What. The. Fuck?

Nik stared at the girl. She was pretty—and filthy as hell. She looked as if she’d been living in the forest for a while. Her odor definitely suggested “wild child.”

She trembled once more as fresh tears ran rivers through the grime caked on her face. “Please, help me,” she whispered again in broken syllables. Her voice was scratchy, as though she hadn’t had water in days.

Or maybe from screaming.

And if she’d been screaming, why? Had someone done something to her? Was someone after her? If they were after her, then he needed to know why before he put his pack at risk. But he also couldn’t just leave her here to fend for herself, not when she was clearly weakened.

Being a pack master seriously sucked sometimes.

Thanks, Gage.

Nik’s jaw was set in a stern line as he tried to figure out what the hell to do.

She looked innocent enough, but so did a lot of other shit that could rip your throat out and not bat a lash.

He lifted his chin and sniffed. For a split second, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him. Her paranormal signature danced and shifted, as if it couldn’t quite decide what it was, before firmly snapping into that of a werewolf.

He put all his focus into studying her signature again. Yeah, she was definitely a werewolf.

Weird. Must be my imagination. That was, until his mate got inside his head, literally.

Did you feel her signature? Alara asked through their telepathic mate-bond.

Yeah, he said gravely, not looking at her. Natural “human” instinct was to look at the person you were talking to, but in certain situations it was best not to give away the fact that you were having a telepathic chat. Ever felt anything like that before?

No, she said, starting to shake her head but stopping herself. She shifted her weight, and Nik could tell she was hiding something. He did look at her then and narrowed his eyes.

What? he asked gently.

She bit her lip. This morning, at the gym, I felt a presence like hers. It was odd, like it was every paranormal creature and nothing at all at the same time.

Fuck.

There were a few dozen creatures that could cause that phenomenon, all of them bad news. He’d worry about figuring out what the hell the girl really was later. Right now, he was more interested in why the fuck she’d been snooping around his manor and, more specifically, his mate.

He made up his mind right then. “Take her prisoner,” he said in a deep voice booming with authority.

The girl’s eyes widened as two members of his pack stepped forward to seize her. “But I haven’t done anything wrong!” she cried, her feeble voice cracking on the last word.

Nik paid the girl no sympathy as he stared back at her with an iron will in his eyes. “We shall see.” He nodded his head, and his men gently led her from the forest and back into the manor. Gage and Danica were right there with them as they hauled the girl into the sparsely used holding cells below the ground level.

The dungeons had been very popular during Malachite’s reign. Nik had spent time in them himself, bleeding from multiple wounds inflicted by Malachite as punishment for his insubordination.

Rest in peace, you son of a bitch… or not. Burn in hell was probably more appropriate.

The dull pang of guilt made that vicious thought pause.

When Gage told him about what the Moonstruck Pack had done to Malachite’s family, Nik hadn’t believed a word of it. Mostly, he knew, it was because he hadn’t wanted to. Ignorance really was bliss.

As it was, the pack was ready to rip him and his brother a new one thanks to the wraith debacle. Tracking down the perpetrators of the murder of Malachite’s family would take time and resources. The resources part they were fine on. If anything, the Moonstruck Pack had always handled their finances well, even in Malachite’s days. He’d been more keen on bloodshed and gore than depleting the pack’s money reserves. Plus, Gage was High King, which kind of made him one of the richest paranormals in the Underworld.

So, yeah, resources—check.

But the time-suck part of conducting an investigation was a problem. Even if he outsourced it, Nik knew he would want to follow up on every lead himself. Despite his irritation with all the stress that came with the title of Alpha, he would die before he let anything hurt his wolves. Slaughtering humans was a grave offense, usually taken up by the state, and possibly national, paranormal justice courts. The pack’s views of him were lukewarm, at best, as it was. If he tried punishing them or even hinted at retribution for what they’d done, then life as he knew it might literally plunge straight into hell. But at the same time, he couldn’t in good conscience let such a crime go unpunished, if some of the original murderers still lurked in his pack. Besides, in addition to letting that kind of filth stay in his pack, how long would it be before they came after him? After Alara, or his pups, God willing he have any?

The anxiety and indecision about what to do about that clusterfuck of a problem was something he didn’t even begin to know how to tackle.

Did he mention he hated being an Alpha? If any other wolf had asked him besides Gage, he would have responded with a prompt and proud, “Hell no.” Ah, shit. Who was he kidding? Even if it hadn’t been Gage who’d asked him, he would have taken over leadership of the Moonstruck Pack anyway. They needed his help. He knew, despite a few soured souls, that the majority of them were honest and good people. They’d been through so much together, courtesy of Malachite. And once you’d endured hell on earth with people, you tended to be bonded for life.

The dungeons once smelled of blood, feces, and death, but now they smelled faintly like lemon. Which would have been hysterical had it not been so downright weird. He had to admit, his housekeepers did a damn good job of cleaning the place. Alara still got on to him for leaving his clothes on the floor instead of using the hamper, but seriously, what was the point when someone else was going to pick it up for him?

The girl hadn’t stopped crying the entire way to the holding cells. They were nice, by prison standards, with new stone floors, clean twin beds in each cell, and a little dresser with a mirror covered in fake glass beside said beds. Clearly, his interior decorator hadn’t looked up the definition of the word “dungeon” when he’d mentioned he’d wanted the place gutted and redone. Hell, it was like a damn hotel compared to what it had been during Malachite’s reign.

Bastard.

He closed his eyes. Okay, new rule—no more thinking about Malachite right now. He had something else more pressing to deal with.

Prioritize. You’re an Alpha now.

