Conference Call

WILLOW

The room blurred and distorted in front of me like it was underwater.

My vision narrowed. My stomach flipped. My hands shook. “Are you sure I’m the only one who made it?” I asked.

Josh nodded. “Hundreds, Willow. All deceased. Every single one.”

I wanted to throw up. Or scream. Or crawl out of my own skin and leave it behind. My mind went to the two friends I’d had in there, back before everything had gotten bloody and dark.

The boy—bright eyes and fast hands—who’d always been better than me with a blade. The one I’d killed the first time I’d shifted. There’d been a girl, too, who’d sat beside me at lights-out and hummed when I couldn’t sleep.

Neither name could I remember. Both were sequenced numbers on a file.

Just like me.

A chime pinged through the room, sharp as a slap.

Josh’s head snapped toward the sound. His laptop lit up when a bright-red banner flashed across the screen. “Shit,” he muttered, spinning the computer around. “Emergency summons.”

Connor stood, his energy shifting, coiling tighter. “What is it?”

“It’s a message from the Werewolf Council Directive. There’ll be an emergency assembly in ten minutes. Attendance is compulsory.”

CONNOR

Josh had us dialed in exactly ten minutes later.

Everyone had remained in my office, speculating what the assembly could be about. Directives like this didn’t come around all that often. The last one had been over fifteen years ago, and it’d preceded a war among the packs.

Willow, still in a state of shock, seemed to have recovered some of that gritty determination in her gaze as the focus shifted away from the contents of the hard drive.

Right on the dot, we were let into a virtual meeting room. The four other pack alphas from Washington state came in too. We exchanged quick greetings before the council member silenced us and began speaking.

He told us that the reason for this assembly was that eight pups had gone missing from three of the other packs. The council suspected a coordinated attack, since they were all alpha-born pups and all had vanished at roughly the same time.

~Shit. ~This was unprecedented.

No one spoke.

But then something tugged at the back of my mind. ~Missing alpha pups,~ ~just weeks after Willow—alpha born—had escaped BioBridge?~ I connected the dots immediately. ~It’s them. They need more alphas to test on.~

This wasn’t a coincidence. This was cause and effect. And it was all related to BioBridge. To Willow.

“We’re pretty sure we know who took your pups,” I blurted out, leaning toward the laptop. “And why.”

Three of the four alphas on the screen erupted at once, their voices overlapping with demands and accusations.

I held up a hand. “Listen. Let me explain.”

They didn’t, though, so the council member muted their mics until they fell silent.

“Pretty sure? Speak plainly, Connor,” Alpha Ronan of White Peaks Pack growled as soon as his mic turned back on. “We don’t have time for guesses.”

“We have a young she-wolf here who escaped from a human-run research facility called BioBridge,” I said. “They’d been experimenting on her since she was born. Drugging her. Torturing her. Trying to suppress her wolf.”

“Why is this the first we’re hearing about it?” the council member snapped. “You keeping strays now?”

I met his stare head-on. “She’s not a stray. She’s my mate.” When that shut him up, I told them the general details of Willow’s background, time in the facility, and escape. I relayed to them how we’d gotten the hard drive and what it contained.

“Point is,” I said to the five shocked faces on the screen, “we’ve done a lot of digging, and I’m convinced there’s a connection between BioBridge and the missing pups. Which means this isn’t just your problem anymore.”

The council member raised his hand. “So BioBridge was experimenting on wolves, and when Willow escaped, they sent GhostBridge mercs after her?”

“So, what,” cut in Roger, Crystal Moon Pack’s alpha whose three pups were missing, “you’re saying that they’re now collecting more to run tests on?”

“But why ~our~ pups?” asked Mateo, the alpha of Cascade Range Pack, also missing three pups. “And why now? They’ve been testing on wolves for decades, according to those spreadsheets. None of our pack members have ever gone missing before!”

