by Laura Wylde
Maybe it would be alright, perhaps Kayla couldn’t escape their trap alone, but if we put our heads together, we could do it. She was whip smart and I was fiery as hell. Together, that would be a good combination. And if there were other women there, trapped in what I could only assume was some deviant hell hole, then we could make it all happen together. I would get back to my life in New York. Nothing would stop me.
A finger brushed my shoulder, sending an ice cold bolt of fear racing to my core. My legs took off quickly without me even needing to think about it. I moved and moved, slamming from side to side, hitting every inch of the tunnel until I knocked into the side of someone warm. A warm body which could only belong to another human.
“Argh,” I gasped, almost screaming. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I…”
“Reese?” The voice which replied chilled me to the bone. I actually couldn’t believe it. It took me a couple of seconds to wrap my head around it. “Reese, is that you? I thought it might be when I heard the voice but…”
“Kayla!” Tears flew down my cheeks now, I couldn’t stop them. She was here. All of that wasn’t for nothing.
I leapt forward to wrap my arms around her, but something stopped me. A large round belly pressing into me, meaning I couldn’t quite reach her. In my half delirious state, it took me a couple of moment to process this.
“Oh no, Kayla,” I party wept. “What did they do to you? Did they… did they…?”
I couldn’t even get the question out, it was far too sickening. The thought that I might have sent her out into this mess was too much to handle. I funded the trip, sent her out here into the middle of nowhere without even considering the potential danger that I could have been sending her into. Now, it was all I could think of. Kayla was here, having fuck knows what done to her and another member of her team had ended up in a mental institute with endless panic about monsters. This was really fucking bad, it was time for me to find a new game…
“Reese, this isn’t what you think.” Kayla took my hands gently. “Just come with me. Let me show you.”
Uh oh. Was she now a part of this? I’d read about this in the news, but I didn’t realize it could come true. Women were kidnapped and brought into some kind of horrific situation, then manipulated into bringing other women into the mess. I couldn’t imagine many females passing this way since none of the tours from the city came passed here – for reasons that I could now understand – so, I was probably one of the first.
I should have run. I needed to get the hell out of there, but for some reason, I ignored every instinct and I allowed Kayla to continue taking me to the end of the tunnel. I was in so much shock that I didn’t even realize the other two men had joined us until the light infiltrated my irises once more and I readjusted to the light.
Antonio wasn’t with them, but he’d likely scarpered once it was obvious the guys had me. He did try to warn me against coming, I suppose, but he didn’t fight me hard enough. Then again, he seemed to be a part of this.
“What… what is this?” I gasped as I looked around at what Kayla was trying to show me. “A court yard?”
But it wasn’t just a court yard, that was just a small part of what appeared to be a thriving city. A city that sure as hell wasn’t on the map when I examined this area in detail. It was a secret, for some reason. There had to be something untoward about this place or it wouldn’t be hidden in the middle of the jungle, shrouded by ancient ruins that seemed to be far more of a disguise than an actual feature. I had to hope it wasn’t long until I worked out what it was.
“Kayla… what…what is this?” I whispered to her. “What are they doing to you here?”
I glanced at her, immediately shocked by how much she’d changed. Not only from the pregnancy which had given her a heathy roundness and a beautiful glow but the expression on her face as well. I always thought that she was happy as she worked, that was where she seemed to get the most of her joy from, but that was nothing compared to this. She seemed full of a real, genuine joy. There was a lightness to her steps, a bounce, as if a weight had been lifted.
“I am sorry, Reese,” she replied, making my blood freeze over. Now was the moment I got ambushed and thrown in a cage somewhere. “Sorry I lost communication with you. That was never my intention.” She sighed loudly, a glimpse of regret crossing her expression for just a second. “I feel terrible about the botched expedition as well. You funded it and didn’t get anything from it. I didn’t want to steal your money like that. If I could pay you every penny back, then I want you to know that I would. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, it was a surprise…”
“But what happened?” I demanded, still unable to wrap my head around it. “What is this?”
I looked around again, amazed to see such a thriving place way out here. Although it had a tribal feel to it where food appeared to be grown, and of course, there wasn’t the constant interruption of technology – I lost my cell phone reception ages ago – the little homes had a surprisingly modern feel to them. It was strange.
“Something is off,” I muttered, more to myself than Kayla who still hadn’t answered me. “What is it?”
As I glanced at everyone in turn, half admiring the mass of sculpted gorgeous bodies just like the guys who had come to greet me and Antonio at the gate despite myself, it hit me. It was all guys. Or almost all men. There were hardly any women around at all which was incredibly strange. There wasn’t a way to have a society without women because of reproduction… which of course, reminded me of Kayla’s swollen body.
I bent over, almost throwing up. This wasn’t normal, I couldn’t accept it.
“What the fuck, Kayla?” I panted, through the bile that threatened to spew over the ground. “I don’t get it.”
“No, I know. I didn’t at first either. I know this is strange, I get it. But you will come to understand, I’m sure.”
