Page 122 of Claimed

“Three,” Linc corrects.

“They’re sick,” Larry says, “Wyatt makes me feed the old, sick, and the useless the soup with that green leaf mix he makes me put into it. When they die, we haul them back there and burn the bodies.”

“He’s pickin’ off his pack one by one starting with the weakest? Why?” I demand.

“We’re low on resources. Maybe because he doesn’t have the resources to feed those that are no use to him.”

“They die as soon as you give it?” Linc calls out.

He stares at Linc blankly.

“Answer him,” I clip.

“It takes about a week, sometimes two,” he answers quickly. “I’m just following orders. If I don’t follow orders, I’ll be fed that soup, too. Or else he’ll just end me himself. His temper is shorter than usual right now.”

The guy is spewing the secrets, the heat behind my eyes has me thinking I’m pulling this from him against his will. I’m leveraging some magic.

“Tell me what happens when people take it.”

“They get headaches. They get weak. Eventually, they just… d-die.”

This the same shit he had Stacy using at the diner? I look at Linc and can tell we’ve got the same thoughts on this.

“How long has this been going on?” I snap.

“A while. More the past couple weeks. Used to put it in the small pot, it only went to a couple people. Now I put it in a medium one.”

I look at Luke and jerk my chin toward the house.

“That’s the alpha’s place,” Luke advises. “It’s off limits.”

Yeah, I smell that fucker, but the stink is old. He hasn’t been here in at least a few days.

I’ll check it out later.

We move along and though I don’t smell anyone close enough to have me thinking there’s someone hiding in there, I can’t trust my nose right now between the foul odors everywhere and Meadows’ track record for scent-masking.

I dial Jase.

“Grey,” he greets, breathless.

I should’ve called by now.

“We’re good, I’m gonna put you on speaker, keep you with us.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I’m here but Brody found another trip wire. He snipped it and is following it. Oh, it goes under a gate. He’s lifted a tarp off the gate, and it shows it goes into a building… say … about sixty feet to the left of where you went in. Careful in there.”

“Yeah, bro.” I put him on speaker and say, “Halt.”

Everyone freezes. Larry looks over his shoulder at me and immediately drops his gaze.

“What’s the trip wire leading to that building for?” I ask, pointing to the building in the far corner behind us, beside the burn pile.

“Don’t know.” He shrugs.

“Eyes on mine, fucker,” I snap.

He looks up and repeats “Don’t know specifically but suspect it’s probably one of Wyatt’s nail bombs. That’s what he usually keeps in there.”

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