by Lola Gabriel
He pulled the car up outside of the hotel and got out. He walked up to the door of the hotel and tried it. It was locked, like he had known it would be. It didn’t much matter. His plan wasn’t to sneak in and try to take Lewis by surprise. He knew Lewis would have security cameras around the place and Bastian was clever enough to have a real plan. He knocked on the door and waited.
After a few minutes, the door swung open and Lewis stood on the step, peering out at him. He frowned when he saw Bastian. Bastian smiled at Lewis.
“I take it you know who I am?” he said.
Lewis shook his head. “Nope,” he said.
“My name is Bastian. I am the alpha bear of District 212,” he said.
Lewis’ eyes widened slightly and then he smiled and stood aside, gesturing for Bastian to enter. Bastian nodded to him and stepped into the hallway. When he had found out what his father was doing and his father’s old beta had come to him and told him about the girl Lewis had for his father, he had also told Bastian that his father had never dealt directly with Lewis. It had only ever been through him. Bastian had hoped that this was true, because if it was, it would make this much easier. Lewis would assume he was an old returning customer and he would let his guard down much quicker. It seemed now that the old beta had spoken the truth.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lewis asked as he closed the door.
Bastian turned to face him.
“I thought it was time we met face to face,” Bastian said. “As I have a new proposal for you.”
“I’m listening,” Lewis said.
“I’ve decided it’s time to take a mate,” Bastian said. “You have always served me well in the past, and if you’re open to it, I would like to discuss the terms of you being the one to find me my mate.”
“Of course. It would be an honor,” Lewis smiled.
He stepped toward Bastian and Bastian tensed up, but Lewis made no move except to pass him in the hallway.
“Come this way,” Lewis said. “I have a photo album in the ballroom with some possibilities you might be interested in.”
“Possibilities?” Bastian asked, following Lewis along the hallway. “You mean girls you’ve already turned into bears?”
“No, no,” Lewis said. “These are girls I have sourced with the Sanmere protein in their blood. I have yet to acquire them, so the pleasure of turning them would be yours and yours alone. Unless, of course, you would rather I do the honors?”
Bastian’s stomach turned at the casual way Lewis spoke about the girls, but he bit his tongue. He had to wait for the right moment, make sure he caught Lewis completely off guard when he turned and took him down.
“I would do that part myself,” he said.
“I thought as much. It’s very different taking a mate with our old arrangement, wouldn’t you agree?” Lewis said.
“Oh, it’s worlds apart,” Bastian agreed.
Lewis paused at the end of the hallway and reached out for the handle of a closed door. He turned to Bastian and smiled.
“Now, Bastian, I must warn you not to set your sights on either of the girls already in here. Their buyers are already arranged. They really are beauties, though, and a good example of the caliber of mate you can expect from me,” Lewis said with a smile.
Bastian felt his stomach turn over again. Lewis had girls in there? He told himself to stay cool. That didn’t matter. Once he had taken Lewis out, he could free the girls. If they had buyers arranged, that meant they likely hadn’t been turned yet. They could go back to living their normal lives and if they went to the police and somehow got the police to believe them and come out here, they’d find no evidence of Bastian ever having been here.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
Lewis nodded and opened the door to the ballroom. He stepped inside and Bastian followed him. The room was large and bare except for four large cages made up entirely of metal bars. In two of the cages, Bastian saw women. One cowered away as they came into the room, but the other one ran to the bars and started screaming obscenities at them.
“Now, now, Sophia,” Lewis said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Is that any way to greet a guest? Luckily for you, our guest isn’t here for you, because hearing that foul mouth, I think he would likely feel the need to punish you if he was. We’re really going to have to work on that mouth of yours before your buyer gets here, aren’t we?”
Lewis turned to Bastian, ignoring Sophia, who continued to yell. He rolled his eyes.
“Honestly, some of these girls are barely civilized when they come to me. Don’t worry, though. By the time you take your mate, I’ll have made sure she knows how to behave,” he said.
Bastian flashed him what he hoped looked like a normal smile. He didn’t trust himself to speak at that moment in case he told Lewis what he really thought of him. Lewis turned away from him and the smile fell away from Bastian’s face as he followed Lewis across the empty room to a small desk he hadn’t noticed before.
“The album is right here,” Lewis said.
He bent down to reach into the bottom drawer, and Bastian knew this was his chance. He stepped closer to Lewis and brought on the shift. He felt fur exploding through his skin, his bones lengthening and changing, and within seconds, he was in his bear form. He roared and threw himself at Lewis. Lewis glanced back over his shoulder as Bastian roared, his eyes widening in fear. Bastian hadn’t given him a chance to shift himself, and when Bastian collided with Lewis, he was in his human form and fell to the floor easily. Bastian roared again, pinning Lewis to the ground with his front paws on Lewis’ shoulders.
He leaned down, his sharp teeth ready to tear Lewis’ throat out. The girls in the cages were screaming but Bastian barely heard them, focusing only on Lewis. He leaned closer, moving slowly, enjoying Lewis’ fear. He wanted him to feel that fear, really feel it, so that he knew how the girls he had taken over the years had felt when they found themselves in cages and being sold off to the highest bidder.