I twisted my neck to look at her, scooping my hair off my face when I spotted her with one of the men from outside wrapped around her with his hands delicately caressing her belly as if the baby inside belonged to him…
Did it belong to him? Judging by the serene looking smile on her face, it wasn’t a bad thing. But if things weren’t as they seemed, if she wasn’t having this lifestyle forced upon her, then what was going on?
“Do you want to be here?” I snapped, unable to keep the temper from my voice. “I don’t understand, Kayla. You were just going to stay here with there…men, and never tell me what was going on with you? That’s messed up. I’ve been worried about you, panicked in New York, thinking that bad things have happened to you, and you’re just here…doing whatever this is. No, that’s unacceptable.” I shook my head hard. “I just trudged through the fucking jungle to find you. This isn’t about the money lost on the expedition, that isn’t important. What I’m concerned about is you. Or I was anyway. Now, I don’t know what the hell to think about anything.”
As the rant spilled out of my mouth, my breaths became sharp and painful. Almost as if I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my brain any longer, a dizziness damn near consumed me. This was fucked up.
“Reese, please calm down,” she cooed. “Just let me explain. I need to talk to you about this.”
“Explain… all everyone wants to do is explain, but I don’t see how anyone can explain this… this mysterious place filled with men that no one knows about.” I waved my hands around dismissively. “If this is just a normal place where you’ve managed to find some kind of love so strong that you were just going to let me think that you died, or something, then why does it need to be private? Hmm? Why can’t people just know?”
Kayla parted her lips as if she was about to say something to me, but I was already on a roll. There were too many things that were bubbling up inside of me, I was a pressure cooker about to explode, and I couldn’t hold it in.
“And do you even care about Paulos? He’s in a mental institute, seemingly because of this mission, screaming about monsters. I we
nt to visit him, and that man is in a real mess. Are you going to explain that to me as well?”
Kayla exchanged a nervous looking glance with the man beside her, the one that seemed to be messed up, and probably very controlling since he’d kidnapped her from society.
“I can explain it all to you,” she tried her best to reassure me, not that I was really in the place to hear it. “I promise, but I need you to calm down a bit before I do, because it’s a lot to take in. You need to have a clear head.”
I shook my head and glanced at my feet, trying to fight back the emotion. “I don’t get it, Kayla. Not at all.”
She stepped away from her boyfriend, which I only knew from staring at her feet, and she wrapped a reassuring arm over my shoulder. A childish part of me wanted to shrug her off, to punish her for leaving me to worry in the way that she did, but I resisted the urge. Mostly because I needed her. She was the only person I knew from real life. I needed some reality in all of this mess. I had to try and keep grounded somehow.
“Let me just take you somewhere that we can talk alone. Then we can clear all this mess up.”
I clung tightly to Kayla’s arm as we walked through this place. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, so I didn’t have to see any more of it. I wasn’t sure how much I could process until Kayla had talked to me. I had to hope that somewhere she knew the right formation of words to make all of this alright again.
“Oh, sorry.” Kayla halted as a boy ran passed our feet. My eyes immediately snap up from the ground, and as I saw him, something snapped inside of me. It was the idea that there were more children here, which meant more women. A strangled scream burst out of my gut before I even realized what was happening.
The boy jumped back, his body contorting. I almost stretched out, to grab him to stop him from falling because it was my frightened scream that caused him to fall… but I snatched my hand back just as quickly.
“He…he…” His body wasn’t just contorting, it was changing, becoming something new. His skin turned and transformed, becoming a black furry being…a monster. An animal. A freaking panther. “He’s a…a…”
I blinked a few times, trying to make this image vanish. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. It had to be a hallucination, an imagine that my weary brain had concocted to make this worse than it already was. There was no way I was actually looking at a human shape shifting into a panther. That wasn’t real. It was a construct from fantasy books or movies. I couldn’t lose my mind, not out here, that wasn’t right…
“It’s okay,” Kayla tried to reassure me. “Don’t worry, this is normal.”
I looked up again to see the boy, now a full panther, bounding off away from me. The sickness that had threatened to come before, spilled past my lips. Luckily, I just about managed to bend forward quick enough, so it only covered the ground and not me. This was a good suit, one that cost me a lot of money. Perhaps that was the wrong thing to focus on, but I really didn’t want it ruined.
“This this isn’t normal, Kayla. How can you say this is normal?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to see before I could explain. You still need to come with me.”
But I couldn’t move. Instead I gave into the guttural growl of fear and I allowed it out. It tore from me painfully. Aching my stomach and my throat, hurting me all over. It didn’t matter how many times Kayla could touch me now, there wasn’t anything to comfort me and calm me down. I was a mess. Everything that I used to know was real, the foundation that my life had been built upon, had been ripped away from me, leaving me confused and dizzy.
“Panthers… monsters… Kayla… they took her… she’s gone… the ruins…”
Paulos’s words ran through me and I realized that he actually wasn’t crazy. He knew the truth, he was right…
What the hell was I going to do now? How was I going to get out of here? I needed to escape, I didn’t care about what Kayla wanted to do anymore, I didn’t want to be here in this nightmare. I needed freedom. I needed to keep my life.
