by Peyton Bogue
“I can’t breathe,” he says harshly into the darkness, and he feels his breaths start to quicken as his panic swells, unable to fight his terror. Every slight pull on his chest makes his muscles seize up uncomfortably.
“Relax,” Steele says, and a second later, light overtakes the room, and Sage closes his eyes from the harshness of it. He squints, and when he fully focuses his vision after a few more seconds, Steele’s smirking face greets him. He’s still wearing his suit from the masquerade, but the top few buttons of his gray dress shirt are undone, his tie is hanging loosely around his neck, and his suit jacket is slung over his shoulder.
He looks absolutely delighted as he stares down at Sage with a maudlin grin.
Sage looks around the room quickly, darting his eyes around the blank walls, intimidated from Steele’s guileful grin. He needs to remember this information.
They might be in a warehouse of some sort, but there aren’t any windows for him to look out of to try to identify his surroundings. All he sees is open space and concrete when he looks around again. The lights above them are paneled into the ceiling, but they aren’t very bright when he glances at them.
A chill runs down his spine, and Sage feels his body begin to shiver. Wherever they are is extremely cold. He doesn’t think that they're in a freezer, though. The room he and Steele are in is way too spacious. They’re definitely in a warehouse.
“You humans are so trivial,” Steele says, and Sage draws his attention back to the werewolf blearily. “Dreaming about your old war days, Cap? For someone who says they don’t like revisiting the past, you sure as hell are quick to project it, aren’t you?”
“What?” Sage asks him. Steele’s words sound muffled, as if he’s speaking to Sage through a door, but when Sage looks at him again, Steele is still standing where he was when the lights turned on. They’re both settled in the middle of the room, but Sage can’t look behind himself from where thick ropes are keeping him restrained to what feels like a metal chair.
“Jesus, have you learned nothing from that Alpha of yours?” Steele laughs sardonically. Sage scowls at him. “Projecting. You practically forced me into that dream with you. I decided I needed to. . .spice things up a little bit.”
Sage doesn’t dream about his time in Afghanistan often. The dream he’s just woken up from, however, wasn’t like the usual nightmares he normally has. He’d dreamt that Steele had killed him. And Steele is the one who made him dream that.
Sage didn’t even know werewolves could do that.
“Stay out of my head,” Sage snaps at Steele, thrashing against his restraints again. More pain erupts over his chest.
“That’s hard to do when you leave your mind open for anyone to walk into,” Steele replies, his smirk widening.
Steele is clearly much more knowledgeable than Sage had given him credit for. He didn’t know that werewolves could invade his thoughts like that. God, has Rhys ever done that to him before, or has he ever—
Rhys.
Shit.
Sage’s breath catches in his throat.
“What did you do?” Sage asks Steele harshly, thrashing again. Everything floods his mind again. The ball. Rhys threatening to kill Steele the next time he saw him. His broken wrist. His totaled Camaro. “You ran me off the road!”
“You’re not that surprised, are you?” Steele asks him, crossing his arms and chuckling. “You know me better than that, Kaelan. I was threatened. And I didn’t have enough time to come up with a better plan.”
I’ve been watching you all, Steele had said at the ball. If he’d been watching them, he would've known the make and model of the car Sage had driven. He would've known that Sage was supposed to drive Hazel to the precinct right after the ball. He might have even overheard them when they were all still talking at the masquerade. Sage didn’t know where Steele had disappeared to after Rhys had threatened him, but he shouldn’t have assumed that Steele had actually left. God, it’d practically been effortless for him to get Sage alone. He’d known when the best opportunity was.
And, shit. Hazel. She’d been freaking out. She’s most likely received medical attention by now. Maybe she’s even already called Kai like Sage had told her to. Someone has to know by now what had happened to them. Someone knows that he’s missing.
Rhys is going to be livid.
“What’s your big plan now then, Steele?” Sage asks him, scowling even as his heart races. “You’ve kidnapped a police detective. The whole precinct’s going to be looking for you.”
“I don’t care about the cops,” Steele chuckles. “I’ll kill anyone who comes near this place. Don’t condescend to me.”
