Gabe's Bride

by Penny Alley

  “Maybe he only took the boy,” Sebastian called back, standing half in and half out of the driver’s open door.

  Gabe bent down, bracing his hands in the bottom of the trunk. He caught his first undeniable scent of her before his nose ever touched the carpet. “She was here,” he confirmed, shifting positions and breathing in again. “So was he.”

  “Deacon?”

  “Yes.”

  Squatting down, Colton fished the stolen car keys out of Marcus’s pocket and then caught a handful of his hair, lifting his head to expose the exit wound that robbed the dead volka of the left side of his face. He grunted. “Somehow I doubt he got what he wanted.”

  “Fuck what he wanted.” Gabe moved back then, dropping to the road to follow Deacon’s trail. “He took her in another car.”

  “Then she’s in Scullamy,” Sebastian guessed, stepping down off the running board to join them.

  Frowning, Colton stood. “If that’s true, she might already be dead.”

  Gabe refused to consider it. “No.”

  “Gabe…”

  “He’d have done it here if he was going to.” Gabe stood up, his eyes following the subtle tracks where the car had turned around and headed back to town. “He didn’t because there was no fun in a quick death. He wants to punish her first, and he wants to make it last awhile. He needs privacy for that.”

  Sebastian snorted. “Easier just to do it and be done. Keeping captives mean there’s a chance for rescue or escape. So, why bother?”

  His gut supplied the answer to that. “Because he’s a sadistic fuck. And because he’s her father.”

  His gaze snapping from the surrounding woods, Colton looked at Gabe.

  Sebastian tipped his head, as if unsure he’d heard him correctly. “We’ve had the daughter of the Scullamy Alpha in Hollow Hills for over a week and you never said anything?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Colton demanded.

  Sebastian tipped his head the other way. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why the hell would I tell you?” Gabe snapped at him. It was harder to meet Colton’s eyes. “I only found out this morning.” And then his temper erupted. “And no, I wouldn’t have told you even if I had known last week. I wouldn’t have had her six days—hell, I wouldn’t have had her two—if everybody knew! And what the hell are we doing just standing here?”

  Colton and Sebastian exchanged the same grim look. “What exactly,” Colton asked, “is your plan at this point? How far do you think we’re going to get before they know we’re here? Deacon’s not an idiot. He’s got to know we’re going to come for him. He’ll have sentries posted on every road between here and Hollow Hills, just waiting for us.”

  “He won’t have time to set guards if we catch up to them first!”

  “And do what? Run them off the road?”

  “I just bought this car,” Sebastian said. “I haven’t even put six thousand miles on it.”

  “Then it’s still under warranty,” Gabe growled.

  “And if we don’t catch them?” the eldest McQueen demanded. “What do we do then? Drive into the heart of enemy territory, smiling and waving at all the soldiers we pass on the way? Or hey, how about we drive right up to the compound—a militarized fortress that not even the U.S. government has the balls to mess with—and do what? Tweak Deacon on the nose and say, ‘Give us back the girl’?”

  “You knew from the start that our chances for surviving weren’t great,” Colton reminded him.

  “If I’d known our suicide was going to be this blatant, I’d have Tweeted about it before we left! Or hell, Claimed your chevolak back when I broke Jax’s arm. Then I’d have alphaship and none of us would be standing here now. Sucks to be your Bride,” Sebastian told Gabe, the sympathy flickering through his eyes as he turned away not enough to soften his tone. “We’ve got your boy. One out of two ain’t bad. Let’s get out of here.”

  “You want alphaship?” Colton turned on him, eyes hard and amplified by the thinness of his smile. “It’s not too late, McQueen. Help us kill Deacon and his son. We’ll put down the Scullamy army, and you can establish yourself as the new alpha here. You’ll never have to go back to Hollow Hills or deal with me and Gabe again.”

  Snapping around, Sebastian stalked back to him, his look of wonderment growing more and more irritated the closer he came. Until he stopped, almost toe to toe and nose to nose with Colton. Taller by at least two inches, his was a lean and wiry strength, one that Gabe had learned a long time ago never to underestimate. “I never wanted Hollow Hills, you idiot. What the fuck makes you think I want Scullamy?”

