Crossing Paths With The White Wolf

Helios P o V

"I've been alone for a long time, Helios. I don't know how to do relationships. There's a reason I live in the middle of nowhere. Relationships don't work for me," she said.

I felt my heart shatter at her words. "It's OK. It's just s*x. It doesn't have to mean anything. I should go shower. The others will be coming to check on us soon," I lied, and walked into the bathroom. I turned on the shower and looked in the mirror. There were still two bullet wounds that hadn't closed altogether but they didn't hurt. Natalia must have healed me. My own body never healed this fast on its own.

I went in the shower, letting the hot water wash away the hurt. I don't know why I thought she felt the same way I did when she told me she wanted me. I guess I was still stuck in another century. I don't know for how long I was in the shower, lost in my own thoughts, when I heard a knock on the door.

"Helios, are you OK? Celeste is worried," Markus' voice came through the door.

"I'll be right out. Did everyone get out OK?" I asked him as I quickly washed my body, turned off the shower head, doing my best to build some walls around my heart so I could face Natalia again.

"Yep, we're all fine. Come down to the kitchen when you're ready. We'll debrief."

I heard the door close behind Markus. I put on a pair of jeans and a shirt and headed downstairs. I slowed my steps as I heard voices talking from the living room.

"I need to get them home. Their parents must be going out of their minds. Can Evergreen get us some passports? The sooner the better. I want this over with. They've already been through so much." I froze on the steps. Natalia's beautiful voice was like a dagger. She already wanted to leave. I struggled to keep the whimsy walls from crumbling around myself and schooled my face from the pain I was feeling and finished walking down the stairs. They all turned to look at me. They were sitting on the couches. Natalia had an arm wrapped around the young girl. She looked like she'd also showered and changed. I avoided making eye contact with her.

"I was so worried," Celeste said as she got up and hugged me. I chuckled as I hugged her back, touched by her concern.

"You know you've given me worse beatings," I teased her.

"But none of that was bullets. You were out for 2 days," she said stubbornly. That last bit was news to me.

"What happened after I was out," I sat down across from Natalia, still avoiding her gaze.

"Natalia, let's leave Markus to the recap. Evergreen will have those passports ready tomorrow. He is already back in Crescent Moon working on them since yesterday. I want to get Eun some things to take home with her." I felt my heart constrict at her words. I didn't know whether to be happy that I don't have to spend time pining for her while she's here, or just hurt, that I had finally fallen in love and would lose her before I even had a chance to win her heart.

"Yeah OK," Natalia said and got up and walked past me. Her leg brushed my knee and I could feel that same static electricity shock me. I could feel her trying to make eye contact with me but I just kept my attention on the TV that was connected to Markus' laptop. It was some sort of video feed.

"Take Gabriel, Tuli." Markus said, kissing Celeste on the lips. Celeste nodded before she turned to me.

"Helios, we're going to borrow a car."

"Sure, grab whatever you want. The keys are against the wall," I said as I turned back to the feed.

"Is this an old feed?" I asked Markus.

"No, it's live," he answered.

"But isn't that the bear shifter we rescued?"

Markus sighed, "No, it's a different one."

"Where is this one from?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out. Sit, I'll start from the beginning," he said as he handed me a coffee and a Tupperware full of toasted coconut cookies. I took it, smirking at him.

He shrugged and smiled. "Celeste bakes when she's stressed. So, after you passed out from taking like a dozen f*****g bullets," he started and I laughed.

"You know I'm immortal, Markus. I may heal slower than you, but it won't kill me."

"Yes, well, it was still not easy to watch. We thought Natalia had died trying to heal you. Celeste had to drag her away from you even after she passed out. Her power was still working while she was unconscious. I could have sworn I heard her heart stop but then it just seemed to start on its own a few beats later."

"Did you and Celeste get hit?" I asked him, hoping he didn't hear how my heart rate sped up.

"I took one to the shoulder, but it healed fairly quickly. Celeste was thankfully OK."

"The guard?" I asked, trying to remember, but all I could hear in my head was a scream.

"The automated weapon exploded when the lightning hit it. His hands were destroyed and the man went into shock and passed," he answered, and I looked down at the ground. We were supposed to avoid casualties since the guards were human and knew nothing of our world.

"It's not your fault, Helios," he said.

I nodded, not wanting to talk about it. "What happened after that?"

"We brought all of the shifters back. I've had to use the Alpha command on a lot of them. Some of them are feral at this point. I have no clue how long they've been stuck in their animal form. We've sedated a lot of them and sent them back to Crescent Moon for now. Gillian. Daniel, Theo and Sebastian went with them. They are being set up in the basement for now. We'll try to get them home when we're able to get them speaking. Gonzalo had some business to take care of at the office, but I texted him that you were awake."

"It's Wednesday?" I asked, when he nodded I continued, "We had a potential client coming in for a meeting." I looked back at the feed. "What's this then?"

"Oh yes. Evergreen deleted the camera footage and installed his malware. When we got back, he monitored the situation. They didn't call any police and, as far as we can tell, they can't really do anything without giving themselves away. His malware is able to connect to any network connected to it and follows anything sent from there. The malware hops networks undetected. This is where we got lucky. The man sent an email to the black-market auction asking if there's a refund for the animals that don't last past a month. That got us a connection to the black-market network. There's a lot of data to go through, but...this is the part that concerns us." He tapped on the laptop for a while and a couple of memos popped up. I read them silently, my rage building. "They pay more for shifters because they are bigger than normal animals. The bigger they are, the more enticing they look at the auctions."

