by RJ Blain
I snarled at him, too.
Elliot scowled at me, crossing his arms. “They’re not going to hurt the you or your puppies. Relax.”
If I relaxed, I couldn’t stand guard, but thanks to the wolfsbane, my body betrayed me, and I went limp on the blankets. A sigh slipped out of me, and I closed my eyes. I managed to curl around my puppies before Elliot’s command lulled me to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
When I got a hold of Elliot, I was going to give him a piece of my mind. I’d do more than give him a piece of my mind. I’d find some way to make his entire existence miserable—Richard’s, too.
Dunking the rats in the lake wouldn’t do any good; the bastard water witch would enjoy it, and Richard was no better.
He liked it when the bitches in our pack got rough with him, especially Nicole.
While I recognized my reaction to my puppies being injured dove over the line into psychotic, there should’ve been limits to how much of a risk others perceived me to be, especially Elliot. I could accept him resorting to taking advantage of the wolfsbane to keep me from flying off the deep end and mauling the innocent witches helping my puppies. I could deal with it if I at least knew my puppies were all right.
I couldn’t handle being trapped in a cage because no one trusted me.
I howled my fury, and in need of an outlet, I punched my pillow.
Richard could clean up the disaster of down feathers scattered all over the bedroom.
If I hadn’t woken up in one of Yellowknife’s containment suites, things would’ve been much easier to accept. The silver in the walls made my skin crawl, and no matter where I went, I couldn’t escape the smell. Unlike other containment suites I’d been in, there weren’t any windows.
I understood them taking my puppies away so they could receive the medical care they needed. I couldn’t provide for them. I’d get in the way, hovering and growling while waiting to hear word.
One thing bothered me more than the rest, and I wanted blood over it. Waking up wearing the collar attuned to Elliot crossed every last one of my lines. No matter how many times I tried to remove the damned thing, I couldn’t unbuckle it or force it over my head. Chewing on the leather made my impotent human teeth ache along with my jaw.
To make matters worse, I had a roommate, and he didn’t seem impressed with my predicament. The fox sulked in a spacious cage tucked away in a corner of the sitting room. I doubted the real owner of the litter box would be impressed with the smell of fox all over her property. My first—and last—encounter with Cindy had ended in bared teeth and bloodshed. Last I knew, Lisa still wasn’t speaking to me for biting her cat.
If the cat hadn’t bitten me first, I wouldn’t have had to retaliate. Maybe the rest of Yellowknife’s pack feared Lisa’s demonic pet beast, but my wolf viewed the overgrown feline as an obstacle to overcome.
At least I understood why the fox was locked in the suite. Cindy ruled over Yellowknife’s pack lodge with an iron paw, and my prison was one of few safe places for the wild animal. What I didn’t understand was why Richard had decided to take the fox home with him instead of releasing the animal back into the wild.
Maybe I could teach them all a lesson by letting the fox out of his cage. A round of rabies shots might caution Richard and Elliot against leaving me collared when they could’ve taken the damned thing off.
I snarled and paced the suite, eyeing the walls as my frustration grew.
The fox chittered at me from his cage, pawing at the steel bars.
Once upon a time, I’d been just like the fox, pawing hopelessly at the bars of my cage. The Inquisition had owned the cell and had only let me out long enough to do their bidding before locking me away again, secluded and separated from the other Fenerec in its service.
Unable to tolerate the animal’s captivity a moment longer, I yanked on the latch, opened the door, and got out of the way. If the fox destroyed the suite, Richard deserved the repair bill for locking us in.
A growl slipped out of me, but instead of being frightened of me, the fox hopped out of the cage and sat on my feet.
I stared at him. He stared back.
“I’m not a chair.”
The fox pawed at my bare leg.
“I really hope Fenerec can’t get rabies, or I’m going to be the one getting shots. Is that really the thanks you’re going to give me for letting you out?”
Maybe Richard and Elliot had been right to lock me away if I was unstable enough to hold a conversation with a fox.