  “You keep threatening to take it,” Colton challenged.

  “Damn straight, I do,” Sebastian rumbled. “If you ever weaken, grow reckless, foolish, cease to take your responsibilities seriously, or put our pack at risk—”

  “The way I have tonight?”

  “—the way my father,” he spat, “did those last few weeks before he died, then yes, I will absolutely take it from you. But,” Sebastian softly added, “I don’t want the job. I’ll do it if I have to, but I don’t want it. Not in Hollow Hills and sure as hell not here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the strength of any good chief—that’s you, you jackass—is made great only through the strife and challenge of his dearest rival. That’s what I am. I will push you, challenge you, and I will make you great or I will destroy you in the process.” His lupine gaze slid from Colton to Gabe. “Both of you. That’s a promise solid enough to bank on.” Sebastian stepped back, waiting for a physical rebuke that never came. As the seconds bled into minutes, he repeated, “I don’t want Hollow Hills.”

  Colton closed the distance between them again. “Fine, then. Push me tonight. Take me into Scullamy and let’s finish this. One way or the other, it has to end tonight or by morning, we won’t have a home to go back to. Deacon will make sure of it. And besides, you’re wrong.”

  Frowning, Sebastian held his stare without backing down, but only for a minute. “Wrong,” he echoed.

  “The strength of any good alpha isn’t in his rivals,” Colton said. “It’s in the men who follow him. And you, my friend, you’ve been following me all night.”

  Glancing back at his brothers, still inside the vehicle and closely watching the exchange, he swore under his breath. “I’m just as stupid as you are,” he spat, marching back to the car.

  Following in his wake, Colton shot Gabe a victory smirk, though there was little amusement in any of this for Gabe. As they reached the rear door, unable to contain it any longer, Gabe’s hand shot out, covering the handle and holding it until Colton looked back.

  “You don’t have to go,” he said. Softly. It could almost have been begging. “Take Scotty. Go home.”

  Blinking twice, Colton turned to him. “If Deacon had Karly, would you go home and leave me here to face it alone?”

  A better man would have said yes. A better man would have said whatever was necessary to save his friend. More than just a friend, Colton was Alpha and alphas were never expendable. It was a humbling thing, knowing he was not a better man.

  Colton took his silence, accepting the answer it implied, and nodded. “Don’t you ever say that to me again.” Pushing Gabe’s hand out of the way, he yanked the back door and tossed Ian the keys he’d taken from Marcus. “Somebody needs to put the body in the trunk, stash the car off the road and out of sight, and stay here with Scotty while we go the rest of the way.”

  Looking from Colton and Gabe, to the keys in his hand, the pup in his lap and his eldest brother, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Ian took a wild guess at which someone had just been appointed to the job and scowled. “Who died and made you king of the fucked up rescues?” he grumbled as he got out of the car.

  Being dragged out with him, Scotty squirmed to get out of his arms.

  “Go with him, buddy,” Gabe told him. “Do exactly what he tells you to do, when he tells you to do it. I’ll be back as fast a
s I can.”

  He reached back, stretching until Gabe took his hand. “Are we still men of our word?” he asked, his somber face much too old for someone so young.

  “I’m not coming back without your mom,” Gabe said, giving his hand a squeeze before letting Scotty go.

  They were on the road with the lights of Scullamy appearing over a distant hill and nothing left to be seen of Scotty, Ian or the car behind them when Sebastian finally spoke up. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  “I didn’t,” Gabe said, watching the lights grow closer still.

  It had felt more like a prophecy anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Toying with the hem of her skirt, Deacon caressed Neoma’s leg, his fingertips drawing nonsensical patterns up and down from shin to ankle and back again. With every mile they drove, she could feel the effects of the paralysis wearing off. As the lights of the compound came into passing view of the windows, she gained enough muscle control to draw her leg off his lap. Without a word, Deacon pulled it across his thighs once more and pinned it there, two hands now instead of one.

