Artem

I turned back to the room full of people. They were all afraid of me, that's for sure, but there were a few that were also very angry with me.

"Now, all of you are going to give me every scrap of information that you can remember. If you cooperate I will be as nice to you as I was the old man. If you fight me-." I trailed off and looked in the direction of the dead woman's body where it laid sprawled on the floor. "Well, I am sure you can guess what would happen." More fear seemed to enter the eyes of all of those in front of me.

I went to them one by one and spoke to them, scenting them also while I was at it. Most of them were oppositional but still spoke, those ones also happened to smell like the rotten son of bitch I was after. Those who spoke freely with not a shred of hesitation or opposition, those were the ones that didn't smell like something rotten. Was it the corruption that was truly making them smell like that? If so, if that truly was the way to tell people in this family apart, then we had just found a massive weapon for us to use in this fight.

None of the people left had anything else to add that the old man or dead bitch hadn't been able to tell me. I had a feeling the old man would eventually be a treasure trove of information. We just needed to find my girl first then we could have a nice long talk with him.

After the remaining women proved how useless they really were I decided to set Morgan to watching over them while I swept through the house myself. I wanted to search every nook and cranny for some sort of information that would lead me to the crazy asshole and my beautiful Star.

The first floor proved useless with nothing more than a scattering of living rooms and sitting rooms to go with the dining room and kitchen. There was a laundry and some bathrooms as well, but nothing that gave me any information on Howard's current location.

The second floor had mostly bedrooms and bathrooms. I searched them all, wondering if I would find something of Howard's, still nothing.

The third floor seemed to be one giant bedroom that used to be an attic. It was like it had been converted into this space by someone deranged. And it seemed like it was Howard's place, judging by what was in there.

There were pictures of Star in an album that ranged from when she was a newborn to right before we rescued her. I wouldn't have known the baby pictures were her though, if they hadn't been marked so clearly. But she was an adorable baby.

Some of the pictures from when she was younger had a beautiful woman smiling in them with her. That was most likely her mother. Star didn't look too much like her mother, just a little around her eyes and her smile. The rest she must get from her father.

That reminded me though, the old man said that Star's mother admitted to the fact that her father was not a wolf. If he wasn't a wolf then what was he? Who was he? Answers to that would probably be found back wherever Star's mother lived before she came back here.

And why had she come back? That was another oddity. She had no reason to yet she still did. I wish she was around to answer these questions for me.

After searching the upper floors I searched the basements. There were actually two of them. There was a basement toward the front of the house that looked like a normal cellar with things stored down there.

The second cellar was at the back of the house, near the door I had run into Star at. The long, narrow stairway led to an almost empty room that was still filled with Star's scent, even after her time away.

There was a ramshackle cot, so old it looked like it would fall apart if I sat on it. My only guess with that was that Star was so small and light from being malnourished that the damned thing was able to bear her weight. There was a bucket in the corner of the room that looked like it was meant to be Star's bathroom. Aside from that and filth there was nothing else. This was the place that Star had grown up, this was the place where she had been imprisoned.

I never thought I would see this place. I never wanted to. I never actually wanted any of this to become real to me. I didn't want to see what she had gone through because it would only make me angrier at her family.

What was fueling my rage and hatred even more though, was that I could smell blood in this room. I could smell that they had beaten her in here and left her to heal on her own.

Star was healing better now. Now that she has been able to eat more and get stronger. But I remember when she first came to us, how long it had taken for her leg to get better. An injury that would only take most shifters a day to heal took Star four days. That was four times as long.

And oh Goddess, how badly had she been hurt in that accident? I smelled her blood too. I know she was injured again, but how badly. I needed to find her. I needed to get out of here and find her right now.

There was nothing left here for me to discover anyway. I had known that the moment that the bitch had told me that Howard wasn't here, but I still needed to look for myself. I still needed to check everywhere. Now, I was leaving with someone who held vital information as well as some things of Howard's that might shed some light onto this situation.