I needed answers. Real answers from somebody who wouldn’t sugarcoat things. Straight answers from someone who wasn’t completely loyal to or controlled by Raul.

There was only one werelock I’d met in the Salvatella pack who fit the bill. The downside was he was a giant dickbag.

And the bigger hurdle that remained was how to orchestrate a private conversation with Rafe.

I knew Raul didn’t want me seeing the Salvatella pack’s head werelock doctor without him present. He’d made that much clear—and frankly, who could blame him after my meeting with Rafe yesterday?

Sneaking over to the medical building to confront Rafe wasn’t a realistic possibility. I was free to roam the mansion, but there were guards everywhere, and I was constantly being watched it seemed. I needed a werelock who had a reasonably high-standing position within the pack to help me. Someone who could smuggle me past the many guards and get me into Rafe’s building. But who, among the Salvatella werelocks I’d met, held enough authority to help me while being disloyal and unscrupulous enough to take the risk?

I considered my options as I strolled through the creepy gallery of statues in the west wing of the main mansion. Even if I didn’t get a single answer out of Rafe, the visit would be worth it if only to take refuge within the sterile white walls of the medical building for a few stolen moments.

While the exterior architecture of the five-story, palatial Salvatella estate was reflective of neo-gothic elegance, the interior was an epic shitshow of avant-garde fails. It was as if Versace and Liberace had taken turns decorating rooms, and then Picasso’s lesser-known, lesser-talented, bastard stepbrother had followed them vomiting random kitsch throughout. To make matters worse, everywhere I turned it seemed a flash of gilding was blinding me in the eye. They’d seriously gone to town with the gold leafing and gold accents in the place. In the words of my Granny Jean: Shit was basic.

Anyone would be anxious and on edge surrounded by such monstrous décor—before factoring in the actual monsters the place was inhabited by.

I was staring at an ostentatious marble bust of the last Alpha, Gabriel Salvatella, when Jorge came up from behind and startled me, asking in a flirtatious tone what I was doing all by myself in the gallery. My first instinct was to try and flee. My second was to scream as he came to stand uncomfortably close to me. But when a look of admiration came over Jorge’s features as he stared at the statue before us and he commented on what a great leader Alpha Gabe had been, I knew I’d found my man.

Going up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, I told Jorge I feared I was on the verge of experiencing explosive gastrointestinal distress, and had come to the mostly empty gallery hoping to let out a little pressure where it would offend less werewolves. Keeping in mind what Tiago had told me about werewolves being able to scent lies, I tried to relay it with as much conviction and sprinklings of truth as possible. I mean, I was sick to my stomach over the décor in the mansion, not to mention my entire situation. So, not a total lie, right?

Jorge recoiled immediately, and I asked him sweetly if he would mind discreetly escorting me to see Doctor Rafe, saying I was too distressed over my situation to ask Raul, and that I didn’t know the guard werewolves well enough to admit to any of them that I felt on the brink of shitting my pants.

Jorge smuggled me through a few shortcuts within the walls—which added a new layer of creepiness to the mansion. I made a mental note that this most likely meant Jorge couldn’t teleport. Raul had evaded the question when I’d asked him how many of the werelocks besides him could poof. So far I only knew of Avery and Mike having the ability.

Jorge dropped me like a dirty bomb as soon as we were inside the medical building, claiming he was late for some meeting. The supermodel receptionist was nowhere to be found, so I wandered down the white hallway I’d gone down with Raul before, once again passing multiple identical doors with no discernible room numbers or markings.

As I got farther down the hall, I heard a woman moaning. Followed by a man grunting. Damn my rotten luck.

The next door I came to was ajar. And the much-revered quack of a werelock doctor was inside the examination room fucking his own receptionist—Yamila Diaz’s doppelganger—within an inch of her life.

Wow.

Like, holy shit, wow.

I froze, my eyes locked on the scene in front of me. I couldn’t have stood there for more than six seconds. But six seconds was plenty of time to see things I’d never be able to un-see.

And I didn’t just mean the size of Rafe’s dick.

I meant the way her breath escaped her each time he rammed deep—as if he filled her so completely there wasn’t room left for air in her lungs. The way her clawed fingernails dug into the examination table, the way her ass jiggled each time his muscled thighs smacked up against the backs of hers. How big his hands looked encircling her tiny waist. And how much raw emotion—how much profound bliss—her orgasmic face conveyed even when half of it was covered by a blindfold.