Bastian’s teeth were almost on Lewis’ throat when he heard a loud bang behind him.
“What the fucking hell is going on here?” a voice shouted.
Bastian glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes, roaring at the two men who had come into the ballroom unnoticed. Lewis took the chance he had been given, punching up into Bastian’s throat.
“Get this fucking bear off me!” he yelled. “I’m the only one who knows where the cage keys are kept, so if you want the girls you’ve paid for, you’ll help me.”
Bastian turned back to Lewis, howling at the pain in his throat but not letting it stop him. He brought his mouth down again, but before he could tear out Lewis’ throat, a roar came from his side, and then a warm body collided with him, throwing him off Lewis and sending him sprawling across the floor.
He sprang up and found himself face to face with two lions and Lewis, now in his bear form. He knew this wasn’t going to end well for him, but he was determined to take Lewis out before the lions could get to him. He roared and threw himself into the air, springing toward Lewis. The lions sprang up at the same time he did, and the three of them crashed into each other in midair. Bastian felt claws raking into him, teeth biting down on his flesh. He roared in pain and anger, trying to shake the lions loose from him.
He saw Lewis turn back into a man and run for the desk. He opened the top drawer and grabbed something and then he whirled to face them.
“Drop him!” Lewis yelled.
The two lions backed away from Bastian and he started toward Lewis again. Too late, he saw what Lewis held in his hands. A gun. He heard the loud bang as Lewis fired, and a second later, white-hot agony filled him as the bullet slammed into his skull. Everything went black.
* * *
Bastian woke up and rubbed a hand over his aching head. What the fuck did I drink last night? he thought to himself. He jumped to his feet, ignoring the headache as the events rushed back to him. He hadn’t been drinking. He had come looking
for Lewis. He’d almost had him too, but then two lions had shown up and held him back until Lewis was able to shoot him. At least it wasn’t a silver or Ure bullet, Bastian thought to himself. If it had been, I would be dead by now.
His momentary victory turned to horror when he saw his predicament. He was locked in one of the cages in Lewis’ ballroom. He ran to the bars and reached out and shook them, but they held fast. Bastian knew that even in his bear form, he wouldn’t be able to break through the bars. They were solid metal, made to hold shifters.
He looked around, looking for the two girls in the other cages, but the other three cages stood empty now. He patted his pockets, but he soon found that his cell phone was gone. He was trapped here, alone and completely at Lewis’ mercy.
As though the thought had summoned him (although Bastian thought it was way more likely that Lewis had seen that he was awake on some sort of CCTV system), the ballroom door opened and Lewis marched in. He smiled at Bastian as though he was greeting an old friend.
“Let me out of here right now,” Bastian demanded.
“I think we both know that’s not going to happen,” Lewis smiled nastily.
“So what? You’re just going to keep me here forever?” Bastian said.
“Of course not,” Lewis said. “What use would that be to me?”
Bastian wasn’t naïve enough to think that actually meant Lewis was going to let him go and he narrowed his eyes at Lewis.
“Right. So what’s the plan?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m going to kill you. I’m sorry. I thought that was obvious,” Lewis said.
“I suppose it was,” Bastian shrugged. “So what’s this, then? You just want to torment me for a bit first?”
“No,” Lewis said. “Believe it or not, I’m not into torturing people. This is a business, Bastian, nothing more, nothing less. Obviously I’m not going to let you ruin that, but please don’t think I take any pleasure from tormenting anyone, human or shifter. You’re being kept here simply because I didn’t have any silver bullets on hand. Don’t worry. I have some ordered and as soon as they arrive, I’ll put you out of your misery. In the meantime, I’ll treat you with dignity and respect, assuming you extend me the same courtesy. Can I get you anything?”
Bastian was both thirsty and hungry, but he wasn’t about to give Lewis the satisfaction of telling him that, so he simply shook his head.
“As you wish,” Lewis shrugged. “I expect you know you’re on camera.” He pointed up into the corner where Bastian thought he could just make out a tiny hole in the wall where a camera watched him. “If you change your mind, wave at the camera and I’ll come back.”
He turned and headed for the door. Bastian didn’t want to ask Lewis for anything, but there was one thing he needed to know, and he swallowed his pride.
“Wait,” he called.
Lewis turned back.
“What time is it?” Bastian asked.
Lewis checked his watch.
“Ten fifteen p.m.” He started to walk away again and then he glanced back at Bastian. “Oh. On Sunday. You were out for quite some time.”
He left the room and closed the door. Bastian sank to his knees, his hope leaving him in a rush. Even if he found some way out of here, which was looking less and less likely by the minute, he was too late. Rachel would think he had decided he didn’t want to be a part of her life, or of Stephanie’s life. And if he got to her now, she would never forgive him.
15
Rachel stepped out of the shower and dried herself off with a towel. She went to her bedroom and got into the clothes she had picked out for work last night. She dried her hair and applied her make-up, telling herself the whole time not to let herself think. She went down the stairs on autopilot, ready to make some breakfast for herself before getting Stephanie up and making her breakfast.
