Saved By The Alpha
Chapter 16

The sun was still low in the sky when Nic and I arrived in Oklahoma City. Bella hadn’t been pleased about being woken up so early in the morning so we could take her over to Remus’ and Luna’s ranch house, but I couldn’t stand waiting any longer. Remus and Eli had captured Maverick late last night, and it was all I could do to keep from bundling Bella up right then and racing over to the Silverstreak house in the wee hours of the night.

Thankfully, Luna didn’t seem to mind being up so early, taking Bella to a guest room she’d done up so the little girl could sleep a little longer. Remus had asked his mother to go over there as well, to give his mate a hand with the three small children.

No sooner had Bella fallen asleep than Nic and I jumped in his rental car and raced our way to the private airport. What could have been a six-hour drive was less than an hour-long flight, and I was grateful for the private jet and the car waiting for us when the plane landed on the tarmac at the Will Rogers Airport within the city.

Nic didn’t say anything as we rode over, and I was grateful for it. I was sure the man was concerned about his former packmate — what Maverick did or didn’t do and what he was planning. I hadn’t gotten much information from Eli last night, and all I could do was hope that Maverick hadn’t betrayed him.

When we got to the facility, it didn’t look like much more than an industrial garage. Some of Remus’ guards guided us inside, and we found Remus and Eli standing outside of a door. I hurried over as Nic approached Remus, ignoring them as I peeked inside the small window. Maverick was chained to a chair, which was bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. He was slumped forward, his body limp. I frowned and took a step back, sidling over to Eli.

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly, my l!ps pressed together.

Eli shrugged. “I’m fine,” he grunted, still staring forward blankly.

Remus looked over at us, looking far less impressed. “He was jumped,” he muttered. “They were trying to kidnap him. Maverick stopped them.”

“He killed them,” Eli added, breaking his thousand-yard-stare to look at me. “Shot them.”

I blinked, looking back toward the door the man in question was behind. “He shot them? I thought he was supposed to be working with them.”

Eli shrugged. “Obviously, something more complicated is going on,” he muttered, rubbing his chin.

Remus narrowed his eyes. “We don’t know that,” he murmured, shaking his head. “For all we know, he was just trying to cover his a*s.”

“Then we need to wake him up and get answers,” Nic rumbled, finally speaking up. He folded his arms over his ch3st. “I assume you had him sedated?”

“Yes,” Remus confirmed, motioning to one of the men behind us. “I have the reversal as well.”

I frowned, giving the man a questioning look. “You can sedate shifters?” As far as I knew, our metabolism ran too hot and too fast for anything to last that long, if it took a shifter down at all.

Remus gave me a dark look. “Indeed. You should ask Fiona about it sometime.”

“Okay…” I tucked that information away for later, opting to follow Eli and the guard inside the cell. The injection was administered, and a few breaths later, Maverick started to stir. Once he began to move, the sedation seemed to wear off all at once. He blinked and lifted his head, observing us silently. He didn’t seem startled or alarmed at all.

“What the hell are you doing, Maverick?” Eli demanded, folding his arms over his ch3st. “I need to understand what’s going on?”

Maverick blinked again, slowly lifting his chin to stare at Eli directly. It was like the rest of us weren’t even in the room.

When he didn’t say anything immediately, Eli kept talking. “I need to know,” he said again. “I saw the tattoo on your wrist, so don’t lie to me. I know how a wolf earns that mark. He has to ‘earn points’. He has to make kills, Maverick. Tell me how the f**k you got that tattoo.” His voice cracked, and my heart squeezed too tightly.

If Maverick has actually killed people, I don’t know what Eli is going to do…

This man had been a soldier first, long before he’d gotten involved with the Raven Brothers. He’d surely killed people before. How much of a jump was it to start dropping bodies in the name of ‘shifter safety’, or whatever the Raven Brothers were preaching? My heart wedged itself into my throat, rapidly beating as we all waited for Maverick’s answer.

