Big Bad Wolf Chapter 4

Big Bad Wolf Chapter 4

Insanity As His New Normal

Javier

Luke lifted his eyebrow at Javier when he met his alpha’s stare across the table. You will protect her?

You just ordered me to, didn’t you? She’s my problem, is what you said. We need her to talk.

Javier was unamused by Luke’s cocky smile and glared at him across the table.

Isabell sat up straight and sniffed. She looked at Javier and smiled.

“The man, he… he beat me.”

She sucked in a breath as Luke, Javier, and Fox growled at once. Eli and Artie shook their heads. Isabell shrank down in her chair.

“Sorry, Isabell, real men don’t enjoy hearing of a man beating a woman. It’s okay. It’s a canine reaction. They growl. You get used to it.”

Eli smiled in her attempt to ease the mind of a timid, wide-eyed Isabell.

Javier wanted to use his claws and fangs against the evil man who’d harmed her. His blood running out over a cold floor as Javier shredded him to pieces sounded good. It took him a few minutes to get control of his anger.

“I think he wanted me to shift, but he never spoke to me. I begged him to stop. He wouldn’t. I shifted to overcome the pain after he broke my jaw. After I shifted, he stopped hitting me. They video recorded it.”

Isabell shuddered and sucked in a breath. No one spoke. They waited for her to continue.

“Another man ripped out my feathers, and a man in a lab coat drew my blood, then drugged me. I fell because I was too weak to stand.”

She was shaking again, but continued.

“I don’t know if the drug wasn’t strong enough. I didn’t pass out. The two men left the room. The big guy who’d beaten me came back in. He grabbed me by the neck and dragged my body so I was flat on my wings.”

She hunched her shoulders and rolled them as if remembering the pain of him crushing her wings beneath her body weight.

“They thought I was weak and couldn’t fight them. I’m a phoenix. There were flames. I bit him with my beak, and I released my flames into him. He froze. I found a better position and shifted. I located his cell phone in his pocket and contacted Fox.”

Isabell had spoken proudly of defeating her attacker. Javier admired her spunk. She hadn’t let them defeat her.

“I traced the phone she used and called a couple of bears, friends. We raided the warehouse. There were four other shifters there. Three canines and a feline. We freed them and got Isabell out,” Fox explained.

“And the man who beat her?” Javier growled.

“He froze solid on the outside and burned out hollow inside. Isabell killed him with phoenix fire. I’ve seen nothing like it.”

“He was hurting me, and I didn’t mean to kill him. Drugged, I didn’t have proper control. The fire and ice just erupted into him. I was desperate for him to let me go. I’m sorry for all the damage I did, all the problems I caused.” Isabell verged on tears again.

Isabell’s compassion blindsided Javier. An evil man beat her, broke her jaw, choked her, dragged her by the neck, and bent her wings. Yet she was sorry he died when she defended herself?

Javier wanted to bring him back to life so he could kill him again. And Isabell was apologizing. He shook his head.

“You didn’t cause any problems. None of this is your fault.”

“Javier’s right. This man, Peter Elliot, had Eli attacked Friday night. Her attacker almost killed her before Javier showed up and intervened.” Luke told her, and Eli smiled at Isabell.

“It appears as if Peter Elliot is hunting shifters. Why?”

Eli asked. It was the question of the hour.

“I think Artie and I may have a plausible answer, sort of. Artie?” Fox said.

“I started looking into Peter Elliot after we rescued Isabell. Then Luke called Friday night, and we connected the dots with Dunbar, the man who attacked Eli for Elliot.” Artie explained so everyone at the table had the pieces to the puzzle.

“Elliot is a rich businessman who made his money in the pharmaceutical industry. His company, Pillsanderz, manufactures prescription drugs. Dunbar was his muscle against small-time scientific researchers. Pillsanderz was targeting researchers and extorting them to sell the rights to their products over to the company. When profits declined over some botched medicines that weren’t quality controlled, Pillsanderz started doing their own research. The company experiments with ‘fountain of youth’ drugs.” Fox explained.

“So, he’s hunting out shifters to conduct research on their immortality?”

It seemed odd. Could science understand or manipulate magic? That didn’t sound good.

“After what we found at the warehouse, we think it’s worse. They held detailed records of torture and records on how long it took the shifter to heal. Experimenting with pain, shifting, and the healing rate, they murdered shifters to see if they could come back. They recorded the time to torture several canines to death, and how long before one bled out after cutting an artery. The five we saved that night forced all eyes on us,” Fox said in a steely voice, admitting the risk he’d taken in Isabell’s defense.