She poured cereal into a bowl and added almond milk. She sat down at the kitchen table with the bowl in front of her, and she realized that she didn’t have a spoon. She shrugged. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to eat the cereal anyway. It was Monday now, and the last she had seen of Bastian had been on Saturday at lunchtime. She had told him not to come on the Sunday if he wasn’t serious about being in Stephanie’s life, and she had meant it, but the way he had been talking, the way he didn’t hesitate before he told her he would be here, she hadn’t thought for a second he wouldn’t show up.
She had spent all of yesterday hanging around, waiting for Bastian to show up. She hadn’t given him a time, and it was well after two p.m. before she started to seriously think he wasn’t going to show. Even then, she had given him the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe there had been some sort of misunderstanding. She had remembered Bastian suggesting they take Stephanie to the park, and she had allowed herself a moment of hope where she told herself that maybe they just had their wires crossed. Maybe she thought Bastian was coming to the house, and Bastian thought they were meeting in the park. She hadn’t let the voice into her head, the one that tried to tell her that if that was the case, they definitely would have arranged a time. She had tried to call Bastian, but his cell phone was switched off, and that was when she knew for sure he wasn’t coming.
She had refused to allow herself to be upset, but last night when she had lain in bed, she had cried herself to sleep, no longer strong enough to stop the tears from coming. She’d told herself then that she would allow herself that moment of weakness, and then that was it. No more crying over Bastian. No more time wasted even thinking about him. It had been easy to tell herself that, but doing it was proving to be much harder than Rachel had thought it would be.
She sat at the kitchen table, staring into space, thinking of nothing but Bastian. Of the way he had held her. Of the way he had implied there could be a future for them. She had been the one to shut it down. Maybe that was it. Maybe he couldn’t bear to be there for Stephanie, to be around her if he couldn’t be with her. But that made no sense. Bastian didn’t give Rachel the impression he was someone who just gave up on something he wanted. He seemed like the sort of man who would fight for what he wanted. And she hadn’t imagined the love she saw in his eyes when he looked at Stephanie. There was no way he would walk away from her.
The more Rachel thought about it, the more sure she was that Bastian would have come here yesterday if he could have. Something had to have happened to him. She shook her head, telling herself she was clutching at straws, just looking for ways to let Bastian off the hook. But she didn’t believe it. Not anymore. Now that she had let herself explore the possibility that something has stopped Bastian from getting to her, her mind went to where he had said he was going. To take Lewis down. What if Lewis had overpowered him? What if Lewis had killed him?
She wouldn’t let her mind go there. It was too painful. She blinked, coming out of her daze. She knew what she had to do. She was afraid, but she had to know one way or the other. She had to let her bear out, trust her animal instincts. If Bastian was dead, her bear would know it. And if he was in danger, it would sense that too. She was confident her connection with Bastian was strong enough for that. She was just afraid to let her bear in.
She told herself Bastian was worth it, and slowly, she let herself relax. Rachel closed her eyes and took a deep breath and waited for the familiar stirring of her bear. Normally, she shut it down the second she felt it, but now, she let it come out further. As she did, she was filled with a sense of power, a sense of freedom like nothing she had ever known. But with it came something else. A certainty that Bastian was in danger. The bear side of her was restless, filled with adrenaline, telling her she needed to act. She held onto that feeling for another moment and then she swallowed hard, pushing her bear back down.
She got to her feet and went and got her cell phone. She called Doctor Monroe and apologized for the short notice, but explained that something had come up—a family emergency—and she needed a few days off. Doctor Monroe told her to take all of the time she needed and Rach
el knew then that the doctor had heard the desperation in her voice. She thanked her and ended the call, and then she called Lena and asked her if she could stay here for a few days and have Stephanie overnight. Lena agreed and said she would be there shortly.
Rachel felt better now that she had a plan in place. She went and got Stephanie up and gave her breakfast. She bathed her and got her dressed and then she sat down to wait for Lena to arrive. Once Lena was there, Rachel repeated her story about a family emergency and then she went outside, got in her car, and headed for Houston and the Bellevue Hotel, a place she had vowed never to set foot in again.
* * *
As Rachel had driven across the state, she had felt her sense of strength fading away, replaced by a fear that got stronger the closer she got to the Bellevue Hotel. She began to doubt herself, asking herself what she could do about this. How could she hope to overpower Lewis if even Bastian couldn’t? But she also felt her connection to Bastian growing as she got closer to the hotel, and she knew her instincts had been right. Bastian was alive. He was in the hotel somewhere and he was in danger. She had no real plan, no idea what she was going to do, but she knew all the same she wasn’t backing out of this.
When she reached the end of the dirt road, she parked her car and got out. She wasn’t going to make this too easy for Lewis by arriving in her car and letting him know she was here. She walked through the trees that lined the road, staying hidden but following the path so she didn’t end up lost. She came to the end of the path and she peered out through the trees, looking at the building where her whole nightmare had started. She felt fear flood her as the memories of Lewis grabbing her, scratching her, and biting her replayed in her mind. Her heart raced and her head spun dizzily for a moment. She reached out and pressed her palm against a tree trunk, taking deep breaths.