And Rafe’s wasn’t. Partially covered, that is. His face was on full display, his scar in full bloom—so much so that he was almost unrecognizable from the werelock I’d met yesterday.

When his head snapped in my direction, I ran.

I didn’t get farther than the next examination room door before I found myself blown inside of it onto my ass, the door shutting and a lock magically clicking in place behind me.

The noises got louder from the room on the opposite side of the wall. Rafe’s grunt’s got angrier. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh came faster. Harder.

She started begging in Spanish.

He started swearing in Spanish—cursing her tight pussy and promising it would be the last time he fucked it.

I felt torn between rolling my eyes and touching myself as I sat on the hard cold floor—a captive interloper.

She wailed as she came.

But then he kept on going. And going.

Oh, seriously? How long was I going to be stuck in here? I got up and tested the door. Yep. No dice. It locked from the outside. Probably the only way Rafe kept any patients.

Several minutes and successive squealing orgasms later, Rafe finally shouted his own release. Two minutes later, he swung the door open to the room I was in to find me waiting, my arms crossed over my chest and the most fearless expression I could manage on my face.

He was dressed. Thank God for small favors. And his scar was back to looking normal-ish. He tilted his chin and sniffed the air as he sauntered in. “Shall I get you a change of thong?”

“What?”

“Your underwear. Is soaked through. Again, I might add.”

Oh, my God.

I felt my skin betraying me, my face flushing.

His upper lip twitched like it was having an epileptic fit trying to restrain the humor he so desperately wanted to express. “Heard about you being an exhibitionist. Seems you’re a voyeur as well.”

“I was not watching you,” I objected. “It’s hardly my fault that I walked in on you … you—”

“Fucking.” He smiled, enjoying my discomfort. The scar running down his face split open. “You’re here against Raul’s orders and without an appointment, so I’d say it’s entirely your fault.”

I tried not to react. “Look, I came to talk to you as a medical professional. Obviously, I didn’t expect to walk in on you. Where I practice medicine, doctors don’t copulate with their staff in examination rooms.”

“She is my patient first and foremost.”

“Great.” I rolled disgusted eyes. “Where I practice medicine, doctors definitely don’t copulate with their patients—in exam rooms or elsewhere.”

“Shame.” He canted his head. “What if it’s the only cure for what ails them?”

“This was clearly a mistake.” I stepped forward.

He moved to block my path, entering my personal space. “Not at all. I was hoping you’d be back for a more thorough examination. You know, I regret I didn’t get to watch Raul fuck and mark you. I think I would’ve enjoyed it. Very much.”

I slapped him hard across the face.

Annnd now things were really uncomfortable.

And I might’ve broken some bones in my hand.

I sucked in a desperate breath, telling myself it would be worse if I backed down now, as I shook my poor hand out and scolded, “Your bedside manner is atrocious. It’s unacceptable.”

Smirking, he reached down and adjusted the bulge in his pants. “Honesty’s not part of your modern-day Hippocratic oath where you practice?”

My eyes sought refuge on the ceiling, wanting to escape his penetrating amber gaze, his transforming scar, and the sizeable erection now pushing out against the fly of his jeans.

This had been a huge mistake.

“Let me see your hand.”

“Uh—yeah, I don’t think so.” Now was probably the right time to start screaming for help.

“I’m not asking. Give me your hand.”

My eyes snapped from the ceiling to his. “I am not going to give you a handjob, you psycho!”

He tucked his lips between his teeth and brought his fist up to cover his mouth, his shoulders shaking as his scar shifted and widened, the skin breaking apart once more. “Bethany, please,” he implored from behind his closed fist, his deep voice thick with suppressed amusement. “You have to stop making me laugh so much. I don’t want to traumatize you.”

Ha! Could’ve fooled me. “If you don’t step aside and let me leave, I’ll—”

“Give me your hand so I can heal it.” He dropped his fist from his mouth as he regained his composure. “You have a hairline fracture in your second and third metacarpals.” He held his hand out, palm up. “There’s still a doctor behind the monster.”

I wasn’t so sure. But I swallowed the lump of nerves in my throat and gave him my hand.

“I could use my saliva for this, but I’m guessing you’d be more comfortable with an injection.”

I huffed. “You guessed right.”

“Did you mean what you said before? About wanting to take Raul’s place as Alpha?”

