The Wolf

J.R. Ward

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781982179885
• eBook ISBN: 9781982179892

Return to the sizzling glymera’s prison camp in this dark and sexy second novel in the new Black Dagger Brotherhood Prison Camp spin-off series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author J.R. Ward.

In the next installment of bestselling author J.R. Ward’s Prison Camp series, things get steamy when Lucan, a wolven forced into bartering drug deals for the infamous Prison Colony, meets Rio, the second in command for the shadowy Caldwell supplier, Mozart. After a deal goes awry, a wolf with piercing golden eyes swoops in to save her from certain death. As shocking truths unfurl, Rio is uncertain of who to trust and what to believe—but with her life on the line, true love rears its head and growls in the face of danger.

CHAPTER ONE

Willow Hills Sanatorium

Connelly, New York

It was a stormy Halloween night when two boys, aged thirteen and thirteen and three-quarters, squeezed through the torn section of a chain-link fence hung with all kinds of “No Trespassing” signs. The one who was older by eight months got his jacket caught on a rusty grab, and the tearing sound was one week without his iPad. Minimum.

“Dammit,” Tiller said as he pulled at the snag.

“C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”

He shouldn’t have brought Gordo, but Isaac was sick, and Mark was grounded for what they’d all done the weekend before. Stupid fire. They hadn’t meant it to get that big, and besides, the leaf pile was gone now and that burned lawn in the Thompsons’ side yard would grow back.

As rain started to fall a little harder, Gordo came over and yanked at the jacket. “Take it off.”

“I am.”

Tiller shoved his ghost-hunting equipment into his buddy’s chest, unzipped the front, and got out of the sleeve. Then he gripped with both hands and pulled as hard as he could—

The release was immediate, and as he landed on his ass, he got rain in his eyes and mud all over him. “Fuck!”

Gordo bent down. “I gotta be back before midnight.”

Like the guy thought Tiller was going to hang around until things air dried. Sometime next week.

“Relax.” He got to his feet and flapped the jacket around. Palm-cleaned his jeans. “What, are you scared?”

“No, dumbass. And we’re s’posed to be online in an hour.”

“Whatever.”

The guy was lying about not being afraid. Which was why he’d been third choice when Tiller had decided he couldn’t handle going alone. Not that he himself was nervous or anything.

Tying the jacket around his waist, he felt like he was wearing his mother’s kitchen sponge, but as he looked around, he forgot about the cold and wet. The trees had no leaves on their clawing branches, and the bushes, with their twisted, finger-like extensions, seemed ready to follow the fence’s example with poisoned thorns—

Overhead, lightning flashed.

Good thing Gordo also jumped.

“Where is the place?”

“Up here,” Tiller said, even though he didn’t know where they were going.

As they continued on, he let Gordo keep hold of the night vision cam and the EVP recorder because he was trying not to run back for the fence, and not sure whether he was going to win the argument with his feet. The deeper into the acreage he went, the more he just wanted to get the video and send it to the seventh grade group chat and have this shit be done with.

“How far is it?”

“Not far.”

Except the trek felt endless, and the trees seemed to move all around them, and Tiller started to lose faith, too. So he fired up the EMF reader on his phone and swung the sensor around, the beeping noise making him think of that submarine movie his father liked to watch, the one with that guy, Stewart Seagal or whatever. The ghost-hunting app, which he’d installed for free, made him feel like he had a flashlight—

The howl came from over to the right. And it was loud and long. And it didn’t sound like just a dog, even a big one like a German shepherd or a Rottie. Whatever was making that noise was much larger.

Tiller grabbed for Gordo, but the kid did the same thing at the same time, so he wasn’t a wuss. As his phone shook in his hand, he almost dropped it. Which would have been a month without his iPad. Or longer.

“I want to go home.”

Gordo sounded like a damned baby. Except, yeah, Tiller wanted his mommy, too, not that he was going to say anything about that.

“It’s just piped in,” he blurted.

“What?”

Tiller shoved the kid off. “Like how they do in haunts to scare people going through the mazes. That wasn’t real. Come on, like there’s a wolf inside this fence?”

“You think there’re speakers in the trees?”

“Just keep going. Jesus.”

Tiller put the phone back up because he needed to look like he was in control. Otherwise, he was going to lose Gordo and have to do this alone. And he was not not sending the video—

“I’m out,” Gordo announced.

Turning around, Tiller marched back to the kid. “You want to look like an idiot after we didn’t jump into the quarry this summer?” He and Gordo really should have just frickin’ done the dare. Then they wouldn’t be here. “We promised the footage, we’re going to get the footage. Besides, nothing is going to happen.”

He grabbed Gordo’s arm and dragged them both forward. When more lightning flashed, they both squeaked and ducked down. Tiller recovered first, and he kept ahold of the other kid. No fucking way he was going to let his cover get away. If something went wrong, he was faster than Gordo and it was like in Zombieland. Rule #1: Cardio—

“See?” Tiller said. “It’s just right there.”

His feet stopped, even though he’d intended to keep going. And Gordo didn’t argue with the no-more-walking.

As thunder rolled through the dark sky, another flash lit up the looming structure before them—and the Willow Hills Sanatorium got way too real. The rotten old building was twice the size of the school they went to, with five floors and two big wing-thingies. Broken windows, busted shutters, and nasty stains running from the roof all the way down to the weeds made the place look like it was possessed.

And maybe that was true, Tiller thought as he took in the empty eye sockets in the towering wall of the centerpiece.

“What’s that?” Gordo mumbled.

“What’s what.” God, he should have brought… well, he shouldn’t have come here at all. “What’s your problem.”

