by Lola Gabriel
His eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly and he frowned, not sure what to make of what he was seeing. The warehouse had definitely been used for storage in the past; the walls were lined with rows upon rows of shelving units. But the shelves were all bare. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had seen the two men leaving the building, he would have assumed it was just a spare building, surplus to the pack’s requirements. But why would the two men have been in here if the building wasn’t used for anything?
He stepped a little further in, his curiosity aroused, and that was when he saw the three women chained to the ground. His blood ran cold as he saw them. He and his pack had known for some time that Alex’s pack was killing humans. There had been a run of torn up remains found. But he had never even considered that Alex and his pack were behind the disappearances in the city. The disappearances usually were closed quickly, an assumption made that the people had moved on. No one ever came looking for them so it made sense. But Grey now saw that there was another explanation.
Alex’s pack was careful, choosing victims that no one would miss. Choosing newcomers to the town, or people with no families or close friends here. And they were keeping them alive, prisoners. Using them for entertainment purposes. He shuddered at the thought of what was being done to the three women in here.
He took a closer look at the women. Their eyes shone in the dark room, each of them peering back at him. His eyes were instantly drawn to the one on the left. She was gorgeous. By far the most gorgeous woman he had ever seen. Even chained up and imprisoned, her beauty radiated out of her. Her long brown hair was shiny and Grey wanted nothing more than to run his fingers through it. Her eyes were a pretty hazel color, and her figure was perfect with curves in all of the right places.
Grey’s wolf stirred within him, as excited at the sight of the brunette as he was. Even this one glance told Grey everything he needed to know. Whoever that woman was, she was meant to be his mate. He knew it. His wolf knew it. She was going to be his.
He took a step closer to the women, trying to establish how he could get them free. All three of them shrank back as he approached them and he held his hands up in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.
“It’s okay. I’m going to help you,” he said quickly.
“Why would you do that?” the black-haired woman asked, eyeing him suspiciously as he came closer.
“Because I’m not one of Alex’s pack,” he said. “I’m here to learn Alex’s habits so I can take him down. His reign of terror has gone on for long enough.”
“Why should we believe you?” the same woman asked.
He answered her question, but his eyes drifted back to the brunette and he directed his words at her.
“Because I’m your only hope.”
The brunette met his gaze. She didn’t seem as afraid of him as the other two women did. Was it possible she felt this connection too? To Grey, the connection felt normal. He had always known the day would come when he laid eyes on the woman meant to be his mate. He had always known that he would feel his love for her envelop him immediately and it would be a certainty that she would be his. But this woman was human—Grey could tell by her scent. The scent of her was all he could smell; she filled his senses like she was the only person in the room. If she felt this connection, would it scare her? Would she think it was a trick?
She smiled at him as she looked deep into his eyes. Her cheeks had the slightest hint of pink to them. She was blushing. Maybe she did feel it too. If not the certainty Grey felt, then at least an instant attraction; something he could work with once he freed her.
“We can trust him,” she announced.
“You know him?” the third woman asked.
“No. But he’s right. He’s our only hope.” She looked down for a moment and then she looked back up at Grey, sending a shockwave of desire flooding through him. “And he has kind eyes.”
“Oh, well, that settles it, then,” the first woman scoffed sarcastically.
“Do you have any better ideas to get us out of here?” the goddess demanded.
“Ladies, listen,” Grey interrupted them. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I wouldn’t be too quick to trust a stranger in your position either. But you can either sit and argue about this, or you can tell me where to find the keys to your ankle cuffs. It’s your choice.”
“We don’t know where the keys are,” the goddess admitted.
“Right,” Grey said.
That made the idea of rescuing them a little harder, but he wasn’t going to just give up that easily. He thought for a moment.
“Okay. You’re going to have to leave the cuffs on. We’ll find a way to get those off later,” he said.
Even from this distance he could see the cuffs were solid. There was no way he could snap them off. Being a wolf shifter gave him more strength than the average human would ever have, but snapping four-inch-thick metal with his bare hands was too much even for him. He did think with a little help, though, he could break the chains, and once the women were free and away from here, hopefully they would trust him enough to come back to the hotel with him where he could use bolt cutters to get through the cuffs.
Grey moved to the nearest shelving unit. He studied it for a moment, and then he reached out and grabbed one of the metal supporting poles. He snapped it clean off. The unit teetered a little bit and fell back against the wall.
“Look out!” a voice said from behind him.
It was the goddess’s voice. He turned and saw the two men who had left the building earlier. They were back inside of it now, the sound of the unit clattering to the wall covering the sound of them entering. They looked at him with evil in their eyes, sick grins on both of their faces. They ran at him as one.
6
Ellery had been thrown completely when the door to the warehouse had opened and a new tormentor had entered. At first, she had reacted like Lisa and Ava, shrinking away from him, wondering what fresh hell this was. But then he had stepped into a ray of light cast by the moon from one of the small windows and she had gotten a proper look at him.
