“This was the only choice. I have the most immediate and significant leverage; myself. Nothing else would have convinced him. I had to do it to protect us all, and if you really think about it, you’ll see that. He’d have killed all of you and taken me, anyway. He was ready to kill us all over that stupid, useless peace treaty … except for me. I had to do something. Using myself as a bargaining chip was the only way to ensure that you’d all be safe. He got to feel like he was in charge, like he had control, and he lost no face in it.”
“Yeah, especially when he kissed you,” Elon grumbles.
Roman closes his eyes, repulsed, and Teague looks away from me for a moment.
“You might have been trying to save all of us, but Isla got taken in the deal too, and now her life is in danger!” Conan’s voice is sharp; much sharper than I’ve ever heard it. It’s crystal clear that he holds me entirely responsible for his wife being taken and held hostage.
And he has every right, too.
I exhale slowly. “Conan, there was no other choice. I offered myself to save you all, and it worked.”
Isla jumps in to my defense. “Conan, stop. She didn’t volunteer me. He did that. It was all him.”
“Besides, I told him that no one from our pack is to be harmed in any way, or I won’t marry him. We’re safe. We’ll get through this.”
Roman’s hands grip mine so tightly that I have no doubt they’d have long since broken if I was still human. “We’re going to find a way to save you,” he says, his voice suddenly thick. “I’ll not let him marry you. You’re our mate, and we are committed to each other, the four of us. You might be marked to him, but you’re not his yet, and we’re not going to let you be his.”
“Please let me handle this,” I say, shaking my head. “I need you to trust me. I will do whatever it takes to keep you all safe, no matter what. That’s my priority. I have a family now, and I refuse to let anything happen to it. Will you trust me?”
Teague sighs and gives his head a shake. “We’re going to trust you, but we’re still going to get you the hell out of there.”
“We’ll get help,” Elon barks. “We’re not going to give up on you. I know there weren’t enough of us to take him and the rest of his pack back there, but we’ll find backup, and when we do, we’re going to take them all out, including him. I don’t even care if they can hear us in here. They should know we’re not going to just sit back and let this happen.”
“He’s right,” Conan adds. “It might just take a little time.”
I take a half step back, prying one of my hands away to take one of Elon’s. Teague reaches out to rest a hand on my shoulder, and for one long moment we just look at each other.
We look at each other knowing everything we’re saying tonight, right now, it all means nothing.
We can make all the promises and proclamations we like, but the truth remains the same. Tonight, I go with Rylan … and unless something near-miraculous happens, I’m going to be his bride.
“We’ll be just fine,” I assure all three—no, four—of the men.
Even when I’m not sure at all.
One of the hunters comes to us from the door where they’ve been watching. “All right, that’s enough. Time for you to leave.” He nods once, his arms crossing over his stomach as he fixes the four men with a stare that practically dares them to try something.
Thankfully, as much as I sense Roman wants to, none of them do.
We all hug goodbye, and it’s horrible to feel the boys wrench themselves from me. We’ve never been apart since I turned, not like this, and it’s excruciating. They keep looking back at us as they’re hauled reluctantly from the room.
The last thing I see is Elon, one hand pressed to Roman’s shoulder as he uses him as leverage to catch one last glimpse at me before the door shuts behind them.
Isla turns to me with tears streaming down her cheeks, and I hug her as tight as I can.
“We’ll make it through. You’ll see. It’ll all be okay. I’m going to make sure of it,” I vow to her. She can hear the assuredness in my voice and feel the strength emanating from me.
Strength that’s false. It’s a mask, and I know it—but still I force it forward. I press the other thoughts back.
“I’ve needed to hear that for so long. You have no idea,” she murmurs back to me.
I realize then just how truly alone she’s been, even long before now—trying to lead a fractured pack, trying to run it all on her own while she’s pregnant and Conan raises their other two kids. She’s missing out on so much time with them and making almost no headway with her leadership because almost no one will take her seriously. She’s not the true alpha, and no one hesitates to reminder of that.
Constantly.
Rylan walks into the room and stops a few feet from us. We turn to face him, holding on to one another.
“Rylan, I’ve said that I’ll marry you. You can feel me. You can sense that I’m telling you the truth. I want you to let Isla go. She has children at home who need her. You can’t keep a mother from her babies. Please, let her go,” I implore. It’s a ploy to use her kids in the plea, but he doesn’t know how seldom she sees them, and it’s true that they need her.
“No,” he states evenly, watching me like a hawk. “She will be released the day after the wedding when you are my bride and my queen. After the wedding night when you have given yourself to me completely and you are mine. Then, and only then, will I let her go.”
I bare my teeth at him.
“If you harm her or any of our pack, I will not marry you,” I swear to him. He knows I mean it.
I can feel it. I can’t feel his emotions as well as my boys, but I can feel this for sure.
He lifts a brow and the corner of his mouth turns up slightly. “The day after the wedding.”
He leaves and I frown. I’ll have no recourse the day after the wedding. Anything could happen, and from what I know of him, it would.
More than that. I know that if he has the opportunity … it isn’t a matter of whether or not he will. It’s just a matter of when.