“No. I didn’t.” Rafe’s fingers were gentle as they palpated the fine bones in my hand, testing the results of the magical serum he’d injected only moments ago. Already, my hand felt completely healed. “Everyone knows Mike would succeed Raul as Alpha. There. Good as new.”

“Mike?”

He nodded, releasing my hand. “And I would back Mike as Alpha. If not for Raul’s Joaquin blood inheritance and his strong alliance with the Rogue, Mike would be our Alpha now.”

“Really? Why not Alcaeus? I thought Alcaeus was second in command.”

Rafe barked out a laugh—a great guffaw would be more accurate—and the scar that ran through the midline of his right eye tore clean open. As I watched in fascinated horror, wondering what in the heck had been so funny about my Alcaeus remark, the white of his right eye turned blood red, then grey, and the iris turned a milky marbled black. “Fuck. Now see what you’ve done?” he said, still laughing. “You’ve gone and blinded me.”

“The last Alpha … did he do that to you?”

The brow over his good eye shot up. He ceased chuckling. “For real? You’re going to address the elephant in the room? During our second encounter, no less?”

I paused for a beat before committing. “Yeah. I am. Am I the first to ask about it so soon after meeting you?”

“No. Avery asked within seconds of meeting me. I think her exact words were: ‘What the fuck is going on with your face?’ ”

I giggled, then immediately slapped my healed hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh.”

“By all means, do. Someone should get a good laugh about it. Yes. Gabe and his brother Nuriel cast this spell on me.”

“Why? Just to be cruel?”

He leaned against the steel laboratory table behind him. “Their younger brother was killed on my watch.”

“Gasoline drink—I mean the werelock you named the drink after? Nahuel’s Blunder?”

“Same.”

“How was his death your fault?”

“It wasn’t. But I made the mistake of blaming myself for it, and they scented the guilt on me when I came back delivering burnt pieces of his remains.”

Damn. Burnt, too? That had been one pissed off mate.

I knew it was probably terrible to ask it, and yet I did. “Can it ever be reversed? Your curse?”

“They said that it could—Gabe and Nuriel, that is. But I don’t know if it actually can.” A faraway look clouded his eyes, which had returned to their normal amber shade. I didn’t have to ask to know he’d spent the past sixty-some odd years trying to figure out how to reverse the curse. “I’ve come to think that was part of their torture plan all along: to dangle false hope in front of me. Keep me searching. Reaching for something I could never reclaim.”

“I can’t get over what monsters those Salvatella brothers were.”

“Gabe and Nuriel were no worse than their predecessors. Just different. And Nahuel, the youngest brother, wasn’t a bad person. Once upon a time, many of us, myself included, harbored high hopes for him.”

It was my turn to laugh—without humor. Silly me for forgetting for a hot second that Rafe was anything but a lunatic. “The brother who slaughtered his own mate’s parents? You think he was a good person?”

“I didn’t say he was a good person, Bethany. I said he wasn’t a bad person. There’s a distinction. As there are degrees. These mountains are full of monsters far worse than Nahuel. Some worse than even Gabe and Nuriel.”

“Don’t tell me: There’s a rival evil werelock camp on the other side of the lake? Let me know when the annual softball game face-off is.”

He smiled, flashing white teeth. This time, when his scar shifted, and the skin broke apart, I barely noticed it. I was beginning to get used to it as part of his normal facial expressions.

“It’s the truth.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t mean Nahuelito the Loch Ness,” I told him wryly, “’cause I know that dude lives in the lake.”

“No. I’m referring to the thousands of Nazis who established residence here to escape persecution after World War II. Bariloche is known as the Third Reich Capital in Exile for a reason. Many of them continued their legacy here.”

A chill ran through me. Because I knew he wasn’t joking. I couldn’t recall if I’d learned it in school or elsewhere, but I did remember reading about Nazis fleeing Germany for South America. The exact locations they’d fled to in South America just hadn’t stayed with me.

I felt a little sick now for having ever thought Bariloche was a beautiful place. And I was suddenly more homesick than ever for San Francisco.

“Make no mistake, Gabe got some things right,” Rafe said. “As did his brother before him. Prior to their reign there was nothing but constant infighting and defection. It was eroding and destroying our pack. Their first order of business was to put a stop to all that.”

My thoughts went to Mike and what he had shared with me on the plane. “By killing defectors while their children watched?”