Her body’s response to the sight of him had confused her so much. He was gorgeous. There was no denying that. He had thick black hair and dark eyes, so dark that they, too, were almost black. His features were sharp and angular, but not in a scary way. They gave his face definition and Ellery had found herself wanting to run her hands over his sculpted cheekbones and over his square, perfectly symmetrical jaw. Her eyes had moved lower, taking in his tall, muscular body. Even through his clothes, Ellery could see the definition on his pecs and his abs, and his arms looked strong, the kind of arms that she wanted to be wrapped up in.
Her center had clenched as she took in the sight of the man, her clit throbbing with lust. She had been wet almost instantly. She had never had a reaction to anyone like that before. It was like she knew the man from a past life, and her body remembered him even if her mind didn’t. Her body responded to him completely, and every instinct in Ellery told her he was the one. That meeting him had always been her destiny; that everything that had gone wrong in her life up until this point had been a part of the universe’s plan for her, that it had been bringing her to this moment.
She hadn’t known how to process her reaction to the man’s physical appearance. It surely wasn’t normal to respond this way to someone who was almost certainly here to torture her and her new friends. Someone whose purpose here was to keep them prisoners and force them into a life as a mate to a man they had never met. Was she suffering from some weird, sexual version of Stockholm Syndrome? She didn’t know, but the strong attraction she felt to the man worried her. She felt like she was going mad. How could she be attracted to a monster, to someone who thought their treatment of people was okay on any level?
And then the man had spoken. His voice was warm, friendly. He didn’t bark orders at them and he didn’t berate them. Instead, he told them he was here to help them. Ellery had wanted to believe him so much, b
ut there was still a tiny part of her mind that was acting rationally, and she told herself not to be fooled by the man’s appearance. Just because he was good-looking didn’t mean he was a nice person. And the way he spoke, telling them that he wanted to help them—that could be a trick.
He had looked at Ellery, his eyes never leaving her, even when he was responding to questions asked by Lisa and Ava. Something in his eyes told him she could trust him. Maybe she was crazy and was just clinging to a tiny shred of hope, which would only be ripped away from her, but she didn’t think so. She thought the man was seeing her, really seeing her, and that maybe he felt this crazy chemistry the same as she did.
She had held his gaze, feeling her cheeks burning as he looked at her like he was looking into her very soul. And in that moment, she had decided to trust him, to trust her own instincts. She had told the others he had kind eyes. They didn’t seem convinced that was enough, but to Ellery, suddenly it felt like everything.
The man had told them he couldn’t open the cuffs without the keys, but that he would get them out of there and worry about the cuffs later. He had gone to one of the empty shelving units and for a moment, Ellery’s hopes were dashed. If he couldn’t see the shelves were empty, then how much help could he really be? But he didn’t waste his time searching the empty shelves for something that wasn’t there. Instead, he ripped off a long piece of the metal pole that supported the shelving unit, and Ellery saw what he was planning on doing: using the pole to break through their chains.
The door opened as he pulled the pole loose and Simon and Clive rushed in. Ellery knew if she warned the man, she would be punished, but how could she not? He was risking his life being here, trying to help them.
“Look out!” she shouted.
The man spun around, the metal pole in his hands. Ellery wondered for half a second how he was strong enough to tear the pole off the unit with his bare hands, but she didn’t have an answer to it, and she didn’t have time to think about it for long.
Clive and Simon looked at each with glee on their faces and then they turned to the man. As one, they advanced on him.
“Well, if it isn’t Grey Langdon. You never could mind your own business, could you?” Simon said.
Grey didn’t waste any time. He swung out with the pole, catching Simon on the cheek and knocking him unconscious instantly. Clive roared in anger, a roar that became an animal sound as he shifted into a wolf. Ellery’s jaw hung open as she watched him turn into a beast. It was a seamless transition. One moment he was a man, and then the next moment he was a wolf. Her jaw dropped even further when the pole clattered to the ground and Grey did the exact same thing.
The two wolves faced each other for a moment, their eyes locked on each other, both of them making low growling sounds deep in the back of their throats. As if acting on some signal Ellery didn’t see or hear, they both leapt into the air at the same moment, clashing together in a ball of teeth, claws, and exploding fur.
“He was telling the truth,” Lisa said, her voice sounding shocked. “He was really trying to help us. He’s a wolf shifter, but he’s not one of them.”
“How many wolves are there in this city?” Ava said to no one in particular.
Ellery could hear the conversation, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the wolves. She had completely lost track of which man had become which wolf. They looked so similar. Both of them had white underbellies and legs and both of them had grey fur along their backs and on their heads. They both snarled and growled and when they rolled closer to the women, Ellery shrank away, unsure of which wolf she could trust and which might take a bite out of her if given the chance.
Ellery was still hopeful. She had learned enough from the other women to know that this warehouse was far enough away from the wolves’ living quarters that no one could hear them, no matter how loud they screamed. That meant if Grey won this fight, no one would know, no one would come to end this. They could still escape.
