It's been months since anyone at the Committee has had any contact from the O'Connell family or their pack members, and they are not happy. Suspicious of the activities that took place in D.C. and determined to find out what the wolves are up to, the Committee recruits one of their newest residents, Dr. Matthew Dietrich, to play the part of neighbor and infiltrate the family.<br><br>Matthew has always been a keep-to-himself kind of person. Though idealistic and optimistic, he prefers to work in solitude, at night, while he researches the findings that he hopes will one day change the world. When he's approached by the executives of the Center, he has no idea why they'd choose him. And to say he is skeptical over the concept of men that can shift into wolves would be an understatement.<br>

Wolf, in League

He walked up the stairs to the upper level of the house berating himself for feeling nervous. For surely there was no trouble ahead of him. That moment had passed. There was no hollering. And though the daylight had faded and left the staircase and the hallways dusk-dark, there was no sense of the ominous. Still, recollection wouldn’t let him dismiss his initial reaction, and it kept peppering his thoughts with vivid flashes of angry eyes, sharpened stakes, and his own red blood being smeared onto cheerful wallpaper.


The warm, sharp solidity of his cross poked into his palm and he realized that yet again he couldn’t recall grabbing it. He could hear his blood bumping steadily in his ears. His lips were growing dry as his breath rushed past them—in, out, in and out—and when he tried to lick them, his tongue rasped like sandpaper over rough wood.


Chapter 34