“We believe Willow changed things for them. Something about her gave them what they needed.” I shifted in my seat. “And I think it’s because she’s a pure alpha. She must’ve been their first.”

Alpha Roger went pale and muttered, “And now that their alpha test subject is gone...”

I nodded, and the room fell dead silent. No one moved. No one spoke. The weight of it all settled over us like wet sand.

The councilman finally spoke. “Humans experimenting on wolves. This is much bigger than a Washington problem.”

“Fuck Washington,” said the alpha of Rosewood Pack, Dan. “I want my twins back! Alpha Connor, where are these humans now? Where’s the lab?”

“Unfortunately,” I began, “we haven’t—”

“Actually.” Josh cleared his throat, blushed, and angled the laptop toward him. “We do know where they are. It was all there in the drive.” He shared the screen with the others, bringing up a map.

Fury flushed my cheeks, but I kept my face straight. Instead, I mind-linked Josh, “~Why didn’t you tell me this, Josh?~”

“~I’m sorry, Alpha. I was saving it for the end, but the council interrupted.~”

“~Fine, tell them. But don’t ever make me look a fool like that again.~”

He nodded at me before saying, “These are their coordinates, but it’s not only BioBridge. GhostBridge and FireBridge operate out of here too. It’s heavily fortified, with sixty or so highly trained mercs. Getting in won’t be easy.”

“Also,” I said, “these humans are armed with weapons built to neutralize wolves.”

“How do you know that?” asked Alpha Ronan. “You said those GhostBridge soldiers had standard weapons. You said you took them out easily.”

“We know,” I said, “because they’ve used them before, tested them. And they’re effective.”

“Sure, maybe they tested some compounds or potions or whatever in a controlled environment, but what proof do you have that they created actual weapons?” Alpha Dan demanded.

~These cave dwellers really don’t want to live in the present, to accept that human technology could be the downfall of werewolf kind. Damn fools.~ I exhaled slowly. “How about I let the survivor tell you herself?” I turned the camera toward her.

The instant Willow came into frame, Alpha Dan, Alpha Mateo, and Alpha Roger erupted in shouts. It was impossible to catch what they were saying, but the emotions were clear: shock, confusion, and disbelief.

Thankfully, the council member muted their mics again, and the screen fell blessedly silent. He waited until they noticed, till their mouths stopped moving, then unmuted Alpha Mateo first.

“Sorry,” he said, leaning into the camera with a furrowed brow, “but is this some kind of joke?”

It was my turn to be confused. “What?” I asked.

He pointed at Willow. “How do you have her?”

I frowned. “I told you how we found her. She escaped. She’s been with my pack for a few weeks now.”

Alpha Mateo shook his head. “No. That’s impossible. You couldn’t have ‘found’ her.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because she’s right here! And her name’s not Willow, it’s Claudia!” He reached off-screen and pulled someone into view.

No, he pulled ~Willow~ into view.

Everyone in my office gasped, and Willow staggered back a step. But all I could think was, ~I knew I wasn’t crazy!~

Alpha Roger, now unmuted, piped up, even paler than before. “Wait. What the hell is going on here? That’s Chloe, she’s in my pack!”

“No way,” barked Alpha Dan, “that’s Clarice! She’s in ~my~ pack!”

And just like that, the virtual meeting devolved into a cacophony of confusion and questions and accusations. All of us in my office, however, seemed unable to speak.

Fixing my eyes on the screen, I stared at three more women who resembled Willow. The only difference was their names. Claudia. Chloe. Clarice. It was surreal. In fact, it felt staged—scripted and wrong.

The alphas and the council member were still talking over each other, and I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I muted the laptop, and silence filled my office until the only thing I could hear was Willow’s ragged breathing.

I turned to her to ask how she was holding up, but Doctor Ross’s sudden gasp stopped me cold.

“I got it,” he said, darting his wide eyes around the table. “Clones! They’re creating clones!”