Chapter 32: 33: Fallen Angel Redux

THE EXPERIMENT

My silver shackles burn my bare skin as I struggle against them.

I’m strapped down to an operating table in some kind of laboratory.

~How the hell did I get here?!~

Though the light is dim, I can make out a wall of specimen jars and test tubes.

My eyes widen in horror when I see what’s inside them…

~Mutated wolf cubs!~

Claws, long and curled inward.

Snouts, elongated and narrow.

Fur, patchy and unkempt.

The grotesque creatures are suspended in a thick liquid for preservation, but it’s clear they’re dead.

Failed experiments…

~Is that what I’ll become too? A failed experiment?~

I struggle even harder against my restraints, but it’s no use. There’s an IV in my arm that administers microdoses of wolfsbane every time I get too worked up.

The poisonous substance courses through my veins, making me feel dizzy and delirious.

I look down at my own body to see that nearly every inch is covered in tattoos.

I wish I knew what they meant or where they came from, but I can’t even remember my own name, let alone my origins.

One of the walls is lined with weapons—crossbows, swords, and sharp silver daggers.

This is clearly a Hunter lab. No question about it.

But what the hell do they want with ~me~?

~Fuck, I wish I could remember…~

I close my eyes and try to relax.

Slowly, I begin to get flashes of a dock near the sea.

A lighthouse shining its spotlight across the water.

My claws digging into a sandy beach.

The sound of waves crashing onto the shore.

~CRASH!~

My memories are interrupted by a door flying open at the top of the stairs.

Heavy, steel-toed boots stomp down the steps as an imposing man comes into view.

He’s dressed all in camouflage and sports a deadly looking crossbow on his back.

But what’s striking about the man isn’t his on-the-nose fashion sense.

It’s his face…

Or rather…what’s ~on~ his face.

He’s adorned with dozens of piercings.

A spike through his left ear.

A row of studs and rings through his right.

A silver septum piercing in his nose.

Cartilage, eyebrows, chin…

~Everything~ is pierced.

As the man approaches and hovers over me with a devious smile, I have a horrifying realization.

He leans in, his face just inches from mine. My eyes water, and my cheeks burn like they’re on fire.

These are ~silver~ piercings.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his tone twisted with wicked glee. “You don’t like my body art? That’s rather hypocritical considering you’re covered in tattoos.”

He pushes in even closer until I can feel his hot breath on my face. My skin begins boiling from the sting of the silver.

Finally he pulls back, and I exhale.

This psychopath is clearly not someone to be fucked with.

“Who…who are you?” I stammer.

“Well, most people call me the Silver Soldier, but you…”

He grabs my face and holds open my eyelids, forcing me to meet his gaze.

“You can call me ~Master~.”

He walks over to a metal cart and returns holding a syringe filled with silver liquid.

“What are you doing? Stop!” I shout as he carelessly squirts the silver in the air with a sick smile.

“Just want to see what you can handle,” he replies, holding the needle against my arm.

“STOP!” I snarl, feeling the skin break.

Moments later, the most intense pain I’ve ever felt rushes through me. My body seizes up, and I’m almost instantly drenched in sweat.

I feel my wolf for the first time since waking up, only…

It doesn’t feel like ~my~ wolf.

It’s something else.

Something monstrous.

My spine starts extending and my bones crunch as I’m forced to shift.

I howl as my entire body breaks—and my mind breaks along with it.

I can’t see.

I can’t speak.

Everything is dark.

ARIEL

The next day, Xavier and I don’t wait for the morning dew to settle before we venture out into the forest, heading west.

The humidity in the air traps any foreign scents, which could make our search for baby Xavi a little easier.

In my hand, I clutch onto a pair of his impossibly tiny socks.

Xavier basically had to pry them out of Natalia’s fingers this morning. She didn’t want to give them to anyone—especially me.

But I’ve never met my nephew and need something to scent him by.

I inhale the soft fabric and keep walking deeper into the brush.

As we move through the forest still inside the pack boundaries, a memory comes rushing back to me from my days in the warrior training program.

We were learning how to hide from incoming attackers, and Xavier instructed me to climb into a tree.