“You’re supposed to be afraid of me. Wolves eat foxes, you know. You’re delicious.”
Apparently, the fox was unimpressed with my implication he might become dinner. Instead of running away like a smart animal in the presence of a predator, he nuzzled my calves and whined.
According to my nose, the high-pitched, squeaky sound reflected the animal’s happiness, probably the result of being freed from his cage.
“Don’t get too excited. You’re still stuck in here with me.”
The fox didn’t seem to care.
I dislodged the animal with a gentle shove and stomped to the kitchen. Either Richard kept the prison disguised as a suite stocked all the time, or the bastard had planned to lock me away for a long time; everything I needed for a siege was inside the refrigerator and freezer.
The fox followed me, and the instant I stood still for more than a few seconds, he sat on my feet.
First, I’d make something for both of us to eat, then I’d figure out a way to break out of Richard’s basement prison. When I got my hands on him and Elliot, I’d make them regret isolating me.
Anger made way for anxiety, and with no outlet for my energy, I attacked everything in the fridge and freezer, prowling the suite when I wasn’t cooking, eating, or cleaning up after the fox.
The first trick I taught him was to use Cindy’s litter box. I hoped the musk of fox contaminated the plastic and pissed Lisa’s Maine Coon off so much the demon cat became a vessel for my revenge.
I had no idea how much time had gone by; none of the clocks in the suite worked. The minutes dragged into hours, and the hours stretched into an endless void.
At least I had the fox for company.
With nothing better to do, I named him Snowflake and filled the time teaching him tricks. He didn’t seem impressed with my efforts, but he tolerated my attempts to shake his paw.
When he refused to shake, come, sit, or do anything I’d seen people with dogs could make theirs do, I resorted to bribery in my effort to teach him something. When Snowflake wasn’t hungry, he buried my offerings under any surface he could, including the bathroom rug, the refrigerator, and the couch.
In one way, Snowflake reminded me of a wolf. Like the lesser cousins, he seemed to enjoy digging. The sitting room carpet fell prey to his claws first while I watched in silence.
While Snowflake dismantled the carpeting, ruined the rugs, and otherwise demolished the suite without me having to lift a finger, I prowled in search of a way out. Two pairs of slippers waited by the door, and I narrowed my eyes as I considered them.
I turned to Snowflake, who was busy attempting to shove one of the couch’s throw pillows under the refrigerator, leaving an explosion of fluff everywhere.
“Snowflake,” I called, crouching by the door and patting my leg.
The fox lifted his head, the cushion dangling in his mouth. With both ears pricked forward and whining eagerly, the small animal ran towards me, his head held high so he wouldn’t trip over his makeshift toy.
One pair of slippers had Richard’s distinct and rather strong scent, and I offered one to Snowflake. “Good boy.”
Snowflake dropped the cushion, made excited squeaking noises, and snatched the slipper out of my hand.
It lasted less than five minutes. Leaving the other three slippers for the fox to destroy, I cleaned up the fluff and put it well out of Snowflake’s reach. I didn’t know a whole lot about dogs or foxes, but I doubted it’d end well if th
e animal ate any of the stuffing. I watched Snowflake and smiled.
Revenge would be a dish served warm, fluffy, and too cute to kill.
The numbness of solitude settled over me long before someone remembered I was trapped in the suite with no way out. At first, the click of the lock and the creak of the door opening puzzled me. From my spot seated on the edge of the bed, I couldn’t see into the other room, but Snowflake barked and chittered to warn away the intruder.
“What the fuck?” Richard boomed.
I rolled onto the bed, grabbed the comforter, and threw it over my head. Instead of the relief at freedom from confinement, weary resignation smothered me.
Snowflake hopped onto the bed and wormed his way under the blanket, thrusting his cold, wet nose in my face.
“Vicky?”
While a protesting snarl would’ve been appropriate, I couldn’t dredge up the energy to do more than grunt, grope for the single surviving pillow, and bury my head beneath it.
Snowflake didn’t seem to mind keeping me company.
