Chapter 63: Sierra: Part 3

“I knew her too... and her son... I know him. Colton.” I don’t know why I hesitate to call him my destined mate, but the sharp, piercing stab to my heart, before the word comes out, stops me.

Maybe because all I can think of when he comes to the forefront is that he has betrayed me and marked that bitch and is now her mate.

I can’t bear to say the word out loud. I swallow it down, the bitter taste almost making me gag.

“Ahh, yes, little Colton. Such a blessed boy. So many years since I laid eyes on that beautiful child. She was so very proud to bear a son, you know.

“She always wanted a child of her own, and the Fates blessed her, finally, with that little bundle of cheekiness while providing Juan the heir he was pressing for. His future legacy.

“He was such a little rebel as a pup, always climbing and running around when I visited the manor. I can’t imagine what her being taken did to him. He loved her so very much.”

I note the faraway look, the distance as he locks onto a memory, and I slide down from the bed, motioning to the food tray so as not to make him think I’m coming at him.

But I want to be closer, so he feels better able to talk freely in a hushed tone. I want to lull him into a sense of security and kill him with kindness.

“She struggled to conceive him?” I ask innocently, trying to direct the conversation and keep him engaged in what he assumes is a neutral topic. Get him talking.

If I’m going to win him over to my side, I have to make him feel he can talk to me and not like I’m prying too much for answers to Sierra’s current predicament.

~“You move around the prey to suss out the best angles and lull it into calmness before you pounce on it,”~ my grandfather always said.

I’m curious, though, why a wolf would have fertility issues, as it’s not something we suffer with. We’re physically perfect. Fertility is a given when the Fates decide it’s your time to pup.”

“Curse of some hybrids, I’m afraid. When they mate with a pureblood, sometimes the pure genetics destroys the hybrid cells, and the child becomes non-viable. In vitro cell death.

“It’s been so hard to reproduce with your kind because, as I said, your DNA destroys imperfections. An invasion of another species in the makeup is exactly like a virus in your body.

“It has a little war of its own and diminishes the fertile egg. Fascinating, yet heartbreaking, especially for her.

“Colton was her seventh, and I think it would have finally broken her had he died. Such a special boy.”

Not where Juan is concerned, he’s not. That’s a whole other thing.

I know he’s said it twice now, but he can’t be right about the hybrid thing.

I mean, my mother had two planned pups, and she never mentioned issues in pregnancy or carrying us, so neither of my parents could have been hybrids, which means I’m not.

And then there’s the matter of Sierra... she is a wolf.

“She can’t be a hybrid. That makes no sense at all. Juan Santo is a pureblood who wouldn’t tolerate that kind of union. His son’s a pureblood; it’s all he ever goes on about.”

I roll my eyes without meaning to, a little anger spiking through as memory replays the whole superior, lording-over-the-mountain bullshit.

I’m sick of Juan’s constant lord-and-king kick and preaching to the packs for decades about his family’s traced pure line of genetics.

The Santos pride themselves on being from the strongest lineage of wolves. He would never willingly take a mate who was anything less. I mean, look at his reaction to me and Colton’s imprinting. That says it all!

The doc looks behind him, checking his assistant is engrossed in dealing with the machines before stepping inside my room, so the door slides shut behind him.

He lowers his tone.

“My dear, I fear I have said too much and inadvertently made your hope of release a less plausible outcome. You must forget what I said, especially about Luna Santo.

“It’s in your best interest that we never had this conversation, and you do not repeat to anyone that we did.”

There’s serious concern etched into his face that deepens the lines around his eyes, and he locks a direct gaze right on my eyes, a hint of warning in his tone.

He’s closing down our line of communication because he thinks what he’s telling me puts me in danger.

It indicates that I was right about his character and his being the weak link in this facility. He’s a decent man who cares, and I need to show him I’m already screwed so he doesn’t lock me out.

“I imprinted on Colton, and Juan forbade it. We’re fated, but he forced him to mark another for the pack’s sake. I’m not getting set free. I’m probably going to end up like her, or worse.

“I’m a reject of the pack, a diluted bloodline that brings shame to his people, and the only reason he’s coming here is to be done with me once and for all.

“Nothing you say makes a difference to what he’s going to do to me. I’m not getting out,” I say in a harsh, hurried whisper.