“You should have run when you had the chance, Steele,” Sage bites out, smirking. “My team knows that I’m missing, and they’ll find you. Better yet, Rhys knows my scent. He’ll come for me. And when he does,” Sage’s smirk widens, “he’ll rip you apart.”
“Oh, believe me,” Steele replies, grinning wickedly, his voice like ice in Sage’s veins, and Sage’s smirk falters. “I’m counting on it.”
◆◆◆
Sage doesn’t see Steele for the next couple of hours. After he gives Sage one last menacing chuckle, Steele disappears behind a heavy metal door, and Sage blinks in shock as Steele practically vanishes right in front of his eyes. He shakes his head afterwards, tugging at his restraints again.
His right wrist throbs and aches, and his head pounds as his vision becomes spotty. He’s probably got a concussion. His wrist is already broken, but Sage thinks that his right shoulder might also be dislocated, and both of his legs hurt when he tries to move them.
It’s quiet in the warehouse. No matter how hard Sage tries to strain to hear voices or sounds, he doesn’t hear any noise. He doesn’t smell anything around him, either. It’s as if his senses are dulled from the crash. His vision is blurry, and all he tastes is metal in his mouth.
Sage might be bleeding somewhere. He feels something trickle down his cheek, and when he glances down, a small pool of blood has started to collect on his good shoulder.
He’s still wearing his suit, but the entire garment is a bloody and soiled mess. His dress pants are ripped at the knees. His jacket is shredded from the glass of the windshield. His white dress shirt is covered in blood and his vest is torn. He doesn’t know where his tie is.
He curiously sweeps his eyes over his body, assessing his injuries. Besides his head and arms, his chest burns painfully, and his throat feels as if it’s on fire. He might have a bruised rib, and Sage doesn’t want to think much about how he sometimes coughs up blood. He might have internal injuries.
Sage shoves those thoughts away, then begins to sweep his eyes over the warehouse. Focus, he thinks to himself. What’s going to help him get out of this situation?
He doesn’t really find anything that could answer that for him as he carefully assesses the warehouse. Besides the fact that he’s currently tied to a chair, there aren’t any windows he could smash, and another sweep of the room tells him that there aren’t any sharp tools to help him cut the ropes of his restraints. He can’t easily defend himself if he’s tied up like this.
There are a couple of sheets covering something around the spaces Sage’s periphery that he can see, but he has no idea what’s underneath them. It doesn’t look like he’s going to get much help from anything around him.
He tries to think, but every time he moves his head, his vision starts to blur, and sharp pain erupts beneath his skull. He knows he isn’t really aware of his surroundings. He can’t make himself focus. He’s definitely concussed.
The only thing that he can remotely feel comforted by is knowing that he’s still got his wolfsbane in his breast pocket. A press back against the metal chair tells him that Steele has stripped him of his gun and his cell phone, but when Sage peaks into the pocket of his jacket, he sees that the pink herb is still tucked safely inside of it. Rhys was right; Steele probably doesn’t know what wolfsbane is.
The though
t of Rhys makes Sage's heart clench in his chest. If Sage wasn’t so stubborn, he might have been at the nearest hospital right now. Rhys would be holding his hand as a doctor fit his wrist for a brace or wrapped it up in plaster. He’d be fussing over the finger-shaped bruises on Sage’s neck from where Steele had choked him, and Sage would've had to give Rhys a kiss to get him to calm down. Rhys would glare at the nurses stoically as they explained to Sage that he needed to keep his wrist as stable as possible to allow it to heal correctly, and Sage would just squeeze Rhys’s hand reassuringly to get him to stop looking so murderous. Rhys wouldn’t let him drive home, but he’d hold Sage’s good hand the entire drive. They’d probably be wrapped around each other for the rest of the night, and Rhys would be so gentle with his touch so that he doesn’t accidentally put any pressure on Sage’s wrist. They’d be together.
Sage shakes his head when his eyes start to become watery. It’s not going to do him any good if he lets himself get emotional right now. He has to believe that Rhys knows what has happened to him by now. He has to believe that Rhys is coming for him.
