Wolf Untamed (SWAT - Special Wolf Alpha Team #11) - Paige Tyler Page 0,86

it took every bit of his control to keep from reaching over and dragging his beta in for a hug and telling him it was all okay now. But he couldn’t do that. Brandon had screwed up, and Diego needed to find a way to get through to the kid so it wouldn’t happen again. As bad as tonight was, it could have been much worse.

“Where does your mother think you are right now?” he asked, figuring it would be best to come at this slowly.

Brandon opened and closed his mouth a few times before answering. “The movies,” he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“The movies.” Diego snorted. “Well, I guess if the lie worked before, why bother coming up with another one? You mom is so desperate to trust you, I can see why she’d buy it again.”

Brandon cringed. “Kevin and I really were going to see a movie, but then we ran into Wyatt and…well…he talked us into going with him. We ended up at the club.”

Diego decided to skip over the question of how anyone had gotten two kids as young as Brandon and Kevin into a club like Blacklight in the first place. That wasn’t important at the moment. “I’m assuming Wyatt was the other guy with you. The one who seemed so friendly with the gangbanger.”

Brandon’s head snapped up. “How did you know he was a gangbanger?”

“The neck tattoo,” he said. “It’s hard to miss someone affiliated with the Hillside Riders. Their tattoos are very distinctive.”

Brandon seemed to consider that a moment. “Kevin and I didn’t know he was taking us there to meet with someone from a gang. If we had, we wouldn’t have gone with him.”

“Then why did you go with him?”

Brandon let out a heavy sigh, slumping in the seat. “Wyatt just graduated from my school. He’s so popular that girls practically climb over each other to get near him. We figured if people thought we were friends with him, they’d want to be friends with Kevin and me, too.”

It didn’t make Diego feel any better to discover high school hadn’t changed much since his day. Kids would still do insanely stupid stuff to be with the in crowd. “And how exactly did Wyatt become so popular with the girls? Anything to do with the fact that he’s in with the Riders?”

Brandon didn’t say anything for a while. “Yeah. I guess he sort of has a reputation for being dangerous. In school, everyone knew if you were looking to score drugs, Wyatt was the person to talk to.”

Diego shook his head. “And this is the guy you thought would help you get girls?”

“Not just girls!” Brandon protested, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder at Kevin still asleep in the back seat when his voice came out louder than he probably intended. “Any friends at all. Since it got out that my dad is a murderer, people have avoided me like internet malware. I might have friends in Jayna’s beta pack now, but Kevin is still screwed. He stuck with me from the beginning, even when it cost him all his friends. When Wyatt started talking to the two of us, we went with it. I want Kevin to find friends like I’ve made.”

If Diego hadn’t been driving, he would have smacked his hand to his forehead and held it there until the desire to groan went away. Only a teenager could think that getting close to the local gangbanger wannabe was a good idea.

“Did you ever think of introducing Kevin to the betas in Jayna’s pack instead?”

Brandon flushed. “No.”

“Is Wyatt the same guy who took you to that convenience store where you ended up getting shot?”

“Yeah,” Brandon mumbled. “We were supposed to go to somewhere cool, but then Elliott stopped at the store. He said he had to meet someone.”

“Which is a nice way of saying he was stopping to buy drugs,” Diego muttered, checking the rearview mirror to make sure Kevin was still sleeping.

“We didn’t know he was buying drugs,” Brandon explained, looking contrite. “We thought it was cool that a guy going to college in the fall was letting us hang out with him. Then the shooting started and he bailed, even when he saw that I’d been shot.”

“Not much of a friend,” Diego pointed out. “And yet he showed up at the movie theater tonight and you took off with him again.”

Brandon stared down at the floor again. “He said he was sorry for bailing on