AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Iris snorted softly and rolled her eyes. “You just going to stand there and catch flies?” she demanded, folding her arms over her chest.
Amidst the chaos, I spotted a photo of Ashley Sanders taped amongst dozens of other faces I didn’t recognize. My spine stiffened. “What the hell is this?” I waved my hand at her wall. “What the hell are you doing?”
Iris growled softly. “You don’t get to come into my place and question what I do there,” she snapped, jabbing a finger at the door. “Get the fuck out, alpha boy.”
I stormed forward, doing the exact opposite. Ignoring her surprised protest, I reached forward and pulled Ashley’s photo off her creepy wall. I wheeled around, pulling the photo away when she tried to reach out and snatch it from between my fingers. “Ashley is a Silverstreak wolf,” I snarled, barely able to contain my anger. “So, her businessismy business. I have every right to ask what you’re doing here.”
Iris balked for a moment, her brows furrowing as she looked between me and the woman in the photo. Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment, I thought she might remember that I’d told her I was from a London pack. If she did, she didn’t bring it up. When she said nothing, I held the picture between us again. “What do you want with her? Is this because you have some vendetta against Remus?”
Iris balked again, her outrage morphing into outright confusion. “What? No! I don’t give a damn about the Silverstreak pack or Remus,” she replied, shaking her head. “What the fuck, dude. Of course, that tracks, doesn’t it? You expect me to be obsessed with your precious alpha.” She snorted. “Open your eyes, Eli. All these missing wolves were dropped on me, and apparently, I’m the only one who gives a damn they still haven’t been found.”
All these missing wolves…?This was the second time she’d mentioned it — I followed her gaze, realizing she was looking back at her wall. When I frowned, she rolled her eyes. “Typical. Of course, Ashley Sanders is the only one you care about. The rest of these wolves are just throwaways, right? Not rich enough or well-known enough,” she sneered.
My attention snapped back to her, and I bristled, fighting the urge to growl again. “You don’t know a damn thing about me,” I replied, my wolf rumbling his displeasure. “You don’t get to judge me.”
A harsh laugh escaped her pretty lips. “Oh, you mean like you just barged in here and judged the hell out of me?” She raised a brow.
“I did not—”
“I haveeyes, Eli Archer. You didn’t say the words ‘I’m judging you right now,’ but it sure was written all over your smug face the moment you marched in here.”
The accusation took me aback for a moment —didI have it written on my face?Whatever, that’s over now.I squared off with her, lips pressed firmly together, so I didn’t offer a snarl instead. “I’m here because I’m an alpha, and Icareabout the pack and the pack’s welfare,” I replied, shaking Ashley’s photo. “And that includes members of my kin’s pack, too. I don’t know what you think I am, but you can get that picture out of your head.”
Iris rolled her eyes, and I had to force myself to take a step back and a deep breath. Clearly, arguing with her was getting me nowhere — she was possibly the most stubborn woman I’d ever met. If I wanted to get any information, I had to stop— Stop— Well, stop whatever I was doing, or all I was going to get from Iris were these smart remarks. Alpha intimidation wasn’t going to work on her, nor was alpha charm.
It didn’t leave me with many options, but if I was going to get any information from her, I would need to try a different tactic. If there really were several other missing wolves, this was a serious matter, and not something for one person to handle on her own.
When I spoke again, it was with a much steadier voice. My wolf thrummed with approval. “Are you working on this all on your own?”
Iris watched me warily for a moment, tapping one finger against her arm. “Yes,” she finally replied, “but you probably knew that. I know you’ve had some goons watching me.”
It took all my willpower not to roll my eyes at the smart remark. “Yes, well, you’ve made no secret of that,” I grumbled, remembering that the former duo had informed me Iris hadwaved at them. “I’m being serious, though. If all these wolves are missing, that is a lot for one person to handle — in sheer volume alone, that’s just too many leads to track down.”
Iris paused again, her eyebrow arched regally as if she were a monarch assessing my worthiness. She must have decided that she saw something earnest in me because she exhaled a moment later, the haughty front disappearing as she leaned against the wall. “It’s just me,” she confirmed, shrugging one shoulder as she looked away. “A former client called me because her sister went missing, and she needed help finding her, but when I started digging…”
Iris paused and waved a hand at her wall of chaos. “I dug up a lot more than I bargained for.”
I hummed, trying hard to keep my face decidedly neutral. I could do it when making financial deals, so why was it so difficult now? “And you’re sure these are all wolves?”
She snorted, scowling at me. “See for yourself,” she grunted, pointing at the scattered files. “I was told this building was where transients disappeared, so I was expecting… I don’t know, evidence of someone overdosing there or something grimmer. Instead, I found this.” She shuddered.
I didn’t know Iris well at all, but the fact that it made her shudder was starting to makemenervous. “And what’s ‘this’?”
Iris hesitated for a moment, her jaw working before she finally continued. “The papers say it was called Project Night Moon. Ever heard of it?”
“No.”
“Me neither. From what I could pick out of all the legalese, it was a government-run project to control shifters to use as weapons during warfare.”
“What?” My blood ran cold as I stared at the pile of harmless-looking folders. “Surely you’re joking.”
“Wish that I were.”
It felt like the world screeched to a halt around me. My head spun.How is that possible? How is that physically possible? Humans have no knowledge of shifters, and there are no shifters in any government, American or otherwise. This is should be impossible. There is no way. No way!
Iris sighed. “Look, I know what you’re thinking—” She paused and pointed at my face when I scowled at her.Damnit. “—and the implications are… bad. Really, really bad. But I think someone in the Silverstreak pack is feeding wolves to these people because they’re all from Texas, Oklahoma, or the surrounding states.”
I took a step back and shook my head. The idea of a state-sanctioned shifter-testing project was absurd, but the idea that a wolf was handing over their own to humans? That was too far. “No way,” I replied, shaking my head. “There is no way that is possible.”