He glances at the wolfsbane in his pocket again. He can’t do anything with the herb if his hands remain tied behind his back. He’s going to have to somehow get out of the ropes.
Sage blacks out again at some point, but eventually, Steele comes back into the room, entering with the same abrupt flourish that he’d left with some hours ago. This time, he’s wearing a black shirt and tactical pants. He looks so normal and mundane that Sage wants to strangle him.
“You’re looking peaky,” Steele tells him as he grabs a hold of Sage’s chin and tilts Sage's face side to side. Sage scoffs at him, trying to pull his face away. Steele tightens his grip.
“Don’t touch me,” Sage hisses, and Steele laughs.
“What are you going to do, Cap? Break my other hand?” Steele asks, lifting up the hand that Rhys had broken. Sage hadn’t seen it earlier, and while Steele’s hand is red and swollen, it doesn’t look nearly as bad as Sage would expect it to look. Not with how hard he knows that Rhys snapped the bones. Steele’s hand shouldn’t look that. . .healed.
Sage scowls at Steele when Steele laughs again, and he doesn’t really think before he licks over his bloody teeth and spits. His saliva hits Steele right in the face. Sage grins.
Within a split second, Sage is gurgling around blood in his mouth. His jaw aches, and he gasps at the throb of pain that bleeds out over his mandible. He coughs, and blood splatters across the concrete.
It takes him half a second to realize that Steele has punched him.
“You really want to antagonize me,” Steele starts, gripping Sage’s chin again, and Sage groans as sharp pinpricks erupt over his jaw, “on the night of a full moon?”
Sage’s entire body freezes.
Steele gives him a menacing smile. “Go ahead,” he says mockingly, “try to piss me off again. Let’s see how much you can take before I break you.”
Sage doesn’t say anything, and Steele grips his chin tightly before he shoves Sage’s face away. The force of the shove has Sage biting back a sob.
Sage watches as Steele turns around and walks a few steps away from him, taking out a small, brown leather bag from his tac pants. Steele’s eyes snap down to Sage, and he rolls his eyes.
“Don’t give me that look,” he tells Sage dramatically. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”
Sage ignores him. “How long have I been here?” he asks, spitting out more blood. This time, he aims it towards the concrete. His cheek stings as he purses his lips to clear the metallic taste from his mouth, and Sage feels blood run down his face. The force of Steele’s blow has split his cheek open.
He snaps his eyes back to the werewolf, but Steele looks completely at ease as he shrugs. “A few hours,” he says contemplatively. “Give or take.”
“How long,” Sage bites out, and Steele smirks.
“The sun’s up,” Steele replies, shrugging again before he starts to open the small cloth bag in his hands.
Sage bristles. That’s why Steele’s hand looks as healed as it does. If the sun’s up, Sage has been in this warehouse for at least ten hours. It was only nine o’clock when he and Hazel had left the ball. Steele had time to heal. He’s had ten hours to heal.
Sage must have been blacked out for longer than he had thought.
“You passed out when I dragged you out from that car,” Steele tells him, and Sage glares at him. “From the blood loss,” he adds with a smirk when Sage scowls.
“What exactly do you hope to accomplish here?” Sage asks him, and Steele gives him another devious look as he crouches down towards the concrete only a few feet away from Sage. “I mean, you’ve kidnapped a cop. That’s a felony. You’ve injured another police officer—”
“Injured,” Steele scoffs mockingly, giving Sage a cocky grin. “How do you know that crash didn’t kill her?”
Sage thrashes against the ropes, ignoring the pain that erupts in his chest once more. Steele laughs, then begins to pour the contents of the bag over the concrete floor. The powdery substance is a dark green, but it’s so concentrated it looks like it could be black. Steele begins pouring it into a circle.
“Relax,” Steele tells him. “Your lady friend is fine.”
“What do you want?” Sage scowls at him. “What’s the point of all of this? Are you trying to intimidate me? I’ve got news for you, Steele. You don’t fucking scare me.”
