Alek

"Excuse me, what?" She pulled on my sleeve. "What does my mom have to do with this."

I pried her hand off my arm and pulled her along. "I told you, it's better if I show you."

It took us a few minutes of walking through shelves with increasingly faded labels to eventually locate our designated timeframe, sixteen years in the past. Looking at the towering stacks of random materials, however, my resolve wavered. It could very well take hours to find anything useful. People came to this warehouse infrequently but not never. The longer we were here, the greater our risk of being discovered.

"I don't understand why this all hasn't been digitized," Verity said. "Who are these people?"

"Olds who don't trust the internet."

"I don't trust the internet either." She took out a thick binder, paged through it and put it back. "Not anymore. Do you know what you're looking for here or what?"

"Search for anything with Cora Hargrove's name."

"Right, but why would my mom's name be here in the first place?"

Because your mom was a werewolf. A deranged monster who left me an orphan. Aurum Venari killed her to save my life and that's why I'm loyal to them even though they may be lying to me.

"What if I told you, your mother didn't succumb to mental illness. What if I said she had... other issues. Issues you've just recently learned of yourself."

"I'd say you should shut the fuck up." She wiped a tear from her eye. "This isn't a game. I know what happened to her. And it's not what's happening to me."

I hoped not.

"You know a story. A story told to you by your father, who was also told a story. That doesn't make it true."

More tears fell. Her face reddened and my heart sank. I couldn't bring myself to tell her the rest. She needed to see for herself.

"Have you known all this? The whole time?"

The reproach in her tone made me want to melt into the ground. "Be mad at me later. Right now, search. You start at that end. I'll start at the other."

Without another word, she turned away from me. I wanted to find answers for Verity whether she hated me for it or not. But I also wanted my own answers. Twenty minutes later, I'd looked through property tax statements, long retired treasure hunt scenarios, and the notes from an international conference in Singapore for supernatural scientists. Nothing on Verity's mom, or on me.

"Whoa" I looked up from an antique collection of silver bullets to see Verity puzzling over a document she'd plucked from a file box. "This might be something."

I placed the lid back on the bullet collection and slid it back onto the shelf. "What is it?"

"An... intake form of some kind. For a laboratory."

A shiny box on the highest shelf caught my eye. "Hold on, just let me grab this and I'll take a look." I brought over a stool, balanced on it, and reached for the box.

"Alek, my mom's name is on this form. Also..."

I froze, hand halfway to the shiny box. "Also what?"

"Shit," she said. "Alek, we need to leave. Right now."

"Just a little longer. You found her name. There has to be more in that file box about your mom."

"No! Someone is here!"

"How do you know that?"

"I can see them. Three thems."

"Where?" I looked around "There's no one in here but us."

"Not inside, genius. Outside."

"How would you know...?" The dumb wore off. Of course.

"I'm watching them." She stumbled towards me on wobbly legs, and I realized her wolf eyes required most of her focus. "They're almost to the door. The same one we used. Is there another exit?"

I scanned the back of the archives. Only one way to find out. I held out my hand. "Let's go."

We ran.

The front door lurched open, but by then, we were nearly to the back. A rusty door with a wooden crate in front of it looked to be our only option of escape. I shoved the crate to the side as quietly as I could. This seldom used door, if it opened at all, was not going to make for a silent departure.

Meanwhile, the voices of three men echoed back to us, words largely indistinguishable, but raised and cut with an edge that suggested they weren't archivists here to dust shelves and alphabetize Aurum Venari member biographies.

"Check in back," one of them said close enough to make my palms sweat.

"Now or never," I said, putting weight into my elbow as I pressed on the door. It opened with complaint, metal scraping against wood. Two golden eyes peered at me from a back alley. "Jesus!"

Verity managed a chuckle at my expense. "You didn't realize I'd be waiting for us?"

We broke into a sprint, heading towards the back of an adjacent warehouse to avoid detection. "I thought maybe you'd solve our problem in a different way. You know, like a wolf would."

"You think I'd eat those guys? Seriously?"

"I'm glad you didn't. They're hunters. They'd have taken you down."

"Let's get back to the part where you think I just can't wait to murder people. This reflects more on you and your moral character than it does upon me, you know." She squeezed passed a bunch of discarded pallets leaning haphazardly against a brick wall.

"Verity, can we just focus on not getting captured? These men are dangerous!"

"Fine." We kept going, the sound of footsteps following us at a distance.

Up ahead, we came to a high fence topped with barbed wire. A narrow walkway to our left would take us back up to the front of the building. The wolf pawed at the ground behind us.

"Okay," Verity said. "The plan is, I'll distract them in my wolf form. I won't attack. I'll just give chase. That will give you and me a chance to get to the car."

I didn't know if that was a good plan or a bad one, but we were out of other options. Verity's wolf stood where the men would soon be and we ran down the pathway, then clung to the shadows of the warehouses as we made our way back to the lot where my car awaited.

We closed the distance. Fifteen feet from the car and I started to believe we'd be okay. Ten feet, and with a yelp, Verity collapsed at my side.

"Verity!" I pulled her up, her body dead weight in my arms. "What happened."

She groaned. "They kicked me. Hard."

Fuck. This was new. "Merge your wolf. Get her out of there!"

"I'm trying!"

I helped her the rest of the way to the car, gently lowering her into the passenger's seat. By the time we'd driven out of the lot, no sign of a tail, Verity had revived.

"Wolf is back in my brain," she said, her voice soft but steady.

"Good."

"Alek." Her warm hand found its way to my thigh. Even through my jeans its presence sent a delicious tingle to all the right places. Now was not the time to fantasize, but damn.

"I need to tell you something."

She doesn't hate me. She thinks about me too. She's not really a werewolf. Her mom didn't really kill mine. None of that is real and there's only us, two people who feel the same pull towards each other.

"It's about the intake form. My name was on it."

A bit of a surprise, but not out of the realm of imagining. "I see."

"That's not all, Alek." She pressed her palm against me. "So was yours."

___

Author's Note: Well, snap... What was this intake form for, and why would Alek's name be on it? This seems a major clue... but to what?