“Yes. For starters. You see, shared pain has a way of bonding individuals in a manner that few things can. The Salvatella pack is unique from others in that we don’t just tap each other’s minds; we often tap each other’s emotions—both past and present. Gabe encouraged this practice. Preached it. Enforced it. And through this twisted dysfunction, he did succeed in unifying us as a pack once again. While paralyzing us as individuals. Breaking us as humans, and molding us back together as codependent brothers.

“He did it so that the horror Mike experienced as a boy seeing his mother tortured, raped, and killed could be my torture forever as well. So that it could be Tiago’s and Stephen’s and Raul’s. Never in the same manner that it will always be for Mike, of course, but enough that it sticks. Cementing us through our collective torment and grief.”

Disturbing as it was, it made sense from a psychological standpoint. I was all too familiar with the manner in which shared pain and grief could strongly bond individuals. Even when it was unhealthy. Especially when it was unhealthy. It was the glue that had sustained my parents’ marriage.

“Just like the ongoing pain and humiliation of my facial curse is felt by my pack brothers and sisters,” Rafe relayed. “Even if only for fleeting moments from time to time, it’s enough. Because we’re already pack creatures, Bethany. Co-dependent behavior is written in our werewolf DNA. Gabe merely magnified something we were already cursed with by nature. It was a tool to help him spread fear. A way for him to keep us under his control, constantly traumatized and on edge, waiting for the next axe to drop. And believe me, someone was constantly either getting tortured or reliving torture around here.”

He smiled—a smile so cynical it wasn’t rightfully a smile at all. The fact that his scar didn’t alter a hair proved it. “He maintained that it was for healing—to promote a universal consciousness and strong sense of empathy within the pack.” A muscle tightened in his jaw. “Gabe only ever had noble intentions.”

He straightened, pushing off the laboratory table behind him. “And now you understand why Sloane’s well-being and safety mean everything to our pack.”

Huh? Had I missed a key segue somewhere? “No. I don’t follow. How does Sloane fit into all this?”

“Sloane is the prophesied Rogue who will beget all rogues. The firstborn of a new and errant breed of werewolf species. Some interpret the prophecy to mean that she will literally give birth to the new breed of werewolf species.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“No. I think her impact on our world has already begun. Her mere presence is already altering us as a species. Look at what happened with you and Raul. It’s inconceivable that anyone would be able to forgo a mating bond pull for so long.”

“You know what? It’d be great if everyone could stop rubbing it in. I get it—I’m easy to resist.” For ten fucking years.

“It wasn’t you, Bethany. It was Sloane’s influence. The same thing is happening with Wyatt. He’s been separated from his mate for seven months now. That isn’t normal.”

“What are you saying?”

“When Avery first became a werewolf, she had the same drive we all do to belong to a pack. But once Sloane was born, that drive fell away. This is only the beginning. Sloane hasn’t even shifted yet.” He raised his chin. “That little girl is our deliverer. Our savior. And she’s going to be an early shifter, too. Mark my words.”

Wow. “Don’t you think you might be putting a lot of inappropriate pressure and responsibility on a not-even ten-year-old girl? She’s a kid. Not a savior.”

He shook his head minutely. “Every day, she brings us closer to claiming our freedom simply by breathing, Bethany. By existing. Don’t you see? She’s already begun giving us a choice in mating. She’s ultimately going to give us our free will as a species at long last.”

Why did this feel so upsetting to me? This was good news. Wasn’t it?

If what Rafe said was true, it meant that despite my ten mating bite marks, Raul and I might be able to gain freedom from one another.

Go our separate ways.

Through Sloane breathing.

“Avery said she barely made it a day or so resisting her mating bond to Alcaeus,” I pointed out. Why was I so set on arguing this? “And Avery’s Sloane’s mom. Why didn’t she have a choice?”

The brow over Rafe’s good eye shot up. “Have you seen those two fools together?”

I sighed. Yeah, I had. Avery and Alcaeus were hopelessly in love. It was impossible to miss. There was more than just a mating bond binding them.

“But werewolves live in packs to prevent their exposure. You’re suggesting that as Sloane’s influence spreads, werewolves everywhere will simply abandon pack existence and go out into the world, assimilating into human society? No offense, but not all of you represent your species very well.” And that was an absurdly generous understatement. “Pretty sure humans still grossly outnumber werewolves across the planet, right? Aren’t you afraid of human mass hysteria? Your entire Liberace estate could be nuked overnight. The world could be turned upside down in a week if werewolves started coming out of hiding in droves. You’re advocating chaos.”

“No. I’m advocating Darwinism.”