“Liar,” Steele says softly, almost gently, as his menacing voice caresses the concrete walls.
Sage’s heart accelerates. He can’t hide his bodily reactions from a werewolf.
“If you were trying to kill me when you crashed my car, you’re going to have to do better than that,” he hisses, and Steele looks at him again as he finishes up the circle. His eyes are electric blue, and it sends a tendril of fear down Sage’s spine.
“All in good time, Cap,” Steele responds, throwing the cloth bag off behind one of the sheet covered items. “You’ll die soon enough.”
“That’s the plan?” Sage asks him, glaring.
“Part of it,” Steele replies, standing to his feet as he surveys the circle of powder. It’s only about three feet wide, and Sage watches as Steele reaches his hand that isn’t broken out towards the barrier. The sound of sizzling flesh startles Sage as Steele’s hand meets the invisible barrier, and he hisses, stepping back quickly. A grin spreads out over his mouth.
“What is that?” Sage asks.
“So many questions,” Steele says, shaking his head. He holds out his hand in front of his face to look at it, and the skin of his hand begins to knit itself back together.
“If you actually answered me, maybe I’d stop asking,” Sage bites out.
Steele’s electric blue eyes snap to his. “If you haven’t figured everything out by now, you haven’t been paying attention. Some detective you are, Kaelan,” he chuckles sardonically.
Sage struggles against his restraints, panting when pain races through him yet again. “Please—”
“Please what?” Steele asks him, a low growl in his throat. “Let you go? Rhys hasn’t found you yet, Kaelan. Have a little faith.”
“That’s what you’re trying to do?” Sage asks, scowling as he strains his hands against the ropes. His broken wrist aches. “You’re using me to lure him here?”
“Careful, Cap,” Steele chides, taking a few steps forward before moving behind the metal chair. Sage tenses when he can no longer see him. The ropes around his hands tighten. “You don’t want to hurt yourself more, do you?”
“What are you trying to do?” Sage hisses. “What are you going to do to him?”
Fingers tighten in Sage's hair and yank hard, and then his head is being pulled back harshly. His neck strains roughly at the pressure. He groans in pain when Steele asks, “Isn’t it obvious?”
“You want his territory,” Sage bites out over the burn in his throat.
“Come on, Sage,” Steele laughs in his ear. “I
t shouldn’t take you this long to catch up.”
“What are you going to do?” Sage repeats, thrashing against the hand in his hair. “Hurt me so that he’ll give it to you? Even if you do kill me, he still won’t give up his territory.”
Steele chuckles lowly in his ear. “Who said anything about him giving it to me?”
Sage’s heart stops beating.
“I’m going to take this territory from your Alpha,” Steele says, his voice like venom in Sage’s ear. He pulls Sage’s hair harder, and Sage bites his lip hard enough to bleed so he doesn’t scream out. “He’s going to find you, Sage. He’s going to accept my challenge.”
“And then what, huh?” Sage asks harshly, his heart in his throat as black spots scatter across his vision. “What’s your big plan?”
Steele lets go of his hair roughly. He moves, and when Sage sees Steele’s electric blue eyes again, there are claws at his throat.
“Patience, Cap,” Steele says slowly, running his clawed index finger right over Sage’s jugular. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
And, for the second time in less than twelve hours, Sage blacks out again.
◆◆◆
“It’s been ten hours, Kai,” Rhys says, fighting to keep his voice low. He can’t look away from the window of the precinct as he clutches Sage’s dog tags in his hands. His eyes are glued to the Camaro outside of the window. The forensic team still hasn’t moved it from where it’s wrapped around the light pole.
Rhys tries to take a deep breath. He can’t get himself to calm down. His mind is racing, and his wolf is outright growling beneath his skin. He can feel how furious it is. The pull of the moon lies just beneath his wolf, and Rhys has to close his eyes harshly when he feels that telltale heat behind his eyes as they begin to bleed red.
“Ten hours,” Rhys repeats, growling lowly. He doesn’t care if anyone hears him.
“I know, Rhys,” Kai replies, his voice pinched.