Chapter 69

Sarah POV

I was told the story later by two highly precocious werewolf little girls who probably didn’t understand some of the words they said, so I confess I have filtered and toned down some of their report to Agent Travis. Nevertheless, the main events of what they say they did obviously happened.

Left alone, Chloe and Grace had stayed in our room for about twenty minutes (They said hours.), before they left the room, tracked my scent, and found the elevator that would take them “upstairs.” They told me they smelled “something wrong,” and so they didn’t take the elevator.

Instead, they found a staircase where many “weird-smelling alphas” had gone and walked up to the top floor. Later, Zane and I would learn there was only one such staircase, so their hunting skills were obviously working just fine.

Knowing it would just be the two of them to help themselves, they had crept along the hallway until they heard “something weird,” and then they had let themselves into a room where “adults were doing some of those weird things.”

I blamed the internet, nodded, and asked them to continue.

From there, they caught sight of Zara, a human slave who had been tied to a pole. Both girls seemed confused as to why that was so, and I just said it was one of the weird things that adults do, which at least placated them for the moment. Chloe, who was doing most of the reporting, though Grace did add some pertinent details, let us know they snuck into the room without anyone’s noticing them for quite some time.

“They were all grunting and doing weird things,” Chloe said, which simultaneously made me want to laugh and scream in horror. “So we got in just fine, and the woman who’d dodged the knives winked at us.”

“She winked at you?” I asked, wanting that to be clear.

“Yeah, so we winked back. Everyone was being so weird,” Chloe said. She looked at Grace.

“They were doing adult stuff,” Grace whispered.

“They were,” I told her with a firm smile that covered up the tears I wanted to shed. “And then what?”

Chloe thought about it for a minute, looking around at the police cars and the ambulances and the other cars for who knew what. I was kneeling in front of her and Grace as they sat in the back of an ambulance with Zane at my side. Werewolves and humans were being slapped into handcuffs what felt like every couple of seconds.

“We went over to where Zara was tied to the pole,” Chloe said, “and then we jumped up and screamed. People tend to get weird when we scream.”

“That’s right,” Grace said.

“And so while they were all looking around, Zara used her blood to slip out of the ropes holding her wrists and jumped on the two werewolves that had been cutting her,” Chloe said. “I’m pretty sure she killed them.”

Zane and I just digested that for a moment, both of us more upset about things than Chloe was.

“I made sure no one noticed Grace,” Chloe said next. I felt my heart drop.

“And how did you do that, sweetie?” I asked.

Chloe shrugged. “I just told them to ignore her.”

“You used your alpha voice?” Zane asked.

Chloe shrugged again.

“It’s OK,” I said. “When you told people to ignore Grace, what were you thinking?”

“I just didn’t want people to notice her.”

I nodded, putting a placating hand on Zane’s arm, although I thought he didn’t need it anymore.

“That was very good, honey.”

“OK,” Zane said. “You screamed, and people looked at you. Zara had come out of her wrist ties, and then what?”

Chloe frowned in concentration. “Well, people were screaming a lot.”

“What were they saying?” I asked. “I mean, just in general?”

“ I heard them say, ‘Hide the chips,’ a lot,” Chloe said. “I heard that real lot. Also, a lot of people were saying the police were going to get there, and Alpha Zane would show his fucking—Oh, I’m sorry.” Chloe shrank in on herself.

“It’s OK,” I said. “You’re reporting what people said because we asked you to.”

“We know you wouldn’t say that all by yourself,” Zane said. “Right?”

Chloe nodded, but I could see she was still upset.

“It’s perfectly fine, sweetie,” I said. “You’re just being a little voice recorder now, telling us what people said. You just keep doing that.”

Chloe looked uncertain for a moment, then she nodded and her face cleared. I hated that this was yet another life lesson she shouldn’t have had to learn until much later in life.

She said, “Then people were shouting about freeing the slaves, and other people were shouting that they needed to kill the slaves and the gammas.”

“People thought they should kill the gammas?” Zane asked, his voice still gentle.

Chloe nodded. I felt I could feel the heat in Zane’s body increase, though he showed nothing.

“OK,” he said, still just quiet and gentle. “Please go on. What happened after that?”

“People were screaming about Rob,” Grace said, and we all looked at her. I kept my expression as soft as possible, and I hoped the others did as well.

“Rob?” Zane asked. “Master Rob?”

Grace nodded. “Everybody was scared of him, you could tell. Some people just ran off. I could hear them go.”

“Some people just left the building?” I asked.

Grace nodded. “Two alphas tried to carry away a human man, but he screamed at them, and they let him go.”

I couldn’t help but look at Zane. This was horrific. How would the girls ever recover from something like this?

“You saved them,” Zane said. “You were superheroes, do you know that? You saved all of them with the help of Zara. People will make movies about you.”

Chloe put on a coy face. “Theatrical release movies or made-for-TV movies?”

Zane made a face. “I plead the Fifth.”

I was looking at Grace. I never wanted to ignore Chloe for Grace, but I knew not to ignore Grace for Chloe either. Basically, I told myself that everything meant checking in with both of them.

Grace smiled at me, and I felt like a popped balloon.

Agent Travis appeared, barking orders into a phone.

“No, take all of them. Those who weren’t in the auction can make their cases later.”

“I really do feel like a lot of them didn’t know what was going on,” I told Travis. “But I also think some of the whole thrill of the thing for some of them was doing it while people didn’t know.”

He frowned at me and then said into the phone, “Make it clear they’re only there because they’re witnesses, all right?”

“What happened after you were screaming?” Zane asked both his girls.

“People were running around all over,” Grace said, and I inwardly rejoiced at how loud and matter-of-fact her voice was. “Zara killed two alphas who were drinking her blood.”

Well, now I wanted to weep at how loud and matter-of-fact her voice was.

“And then she led everyone out of the room?” Zane asked.

“Yes,” Chloe said.

“Do you know where?” I asked.

They both nodded, and in short order they were both leading us down to a basement we would probably never have found on our own.

And there they were: all the slaves I had seen before and more, shackled and collared and looking at us not in celebration, but in confusion.

“I’ll kill him,” Zane muttered into my ear as we looked around. “The next time I see Scott, I’m going to kill him.”