Jakar
Marvelous. I gave my brother a withering look before nodding in Trevor’s direction to allow him to run after his son. This was the exact reason why we didn’t want the panicked business woman to just blast into our city without warning. We needed to prepare her and the guys as well. It was obvious something like this would happen.
Kayla tried to grab her friend – I presumed it was her friend – as she fell, but her pregnant belly prevented her from doing so. So, with lightning speed I jumped in and stopped her from hitting the ground. The raven haired beauty fought me with a surprising amount of force for a human female, but she was no match for me.
“We need to get her inside,” I warned everyone. “Then, we need to do whatever it takes to calm her down.”
“Water,” Kayla rasped. “She needs water. Maybe food as well. Something to get her breathing in order.”
Javier led the way and I followed with this woman bashing and fighting me. At one point, her teeth sunk into my arm which stung a little, but nowhere near enough for me to drop her. If anything, it made me smirk.
“Lock the door,” I warned Javier as we finally found a suitable private room for her. “Or she’ll make an escape.”
“Reese,” the woman who was more feral than any of the animals in the room snapped. “Reese, not she.”
“Reese.” Mmm, I liked the way her name rolled off my tongue. “Okay, I’m sorry…Reese.”
In a haze, water and food appeared. I watched her intently as she gulped the drink back as if she’d been in the desert for years on end, but she only eyed the food suspiciously like it might be filled with poison.
“Is that better?” Kayla asked her cautiously. “Are you calm enough to talk yet? Because I can make sense of this.”
The flames ignited, I spotted them flickering behind her eyes, and I braced myself for another attack. It was coming, Reese wasn’t the sort of person to swallow her feelings, I got that impression of her already.
“I can make the guys go,” Kayla continued in a hurry, clearly seeing the same thing that I did. “It can be just me and you. We can talk alone, and I will answer any questions you have. I’m sure there are hundreds.”
Reese’s eyes flickered among us all. She was sizing us up, and as her eyes met mine, she froze for a second. I wanted to switch places with her for a moment, to see what she saw in me. Why I was the one she stuck to. Did she trust me the least? Like me the most? Assume that I would be the one she could talk to?
Or, perhaps she could feel the same thing I could. That deep seated, inexplicable pull. It was almost a connection of some sort. I wasn’t sure it felt exactly as Javier described, but it was something…
“Okay.” She nodded, putting the flames out as she admitted defeat. “I will speak to you. Alone. Only you.”
We were forced to leave the room. I didn’t want to, but we had to if there was going to be any resolution found today. Javier ran off, presumably to warn everyone else what was going on so we didn’t have any other accidental shifting which could prove dangerous if Reese accidently got in the way, leaving me, Garret, and Dean to guard the door. We all glanced at one another, unable to believe what a turn this day had taken.
“I guess we aren’t headed out into the city today then,” Garret chuckled. “We have too much drama here. What actually happened? One minute we were all packing, and the next chaos erupted. There was all this screaming…”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Javier called me, and we found Antonio outside of the ruins…”
“Antonio is the old guy, right? The one who knows all about us. I love that dude, he’s awesome.”
“Exactly. Then this woman just came screamed past us, demanding to know what happened to Kayla.”
Garret narrowed his eyes at me, staring into the parts of my soul I wouldn’t want revealed. I shifted my feet uncomfortably, trying to create a distraction. I didn’t want him to call me out on the changes in my expression as I spo
ke about Reese. If the guys figured it out, there would be a lot of pressure on me.
“So, do you think Kayla will be able to talk her around, or what?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know, I hope so or this could create issues for us. It could get serious quick.”
Garret pressed his ear against the door, listening into the conversation happening inside. I was just about to tell him that I didn’t think that was a great idea, that we shouldn’t intrude on their privacy, but curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to hear too. Luckily, our enhanced panther hearing ensured we wouldn’t have to miss a thing.
“What are you doing?” Dean hissed, voicing the sentiment I decided against. “We can’t listen.”
I waved a hand dismissively. Obviously, Dean wouldn’t listen, that wasn’t the sort of thing he did. As a quieter, more reserved member of our pack, he wasn’t known for doing things that weren’t recommended behaviors. Usually, I would’ve agreed with him, but today this was different. Today, breaking the rules felt like life or death.
“…yes, this city is called Panthera, which is Portuguese for panther,” Kayla explained. “I’m sure today has shown you why that is. I know it’s scary, I felt that too at first, but I can assure you, worrying is needless.”
“Needless? Fucking needless?” Reese snapped back in that vicious tone of hers. “Are you joking me? The men here turn into animals. That shouldn’t even be real, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to worry about it.”
“Okay, yes, I understand that. I do. But the panthers are a gentle race, they wouldn’t hurt anyone. They are more protector animals than anything else. Nothing has ever happened to me while I’ve been here.”
“But if they are so helpful and all about protection, then why all the secrecy, huh?”
I smiled at Reese’s authoritative tone, she was incredibly amusing to listen to. Even as she yelled, I just wanted to hear more. I could picture myself being screamed at by her for the rest of my life.