“Elliot,” Maverick sighed, his mouth twitching. I frowned, sneaking a quick look at Eli and Nic. Elliot? Is that his name? I thought his name was Eli.

Eli’s frown deepened. “Don’t call me Elliot. That isn’t my name, and your stupid childhood monikers aren’t going to work on me,” he snapped, shaking his head.

Maverick nodded. “Eli,” he said instead, tipping his head to one side. “I have never lied to you.”

Eli scowled. “What the f**k is that supposed to mean? If that were true, you would have told me you were actually working for the Raven Brothers!” He pointed at the man’s right arm.

I frowned, crossing my arms over my ch3st as I watched this unfold. I wished there was something, anything I could do for Eli to make this easier, but…this was for him to unpack. It still didn’t make it any easier to watch.

Maverick sighed, leaning back. “May I speak?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Eli rolled his eyes. “Go on,” he snapped.

Maverick hummed. “Eighteen months ago, I was approached by Interpol for a…how did they put it? ‘A unique situation.’” He gave us a wry smile.

Eli’s brows bounced up so quickly that I was surprised they didn’t leap right off his forehead. “Interpol? Seriously? You expect us to believe that?”

Maverick fixed him with a dry look, and Eli scowled, rolling his eyes. “Fine, fine. Talk,” he muttered.

“Evidently, they had caught wind of Project Night Moon, and they needed someone with some pretty specific qualifications. By working with them, I learned that this ‘project’ had previously been sanctioned by the German government. Interpol’s observations only go back thirty years, but evidence has led them to believe this project was started before World War II, operating out of an underground lab before its official sanction. As you may have guessed, the government there has since shut down the project. But someone clearly felt it was worth continuing, and it’s since moved out of Germany to the American south.”

I frowned. Something about this wasn’t adding up. “If Interpol has known about this project since the nineties, why haven’t they shut it down already?”

Maverick grimaced. “Well, it was sanctioned by the state at first. It’s much harder to shut down something that technically doesn’t exist on the books while working under a governmental body. Lots of politics.” He gave me a wry look. “And if they were to go after the project like that, they’d have to convince a lot of different people in a lot of different companies that shifters do, in fact, exist.”

My frown deepened. That did present a huge problem…and if there were any shifters in Interpol, they probably wouldn’t be eager to expose us to the world at large. Even if only a few politicians were told, they were still politicians. One way or another, someone would leak the information, and shifters would never be safe again.

“At some point in the nineties, the German government decided to terminate this project, and, as I said, someone decided to keep it going. Interpol’s information on Night Moon in the following decades is spotty, but it seemed they jumped from country to country, hiding out in large cities and moving at the first whiff that someone might have located them. They found their way to the United States in the last ten years and entered Austin about five years ago,” Maverick continued.

“That’s not possible,” Remus said, interrupting him. He was scowling. “We would have noticed if there had been ‘disappearing’ wolves from my territory over the past five years. That’s just not possible.”

Maverick shook his head. “They don’t always kidnap wolves. Actually, that’s pretty new. Previously, they got folks to volunteer to ‘work’ with them, offering to pay off debt or provide housing for their family. They even offered to pay for college — a scholarship, so to speak — for some younger shifters. When they aren’t ‘losing’ wolves, they don’t have to ‘restock’ with any urgency, so no kidnappings occur.”

Restocking. What a gross organization.I grimaced at the thought.

Eli shook his head and waved a hand. “Okay, so Interpol approached you about this organization,” he said, still scowling fiercely. “Then what happened? You haven’t mentioned the Raven Brothers at all yet.”

“I was getting there,” Maverick replied calmly, the corner of his mouth tipping upwards. “While continuing to track Project Night Moon, Interpol became aware of the Raven Brothers. They’d been trying for two years to replace someone with the right profile to infiltrate the group when they approached me. Someone I was in basic training with had gone on to Interpol after their military service and recognized me.”

