I coughed myself awake, choking on icy water that I had breathed in. My head bobbed up instinctively and my hands reached for my throat. Except my hands couldn't move. Blinking the crust out of my eyes, I was able to actually see my surroundings. The mismatched furniture and grey walls looked very much like the basement in my parent's house.
Then I noticed Braden standing off to the side of the chair I was strapped to. A plastic bowl dangled from his hands and water dripped from its rim onto the floor. His face was hard and blank, eyes flat. My stomach dropped. From what I knew about my brother, he wouldn't even know how to look at someone with such hostility. Maybe this wasn't my brother.
"Welcome back," he said lowly. "Get enough beauty rest?"
"What the hell, Braden?" I yelled despite my aching throat. "What's going on?"
"You tell me. That thing came here looking for you and it nearly killed Anna. It nearly killed my mate!"
My memory sluggishly dragged out the last moments of consciousness when I had been scooped up by the beast. And then when both of us were mowed down by my brother's tranquilizer gun. Wherever the hell that came from.
"I don't know what you mean," I told him. "It came looking for me? How would it do that? How would it track me from Bloomberg to here? That doesn't make sense."
"The whole fucking animal doesn't make sense!" he bellowed.
I didn't flinch at his voice. Instead, I squinted at the floor and tried to think through this ordeal. Could the beast somehow have followed me here? It was over a hundred miles between these towns. Even if he had a big sniffer, it would've been difficult—if not impossible—to track me. I shook my head.
"This is bullshit," I said. "Let me go, Braden. I don't know what you think, but I didn't bring the beast here. It's not my fault that it attacked Anna, okay?"
"It wasn't just Anna. It was anyone or anything that got in its way. The only person it didn't try to tear to shreds was you."
The tingling build-up of tears started behind my eyes. "But that isn't true! The beast has attacked me. It would have killed me too if Tandan hadn't saved me."
"So you admit you've seen this thing before? And you've interacted with it?"
Lips trembling, I nodded.
"Then what other reason can we account for the animal's travel? What other motive would it have for coming here?"
"I don't know," I murmured, head bowing. A few tears dropped off my face and onto my lap.
Braden hurled the bowl across the room with a cry of frustration. "Damn you, Rylee. I don't want to hate you. You're my sister. But I have to blame someone and there's no one else to take it."
"Why do you have to blame anyone?"
"Because people want someone to account for the injuries and deaths. They need someone to be held responsible. The pack is suffering without any sense of closure otherwise."
"What about the animal that actually hurt them? Why not blame it?"
Sighing, he approached my chair and crouched in front of me. Our eyes met. I could see the sympathy and regret in his; he knew this wasn't my blame to take.
"We can't kill it," he told me. "Bullets penetrate but don't kill. Its body spits the shrapnel out. And it's far too strong to tie down and behead. We don't know what to do with it, and you can't punish something you can't control."
"So you're just going to stick it to me, huh?" I let out a satirical, tired laugh. "Best brother ever award goes to...well, not Braden Sanders."
Cursing, he shook his head and stood up. "I don't know what else to do, Rylee. Everyone is looking to me for a solution. But I don't have one. I don't."
"You can start by letting me go," I said. "I'm not guilty, Braden. You know this. It's wrong to treat me like this when I'm not a criminal. I'm not even trying to use the sister card here; I just want you to see the unfairness."
"I know." He scratched his head of unkempt dirty blonde hair and turned away from me. "I'm going to talk to Danny. See if they've gotten any new info on the animal."
"Braden! Don't leave me down here!"
When he reached the bottom step of the stairs, he paused to look back at me over his shoulder. "There has to be a vote to let you out. I wasn't the only one who wanted you down here."
Then he faced ahead and walked upstairs, leaving me to weep in the quiet loneliness.
—(—)—
Braden returned eventually. I felt like hours had passed and my stomach had noticed the interminable stretch of boredom. I'd tried eavesdropping through the house to get some answers, but the walls were too thick and insulated. It wouldn't stop rumbling. When I saw another shadow descending the steps behind Braden, I got excited. My face fell at the sight of Alpha Danny's face. For some reason, I knew he was at least partly to blame for my situation.
"I brought some food," Danny said once he and my brother reached the basement floor.
I tore my eyes from him to study his offering. A grilled cheese sandwich and bowl of soup on a platter. My stomach growled louder, making him smile.
"How am I supposed to eat it?" I grouched. My eyes cut at him.
"Your brother will do you the honor," he replied.
My glare switched to Braden. He shrugged, took the plate from Danny, and came to kneel in front of me. I fixed my mouth in a tight line.
"Do you want to eat it or not?" he snapped.
"Yes," I hissed.
