I felt Dominic’s eyes on me and I dropped the pen, splaying my hands out on my desk, as I settled a glare on him. “Why doesn’t anyone in this damn pack know about this?”
Dominic stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, and then said, “Knowing Ray he probably didn’t want anyone to know they were his sons. It explains a lot, though. The team always looked the other way when Ray stepped out of line. It was smart not to let anyone know. Too many gray lines when you have that many blood relatives in power positions. If I’d known, I would have fought it, and I’m sure others would have, too.”
His weak explanation didn’t improve my mood, even if it did shed some light on why all those pack members had cowered back, clearly afraid to interfere, while Ray had been beating his mate. If the team had always looked the other way, then there was no one to have their back if the alpha abused his power.
I was starting to feel a bit ill. “Should I be worried about Jade out there with them?”
“No.” Tommy said it with certainty. “Landon and Mark are loyal to you. Beck is stuck in the middle somewhere, loyal to the pack and to his brothers, but he wouldn’t let any of them, not even Jared, touch her. He loves her, even if he isn’t sure about you.”
“None of them will talk about Jared,” Chris added. “They’re trying to cover for him. It’s pretty obvious he would love to see you dead. And Craig hates you for touching Erika.”
I leaned back in my chair. I didn’t know what surprised me more … that two of them were loyal to me or that two of them would be happy to see me dead. I guessed it could have been worse.
“Don’t blame yourself,” Dominic said after a stretch of silence. “When your mate’s ex-whatever-he-was wants you dead, he wants you dead. There’s nothing you can really do about it. And besides,” he shrugged, “Jared always wants someone dead. He’ll get over it.”
CHAPTER 25
~ JADE ~
I had expected to be taken to the last trail that was uncovered, or at least to the base of the mountain where the cougar tracks were thicker, but instead the team had turned off and headed straight for a new patch of land that hadn’t been searched. And I really didn’t like where they were planning on searching. We were heading straight into the hunting camps.
I knew that hunting season wasn’t open yet and that even if it was, hunting wolves was illegal, but even knowing that, it still didn’t seem like such a hot idea to go running into a place that potentially had men with guns.
But I figured the hunting camps were a good place to look. They had shelter. They had beds. And they were only used a couple weeks of the year.
Jared’s deep brown wolf led the way, keeping a muscle burning pace. The team stayed with him, running in a watchful silence. We ran for a solid twenty minutes before he finally slowed to a light jog and cut right, heading down a dirt roadway.
The roadway hadn’t been travelled recently, not a single tire track was pressed into the dirt. Trees hung overhead, and sprigs of weeds and grass had popped up sporadically down the center of the path. The forest was darkening quickly, the sun almost gone for the day, and skeletal shadows crisscrossed along the path in front of us.
Jared slowed again, veering left as he followed a bend in the trail.
And then the first camp came into view.
The building ahead had a rotting sign hanging over the door that read, Brinkwell. It was a large rustic looking cabin made of logs. There wasn’t much of a clearing, as if the owners had only cut down enough trees to make way for the structure, a few picnic tables, and a fire pit.
Beck moved in closer to me, hugging my side. He growled when I pulled back and away from him. It was a flat warning to stay close and he reinforced it by nipping at my shoulder.
I stopped dead, cocking my head to look at him. His eyes stayed on mine as he dipped his head, pressing his muzzle to the ground. His nostrils were flaring with each long breath he took. He nosed at a small pile of leaves, pushing them toward me, and I breathed in the scent.
There was, I realized, a faint trace of cougar on those leaves.
Jared growled and Craig, Mark, and Landon moved in around him. He pawed at the wooden door of the building, but it didn’t budge. His coat began to shudder and ripple. The dry crack of bones sounded loudly in my ears. His fur receded in a quick, clean motion. And then he was human, standing on the rickety looking deck. “Beck, don’t leave her side,” he said in a ragged pant, and then he shoved the door open.