“Another shifter?” Eli asked.

Maverick hummed an affirmative.

“As an alpha who’d been banished from a pack with some sort of military training, I was exactly what the Raven Brothers were looking for in potential elite recruits.”

Remus frowned. “So, once you got into the Raven Brothers, what was the plan there?”

“My main objective was to gather information on who was leading the group and how they were related to Project Night Moon. Most of the higher-ups are virtual ghosts. Interpol had no idea who was in charge or even what the hierarchy looked like. A pack of alphas isn’t exactly conventional — if you could call it a pack at all.” Maverick paused then, his expression flickering.

Eli narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

Maverick looked up at him, seeming to consider whatever he was about to say next quite carefully. “I was the one who identified Dr. Brenner for them. I was in the organization for about a year before they let me work near him. Before that, Interpol had no idea who was running the scientific operations.”

He frowned. “I’ve been trying to gain enough trust to meet some of the higher-ups within the Raven Brothers themselves, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

I frowned and pointed at his arm. “You had to have an awful lot of trust for them to give you that,” I said, motioning to his tattooed arm.

Eli narrowed his eyes. “We know you earn that tattoo by ‘earning points’ through murdering people. And shifters.”

Maverick sighed and gave Eli a look I might classify as disappointed. “Do you really think Interpol has never relocated an individual a dangerous organization wanted to eliminate, Eli?” he replied, raising a brow.

“Like witness protection? What does that have to do with anything?”

He shrugged. “I’m not at liberty to confirm or deny any witness protection program,” Maverick said, giving Eli a long look. “But if it were a situation like that, admitting to it would put their new identity at risk, wouldn’t it? Those targeted couldn’t pop up and say, ‘Hey, I’m actually alive. I’m over here!’ They’d risk attracting the Raven Brothers’ attention all over again. For all the Brothers knew, these targets were eliminated. They had all the proof they needed. No idea that Interpol was involved, and I very much wanted to keep it that way.”

Eli scowled back but didn’t argue. After all, Maverick had a compelling argument. I couldn’t imagine Interpol sanctioning the deaths of people and shifters in numbers that high, and I’m sure this wasn’t the first person they’d had to take on a new identity.

“You knew exactly who Iris was the day she was taken, didn’t you?” Eli spat. Every inch of him reverberated with tension.

Maverick hummed, nodding again. “I did, yes.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say something?” Eli demanded.

“I didn’t want to blow my cover,” Maverick said softly. “If I got found out, I wouldn’t be able to help Iris at all — I wouldn’t be able to help you at all. After you called, I did try to replace her, but she had been placed in the High Priority portion of the facility. I didn’t — and still don’t — have clearance to that portion of the building.”

“High Priority?” I asked, raising a brow. A lump was already starting to form in my throat. “What does that mean?”

Maverick sighed. “Those are the shifters currently considered the most valuable. Sometimes shifters are moved to that portion of the facility after Dr. Brenner discovers some sort of ‘breakthrough’ with them. A year ago, a kidnapping victim being ransomed was kept there until the fee was paid. Iris was kept there as a ‘rare specimen’.”

He turned his gaze to me, his expression somber. “Dr. Brenner had strong reason to believe she was the last member of an old clan, Bella Nova, and her parents, Beauregard and Pearl, were believed to be among the last members of the Crescent Moon Pack, if not the very last. Supposedly, that pack had a large amount of wealth as well.” His eyes gleamed. “Dr. Brenner wasted no opportunity to get more funding for his projects, you see.”

I studied him for a moment. “Then why was Cynthia Smith in that room? Zone? Whatever?” As far as I could tell, there hadn’t been anything “special” about her. After all, her family wasn’t important enough to get the Silver Streak Pack council’s notice. Her sister was the one who hired me, and they certainly weren’t the last members of a pack. They weren’t even in high standing.

