27
The Ingraham Institute
He slept. He didn’t know for how long, but eventually, awareness returned. First in the muffled flashes of dreams, and then the painful battle for outright consciousness.
When Sasha finally opened his eyes, it felt like a victory. A pathetic one.
He took a moment to blink his vision clear and get his bearings. It wasn’t the same room as before. For one, the lights were, blessedly, lower: a series of wall-mounted lamps on dim settings rather than harsh overhead tubes. He lay on a bed, across from a heavy steel door with a wire-reinforced window at its center, like at a hospital. He could smell chemicals, cleaners, humans. His body felt heavy; whatever drug they’d used had been strong. Calibrated for a wolf, he guessed. They’d known not to bother with human sedatives.
He lifted arms that felt like stone pillars and pulled up short; thick metal cuffs locked on his wrists bit into his skin with unusual sharpness, and he hissed at the resultant pain, letting his hands fall to the mattress. He wiggled his feet and felt similar cuffs there; heard the rattle of chains.
His next breath left his lungs in a rush, and panic tightened like a vise around his ribs, preventing him from drawing air back in. He stared up at the acoustic ceiling tiles and opened his mouth, panting shallowly as sweat bloomed across his body.
Trapped.
A prisoner.
He couldn’t get loose, and Nikita was, Nik was…
Panicking wouldn’t help, but he couldn’t stop it, the hot and cold waves of fear shifting through him, leaving him light-headed. Or maybe that was just the drugs.
A quiet knock sounded at the door.
He held his breath.
The knob turned, and the door swung slowly inward. He heard the clip of shoes and then the door shut again.
When he took his next breath, he smelled…
Forest. Resin. Wet earth. And the faint musky undercurrent of…
Wolf.
He sat bolt upright before he remembered the cuffs; they bit hard, hurt badly, but he managed to get upright, swaying a little from the headrush.
“Oh, hey, it’s alright,” the intruder said, her voice soft, Southern at the edges. Kind, somehow.
When his equilibrium had steadied, he saw a girl standing with her back to the door. Slight, fresh-faced. A tumble of dark hair and shiny, cotton candy pink lips.
He took a few more ragged breaths, confirming what he’d known on the first sniff: she was a wolf. Like him.
Or, unlike him, given that she was loose, and he was chained to a bed.
He worked his jaw a few moments, trying to peel his dry tongue off the roof of his mouth before he could form words. When they came, they were halting and cracked. “Who are you?” He didn’t have the energy to be polite.
She smiled softly like she understood.
“I’m Annabel. And I’m thinking you must be Sasha.”
No sense lying, he guessed. They already knew who he was – Dr. Talbot standing over him, “Hello, Sasha, my name is Doctor Talbot,” and that reptilian smile that made Sasha shiver even now, just at the memory. “Yes.” He darted his tongue across his lips, but both were dry, and so it did no good. “How do you know my name? How does – he know my name?”
Her brows knit together in concern, and she took a hesitant step forward.
He growled before he registered the impulse to do so, a weak and sad little rumble in his chest.
She made a low chuffing sound in response, gaze soft, body language non-threatening. It’s okay, she projected. I won’t hurt you.
“I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “Dr. Talbot said the Institute was founded a long time ago. 1941, maybe?”
“Forty-two,” Sasha said, pushing back against the memories that crowded his mind: nervous Dr. Ingraham with his stumbling Russian; Rasputin lying on a table, looking dead; the pain of a knife across his palm; the slippery Latin words on his tongue…
He realized he’d shut his eyes and opened them again, seeing that the girl – Annabel – had inched closer, expression achingly sympathetic.
“They musta had files or something leftover,” she said. “They knew all sorts of stuff about you.”
He curled his hands into fists and felt hot little trickles of blood slide down his knuckles from the lacerations where the cuffs had bit into his skin.
“But I know your name because Val told it to me,” Annabel continued, and Sasha stilled.
“Val?”
She smiled. “The one and only. He told me all about you, asked me to see if I could get in here and check on you. I don’t think he’d ever admit it out loud, but he’s worried about you.”
“Val…he’s here?”
Her smile turned wry. “Subbasement two. The dungeon.”
“The…” His thoughts were racing, too quick to keep up with his exhausted, shaking body. He dipped his head forward and caught it between his hands.
Val was in the dungeon.
Val would be no help springing him out of here.
He didn’t really know anything at the moment, but he knew that: he had to get out of here.
“Hey,” Annabel said, and the careful gentleness bled out of her tone, replaced by something realer, more solid. A sturdy Southern sort of forthrightness that he found strangely reassuring. She moved to the foot of the bed and leaned down, trying to catch his eye. “Val said something else. He’s been in contact with your friends. They had a séance, he said, and he talked to – damn, what did he say their names…? Trina, and Lanny, and Nikita–”
He jerked his head up, which was a stupid idea because it kicked off another dizzy spell. He didn’t care, though. “Nik? He talked to Nik?”
She nodded. “Yeah. He and the others. They’re coming to get you.”
