Fuck, this was going to take forever.
But he’d known what to expect. Paul was a sadistic wanker, but he was also thorough.
“Any chance you can undo these?” He raised his shoulders, indicating his tied hands.
Paul gave a short, sharp shake of his head. “Talk.”
Starting at the moment Cole had knocked on the door at the medical centre, Logan repeated, in great detail and as truthfully as he could manage, every interaction they’d had.
* * *
Cole spatout a mouthful of blood onto the floor.
Pain flowed through his jaw and up the side of his face, but the bones were already knitting back together, skin healing as if it had never happened.
“Well, would you look at that.” Simon—as he’d introduced himself when he’d walked in, full of self-importance—gestured to Cole’s head. “Almost as good as new. You’d still be writhing in agony if you were human.”
Even with shifter healing, it hurt like a bitch, but Cole got the impression he was supposed to be grateful. He shot Simon a look that he hoped conveyed how much he could go fuck himself, but he kept quiet.
Jacob had been extremely detailed in his instructions for handling this interrogation.
Either of the betas would take charge initially—that part was unavoidable—but if things went to plan, Jacob had an ally in Paul’s team who would come in to take over the main interrogation while Paul dealt with Logan and Aaron.
At least that was the plan.
The story they’d spun was that Cole had been bitten to save his life, but he hadn’t asked for it.
Therefore, he needed to give off a delicate balance of being pissed off at no longer being human but knowing that joining the McKillan pack was his only option to have any kind of life now. He had to grudgingly want them to accept him.
Which meant he couldn’t exactly tell Simon that he wanted to rip his throat out and leave this fucking awful place.
Closing his eyes, Cole tried to gain some measure of calm. Jacob had warned him it would be hard, but it was so much worse than Cole had imagined.
The scent ofshifterfilled the room, smothering him with a smell that should be familiar, should scream pack and offer comfort—especially to a newly turned shifter like him—except it didn’t because he hadn’t been bitten by a McKillan pack member. Instead, the urge to claw at his throat had him straining against the handcuffs holding him in place. The metal burnt against his skin, but Cole barely felt it amongst the onslaught to his other senses.
The room they were in was soundproofed, but that seemed to amplify every sound inside it—Simon’s breathing, the way his shoes squeaked against the floor tiles as he paced the room, the rustle of fabric when he stopped to lean on the far wall. All small, insignificant noises, but in the absence of any other sounds, they were deafening.
To Cole, anyway.
Simon appeared unaffected.
“It’s a little overwhelming at first, isn’t it?” Simon gestured at Cole with his hand, in a way that Cole took to mean his newly heightened senses. “No doubt it’s worse for you.” He said it matter-of-factly, as though he was merely stating something obvious. “If you’d been bitten by Michael, by an alpha, then all this—” He waved his arm around to encompass their surroundings. “—would all feel so much more like home.” He took a couple of steps closer, deliberately keeping eye contact. “Instead of somewhere that makes your skin crawl. Makes your wolf uneasy, like there’s a threat around every corner. Surrounded by so many foreign pack scents, it must be... disorienting to say the least.” He grinned, clearly delighting in that fact. The sight sent a cold shiver down Cole’s spine. “If you hadn’t tried to escape, then none of us would be in this mess.”
Not for the first time since they’d been separated, Cole’s thoughts turned to Logan, and his heart stuttered.
With Logan close by, he hadn’t been affected like this. There’d been Cole, Logan, and Aaron in the car, yet he hadn’t felt smothered by their combined scents. Hadn’t felt threatened or uncomfortable in their presence.
But then again, his new relationship with Logan probably had a lot to do with that.
He wondered if the same thought would occur to Simon. Maybe he just assumed it had been bad from day one and didn’t care enough to ask otherwise.
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” Simon crossed his arms, shoulders and biceps bulging.
Fuck, he’s a big bloke.
Cole swallowed, pushing back at the curl of fear in his belly. “Okay.”
“You have two options open to you.” He paused, maybe going for dramatic effect, who knew? “Join the McKillan pack, have Michael bite you, then train with the HRU until you’re mission-ready.”