Maverick grimaced and shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. As I said, I didn’t have access to that area. Either Dr. Brenner had found something ‘different’ about her, or…” He trailed off before his expression hardened, the emotion almost disappearing entirely. “There had been rumblings that he wanted to set up a breeding program. If he had shifters born in captivity, it was believed they’d be much more compliant.”

We all went silent for a moment as we digested exactly what he was implying. The memory of the guard who’d tried to claim me flashed across my mind. Well, that explains why no one seemed to care what bullshit the guards got up to, I bitterly thought to myself.

“Breeding program?” Remus broke the silence, his upper l!p curling in disgust.

Maverick nodded. “Again, I can’t say for certain. I didn’t have clearance to access that part of the facility, but I’ve overheard guards discussing it.”

I shook my head, attempting to will away the uncomfortable feeling of my skin trying to crawl straight off my body. “If that’s the case, is it possible there are children still there?” I hadn’t seen any, but it wasn’t as if I had been given the grand tour.

Maverick shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. If there’s been any success, they’ve prevented leaks. I haven’t heard anything.”

I took a step back, rubbing my palm over my face. “Shit.”

Remus rumbled, clearly agreeing with the sentiment. “If there are children involved, that seriously complicates matters. However we decide to handle this, we can’t put them in any more danger.”

“Agreed,” Eli said, sighing heavily.

Remus turned his attention back to Maverick. “You know where the facility is. You’ll lead us there, and we’ll shut this thing down before anyone else gets hurt.”

Maverick shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”

Remus growled. “I fail to see what’s complicated about that.”

“Well, for one thing, the facility was designed to keep humans out and werewolves in. As I said, my key card won’t access every area in the facility, so even if you were able to storm it somehow, there would be locked areas and individuals you wouldn’t be able to get to.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “It’s possible the air vents could operate as a way to get around that issue, but I wouldn’t want to just go crawling through them without being absolutely certain they’d led to the areas in question.”

“Then we need to get blueprints,” Eli said as if it were as simple as looking them up online.

Maverick gave him a steady look. “Those are kept behind locked doors as well,” he said calmly. “Which I don’t have access to. I think Dr. Brenner’s key card should get us access to anything. I had been planning on pickpocketing him, but the file he handed me derailed my plans.” He tipped his head, giving Eli a meaningful look.

Eli made a frustrated noise. “Then why don’t we just grab Dr. Brenner? The Raven Brothers don’t even have to know you’re involved.”

Maverick sighed. “He has alarms all over that house, as well as cameras. There are armed guards with him at all times. They stay inside the house. There’s also a proximity fence — which you two triggered, by the way.” He gave Remus and Eli a grim smile. “A larger team was alerted to go investigate. You’re lucky I was on duty.”

Eli scowled. “We saw absolutely no one go in and out besides you.”

“Of course,” Maverick replied, shrugging his shoulders. “It has to look like a normal house. They have someone specifically hired to come and go so the neighbors won’t get suspicious, but the guards access the house through a tunnel. It leads to a safe house on a different street. One disguised as an industrial building so no one will think anything of the traffic at odd hours.”

“Then why didn’t you use it?” I asked Maverick, narrowing my eyes.

He tipped his head, grinning at me. “Because I wasn’t strictly on business at that moment, so I didn’t want to alert anyone by using the tunnel. Dr. Brenner is quite arrogant and didn’t think anything of me coming to the front door and handing me Eli’s file right there. He’s lucky he did, or I probably would have had him before any of his guards noticed something was strange.”

Remus frowned. “A weak argument.”

I agreed, but I didn’t say anything. Eli was looking at Maverick as if he’d hung the moon, and I didn’t want to get in the middle. Besides, no matter how strange Maverick’s story was, it was the only one we had to work with right now.

“It’s what we’ve got,” I said, giving Remus a sideways look. “And I don’t think we can afford to waste any more time.”