Chapter Three
Pale light filters in tiny spots through heavy gray clouds blanketing the world from horizon to horizon. The thunderheads reflect the weight of my mood and the gravity on my heart. There’s a veritable ocean of water above us in the sky, and we are sailing through the air beneath it.
Though sailing might not be the right word—because it implies I have any control in the matter. It’s more like I’m adrift.
It feels like everything is flipped. What should be below is above, and what was once above is now below. Nature is inverted, my life is inverted, and the future is clouded—unseeable and foreboding.
Expect the unexpected—a wise saying that’s nothing more than a fool’s errand. How can you prepare for something you’d never expect to happen? How can you prepare for something that literally has no precedent?
I was one month into finding out a whole supernatural world existed—one that I am now a part of—and now … now this? Now I’ve been coerced into marrying an alpha wolf shifter to save the pack I didn’t know existed until just weeks ago.
Weeks.
Before this, I never would have imagined making this kind of self-sacrifice. Not when every day was a sort of self-sacrifice. But meeting Roman, Teague, and Elon … it changed everything. Not just because they physically changed me, but because now that I know them, I can’t imagine a life without them.
Even if that life is reduced to seeing them in passing.
Whatever it takes to keep them safe, I’ll do it. I know they’d do the same for me. I know that right now, despite my protests, they must already be working on some way to free me.
But I, meanwhile … I need to just work on keeping them alive. Unless something else very unexpected happens, the Nashville pack doesn’t have the resources to take on Rylan. Not without losing, or at the very least taking on heavy casualties—something I’m not willing to let them
afford.
Because of that, Isla and I are now racing through the rain toward Rylan’s compound. Isla told me last night that it’s near Miami; not close enough to be involved in the city hustle, bustle, drama, and chaos, but still near enough to be convenient when needed.
And I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that there are a million and a half acres of everglades to hide in.
All I know is that it’s too far away from my boys—my life partners, lovers, best friends, and fated mates. Every single mile that takes me further from them makes me feel like there’s a tear in my soul that’s growing continually bigger, and I can’t stop it. The pain of this separation from them is the worst I’ve ever felt about anything in my life, and it’s taking everything in me to remain strong and determined through it. Or, at the very least, to make myself look strong and determined.
That conversion, pain into strength, is exactly what’s driving me to make this work and find a way through it all, whatever that might be.
Isla’s hand is in mine, and her head is on my shoulder. She didn’t sleep last night, but she’s so exhausted today that she finally just passed out on me. I’m relieved that she’s resting. She really needs it. Even in her sleep, my senses are flooded with her fear, grief, and worry. It’s a safe guess that there’s nothing and no one in the world that she hates more than Rylan, and now she’s been forced to be his prisoner until he lets her go.
Just like she always feared when she rejected him the first time.
I can feel that she doesn’t believe he’ll ever let her go, that he’ll ever truly honor his bargain. It only makes me more determined to ensure that it happens.
Hours pass and there’s still no conversation in the vehicle. No camaraderie like there is between Roman, Teague, and Elon. Even Isla has a relationship with the members of her pack—more like a family, a friendship than a strict hierarchy.
This silence, the heaviness that sits between Rylan and his pack, it’s bizarre to me. How can these people go so far without saying anything? Or are they silent because of Isla and me?
I focus my senses on Rylan, but he, like the weather outside, is difficult to get through. He’s cocky, but he sees it as self-assured. He’s controlling to a fault, but he sees it as leadership. He’s cold and unforgiving, but he believes that being strict sets specific boundaries in place, and when people knowingly cross those boundaries, they pay a steep price.
In his eyes, that’s fair. There’s so much more to him, but it’s difficult getting through the layers he has himself hidden in.
I think of one of those Chinese puzzle boxes; the kind that have so many intricate pieces so deftly fit together, hiding the treasure at the center. It takes a great deal of patience, effort, and time to get into them, figuring out how to open and remove each piece to get to the next piece, until one finally reaches the center, and is able to open the box and discover what’s inside. I don’t think there’s a treasure at the center of Rylan, but he is keeping all his secrets there in the middle, where even his own wolves can’t reach, where no one can sense what’s really going on inside.
That way, at least in his own head, he can be in charge and lead without anyone at all discovering his weaknesses. That’s what truly makes him undefeatable. No one can figure out how to take him down because no one can get through all his layers to find his vulnerability.
Roman and Isla and all the rest there in Nashville, they have so much to lose. Family. Love. Land.
But Rylan … he’s playing with none of that. He has all the advantages without any of the weaknesses that the rest of us do. The man with nothing to lose is truly the most dangerous man of all.
I stare out of the window as the world passes by in a blur; my heart aching horribly for the boys, for the family I’d finally found for the first time in my life, and for the unthinkable unknown I am racing into. Raindrops stream across the glass, blurring my vision like tears would if I let them fall, but I do not. Not tonight. I’ll never give that to Rylan if I can help it; allow him to see a weakness in me. There’s something deep in me that knows without a doubt that he would exploit it and use it to his advantage in every way.