Fear gnawed around the edges of her hope, though. What would happen if Clive won the fight? He would surely kill Grey, a thought that filled Ellery with despair despite the fact that she didn’t know anything about the man. And then the women would be punished, her especially for warning Grey. They might even be turned quicker than planned in case anyone else came looking for them.
One of the wolves went down. The other one pinned it to the ground, snapping its jaws above it. The wolf on top leaned down and tore a chunk from the other wolf’s throat. The wolf whimpered, blood running from the wound. Ellery felt a moment of hope flare inside of herself. Please let the wolf on top be Grey, she thought desperately to herself.
The hope faded away to an empty nothingness when the bleeding wolf turned back to its human form and it was Grey. The other wolf turned back into Clive. He kicked Grey hard on his temple and Grey’s eyes slipped closed. It took everything Ellery had not to cry out, but she knew if she did, she would get the same treatment.
“Fucking interfering do-gooder,” Clive muttered to himself.
He ignored the women and moved to Simon where he still lay, unconscious. Ellery hoped that was all Grey was, but she feared the worst. Clive tucked his hands into Simon’s armpits and began dragging him across the ground. As he reached the door, he looked at the women.
“I’ll be back in a moment with chains for our new guest. No one move,” he snapped, and then he was gone.
Ellery looked at the other two women and once the sounds of Clive’s grunting from the effort it was taking him to drag Simon away faded, they all jumped up and rushed to Grey’s side.
Ellery felt relief flood her when she saw Grey’s chest moving. The hole on his neck was almost healed, no longer bleeding. She glanced at Ava, confused. She was so sure she had seen Clive bite out a chunk of Grey’s flesh. Ava saw her confusion and explained.
“They’re immortal, remember? They heal quickly,” she said.
Ellery would have laughed at such a statement a few short days ago, but now she just nodded, accepting this as fact. The three women gathered around Grey, trying desperately to wake him up, but it was no use. He was out cold.
“He’ll stay that way until his body fully heals,” Lisa said. “I think.”
Ava stood up and began to move away from the group. Ellery saw what she was going to try to do at the same moment she saw that it wasn’t going to work. Ava was trying to get to the metal pole Grey had dropped, but her chain was too short.
“Dammit,” Ava cursed.
“Someone’s coming,” Lisa said.
The three women threw themselves back to their original positions. They must have guessed pretty much right, because Clive didn’t say anything to them about disobeying his orders when he came back in. Within minutes, he had installed a new ring in the ground and attached a chain to it. The chain was shorter than their chains, Ellery noticed. Clive dragged Grey’s body across the ground to the chain. He dragged Grey by his ankles rather than his arm pits, not caring that Grey’s head kept bouncing off the hard concrete floor. He snapped the cuff around Grey’s ankle and stalked out without so much as a backwards glance at the three women.
* * *
Ellery sat upright, listening to the deep, even breathing of Ava and Lisa as they slept. She could feel her own eyelids growing heavy and she craved the oblivion of sleep. When she was asleep, she could forget her fate for a while, but she wanted to be awake when Grey woke up. He had been unconscious for hours and she was starting to think he was never going to wake up.
She looked at him. He looked peaceful enough, not like he was in any pain. His face was relaxed and Ellery guessed he was around thirty, although he looked a little younger in sleep. She still hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling that they were somehow destined to be together, but she convinced herself it was ridiculous. As if someone like him would even notice someone like her. But he had noticed her. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her when he first got here. She shook the thoughts away. She had much bigger proble
ms than whether or not Grey found her attractive.
She reached out and gently shook Grey. She had been doing it regularly since Lisa and Ava fell asleep. He had never responded to her touch, but this time, he muttered something she couldn’t understand and rolled from his back to his side. Ellery felt hope blossom inside of herself again. Grey was waking up. She moved closer and shook his shoulder a little harder.
“Grey?” she said in a loud whisper. “Grey. Wake up.”
“Mm,” Grey muttered in a voice thick with sleep. He didn’t open his eyes and his breathing started to even out again.
“Grey,” Ellery said again. She moved her mouth close to Grey’s ear, wanting to wake him but not the two women. She shook him hard this time. “Grey.”
This time, Grey’s eyes came open. He sat up quickly, looking around.
“Do you remember what happened?” Ellery asked.
Grey nodded, rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning.
“Yes. Shit,” he said. He tugged on the chain connecting him to the ground. “I fucked that up in style, didn’t I?”
“Not at all,” Ellery said. “You put up a good fight.”
Grey shrugged, looking unconvinced.
“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” Ellery said. “You can get out of that easily enough.”
Grey shook his head.
“I’m stronger than a normal man but I’m not the Hulk,” he said.
Ellery couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Grey as the Hulk and he returned her smile.
“You can turn into a wolf,” Ellery said. “Your ankle will easily slip out of there.”
Grey shook his head again.
“I tried that the second my eyes opened in case that bastard was still hanging around. The cuffs have a silver core. It’s not enough to give me silver poisoning, but it’s enough to keep my wolf dormant,” he said.