"That's insane. They are condemning shifters to a life as show animals for a bigger profit? What kind of sick individual does that?" I said with disgust.

"We're still trying to figure that out, but they don't just know about us, Helios," Markus said ominously as he pulled up another feed. "They are experimenting on shifters. There are tons of cages that we can only assume are all shifters." We watched in silence for a long time and I slowly got up and paced as I watched as they pulled one shifter from the cages, and took them to a weird looking cage. It's long and rectangular in shape. It's only tall enough to shift. I watched as they put the animal in the cage. They began electrocuting, prodding and torturing, measuring its endurance, healing. They would force it to shift half way and then force them to maintain the half shift. I could feel my anger radiating from me. Fire was burning in my veins.

They switched my attention to another camera. This one was in a room. They had a man strapped to a bed with machines and electrodes. A doctor came in and injected something straight into the man's heart. He exited the room quickly and you could see him taking notes from a window on the side of the room. The man on the bed started seizing and fur started sprouting from his body. I saw his snout elongated before he flatlined.

"What is that?" I asked Markus. My eyes were glued to the dead man in the feed.

"We think they are trying to make shifters. We've seen them inject that substance three times in the last two days. Evergreen has found some files but is struggling to retrieve them without triggering the encrypted security measures."

I looked at Markus, my eyes widening in horror as I processed his words. "We need to take these people down."

"I agree, there's just one problem. These were saved to a network server and we have access to the live feed, but while we're connected to the network, we can't figure out where this place is. Every computer have their location settings removed. The entire network is off grid. We need a smart device to connect to the network so we can use it to pin its location. We're at a dead end right now," he growled.

I put my hand through my hair. How long has this been going on without anyone finding out? Markus put the live feed back on and we sat in silence for a few minutes as we pondered the enormity of what we had found.

"You're council. Have they been informed?" I asked.

"No, we don't have enough information yet. We're still processing this ourselves," he said.

"We need to find a way to help these people. I...I thought my path was to help Natalia and her friends but I'm beginning to understand this is bigger than even them." I looked at Markus, "I could really use some help to know where I'm supposed to go from here. Any details you can share on this vision of Celeste's?"

"I wish I could. The vision Celeste keeps getting is the outcome of your path. Not the in between. Any other snippets of information that we get are what Selene passes on to Kara. We're just playing telephone from there."

I leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. A little help would be nice, I thought. Markus' phone rang and I thought maybe it was the answer to my prayer. Hoped rather. I held my breath as Markus answered.This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

"OK Tuli, see you in a bit. Love you," he said and hung up. "Celeste and Natalia are on their way back. Gonzalo called her and he was running late, so she picked up some Indian food. She's been on a weird kick for it, so I hope you like Indian," he said and I let out my breath. So much for that hope. I heard a phone ring.

"Is that yours?" Markus asked. I got up and followed the sound to find the burner we used for the black-market auctions still plugged into the wall.

"Hello?" I picked up before it went to voicemail.

"Mr. De la Luz. This is Drieker from the auction. I was hoping to see if you'd changed your mind about the wolf? I'm still quite interested in adding it to my collection," he said.

"The wolf is not for sale, Mr. Drieker, but if you've changed your mind about the cat, I can certainly pay top dollar for it." I smirked, knowing his answer.

"I'm afraid the cat wasn't in as good condition as we thought. It's sadly succumbed to disease," he said.

"That's a shame. I'll be sure to test mine to make sure they are healthy," I played along.

"Could I buy one off you if that's the case? I'm quite gutted to have lost mine."

"I'm afraid not. Perhaps at the next auction, you might get a little luckier with the biddings. I spent more than I was planning on the last one, so I'll likely skip a few before my financial adviser yells at me."

"I'm sure I will. Well, it was worth a try. Thank you for your time," he said, and hung up.

"That was weird," I told Markus as I plugged the phone back in.

"Yeah," Markus said.

We sat back down. "So. You and Natalia?" he smiled at me. I shook my head and the smile fell off.

"You heard what she said, Markus. She just wants to go home."

"Have you talked-" Markus' phone rang again. "Hello?" I could hear very agitated talking on the phone and Markus put the phone on speaker.

"Calm down Evergreen, you're not making any sense. What's tracking?"

"Alpha, they have your location. They had a woman strapped to a chair, beaten bloody, back at the compound. They handed Drieker a phone and traced the call. I pulled up the computer they were using. The location is Helios's house. I don't know what they plan to do but they have your location. You need to relocate. I'll call you back when I have more information," he said and hung up. I looked at the phone plugged into the wall. The ideas were running through my head.

"I have an idea," I said. I had just finished explaining my plan and Markus was telling me why it was a shitty idea when 5 men in tactical gear crashed through the windows from the beach front and another 3 busted through the door.

"Now what?" Markus whispered as they surrounded us.

"Just do what I said. It will work, Markus. Just make sure you're safe. I don't need Celeste killing me." I whispered back. He grunted.

"Our boss would like a word," one of them said.

"Your boss can kiss my a*s," I responded. OK, maybe not the most original of responses, but it had the desired effect, I thought, as they charged at us.

"Celeste is going to be so mad at you when she finds out," Markus grunted at me.

"Just keep them at bay. I'll get word to you. A month. Two months tops." I responded as I let one of them hit me in the jaw.