The girl sniffled as his men sat her down on a metal folding chair—with a cushion, might he add, that probably cost more than the chair was worth, thanks to the overly enthusiastic designer—and stared at her feet.

He knelt in front of her, his face a mask of apathy. “You can stop the fake waterworks now. You’re not a very good actress anyway.”

Almost as if on cue, her tears dried up, and she went utterly still. It was eerie as fuck. Slowly, she lifted her head and stared back at him with dead eyes. He thought “dead” because there was no emotion whatsoever within them, as if he were looking at a damn statue.

Can we say “creepy”?

He thought she might say something first or at least come back with a sarcastic quip, but her lips remained closed.

Since the endless staring was starting to creep him out, he decided to talk first. “Let’s start with your name.”

“I’ve had many.”

Damn, even her voice was emotionless. Shivers broke out over his skin. “Care to elaborate?”

“I’m a doppelgänger,” she said without batting a lash.

He raised a brow while resisting the urge to shudder. Doppelgängers, or skin walkers, creeped him the fuck out. All that talk about how if you saw your doppelgänger you were going to die was true. If they took your shape—your very soul, he thought, though the details were sketchy to him since he’d never actually seen a doppelgänger—then you essentially became a soulless corpse. Nik could think of few things on this earth worse than being alive and yet trapped in your own body. He’d heard stories of people murdering their own children, doing other vulgar, obscene acts, and torturing themselves if the doppelgänger required information the host was unwilling to give. But they always caved in. They had to; supposedly, the longer the doppelgänger leached off your soul, the weaker you became. He wasn’t sure he’d have the kind of restraint necessary not to give in were he in that situation.

Suppressing a shiver, Nik reached out to Alara through their bond. Call Penelope. We’re going to need her help. Tell her to hurry, he added as an afterthought.

Alara silently slipped out of the room and flipped open her cell phone just outside the door. Judging by how quickly she’d left, she was just as freaked out by their unwanted visitor as he was.

The girl’s eyes darted to Alara for a second and then back to Nik’s.

He growled and stepped in front of her, shielding the door from the doppelgänger’s view. “You seem awfully interested in my mate.”

The girl smiled. Rather than giving him the warm fuzzies, it made him want to throw up. “She’s pretty.”

“You mean her body is pretty.”

“It’s one and the same, isn’t it?” she asked coyly.

Yeah. This girl was totally a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Well, you can forget about whatever it is you’ve come to do, because you’re not going anywhere near her.”

The girl grinned, her eyes sparkling with challenge. We’ll see about that, her expression seemed to say.

He might admire her spunk if he didn’t want to skewer her.

Nik crossed his arms. Gage remained silent near the wall, surrounded by his guards. He didn’t look any more pleased about this than Nik was. Nik appreciated him keeping his mouth shut and letting him handle the situation, considering he was the Alpha at Crescent Manor now and they were on Moonstruck Pack turf. Much like politics in the human world, you had to be careful about stepping on another Alpha’s paws while in their den.

“Why were you in my house earlier tonight?” Nik asked. The steel in his voice warned her she better not fuck around.

She blinked, looking surprised for a split second, before her earlier arrogance returned. “I wasn’t.”

Nik glanced at Gage. “Do you smell bullshit?”

“I think it reeks of bullshit in here,” Gage said, eyes glowing gold. “Maybe we need to try more… persuasive methods to get the answers we seek.”

Nik raised a brow. Gage had never been one for torture, though Nik enjoyed the hell out of beating the shit out of bad guys. Being High King had hardened his little brother.

Good. Maybe now he’d finally be strong enough to survive the cutthroat world of Underworld politics.

“Good idea.” Nik went to pick up a heavy metal object that looked as if it could be used for sawing wood.

Or bone, in this case.

The girl swallowed hard as he walked back over to her without so much as a hitch in his step. He’d done some pretty terrible things to criminals they’d tried and found guilty, but they’d always done worse. They’d deserved it.

This girl… what had she done? She couldn’t help being what she was. Doppelgängers had to switch bodies in order to survive, he’d been told. The myths surrounding them were a little murky, so he didn’t know exactly how they worked. But taking a saw to a girl’s leg did, admittedly, make him think twice about what he was doing.

He glanced at her. Her eyes were glued to the saw, and her chest heaved as her breathing quickened. He swore she paled, though it was hard to tell with all the dirt coating her like a second skin. “Care to change your story?”

“I…” Her voice fumbled for an answer. “I’m not lying.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Hope you don’t need this.” He started to press down. The teeth of the saw bit into the grimy flesh of her thigh, drawing blood, and she yelped.

“Wait!” she shrieked. “I’ll tell you!”

He almost snorted. He had no intention of actually sawing her leg off. Even he had limits. But the bluff had accomplished the desired result.

Straightening, he crossed his arms, keeping the saw in plain view as a reminder not to lie to him again. “So why are you here?”

“I…” She gulped then breathed a few deep breaths. “I sneaked in through the vents.”

Shit. He made a mental note to have the whole premises swept by his warriors stat. How the hell had something like that escaped his notice? “Go on,” he said.

“I came inside because I was trying to see if this was a safe place or not.”

“Then you went back outside?”

She nodded, blushing. “I thought you might try to attack me if you caught me inside your house. If I appeared nonthreatening, outside of your home, I thought you might be more receptive to me.”

“Why would you want to come here?” Gage asked.

Nik didn’t mind. He’d been about to ask the same himself.

This time, the girl did drain completely of color. Her eyes were wide. She didn’t look scared—she looked terrified.

“Because…” She glanced around, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’m running from someone.”

“Who?” Nik pressed when she didn’t give a name.

She started to shake.

“Mistress Black.”