  The car slowed for the checkpoint, decelerating just enough to allow identification to be made and for the long gate arm to rise. Past the waving guards, Alaric accelerated again and, finally, Deacon said, “I’m surprised you did not go with him willingly. Did he tell you he wanted to kill me?”

  Her tongue felt swollen, dry and stuck to the insides of her mouth. She worked to summon moisture, but none came and when she spoke, the shaky rasp that exhaled out of her barely sounded like her voice at all. “No.”

  “Hm.” He grunted, tickling lightly around her ankle. “You’re probably too young to remember, but he was born in Scullamy, oh…a long time ago.” His brow pursed. “I’ve been trying to remember his name, but it eludes me.”

  She licked her lips. “Marcus.”

  “That’s right.” He gave her shin a good-job pat, nodding. “Marcus. Not that it matters, but I won’t forget again. Marcus.”

  Her eyes burned, the unshed tears making it difficult to keep him from blurring out. She blinked to clear them, determined not to look away. Scotty was dead. He’d killed her son. Eventually, he would kill her too, but that didn’t matter. She felt no fear, only alternating waves of burning, shaking, nausea and rage. If the opportunity presented itself, if she saw the chance to strike first, she was going to take it. After that, she didn’t care what happened to her. The man she’d been afraid of all her life, she now hated with a helplessness and passion that made her feel sick. But then, that might also have been the drug wearing off.

  “I’ll bet he thought I’d forgotten him.” Deacon smiled, deceptively gentle. The corners of his eyes crinkled and he patted her leg again, his wandering fingers moving up to her bent knee. “There’s not a lot I bother myself to forget these days. Particularly not when those things might come back to kill me. Ah well, regrets and all that. As the song goes, I’ve had a few.” He looked at her fondly. “And you, you child, are both my worst and my best of them. The only one of my children to be worth the spawning.”

  He closed his hand around her ankle, seemingly captivated by the way his fingers overlapped even around the thickest part. “Had I found your mother sooner, I’d have taken a different Bride.” He grunted softly, arching both eyebrows. “Had you been born male, I’d have cast Lisbet aside, Jax and Joela with her, and I’d have made you both mine. Perhaps it’s for the best, hm? You’re trembling.” Taking advantage of that excuse, he slid his hand up her thigh. “No goosebumps,” he noticed. “And I can see the wolf burning in your eyes, so I know it’s not because you are afraid. That leaves either passion or fury. Let me guess. Do you want to kill me, Neoma?”

  “Yes,” she growled.

  He laughed. “Good girl. All teeth. You get that from me.”

  He tickled at her knee before hooking the lower hem of her sundress and pushing it midway up her thigh. When he paused to admire her, Neoma struck at him. It took every ounce of strength to lift her hand, but the muscle relaxant Marcus had injected her with still had her in its grip and she missed so wildly that he laughed.

  “That you get from your mother,” he chuckled, catching her wrist when she flopped her hand up to try again. So angry she was crying, Neoma twisted and growled, but he still pinned her arm to her hip and, with no further defenses to breech, gave the hem of her skirt a flick to bare her all the way to her underwear.

  “And there the similarities end,” he tsked. “Cotton. Your mother never wore cotton. But such is the state of things in backwoods country places, I suppose.” Covering her once more, Deacon patted her thigh. “Satins and lace, that’s how you should be dressed. If you’re good, I will see the situation remedied once you are again mated.”

  He turned his face to the window, fingers idly tapping at her wrist until, at last, he released her. Neoma lacked the muscle control to yank away from him. For some time, silence broken only by the angriness of her breathing reigned inside the car. Outside, passing lampposts alternately lit up the backseat and cast it back into darkness.

  “Mated,” he mused to no one in particular. “No doubt you’ll birth strong sons. I can almost see them, like little lions, at first clinging to your skirts, all grubby fingers and runny noses, and then guarding them as they grow. And none of them with any love for me.” His fingers rose, patting lightly down on her leg. “I wonder… I wonder how I shall ever stand to let them live.”

