I gently set Savannah down in the passenger seat and texted Sam as I
slipped behind the wheel. 911. Meet me behind the apartment. Clear the
guards up to my penthouse. Don’t tell Regina.
Sam was waiting for me fifteen minutes later when I pulled up out back.
“What’s this about?” she asked as I got out of the truck.
What could I say? I just opened the passenger door and pulled out the
exhausted auburn wolf.
“Who is…” Sam sniffed the air out of instinct, and her eyes went wide.
“Oh. My. God…that’s…”
“Yes, it is, and don’t say a word. Get the door. I’m taking her up to the
penthouse.”
“Your penthouse?” she asked as she opened the door and called the
freight elevator.
“It’s warded with spells, I can put a dozen guards out front, and nobody
will ask questions. You’re going to stay with her tonight.”
Sam lived in the building and served as my eyes and ears in the pack. She
was the only one I trusted to handle a sparking stick of dynamite like this.
The elevator binged, and the doors rolled opened. We got on for the long,
awkward ride up. Sam’s heartbeat was racing, and I could smell her distress.
I pushed my presence toward her. “This is going to be a shitstorm, but
we’ll ride it out, like always.”
She swallowed and nodded. “How could this have happened?”
“I have no fucking idea. It has to be lycanthropy. But Savannah never told
me she’d been bitten. Would she have covered that up? Did she say anything
to you?”
Sam shook her head. “What about after the battle in the woods? Could
Billy have been a carrier? Savannah was pretty beat up and left immediately
after. I never checked her wounds…or what about when we were captured?
Billy had access—”
“I don’t know.”