Then I fall silent as I catch a glimpse over his shoulder of his assistant coming out of Sierra’s room, nodding her way to alert him.

He seems completely dazed, stiff, and still, staring at me intensely.

“I’m done. I’ll go up to the lab and run the new bloods they sent us from the south, Doctor,” she calls to him from the hallway across the bay.

Without looking back at her, he waves a hand dismissively, eyes locked on me most alarmingly.

She takes that as an answer, nods, and walks off toward the elevator briskly to head back upstairs. The air in this room is suddenly heavy with tension.

“Imprinted? By the Fates? As in that rare form of bonding two souls so they become insanely lust and love-driven to be forever together?

“I didn’t think any alpha had the authority to undermine that. It means you’re linked to… Sierra’s bloodline?” His skin tone seems to pale noticeably, and his eyes darken weirdly.

His mind is racing over a million thoughts, and his forehead wrinkles deepen as his frown does—an air of mild nervousness kicking up around him.

“Yeah, well, Juan doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything except his own authority, and Colton, he’s so stuck in his shadow that he chose to let me go instead of honoring the bond.

“So I left, didn’t look back, and something brought me here instead. This wasn’t a chance find… this facility. I dreamed of her almost every night, and something pulled me here.

“I’d headed south, but something made me change and come east from my path. Sierra’s voice calling or some stupid memory of a dream that wouldn’t leave me alone.”

I offload on him now that his companion is in the elevator, and it feels good to say it to someone rather than be caught up in my own head—a gush of chatter that I’ve been turning over for days.

“Stop. Don’t.” The doc waves his hand at me, snapping me back to attention, and there’s a wild-eyed, terrified look on his face as though I just told him I have a bomb under my ass.

He turns abruptly, panicked, and slams the card against the wall panel to slide open the door, lacking graceful coordination.

He steps out of the doorway, shaking his head and hands, and I follow, unsure why he’s recoiling. His whole body is trembling as he emits a crazy amount of fear. I can taste it.

“What? Why? Do you think I’m lying?” The sudden rise of emotion in him has me on edge, too, and I panic that I’m scaring away my only ray of hope for escaping.

He appears to be running away, but as he turns to close the door, the tear I catch in his eye silences me, and he pauses, taking a deep breath and lowering his hands.

The open door between us keeps us a couple of feet apart, but his sadness overwhelms me.

“Eight years of silence. Eight years watching her sleep, eight years hoping that one day the things she said… I’d accepted that my friend had lost her mind completely.

“Eight years… and I convinced myself that her visions and stories were that of a madwoman, broken by a battle that convinced her that her mate was an evil player in some bigger plan.

“And her confinement here was a betrayal to silence her. Eight years justifying that she was better off asleep than to be tortured by an illness of the mind.”

I don’t know if he’s saying this to himself or me. His eyes are not on me, just glazed and distant as a single tear rolls down his cheek, and I’m so very confused.

“I don’t understand. Upstairs, you said she was fine. She’s been here longer than eight years. Colton said nine.”

Or was that including the war when he didn’t see her in that timeframe because he never saw her when she came home? I don’t know.

Oh, God, please don’t tell me she truly is broken, and this is all for nothing.

The thought crosses my mind. Things are not adding up to what he said, and he is going around in circles, unable to piece it together logically.

Maybe Sierra was sick, but then what the hell is he saying? He smiles sadly, his pale-gray eyes finally landing on mine, and gives me a watery half-smile.

“If she was crazy, how could she tell me that one day a solitary she-wolf from the west would come to save us all from something coming? A future leader of her people, joined to her blood by the Fates,” he says.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, and maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s wishful thinking and guilt because I’ve let her lie there for eight long years. Don’t you see?”

He’s babbling, but I pick out the points I think he’s trying to connect.

“I came east from where I was, and I’m linked to her son,” I repeat robotically, still looking at him with a quizzical expression and trying to figure out what his vague statements mean.

He’s lost in his head.

“Tell me. What does the name Marina mean to you?” He narrows his eyes on me, leaning in as though telling me a secret of the utmost importance.

Her name falls off his tongue like a lead rod that stabs me in the heart.

I gasp at its utterance on this man’s lips, my blood running cold as he says it, and I openly stifle a sob at the unexpected pain of hearing it.

It was a name that died when she did, and no one has uttered it in a decade.