  Her skin prickled, and a cold that had nothing to do with the night crept through her. When he shifted narrowed eyes to look at her, it grew colder still.

  “Would you teach them to love me?” he asked suddenly. “If it were the only way to ensure their survival, would you do that, or would you leave it to me to teach them? As a father, rather than an alpha. Hm.” He thought about that. “Perhaps I should, not that I’ve had much success with it, you understand. Neither of my children bear me any affection. My son is an idiot. He has none of your courage and no mind for strategy. He thinks all he has to do is wait, that I’ll die and he can just step into my place.” He shook his head. “Jax could not catch a chevolak at the Hollow Hills’ Hunt without getting his arm broken. What use is a son like that to me?”

  The unpleasantness of his touch wasn’t just crawling on her skin now, it was burrowing underneath, chewing into her imprisoned legs and she couldn’t even kick. Her toes flicked when she tried, but that was all.

  “And Joela,” he tsked, worlds of disappointment weighing heavy in the sound. When he turned back to the window, the glow of a passing streetlamp lit his features, but only for a second. “She whores herself without discretion, accepting anyone she hopes might be strong enough to end me. It’s a tedious thing, keeping track of all those plotting beaus. But, unlike you—” Pushing her legs from his lap, Deacon took her wrists and heaved her limp body upright. “—she would never dream of killing me herself. My progeny,” he mocked, pulling her up to sit on his knee, a puppeteer with his favorite oversized doll. “My line is naught but weakness. It makes one think of dogs.”

  Neoma kept her head up, but only because he gripped her hair, forcing her to hold his stare while he adjusted her pose, closing her sprawling legs and laying her hands in her lap. She only pulled from his touch once, but every movement was a Herculean attempt that exhausted what little strength she had. Her back kept trying to slump. If not for his grip at the base of her scalp, her head would have fallen and she simply hadn’t anything in reserve with which to lift it.

  And yet, it was getting better. She no longer had to think about each breath before she took one, and she could move. Small twitches, discordant spasms of muscle that refused to obey her now, but which she hadn’t been able to control at all only an hour ago. Another hour from now, she might be able to Shift. If he still held her then—in his lap just like this, with his face so carelessly close to her own—she might just be able to kill him.

  “Do you know what I think about dogs?” Deacon a
sked, adjusting her dress for modesty with tiny tugs here and there. “I think about breeders mostly. Volka aren’t dogs, but I can’t help thinking the principle’s the same. When a line needs improving, you have three choices: crossbreed, linebreed or inbreed. Mating father to daughter will produce pups almost as strong as the sire, or so I’m told.”

  Neoma stared at him, sure the drugs in her system were now affecting her ears. But then he slipped his hand beneath her skirt to rest upon her knee and her stomach rolled. “I’d rather die,” she choked.

  Deacon arched both eyebrows, amused. “Your mother once said something quite similar. But you know, when it comes to dying—and in particular, to dying badly—they almost always change their minds.”

  The car slowed, the streetlamps giving way to fancier lantern-style lights on top of the perimeter wall they now drove alongside. Turning off the main street, Alaric stopped in the mouth of a circular driveway in front of an armed patrol. Releasing his grip on her hair, Deacon tapped a button and, with a hum of movement that pulled at her hair, the window she now leaned against rolled down. She panicked, afraid the support of the glass would vanish behind her and she’d flop backwards out the window. She couldn’t fall out of the car that way, but she couldn’t drag her head up either. She tried, but ended with her head bumped up against the side of the door before her chin rolled down on her chest.

  Opening the window just a crack, Deacon called to the nearest guard. “Are my children in residence?”

  “Yes, sir,” the guard replied, terse but respectful. “Your son never left today and your daughter clocked in at the gate a few minutes past seven.”

  “Please let them know I’ve arrived and congratulate me, Belfour. I’ve stolen a Bride tonight, and that’s practically a Claim.”

  “Many happy years and strong sons to you both,” the guard said expressionlessly.

  “Thank you.” Adjusting his hand behind her back, Deacon pulled her head up by her hair again. “Belfour has just paid you a compliment, darling. What do we say?”