The bed shifted as someone sat on it. I couldn’t detect Elliot’s scent nearby, although hints of it clung to my Alpha. While faint, I smelled my puppies.
There was no sign of the silver that had almost taken them from me.
I should’ve felt something more than resignation. My experience with silver burns and poisoning told me at least a week had gone by—longer for younger Fenerec. Even with witches, even with doctors helping, and even with the best medical care, it took that long for the last remnants of silver poisoning to fade enough it couldn’t be detected by scent.
The last time I’d been shot, it had taken five days before the sharp stench of silver left my scent.
I had no doubt at least a week had gone by with only a wild fox for company. Why hadn’t anyone come?
Why hadn’t anyone at least told me what was going on or why I’d been imprisoned?
Nothing ever changed. In the end, I remained a rogue without truly belonging to a pack. Yellowknife was no different from North Fork. All of them tolerated my presence because of my puppies.
Some in North Fork had even liked me, and I missed them. The nagging fear I’d been walking down a one-way street, hoping in vain for acceptance, tightened my chest.
“I see you let the fox out of his cage.”
“How many days has it been? Or weeks?” I made no attempt to keep my bitterness out of my voice.
“It’s been busy.”
The silence stretched between us. While there was a lot I wanted to say, I couldn’t bring myself to mutter a single word of it. I believed Richard had been busy; Alpha males lived and breathed for their pack, and with two injured puppies to care for, he'd had no time to care for anything other than them.
Add in the fact his mate was gone because of me, and it was easy to understand why he’d been too busy to deal with me. While I’d met most of Yellowknife’s pack, my allergies kept them at a distance. I only knew some of them by name.
Of those I did know, they all had reasons to avoid me. Lisa wasn’t stupid. She knew I was responsible for her twin’s disappearance, just as I was responsible for Dante’s loss. A Fenerec losing their witch hurt, but the same applied to witches, too.
Amber wasn’t stupid.
The pack had plenty of reasons to lock me away and throw away the key.
“Aren’t you going to ask about your puppies?”
There was only one way I knew to protect myself, and that was to make as much distance as I could and wait out the storm. Maybe the pack had the right idea from the start.
If it hadn’t been for me, my puppies wouldn’t have been shot in the first place. I knew it, and I had no doubts they knew it, too.
“No,” I whispered, and I flinched at my broken voice.
Richard sighed. “They’re recovering at my house with Elliot. I need to get back. When you’re ready, Frank’ll drive you up on one of the snowmobiles. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”
When the bed shifted and Richard left, Snowflake wormed out of the blankets and followed the Fenerec, leaving me alone.
I had no intention of being ready, so I undid as much of Snowflake’s destruction as I could and, for the first time in a long time, shifted to my wolf without help. As Richard had claimed, the door was unlocked, so I left.
In order to protect the pack from dangerous Fenerec, Richard’s basement suite wasn’t beneath the lodge. Dim daylight gleamed on fresh snow broken by shoveled paths.
His caution made it easy for me to slip into the snowy Canadian wilderness. The driving desire to find my puppies wilted away to the weary acceptance I hadn’t done much for them.
All I’d done was kill a man. Everyone else had done the truly hard work.
Alex and Emily would be safer with Yellowknife’s pack. They’d be safer without me. With so many new faces, with so many other puppies around, I’d be nothing more than an afterthought to them as they recovered and discovered a new world to explore.
Unless I could find a way to escape the accursed collar around my neck, I was as trapped outside as I’d been inside. No matter how far I ran, it’d be trivial for the Inquisition to track me down.
While I was aware of my wolf, her melancholy matched mine, and she retreated to the recesses of my mind, leaving me to deal with the burden of living. I hunted, but the wise animals had left long ago and the few lingering birds were far out of reach.
The sun set, and once the last of the light faded, curtaining waves of green illuminated the starry sky. I found a spot on wind-swept stone and listened to the breeze whispering through the bared trees and pines.