~ AIDAN ~
“She’s not going to like this,” Dominic said, but he pushed the door open and hopped out of the car anyway.
I got out of the car, and pressed the lock button on my key fob. “Yeah, well, Jade’s worried about her and I need to talk to her.”
The Dog Mountain General Hospital didn’t look any different than a hospital in any other small town. The building was a non-descript brown brick structure. If it weren’t for the big Hospital sign, and even bigger Emergency Entrance sign, you wouldn’t have even really known it was a hospital. There were two parked ambulances in the lot and a few cars, most likely belonging to the medical staff.
As I walked through the emergency doors, people noticed me. Everyone knew who I was, what I was. I didn’t really like it, but there was nothing I could do about it. No one looked at me directly, but I could feel them watching from the corners of their eyes.
Mrs. Shaw sat behind the desk at the nurses’ station, and she looked up as the doors slid shut behind us. She didn’t smile as she said, “Hi, Dominic,” and then she gave me a curt nod, “Aidan.” She was an attractive woman in her late forties, dressed in bright floral scrubs. Her dark brown hair was tied in a tight bun. She looked a lot like her daughter, same big brown eyes, same nose and cheek bones.
“Hey, Mrs. Shaw,” Dominic said with a little wave. His tone was light, and he smiled. “Could you maybe spare a minute?”
“Depends,” she said. She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead she kept her cool brown eyes locked on me. “Is he here about my daughter or my husband?” Her tone was casual, sweet even, but her face was tight.
I approached the desk and leaned against it. Keeping my voice just as light, I asked, “Would it make any difference which one I’m here to talk to you about?”
“Yes,” she said tightly and nodded. “Yes, it would.”
“He’s here about the team, Mrs. Shaw,” Dominic said and smiled again. She didn’t smile back, didn’t even pretend to. “And about Jared stopping by to see Jeff this morning.”
Mrs. Shaw swallowed hard. Her entire body tensed, and then like a rolling wave, she relaxed. “As you can see,” she said, nodding toward the waiting room, “I’ve got work to do.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the empty waiting room and frowned. I hadn’t expected to get a no, at least not right away, and my heart sank a little. “Look, Pam,” I said. “We can do it now when your husband isn’t here, or I can come by the house later.”
“Where’s my daughter?” she asked, her voice cracking over the words. There was a subtle change in her scent, the tanginess of fear or paranoia, so light that I almost missed it, but it was there.
“She’s out with Jared,” I said, watching her closely. I leaned a bit closer, and dropping my voice low, I added, “And his brothers.” She stared at me for a long, hard moment. Her fingers were trembling now and the tanginess increased in the air. “I’m not trying to scare you, Pam,” I added, feeling more than a little heartsick. “Really, I just have a couple of questions and I promise you, your answers will remain confidential.”
I was pretty sure she didn’t believe me, but she let out a pent-up breath and her shoulders sagged as she gestured to the closed door of the triage station.
~ JADE ~
There were more hunting camps hidden in the woods than I had thought. Big log structures full of bunk beds. We’d found three more in the last two hours, all of them empty, but all of them had the same scent of birch bark and lemon and cat.
And it hadn’t been empty long. The scent was thicker here and it still clung to the grass and trees in the area.
We were getting closer.
The problem with getting closer, though, was that we learned some truths that I seriously could have done without knowing. One of those truths: they kept the women in cages made of thick barbed wire. We’d found traces of old human blood around the crude structures. And there were thick chains and long leather whips on the ground, the kind of whips you saw in the hands of large animal trainers.
It was best not to look at it. Better to keep going. Stay focused.
Beck stuck close to my side, so did Landon. Tension was running high within the team and I had a feeling that Aidan and Tommy were right; the tension wasn’t just from the hunt. The only one that paid any real attention to Jared was Craig, the others, stayed focused on me, and through me, on the hunt.
I put my nose to the ground, searching for the trail. But there wasn’t just one trail. There were many. Each one I followed wrapped around, branched off, met back up and then backtracked. Each loop took me back to the same place. To the cages.