Gordo shook his head. Standing there in his Minecraft sweatshirt, with his shaggy brown hair in his scared eyes, he reminded Tiller of a fence post jammed into the ground.

The kid wasn’t looking at the building.

“There’s something over there.” Gordo raised his arm and pointed off to the side. “There are eyes between those trees…”

Tiller swung himself around—and there it was. A set of yellow eyes glowing in the shadows.

“Fuck this,” Gordo yelped as he dropped all the equipment and tore off.

For a second, Tiller stayed right where he was, his body incapable of motion. But then the snarl was low and carried the promise of sharp fangs and bloody stumps and—

Tiller tripped over his feet as he started to bolt away, and when he landed hard, he lost his phone. But he couldn’t worry about that. Lunging back up, he ran like his life depended on it—because it fucking did—and he didn’t care how long he was going to be grounded or how many weekends he was going to have to work for his dad in the yard to pay for a new iPhone.

He just wanted to get home without being dead.

And so he ran, ran as hard as he could, back for the fence, to the tear in the metal twists. To his friend. To his house, where wolves didn’t howl and didn’t snarl and kids didn’t accept dumbass dares that took them into haunted places on Halloween with the least courageous of the neighborhood’s group of seven boys…

In the aftermath of the rushed departures, the snarling in the barren tree line stopped. And then there was a pause, followed by moist cracking sounds, a groan or two, and a ground cover shuffle that was easily drowned out by more of the thunder’s lazy, snoring travel through the ionized air molecules of the storm.

A moment later, a pair of muddy bare feet walked over to the 8S, and a human-like hand reached down and picked up the cell phone. The ghost-hunting app made a frantic beeping sound, and as the wolven turned the sensor to himself, the damn thing lit up like a Christmas tree, screaming with warning.

The male chuckled.

Until a menacing, female voice said behind him, “Don’t you have somewhere to be down in Caldwell?”

The wolven glanced over his naked shoulder and flashed fangs white as morgue shrouds, sharp as surgical instruments. “I’m going.”

“Just keeping you on time. You know what you have at risk.”

“Yeah,” was his muttered response. “You’re good like that.”

CHAPTER TWO

Trade & 29th Streets

Caldwell, New York

Ainhoa Fiorela Maite Hernandez-Guerrero knew she was being watched in the alley. As Rio stood in the shadows thrown by a fire escape, she could feel the eyes on her, and she slipped her hand into the pocket of her leather jacket. The nine millimeter autoloader was small enough to hide, deadly enough to defend.

What more did you need in a gun, really.

Looking around, she was aware that she was alone in a way that made things dangerous. It wasn’t that nobody was around. She just couldn’t trust anyone who—

Spaz came shambling around the corner into the alley, his stained peacoat and paper-thin jeans the kind of wardrobe he’d have to go to a landfill to update. The man was only in his mid-twenties, but the drug lifestyle was a nonbiological cancer, eating his body and mind away, only a husk remaining.

Until such time as even addiction couldn’t animate the shell anymore.

“Hey, Rio, you got anything?” he asked.

She glanced behind her and prayed that the supplier contact she’d come here to meet was late. “Not on me, no.”

“So, yeah, listen, Rio, you gotta give me some business. I mean, I’m good. I can handle myself. I mean. Come on. I can sell for you regular.”

Spaz’s watery, bloodshot eyes circled the alley in the manner of bats, flapping around in a disorganized way. She was willing to bet that the last time he truly focused on something was the first time he’d put a meth pipe to his lips.

As a wave of exhaustion came over her, she said, “You think Mozart doesn’t know what you did with that last piece we gave you to move?”

“I told you two days ago, the guy jumped me. He took the shit after he got me.”

Dirty fingers lifted up an old Soundgarden t-shirt that had more holes than cotton fibers to it. “Look.”

She didn’t need to lean forward to see the line in his skin. It was about an inch long, off to the side above his hip, and the thing had the red puffy profile of infection.

“Spaz, you gotta get that looked at.”

“I don’t have medical insurance.” He smiled, showing cracked teeth. “But I could get some. If you give me—”

“It’s not up to me. You know that.”

“So talk to Mozart.”

“He does what he wants.”

Spaz’s Ping-Pong-ball pupils got in the vicinity of her face and hovered around. “Can you give me some money, then.”

“Listen, I’m not—”

“I gotta pay someone back. You know how it goes. And if I can’t get the product or the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Glossary of Terms and Proper Nouns
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Chapter Twenty-Five
• Chapter Twenty-Six
• Chapter Twenty-Seven
• Chapter Twenty-Eight
• Chapter Twenty-Nine
• Chapter Thirty
• Chapter Thirty-One
• Chapter Thirty-Two
• Chapter Thirty-Three
• Chapter Thirty-Four
• Chapter Thirty-Five
• Chapter Thirty-Six
• Chapter Thirty-Seven
• Chapter Thirty-Eight
• Chapter Thirty-Nine
• Chapter Forty
• Chapter Forty-One
• Chapter Forty-Two
• Chapter Forty-Three
• Chapter Forty-Four
• Chapter Forty-Five
• Chapter Forty-Six
• Chapter Forty-Seven
• Chapter Forty-Eight
• Chapter Forty-Nine
• Chapter Fifty
• Chapter Fifty-One
• Chapter Fifty-Two
• Chapter Fifty-Three
• Chapter Fifty-Four
• Chapter Fifty-Five
• Chapter Fifty-Six
• Chapter Fifty-Seven
• Chapter Fifty-Eight
• Chapter Fifty-Nine
• Chapter Sixty
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright