would even care if we went missing?

  “What was that weirdness in the basement?” I asked cautiously. “The girls in white?”

  Grayson stiffened. “Lamia feed off humans, Lori. That’s their nature.”

  I frowned. “The girls seemed… off. They didn’t even acknowledge our presence, even when I tried to speak to one.”

  “The lamia probably have them under their compulsion while they feed,” Grayson said softly. “To make it easier on both parties.”

  I chewed on my lower lip. “And the humans agreed to this?”

  Grayson’s eyes were sad as they gazed into mine. “I doubt they fully understood what it was that they agreed to, but from what I’ve seen, the lamia treat them well.”

  Nausea churned within me as I pictured Lily’s blank stare. “It felt like a prison down there, Grayson,” I murmured.

  Grayson pulled me closer, and I tried to take comfort in his scent and his warmth. “You have to learn to accept the things you can’t change, Lori,” he said as he gently stroked my hair.

  “I don’t like knowing that those girls are being taken advantage of,” I admitted. “It doesn’t sit well with me.”

  I felt Grayson’s breath in my hair as he breathed out a sigh. “It brings back memories of being helpless and trapped?”

  I flinched, but he held me tightly and didn’t let me pull away from him. “Grayson…”

  “You see your old self in them,” he continued. “But we don’t know the whole story.”

  “You can’t just pretend everything’s fine,” I hissed as I shoved him away. “Do you know how many nights I prayed for someone to come rescue all the females from my pack? It was terrible to watch my mother suffer every day, knowing there was no way out for either of us. I watched the other females break down and slowly give up on life, knowing that was my fate as well.”

  Grayson let me go, and I could see the sympathy in his eyes. Yet all of the pain and fear of my past was rising within me. I dealt with the hurt by getting angry. My hands started shaking from the overwhelming emotions battling within me.

  “What would it have taken for your pack master to let the females go?” Grayson asked quietly.

  “What?” I asked in confusion. I was ready to fight, but his question threw me off.

  “Would Baracus have changed if someone asked him to?”

  Anger boiled inside of me. “I’m not a child, Grayson,” I spat out. “And I’m not stupid.” Just how naïve did Grayson think I was? I knew how the world worked. Asking the lamia to let the humans go nicely wouldn’t do anything but make them laugh at me.

  “I know you’re not,” Grayson said simply. “But I think we both know that there would need to be extreme measures taken to change the lamia’s way of life. And we’re not in the position to make those changes happen right now.”

  I deflated. “So we turn a blind eye to it?”

  “We bide our time,” Grayson corrected. “We help where we can, but if we instigate a fight we can’t win, then we’ll only make things worse for everyone involved.”

  “I know,” I said softly, my shoulders slumping down. “But I still don’t like it.”

  Grayson took me in his arms again, and we embraced in silence. Guilt threaded through my frustration. If I could see those things happening and just walk away, just ignore what was right in front of my face, what kind of person did that make me?

  I could feel exhaustion in Grayson’s muscles as I embraced him, and I gave him a tight squeeze. “We can talk more tomorrow, but we need sleep before we’re going to be able to do anything.”

  “Make sure you talk Kannon into going to bed, too,” Grayson said with a yawn. “Wake me if you need anything.”

  I gave him a nudge towards the bedroom. “Try to stop worrying long enough to fall asleep.”

  Grayson gave a raspy chuckle that made my stomach do a weird little flip. “Yes, ma’am,” he teased me.

  Grayson disappeared into the bedroom, and I walked back to where Kannon was on the couch with his laptop. “You need to sleep even more than Grayson does,” I chastised him. “You still need to heal.”

  Kannon lifted the blanket over his lap and patted the seat of the couch right next to him. “Watch a movie with me?” he offered. “I still need t
o unwind before I can sleep.”

  I had forced Kannon to sit while I made dinner, but I wasn’t ready for sleep either, despite how exhausted I was. I was worried about Corey, but I was also apprehensive about our future here in town. The lamia could make the charges against Corey go away, but that wouldn’t fix all of our problems.

  Only half the town had been willing to give us a chance to prove ourselves before Gus’s death and the destruction of his shop, but that number had probably shrunk down to zero by now. We would have to close our business unless we could make a miracle appear out of nowhere. The lamia weren’t going to let us walk away, and where would we even go?

  I climbed under the soft fleece blanket and curled up next to Kannon as he pulled me close to him. I inhaled Kannon’s unique scent and closed my eyes as I enjoyed the warmth of his body close to me. I felt his muscles relax as he started the movie and kissed me on the top of my head.

  “We’re going to be okay,” Kannon assured me as he rubbed my shoulder.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked in frustration. “Everything we’ve tried to do has gone so wrong!”

  Kannon breathed out a sigh. “I know things are going to work out because of how much we’ve gone through. This can’t all be for nothing. There’s going to be a happy ending.”

  “I wish I could be that optimistic,” I said wistfully. “But life has shown me otherwise.”

  “You just haven’t gotten to the good part yet,” Kannon said with a smile. “Be patient.”

  I huffed impatiently, but he was right. I tried to take his advice and think about what good the future might hold for us. “What does your happy ending look like?” I asked curiously.

  Kannon thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, exactly. I don’t know where we’ll end up or when we’ll get there, but none of that matters as long as we’re all together.”

  “We need a specific goal if we want to make a plan,” I said with a frown. “We can’t just wish for magic to get us there; we need to make it happen for ourselves.”