Wolf's Call (Wolves Next Door #2) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,157

just as Lane came out of the bathroom.

"I'll watch Gabby," he said, turning me toward the bathroom door. "And I'll find you clothes."

I paused to kiss him, then hurried in to do my business and brush my teeth. The whole time, I was listening to the guys in the other room. At first, it was nothing but the sound of my drawers opening and things moving around, but then Ian broke the silence.

"You think she's mad at me?"

"No," Lane assured him. "You were busy last night, and she was worried about her daughter. Did you get any sleep?"

"Not much," Ian admitted. "How's Gabby doing anyway?"

Lane laughed. "Same as always. She's probably the most fine of all of us. Did you hear about her organizing the kids?"

"Probably more than you," Ian said. "According to Amy, one of the older teenagers there, Gabby started snapping orders at the wolves. They handled the first aid for anyone who'd been hurt at all. A few kids got cut in the rush to hide. Something like five got shot, but none were fatal. Gabby started telling them how to treat it, Olivia got pads and tampons from all the girls, and that human kid, Samantha? Yeah, she carefully cleaned up Xander's blood from the floor once she realized that it could be a problem."

"She's going to be an amazing alpha," Lane admitted. "But what do we do about this? There's a fucking video of us. If anyone takes it seriously?"

"And this boy is saying he saw Xander shift," Ian told him. "He saw a werewolf, he wanted to be one, or he was trying to stop them - from what he's said on the news - while that's all conflicting and is helpful to create reasonable doubt. Now there's a video?"

"Yeah," Lane agreed. "I'll see if Seth has any ideas on how to make this better."

I'd just finished, so I stepped out of the bathroom to say, "Wolf's Run. Look at what they told Gabby. These kids are from Wolf's Run, so they're wolves. If Mason is insane, he could've taken that wrong. When I heard it, I never suspected a thing. It made perfect sense, just like I was a Bronco growing up, because that was my school mascot."

"Clothes," Ian said. "While I don't mind the view, you are very distracting like that."

In my best impersonation of my daughter, I rolled my eyes at him, but I did get dressed. Sadly, I was now completely awake, and heading for panic mode again. Something had to be done. If the world found out that werewolves were real, then what? They'd want to study them, and Mason had specifically mentioned Xander.

"Can they make you shift?" I asked while I pulled on my clothes.

Beside me, Lane was doing the same. "Humans? No," he said.

"Not usually," Ian clarified. "If we're tortured, there's no telling. People all react to pain differently."

"And there's not really any way to test that you're different unless you shift, right?" I asked.

"I don't know," Ian admitted.

"It is a virus," Lane said. "So there has to be something. It's just that no one's made a test, or a thing for it yet. I don't even know how they do that."

Yeah, me either, but this was good news. "So, if they asked, and the kids said no, the most they could do is draw blood, right?" I looked between Ian and Lane. "And if that came back like a normal person's, then it would be ok?"

"You'd have to ask Bridget," Lane told me. "I know we can go to a hospital, but I don't know if a scientist could find it."

Next I grabbed my shoes. "Ok. Well, it's a place to start. I mean, they can't do anything to the kids under eighteen without our permission. That gives them some protection. We'll just need to make sure that the parents know to refuse anything that could be a problem. I'm sure we can combat it with the media, saying it's a witch hunt, because everyone knows that werewolves aren't real."

"But we are," Ian reminded me.

"No," I said, finally ready to go. "As far as the rest of the world knows, this is a sick and deranged boy who's suffering a mental break. He's just confused the name of the community and the fact that they're all friends with some desperate belief in a wolf pack. I have a feeling that if they check, he's probably spent a lot of time lately looking up werewolves, and he