He sucked in a breath through his mouth. “But they – but…” The panic returned, clawing up his throat, choking him. “They can’t! It’s too dangerous, and–”
“Honey, you gotta breathe.”
He tried to, the breath catching on barbs of his own making. He’d never been a fearful or anxious person, not even during the war, but now…
“Here, breathe with me,” Annabel said, taking a deep breath and letting it back out slow, mouth pursed in an exaggerated O. “Again. Come on. Passing out won’t help anyone.”
He inhaled, and exhaled, and after a few minuets it was easier, and the black spots receded from the edges of his vision.
When he was calmer, Annabel said, “I won’t lie to you. It won’t be easy. This place is locked up like Fort Knox, and there’s eyes everywhere.”
He glanced toward the ceiling, and she shook her head. “No, I already checked. Otherwise we’d be having this conversation in sign language. But we’re gonna get you out, okay? So you just have to hold on a little while until we get it figured out.”
Slowly, Sasha nodded. “I…I can do that.”
She grinned wide enough to flash the very tips of canines that were just a touch too sharp. “Attaboy. We can–”
The door banged open.
Sasha caught the sharp scent of an agitated wolf – an agitated alpha male wolf – a fraction of a second before a snarl pulsed through the room.
“Oh, shit,” Annabel said, and turned.
An arm caught her around the waist and she was lifted off her feet – “Oh, for the love of God, Fulk,” she muttered – spun around, and set behind a man – a wolf – who turned toward Sasha with teeth bared and blue eyes flashing.
Sasha started growling back before he could reason that it probably wasn’t a good idea. He was chained, and he couldn’t fight like that, but instinct wouldn’t allow him to go down quietly.
The other wolf was tall, and slim – a distant, rationally-thinking part of his brain likened those traits to his own slender frame – with a thick cascade of long black hair that fell past his shoulders. Pale. Dressed in a clinging black t-shirt and skinny jeans; engineer boots with lots of straps up the sides.
He looked like a rock star.
Like a Hollywood vampire, even.
But he smelled and sounded like a rival.
Sasha ducked his head as much as he was able, trying to shield his throat. The other wolf did the same, his growl growing louder, more violent, high and frenzied–
“Stop!” Annabel shouted, throwing herself between them.
The other wolf startled hard, gaze going to her. Anguished. “Get out of the way–” He had a British accent under his awful snarl. And he looked at Annabel like…
Oh.
It clicked into place for Sasha, then: they were mates.
His growl died in his throat. He straightened. Tested the air with his nostrils. Mates. Philippe had said that wasn’t possible, that wolves were, by nature, loners. But that wasn’t true; it had pained him to hear it at the time, had felt wrong to him. Wolves were pack animals. He’d thought of the simple joy he’d felt when the rest of his pack pressed up around him, four- and two-legged, and he’d recoiled from the idea that wolves weren’t supposed to mate. To have a partner in life on whom they leaned. Whom they loved.
And here, right in front of him, stood proof that Philippe had been a liar: a mated pair. When he breathed now, he could smell the ways their scents overlapped and held one another: his on hers, and vice versa.
Despite his circumstances, he found a kernel of happiness, and he smiled because of it.
“Fulk. Stop.” Annabel put her hands on her mate’s – on Fulk’s – chest and he stopped. He could have pushed her aside, but he didn’t; he let her hold him back.
Because she was his mate. And he didn’t want to hurt her.
“He’s chained up,” Annabel continued. “Look.” She stepped to the side so he could see Sasha, one hand still clenched tight on his arm.
The other alpha took in a few ragged breaths through his mouth, chest heaving. Slowly, slowly, the fight drained away – or, rather, was pulled back into something manageable. A human level of aggression that could be packaged and dispensed at will.
“Babe,” Annabel said, “meet Sasha. Sasha, meet Fulk. My husband. The territorial jackass,” she tacked on, growling a little herself in clear warning.
Her mate stopped growling. Mostly. Just a low rumble deep in his chest. His lips closed over his teeth, and when he wasn’t snarling, Sasha could see that he had sharp, cruel features. And that his hair was pulled back at the crown, thin, elaborate braids arching over each ear in an almost elvish fashion.
“Fulk,” Annabel said, patient, quiet. “You’re gonna stop freaking out soon, right? Before Ad-vla comes to see what all the fuss is about?”
Sasha had gone through a phase in the early nineties when he thought pig Latin was hilarious. It was, admittedly, a short phase – about a week – because Nikita hated pig Latin worse than he hated country music, and that was saying something. So Sasha had dropped the habit, but not the knowledge.
“Vlad?” he said, and both halves of the mated pair turned to regard with him surprise. “I’ve talked to Val, remember? I know who his brother is. And that he’s awake.”
They blinked at him.
He gave a little wave, cuff heavy on his wrist. “Hello. I’m Sasha.” His head was clearing, his anger ebbing. “Are you mates? You are, aren’t you? I’ve never met mated wolves before.” He managed a smile.
Fulk looked at him, and then at Annabel. Back to Sasha. “What?”