“The canines belonged to a pack out in Nevada. They went to warn their pack leaders. The feline disappeared without a trace. Isabell was too weak, so Fox and I took our friend with us,” Artie explained.

“They tracked me to San Diego.”

Isabell shifted her hair and showed them an angry half-healed cut on her neck.

“I found the tracking device and sliced it out with my talons. Artie disposed of it, but she caught a man sniffing around after that. We were pretty sure they’d tracked me to Fox’s place and lost the signal before they could take me again. I ruined their home.” Isabell said in despair.

“Relax, kid.” Fox knew it wasn’t her fault.

“It was almost time for Artie and me to reinvent ourselves, anyway. We’d been in San Diego for over thirty years. Someone was bound to notice we didn’t age. Even in California, people remark thirty years of never changing.”

“So, what are you proposing?”

Luke wasn’t the only one who wanted to know what Fox wanted.

“We discussed it before we left California. We want to join your pack here in Tyler.” Fox replied, as if they had indeed all discussed it in advance.

“You’ve been alone for over five hundred years. What’s the deal?” Luke asked his old friend, unsure.

Fox didn’t strike Javier as a man who made rash decisions. He would have excellent reasons for his choices.

“I’m not the alpha you are, Luke. Hell, I’m not the alpha Javier is, either. I can’t protect Isabell and Artie on my own, and Isabell has no one else to turn to. She needs a place to rest and heal from her ordeal, and Elliot has driven us from the den. I need your help.” Fox told his friend the unadulterated truth. Fox wasn’t the type of man who asked for help, either. Elliot was bad news and worse than Javier had imagined.

“No, we need your help,” Artie amended Fox’s statement.

Javier was realizing a much more dangerous situation than he’d at first understood.

“There’s strength in numbers,” Isabell said.

“We wouldn’t be a detriment. Fox and Artie are a brilliant research team, and I can pull my weight. I can contact some galleries in Dallas and Houston, maybe Austin and San Antonio. I can sell my work and build up my commissioned art business again. We would contribute.” Isabell pleaded with Luke, then Eli, and let her eyes beseech Javier.

Fox and Isabell were both saying what Javier and Luke had already discussed. That made sense. The pack already had a tiger as its alpha female. Why not a couple of foxes and a phoenix, too?

Javier’s direwolf was panting for the phoenix, and his vote was cast. Luke had to say.

“Will you all submit to Eli and me as your alpha pack leaders? Will you accept Javier as a beta? If things go bad, I need the chain of command established and understood.”

Luke breathed out. He was a leader of men.

“Absolutely. Yes, on both accounts. When do you want to do the ceremony?” Fox asked, and Artie and Isabell nodded, agreeing with him.

“This Saturday. We’ll do it on the hill overlooking the lake at the retreat. That way, we can run as a pack afterward.” Luke decided.

Javier smiled, and Eli smiled, too. Fox, Artie, and Isabell sighed in collective relief. They’d been frightened out of their home, forced to flee. Joining Luke had been their best chance.

It pleased Javier that Isabell seemed relieved. Seeing her tremble in fear bothered him. “Fox, will you explain it to Isabell so she knows what to do?” Javier asked.

She already submitted to Javier, but he guessed having it explained before the ceremony would ease her anxiety.

“It might be better if you teach her,” Fox replied.

A hint of a knowing smile played in his eyes, but didn’t touch his lips. Javier suspected the devious fox was up to something. He didn’t know Fox well enough.

“I’ve never submitted to the pack before, so I have no firsthand knowledge. I’m a canine, and I assume it will come to myself and Artie. You have recent first-hand knowledge.”

“You would be better at explaining how it feels, Javier.” Eli piped up.

“What do you think, Isabell?” Eli asked, not wanting to leave her out of a decision involving her. Eli was always good like that.

“I’d like Javier to teach me about the pack,” Isabell said with a small, shy smile.

She was beautiful. Javier didn’t wish to deny her.

“Do you think I might fly?” she asked Javier.

Javier looked at Luke over Isabell’s head. Luke nodded. Javier smiled at Isabell.

“Here, you will fly.” Isabell smiled at Javier like a child granted candy at the checkout line in the store.

“Then it’s settled. We expand the pack on Saturday. Let’s say around four. We’ll use your cabin, Javier, to let the women disrobe and dress afterward.”

Luke looked at Javier, who nodded in confirmation. His phoenix was going to get naked in his cabin. There was no way he could deny her. Thankfully, he wore loose joggers, and no one noticed how hard the idea made Javier.

He was sure he’d lost his mind. Considering he was a turned direwolf shifter, Javier accepted insanity as his new normal.

Thank you for your support! Welcome to the dream… Sincerely, -OK

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