Releasing a heavy sigh, he lifted the sandwich to my mouth. I looked away and took a bite. This continued for a minute or so before Danny began speaking.
"We are going to release you," he said, "but not without getting some answers."
I stopped mid-chew to stare at him.
"You can finish eating first."
"Oh no," I quipped. "Please, interrogate me."
Braden rolled his eyes and stood up to move away. He and Danny shared a look before the latter grabbed the nearest loveseat and turned it around to face me. Then he sat on it.
"Rylee," he started, "you need to tell us how you originally came into contact with this creature."
I don't 'need' to tell you asshats anything, I thought indignantly. But I wanted to get out of this basement and these bindings more than anything, so I played along.
"I was taking a run in the woods back in Bloomberg and it started chasing me. It attacked me." Wetting my lips, I allowed my memory to go back to that night. "It probably would have killed me."
"And why didn't it?" Danny pressed.
"I don't know. My mate came to the scene and I assume he somehow chased it off, but I don't know. I couldn't see anything at that point."
"Woah, woah. Wait a minute." His eyebrows kissed in confusion. "Your mate? No one ever mentioned you had a mate and that he was involved."
Shit! I blew my own damn cover. When I glanced at Braden, he seemed surprised that I had said as much too. Dammit. If I could just do one thing right...
"He's not in the picture anymore," I answered without looking at Danny.
He was a pack wolf. Worse, he was an Alpha. There was nothing more important to an Alpha than tradition and I had screwed over the most important tradition of all by rejecting my mate. I would never make it out of this basement if they knew what I had done.
"Why not?" Danny asked. "What happened to him?"
"He, um, fell in love with a human." It wasn't a lie at all, really. I only hoped it was enough to protect me, to maintain my innocence.
"So he rejected you?"
"No!" I rushed to say. Then I bit my lip in shame from the outcry. "No, he didn't reject me. He just left me."
Both he and Braden's faces softened. My brother didn't know how my relationship ended with Tandan, but he knew enough about Lorrie to believe my lie.
"So your mate who fell in love with a human and abandoned you saved you from this monster?" Danny looked confused again. "How does that work?"
"Well, we tried to make it work. It just couldn't. He loved her too much. So yeah, he saved me but that doesn't mean he loved me or wanted to be my mate."
His eyes turned to the ground in discomfort. I felt slightly relieved at his reaction, for some reason. Maybe because I often felt uncomfortable about my relationship with my mate too.
"And that was the only encounter you had with the beast?"
I swallowed heavily. "Not exactly."
"That sounds like a 'no,'" Braden remarked.
After glaring at him for a moment, I looked back at Danny. "I went for a run again on a separate occasion. It was stupid—I know. He found me again and clearly wanted to kill me. Again."
"And how did you escape this time?"
"Well...I didn't really. Not immediately. I shifted back into my human form and—"
"So you were in wolf form for the second encounter?"
"And the first," I corrected.
Danny nodded thoughtfully. "Continue, please."
"So I shifted back into my human form and suddenly the beast didn't want to kill me. It just picked me up and carried me to a cave in the woods. I waited a few hours until he fell asleep. Then I escaped, ran back to my car, and drove home."
"Was this the last encounter you had with it?"
"Until he appeared in my living room this morning, yeah."
"How long ago was this last encounter?"
I sighed and shook my head. "A day? I packed my things up as soon as I got to my apartment and drove home. I arrived here last night."
"Thank you, Rylee," said Danny. He leaned forward to place his elbows on his knees while staring me directly in the eyes. "One last question: we have reason to believe this is a lycan. Do you know what a lycan is?"
"Our ancestors were lycans," I replied. "But I thought they had all died out?"
"So did we. Until we reached out to other packs to see if they knew what we were dealing with. One of the packs has an oracle who maintains ancient scrolls and knows werewolf history better than anyone in the next three time zones," he said. His face became very stoic, very serious. "Have you heard of the Basileus Prophecy?"
I couldn't help but laugh. "What the hell is that?"
"It's a prediction our ancestors made thousands of years ago about the return of the king, the Basileus. The oracle said he would come upon two conditions: he would be a descendant of the original lycan who had unforeseen strength, and he would come before a turning point in werewolf history."
My mouth must have been hanging open because it felt strange to voice the next words on my tongue. "So you think that beast is this prophesied lycan king? Sounds like a bunch of oracle nonsense to me."
"We don't know what else he could possibly be," Danny answered. "Clearly, he has some connection or fondness for you. Do you know who might have been the vessel for him? The oracle said he doesn't have to be a werewolf; the blood could be so diluted at this point that the vessel may have been human."
I felt my eyes grow wide. No way. No fucking way. His name slipped off my lips in a deadly whisper.
"Matt."