My wall, like his own, is for self-preservation. If only I’d had a little more time to perfect it. I’d only just begun to learn when I was ripped away from my new pack.
I hadn’t even learned how to properly be a shifter. Something tells me I’ll be hard pressed to find such patient teachers in this new pack.
My new pack.
No. no—I refuse to think of it like that. Nashville is where I belong. Roman, Teague, Elon, Isla … they’re my pack. Not Miami. Not Rylan.
I have to remember that if I want to stay sane.
Twelve hours after we drove out of Nashville, the SUV arrives at a massive compound.
I had imagined in my mind what it might look like, but nothing could have prepared me for this. There’s a giant wall all the way around it, and it’s got to be twenty feet high. It’s made of stucco with small squared portholes in various places along the length of it so guards can keep watch over the world outside.
The walls form a giant square that must encompass at least nine city blocks. It doesn’t sound like much, but set here into the south Florida landscape of mangroves, Sawgrass, and flat endless stretches of land, it’s positively tremendous.
At each corner, and along the top of it at intervals, there are guard houses with two armed guards stationed in each one—at least. Two that I can see. My stomach drops at the sight of them. It makes me feel as if there is no way in and no way out for anyone who doesn’t have permission.
It’s a far cry from the Nashville pack headquarters. Where Roman’s pack was built for peace, it’s clear that Rylan’s was built for war.
No wonder even the demons fear him.
There’s nothing but Florida jungle around us for miles. No neighborhoods, or even neighbors, for that matter. Just green in seemingly endless colors, sizes, and shapes, in every direction, as far as I can see; which in truth isn’t that far because the growth is much too thick to see through.
The vehicle rolls up to a massive iron door, rusted to a ruddy chocolate brown from all the moisture in the air and the regular rains. It’s the same height as the wall, sliding gradually to one side as guards with their weapons ready stand on either side of the vehicle, gazing into it. They nod their heads at the driver and Rylan in the front seat, watching in more silence as we enter the grounds.
I look back over my shoulder at the iron door as it slowly seals us off the outside world, and immediately I know full well that I’m a prisoner here. Isla, who woke up a while ago and hasn’t spoken, gives my hand a tight squeeze. She’s scared. Really scared. I can feel it, and I know Rylan can as well. It gives him some measure of satisfaction to know it.
I can smell it on him, and it reeks.
A fire kindles deep in me, and I clench my teeth. How dare he feel that way because Isla is so afraid? It’s disgusting.
The car stops and I reach for the door handle, but before my fingers can even touch it, the door is pulled open and I find myself staring into the passive face of one of the guards who let us in. There’s no emotion. No smile, no welcome, no irritation, not even derisiveness; there’s just … nothing.
All I can feel from of this shifter is obedience.
I’ve never seen a dog this well trained.
For a second my mind flashes to the guards at Buckingham Palace; the ones they say never react to anything, who just stand there through rain or shine, night and day, at their posts. I think this guy could give them a run for their money.
He steps back, and we step out of the SUV. We only stopped twice on the drive, and while it’s a relief to stretch, it doesn’t feel good to be here at all. We’re in a massive courtyard, and everything around us is beautiful; every tree, every potted plant and flower, every terra cotta tile set into the ground or the walls, even the stunning fountain near us that rushes with the fall of water. The outside might be all wall
and guard towers, but the inside closely resembles a Spanish villa. It’s perfect, and for a second I’m amazed, but then I look more closely.
And immediately wish I hadn’t.
Beyond the facade of beauty, I see dozens of succubi and incubi in the shape of human bodies. Each is dressed in a simple beige gauze; a sort of housedress with a circled neckline, long loose sleeves to their wrists, and roomy material to their ankles. Their feet are in beige sandals.
It’s a uniform meant to keep them humble. There is no adornment on or about them, save for a red embroidered crest on the left side of their chests, over their hearts. I know instantly that it means their hearts must be loyal to Rylan. All of them keep their eyes and faces downcast, focusing solely on their work, and not on anything else around them. They work silently, not greeting one another, not speaking or calling out, not even singing or humming. They do not share gazes; not even with one another. They simply work hard in silence.
This is what Rylan wanted Delilah for. Turn a succubus, and you have an eternal servant.
It’s even better than a long-lived shifter—or a hunter, even.
For Rylan, anyway.
One of the guards gets into the SUV and drives it away, presumably to some hidden garage. It slips through a set of metal doors within the courtyard and vanishes.
The courtyard is surrounded on three sides by large buildings, also made of vanilla-cream colored stucco like the outer wall, and they reach two stories. There’s a balcony that faces the courtyard all along the second level of the buildings, and it seems to be connecting each of them with small bridges over the spaces between the structures. The roofs are terra cotta shingled on top, but all the supporting beams beneath them are made of dark wood, as is the balcony and the intermittent flights of stairs between it and the ground floor.
Shifters begin to emerge from doorways on both levels of the buildings, gazing at us with interest. At least it seems not every member of the pack here is a completely mindless drone.
Alpha Returned: A Rejected Mates Reverse Harem Shifter Series (Feral Mates Book 3) Page 2