I scanned the grounds again, looking for anything that I could have missed the first time. There had to be something. Had. To. Be. It just wasn’t possible for a full pack to vanish without a trace.
I trotted toward the base of a towering oak that was roughed with deep gouging marks. Someone barked, Beck nudged at my side, and I growled, snapping out at him to leave me alone.
The gouges looked like claw marks and they shot up into the low hanging branches. Could they have climbed the trees? They were big cats. They could climb, right? Leap from tree to tree, hiding their real trail.
Beck nudged me again and growled another warning. I dodged to the left, circling the tree, and backed up for a better look at the trunk. I heard the loud snap at the exact moment I was ripped from my feet and tossed into the air like a ragdoll.
And then I was hanging upside down, dangling by a leg about five feet from the ground.
Adrenaline took over. My bones began to remold, breaking and shifting, as I swung, bobbing, back and forth. As I finished the change back to human, sharp pain lanced through my leg as if a fireball had been shot within my body. The rope seemed as if it were tightening with each small movement, cutting deeper into my flesh. I screeched and my eyes stung with tears, and for a moment I lost my breath to the skin ripping, muscle tearing pain.
I couldn’t hear anything over the loud buzzing in my ears as my blood rushed to my head. Thick warm liquid trickled down my leg and I fought the panic that began to claw its way through my chest. I started to pull myself up, using my arms and abs. I needed to get the rope off. I needed to get down.
After a few grunts and a lot of muscle burn, I managed to loop my arms around my knees. And then I saw my mangled ankle. The rope had cut deep, hidden in my skin and under the blood and I lost my balance falling back to dangle again.
“I tried to warn you,” Beck said with a rumbling chuckle. “Next time, don’t shift. Your skin and muscles rip more easily while your body is reshaping.”
“Glad you find this amusing,” I snapped, fighting against the pain. I’d be damned if I was going to let him, one of the tough enforcers, see me cry over a little rope burn and cut.
Beck chuckled again, pacing around and staring up. I tried not to watch him, focusing on anything but his lean naked body or his wide muscular shoulders. And it was in that second that I realized that I was hanging upside down, stark naked. I felt a blush reach my cheeks and a whole new panic settled into my belly. My anxiety ratcheted up when the others gathered around him and started to shift. Laughter echoed through the air, hard and loud.
I should have stayed a wolf, I thought bitterly.
“This is so not funny, guys,” I hissed, folding my arms over my chest in an attempt to cover my breasts. “And it hurts like hell so get me down and don’t look.”
CHAPTER 26
~ AIDAN ~
“Well, shit,” Dominic said. “I really didn’t see that coming.”
I glanced over at my beta. He was grinning like a fool as we left the hospital. He walked beside me with restless, twitchy steps, as if he were itching to shift and burn off some energy.
“Really?” I asked. “’Cause I thought it was pretty obvious.” I dug in my pocket for my keys and unlocked the car. The headlights flashed, lighting up the parking lot.
Dominic laughed. “Yep, that’s right. You knew all along that Jared went over there to beg her father to help him get her back. And then when he said no, Jared tried to beat a yes out of him, because Jared’s always been the desperate type and it’s not like I can smell the stench of lies coming off you or anything.”
Okay, so yeah, it was a lie. Whatever. At least I was now certain that Jade’s mom knew nothing of what her husband was really in to. The woman truly believed he worked for my pack. And she also believed he was a good man. Knowing that lifted a little stress, although not enough.
I got into the car, slamming the door, and when Dominic jumped in he was still laughing. I narrowed my eyes at him and wondered if I just kept my mouth shut, if maybe, just maybe, the conversation would end.
When the silence stretched, he laughed. “Come on, Aidan, lighten up.”