He climbed up after me, and as I pressed myself against the trunk, I could feel his chest against my back, his breath heavy on my neck.

I thought about that brief moment for days after it happened.

And now, with Xavier walking one step behind me at all times, I can’t seem to shake the memory again.

As much as Xavier has defended me since I arrived at the Crescent Moon Pack, he clearly doesn’t trust me enough to let me out of his sight.

Whenever I look his way, he has his eyes fixed on me, which stupidly makes me blush every time.

“Should we shift?” he asks me the next time I catch his gaze.

“Not yet,” I say, continuing to study the ground closely with every step I take.

Even though my sense of smell would be sharper in wolf form, my vision is better with my human eyes.

“What exactly are you looking for in all that dirt?” he asks me. “Any footsteps will be long gone.”

“It’s not that,” I say. “I’m looking for an abnormality in the roots. Some sign that the ground has been dug up.”

“Why?” he asks, catching up to me now.

“The facility that the Hunters kept me in was underground, which means it could be anywhere here.”

We continue walking in silence until we reach the border of the Crescent Moon Pack. It’s not clearly marked, but I can recognize it by the changing shape of the trees.

After a few more minutes, I hear Xavier’s voice next to me. “Ariel,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“You were underground for two whole years?” his voice cracks.

I just nod.

“Oh my Goddess,” he says. “I had no idea.”

“You didn’t ask,” I say, giving him a side-eye.”

There’s so much more I could tell him.

The confinement and claustrophobia were far from the worst parts of the torture.

But I stop myself from telling him anything else, because I don’t want to worry him any more about his child.

Thanks to the Goddess, I survived the kidnapping—just barely… But it will take another, more powerful miracle for Xavi to make it through.

Just as I am about to change the subject to literally anything else, something stops me in my tracks.

A new scent in the wind.

When I turn to face Xavier, I’m sure he has smelled it too.

“Is it one of your men?” I ask him.

“No,” he says, his voice darkening.

We pick up our pace as we follow this new lead…

The smell of an unknown wolf.

And something else.

~Blood.~

ALEX

I sit at the top of the old water tower, Dom by my side.

It feels like it’s been ages since we sat up here last. The night I went to investigate the explosion. The night I met Ariel.

“This’ll probably be the last time we get to come up here together for a while,” Dom says as he takes a sip of his beer.

“How’s Helena doing?” I ask.

“I think she’s doing fine,” he replies. “The morning sickness is gone since she woke up. She thinks it has something to do with Ariel healing her and Blue.”

“Blue?”

“The baby’s the size of a blueberry now,” he says, smiling.

Of all the people I would have expected to be a father by this time, Dom would have been the last on my list. His life has done a complete 180 since meeting Helena, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy.

“I still can’t believe you’re going to be a dad,” I say.

“Correction,” Dom says. “DILF.”

I shake my head as I let out a laugh. But Dom can tell that it’s a forced one.

“What’s going on with you?” he asks me as I pull out my phone again, checking it anxiously. “Are you ~that~ whipped already?”

I crush my beer can with a loud grunt when I see that I still have no new texts.

“I sent her a message when I woke up this morning,” I tell him, “and nothing.”

Dom claps me on the back. “Don’t freak out, dude. Xavier’s a strong Alpha. He’ll keep her safe.”

I nod and slip the crushed can into my pocket.

I know Dom is right.

But I just don’t want Ariel to start feeling ~too~ safe with him.

ARIEL

As we reach the edge of the woods, my eyes are immediately drawn to an unconscious man lying facedown in the middle of a clearing. He’s covered from head to toe in tattoos.

On his back is a huge tattoo of angel wings.

Under the light of the moon, he looks like just that…

~A fallen angel.~

“Who the fuck…” Xavier starts to speak, but I cut him off with a gasp when I get a closer look at the man.

I rush past Xavier and drop to my knees at the man’s side.

“Ariel! Stay back!” he calls out to me, but I disregard his warning.

The man has silver burns and cuts from shackles on his ankles and wrists.

He has injection marks all over his body.

Scars from uncontrollable shifting.

“He’s…he’s like me,” I murmur.

The Goddess was right.

He’s an experiment too.