While my winter coat offered some protection against the cold, it didn’t take long for the wind to work through my fur and chill me. I rested my head on my paws, aware of the collar’s pressure around my throat.
It would lead someone to me eventually, and I wondered how long it would take before they cared enough to find out where I had gone. In the morning, I would hunt again, farther from the pack’s territory where the prey lived.
My wolf cared for one thing: survival.
With Samantha, my wolf and I would’ve become one and run, embracing our nature without care for the human world, discarding our memories of it. Without her, my wolf understood what would happen to us, so she hid as she had when I’d been a child, lurking deep within, waiting to be released and welcomed into the world.
If I’d been truly human, I would’ve welcomed death over being an Alpha’s prized bitch, waiting for the day he deemed me old enough to claim as his mate. In a way, I owed the Inquisition for killing the pack that had purchased me.
They hadn’t been willing to execute me; Fenerec bitches were too rare and precious, and I’d only been a child in all ways.
It would’ve been a mercy if the Inquisition had killed me. Instead, they’d kept me, trained me, and locked me away when my wolf and I proved too aggressive and wild to be allowed to roam free and unchecked.
The years had blurred together when I had served to protect Normals from my kind, killing witches and Fenerec alike. Instead of wearing a collar, I’d been chained with the promise of death.
My wolf’s desperation to live bound me far more than the Inquisition’s threats ever had. Even with my wolf in hiding, I was aware of her desire to live, her need to mate, and her longing for puppies—puppies no one could take from us.
If Alex and Emily had been truly mine, would I have still been locked away without word? Would I have lost custody so easily? The courts hadn’t deemed me fit, favoring Markus’s better schedule and stability.
I hadn’t fought very hard, because I’d given them what I could, kept my distance, and let them grow without me smothering them—or them smothering me. In so many ways, I agreed with the decision, although the bitterness of being deemed unworthy, unfit, and unsuitable to care for the puppies remained.
Why did it seem like, no matter what I did, I was always in the way?
Maybe I’d b
een right all along. Running was so much easier than stopping to live in the moment. If I’d just moved on, Richard wouldn’t have lost Nicole. Elliot wouldn’t have lost Dante.
I wanted to change that, too, but what could I do? If I couldn’t be trusted with the puppies, why would anyone trust me to be involved with finding out what had happened to Nicole and Dante?
No matter what anyone said, I was to blame. If Markus had betrayed me and the puppies, I was the one responsible. I’d read the messages I’d sent to Markus. I hadn’t told him where I was going or why, but I’d told him when I’d be leaving and returning.
I’d led him to North Fork, too, and they’d paid the ultimate price for my mistakes.
The winter wind blew and brought with it clouds. When the snow finally fell, the storm didn’t call my name, as if it, too, knew my guilt and held me accountable for all I had done.
Chapter Fourteen
The rumble of an engine warned me someone approached long before headlights illuminated the powdery snow drifting from the sky. I bared my fangs at the intruder.
My nose recognized the strong cinnamon scent of another Fenerec, one of the Yellowknife pack males. It wasn’t Richard or Alex; I knew them well enough to distinguish them without effort.
He halted the snowmobile beneath my rock and snorted as he looked me over. “Don’t tell Richard I said this, but it’s so much fun watching you, Elliot, and those puppies turn his world upside down. I don’t think I could get this much of a reaction out of him even if Alex helped me.”
Frank, Richard’s Third, had limited his interactions with me to keep my allergies from flaring up even worse than they already did when I came to Yellowknife. I flattened my ears and watched him.
“Richard forgot you’re an Alpha again. I tried warning him he was making a stupid mistake. I warned him the day he flew you in, I’ve warned him every day since, and I reminded him of that before I hung up on him several hours ago. I was going to make him deal with the problem he’d made.” Frank pulled his helmet off his head and set it behind him on the seat. “Then I remembered I was dealing with Richard, so here I am. It’s forty below, and I’m pretty sure my ass froze to the seat an hour ago. A blizzard is going to hit in the next few hours. Please come back to the lodge.”