“How I am supposed to lighten up about this?” I pushed back my hair. “Jade is just a trophy to him. A prize. Something to wave in my face. And she doesn’t see it. You heard what Pam said. Jared’s using her to get to me. The pain it would cause me was his damn bargaining chip this morning.” Oh, hell. I was really starting to feel like a failure. As a male. As an alpha. And it was burning away my sense of self-worth.
“Start by picturing Jared begging,” he said, chuckling. “Then picture the look on Jade’s face when you tell her about this.”
I winced and looked away. “I’m picturing the look, Dom, and it burns.”
~ JADE ~
Beck cut me down — literally — and I fell five feet, butt naked, into Landon’s arms. As I landed all I could think was thank God Aidan wasn’t around for this one. He would have lost his freakin’ mind.
Within seconds of landing, Mark had tossed a dirty old wool blanket over me, covering me up, and then Landon carried me inside the hunting camp. He’d put me down on a ratty old couch that had some odd patchwork pattern on it. The thing was faded and worn, but it was ridiculously comfortable, and after thirty minutes of sitting on it I was ready to take the ugly thing home with me. It was that comfortable.
Having the rope pulled out of my skin was not fun, and yep, I screamed and cussed up a storm. The raw gash it had left behind ran all the way around my ankle, and cut through the muscle, almost to the bone. But it was out now, the wound was healing, and the bleeding had stopped.
The guys had found some clothes: bright orange hunting jackets and coveralls. I felt as if I were drowning in them. The jacket was rough against my skin, and so were the stiff jean coveralls. But at least we were all clothed as we waited for my leg to heal enough to make the trek home.
A cold sweat broke out over my skin, as I shifted on the couch, placing my foot down flat, and put some pressure on it. Pain shot through my body like fire and I quickly swallowed the gasp. I’d been testing it almost every five minutes now, but still it hurt — bad.
“That’s going to hurt like hell for a few hours,” Landon said. He was hovering, so was Mark. It was getting close to suffocating. And each time Jared moved, they slid closer to me, pinning him with heated glares.
The only reason I pretended to ignore their crazy aggression was because they looked as if they were ready to smack Jared around, and my instinct was telling me that if I called attention to it, it would only make things worse.
“I’m good,” I hissed. “We’ve got to get back. Let Aidan know what we found.”
“Jade, you need to heal,” Beck said and gave me one of those firm big bro
ther kind of looks. He stood under one of the light fixtures and the way the light hit his face made his cheekbones look hollow and the creases above his brow, harsh.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I need to get out of here. Seriously, this place creeps me out.” I glanced over at Jared and wasn’t really surprised to see him still brooding, leaning against the doorframe. “You done searching the area?” I asked him.
He looked me over with cold, harsh eyes, and as he did, I tried to remember a time when he’d ever looked at me with even a sliver of warmth. I couldn’t. Jared didn’t do warm. His voice might heat a little, but that gaze was pretty much always cold. Right then, all I wanted was to get home and see Aidan. See his warmth. Feel some heat. I forced a smile, trying to show I was good to go, even if I wasn’t sure if I actually was.
He didn’t answer me and nobody else spoke up, so I finally said, “Jared, I want to go home now.”
Then, without breaking the cold eye contact, he pushed off the doorframe. He stalked toward me with a slow, predator-like grace, his lips lifting into a sly grin. “Your scent draws him to you, but does he love you?” His tone was flat.
I stayed silent for a moment wondering where the hell his question had come from. A flicker of unease tightened in my chest as he watched me expectantly, waiting. My forced smile faded and I frowned. “Yes, yes he does.”
“Then you don’t love him.” More coldness. God, I could almost feel it in the air, pulsing out from him.
“I do love him.” I said it fiercely, so fiercely that I was pretty sure I shocked the entire team. For a breathless moment they all turned to stare at me, stunned. The moment didn’t last.
Jared took another slow, stalking step and stopped smiling. “Then why haven’t you claimed him?” His question cut through me like a knife’s blade.
Deadly Mates (Deadly Trilogy) Page 18