Raised by Wolves(94)

Retreat.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


BACK AT OUR TEENY-TINY MOTEL ROOM, I TRIED TO catch the boys up on everything Lake and I had discovered with our internet sleuthing. “It’s hard to get a real count of how many attacks this guy has been involved in. There are at least four or five confirmed deaths—with bodies and everything—that might fit his profile.”

Those would be the Rabid’s failures. The people he’d tried, but failed, to change. Or maybe he’d never tried to change them. Maybe he’d just been thirsting for blood.

“We found several other attacks, too, where the victim was either missing or presumed dead. I’m not sure how many.

Less than a dozen, more than six, but that doesn’t really tell us how many wolves Wilson has in that cabin. Who knows how many of his attacks we missed? This is Google we’re talking about here, not science. Lake and I aren’t professional profilers. The only thing our research really told us is that there was a very good chance he’d attacked a lot of people in a lot of different territories. The numbers are fuzzier.”

I thought of the missing-children database Lake had found online, put up by parents hopeful to get their kids back. How many of those “missing” kids were dead? How many of them were here in Alpine Creek, older and less human than they’d been when they disappeared?

“I saw fifteen or sixteen at the cabin,” I said, thinking back. “There might have been a few more inside. The youngest was maybe four or five, the oldest probably about seventeen.”

“Were they all female?” Chase asked, an odd expression on his face, like the word female had taken on a whole new meaning the moment he’d become a Were.

I shook my head. “About half and half.”

Lake laughed, but it was a sad, grating noise. “Half of sixteen is eight. Looks like Katie and I aren’t quite so special anymore.”

Lake was right. The only way a female werewolf could be born was as half of a set of twins, but apparently, if you knew the secret to making new werewolves, females were just as easy to make as males. I thought about what that could mean for a pack. Fewer human wives, fewer babies lost in childbirth. More purebreds. Stronger wolves.

A stronger alpha.

“I guess we know why the Senate was willing to deal,” I said, my voice like sandpaper on my throat.

Werewolves were so long-lived that it didn’t make much of a difference for the species if there were years when not a single live birth took place. The birthrate, however low, was still usually higher than the death rate, because Weres were nearly impossible to kill.

But expanding a pack’s numbers? Trying to stay head to head with a pack as old and large as Callum’s?



That was a real concern.

“The other alphas want stronger numbers.” I looked down at my fingertips, like they’d tell me my sickening logic was false. “The Rabid can give them numbers.”

Suddenly, I understood why the alphas had really wanted to see Chase. They’d wanted to see how a changed werewolf compared to someone who was born that way, and they’d wanted to know the details of the Rabid’s attack, because they were hoping to figure out what the monster knew that they didn’t.

“The Rabid isn’t going to give up the secret to making new werewolves.” I said the words decisively and wouldn’t have been able to keep from saying them, even if I were the only person in the room. “The moment he tells the alphas how to make new wolves, he’s dead, and we have an even bigger problem.”

One Rabid out hunting humans was bad. A half dozen or more alphas doing it was a problem that no amount of trickery on my part would solve.

“So if he’s not giving up the secret, what do the alphas stand to gain from letting him live?” Chase asked, sounding more human than I’d heard him in a very long time. If he’d let his wolf take over, he would known the answer.

Numbers were power.

“He’s bartering them,” Lake said, flopping down on the bed and pulling her knees to her chest. “Those kids back at the cabin. Those are his bargaining chips.” I reached out to Lake’s mind and saw how close this hit to home, how many times she’d wondered if someday, her own alpha might decide to barter her.

Never, I told Lake silently, putting all of my force behind that single word. Callum was an alpha of alphas. His first instinct was always, always to protect.

Except, a tiny voice in my head reminded me, when it wasn’t.

Still, I couldn’t believe, even for a second, that he ever would have treated Lake like a commodity. That he ever would have let anyone harm her, no matter what they offered him in return.