Page 67 of Never Tamed
He thrusts it out until I’m forced to take it. “I found it in one of the supply sheds. I’ve been fiddling with it to see if we can tap into the radio waves and see what’s going on out there. It took some time, but I’ve finally gotten it to work. And…” He trails off and frowns.
Our afterglow is absolutely demolished. Whatever comfort Ren and I found in the aftermath of fucking might as well have never happened. There is only my wolf with his terror like a fourth person in the room
The hair on the back of my neck bristles.
“What? What is it?” I demand an answer.
“You’re just—you’re going to want to listen to this.” Hendrickson turns the knob and adjusts the dial until the station comes in clear.
A low, crackling voice finally filters through as my blood ices.
“…massive explosion earlier this morning at what authorities have identified as the former headquarters for the real estate megacorp known as Steel & Associates. The blaze is still ongoing, and emergency responders have been unable to access the full site due to intense heat and structural collapse…”
My stomach drops and twists into incalculable knots.No.
“Torin…”
But I can’t answer either of them; at that moment, I can’t breathe. The static voice echoes in my head like shrapnel.
“Alpha,” Hendrickson whispers. He adjusts from foot to foot with a dull whine. “What do you need me to do? Do you want me to inform the others?”
“What can we do?” I mutter out loud.
Not a fucking thing. There’s no going back from this kind of destruction and we all know it although it’s another thing entirely to say it out loud.
I turn in a tight line and kick out one of the nearby chairs. The wood goes flying and cracks into the wall but neither Ren nor Hendrickson flinch.
Our home is gone. The explosion took everything. Not like there was much to go back to. We’d escaped with only the clothes on our backs and as many wolves as possible the last time we were attacked.
“Torin, I’m so sorry.” Ren cuts after me and rests her hand on my elbow. “I’m sorry.”
Numb, I let her touch me, my grip loosening on the radio. Hendrickson plucks it out of my hand before I drop the thing, my head a clang of bells and a low roar torn straight from my wolf.
The Steel Claw building is gone. The place where I was raised…no more. The company my father built from the ground up and I expanded, where my wolves—my pack—used to live, is nothing but a pile of soot and warped metal for the human fire fighters to drench with their useless hoses.
All my hard work. My memories. All of it.
Only ashes now.
I stumble back a step as a tremor rocks me and knock my tailbone against the table. It skids out of the way, the heavy wood screeching and digging grooves into the floor.
Ren moves with me. “Torin…I don’t know what to say. What can I do?” Her hand finds mine. Her fingers tighten, grounding me.
“…investigators believe the blazes may be connected, even though the locations seem random…”
Blazes connected. Of course. The sound sharpens the blur in my head and makes sense of the situation, but only for a fraction of a second.
This wasn’t just a message. It was a fucking declaration.
Andras wants us to know that we have one option left. We can submit under him or be obliterated.
Anger helps, the way it always has. Cool control and colder fury have always gone hand in hand for me. I learned it at my father’s knee. As Noble is always so keen and quick to remind me, I’m more like the old man than I thought. What would he do in this situation?
He certainly wouldn't give in to the heartbreak and the agony of loss. He’d use them and forge them into weapons.
But I have one thing he never did: I have my mate, and through her, another alpha.
We have to be stronger than anything that’s come before us. Otherwise what’s the fucking point?
