by Vivi Andrews
He growled, making a half-hearted swipe with his paw, but the gunman rolled away from him, cradling his arm and a trio of thunderous footsteps seemed to crash through the woods to him.
From the clearing. From Grace.
Grace. He couldn’t fail her now.
He gathered his legs and tried to shove to his feet.
A deep basso voice rumbled, “Damn,” and another dart snicked into his shoulder.
As he staggered, a giant dark shadow of a man moved toward the injured gunman, kneeling at his side.
Dominec had almost managed to get his belly off the ground. Something hard nudged him in the side and he went over like a ton of bricks, sprawling on his side, rolling his head to see what had hit him.
A slim girl who couldn’t be more than sixteen, pale as the big man was dark, stood over him, tranquilizer gun pointed steadily toward his heart.
He tried to keep fighting, ignoring the fact that there were two of her swimming before his eyes.
“What the fuck is this guy?” she asked, her voice musical and light, and seeming to come at him from both sides. “We must’ve hit him at least twelve times and he’s still conscious.”
“Stop playing with him,” the dark shadow commanded, rumbling deep. “We need to get Soren to the healer. Asshole hit an artery.”
Good. Got at least one of the bastards.
Dominec tried to turn his head, tried to look back toward the clearing and Grace, but his limbs were no longer obeying him. The girl nudged him with a foot again and then raised her right arm—both of them—and aimed the tranq gun back at his heart.
“Nice kitty.”
She squeezed the trigger, and kept squeezing until the lights went out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Generally Grace liked new experiences, but she could have done without this one. Waking up handcuffed to a chair in a dark room had never been on her bucket list.
Her shoulders were stiff and she’d lost sensation in her fingers, giving her a clue that she’d been trussed up like this for a while. Her hands were bound behind her back and an experimental tug revealed they were secured to some kind of steel bar. The chair itself also seemed to be made of some kind of reinforced metal. She threw her weight against it and it didn’t budge a centimeter. Bolted to the cement floor.
So this wasn’t the wolves’ first rodeo when it came to keeping prisoners. No rickety barns and makeshift prisons for them.
She rustled her cuffs again and a low feline snarl sounded over her left shoulder. Twisting, she saw that the room was much bigger than she’d originally thought. She was perhaps fifteen feet from the wall in front of her, but there was easily twice that behind her. And in that space was a cage. It was big enough for Dominec to prowl back and forth in his agitation, but just barely.
The sight of him, locked up like that, hit her like a blow to the chest. For years he’d been stuck in a box and now these assholes had penned him again. Even if she hadn’t already been halfway to hating them, that alone would have tipped her over into pure loathing.
Fear might have been a logical response—chained to a chair in a room with a feral tiger—but Grace had never been very good at doing what was expected of her. She didn’t get scared. She got angry.
She jerked at the chains harder, cursing. “Fuckers.” She looked over her shoulder at Dominec. “You okay?”
The tiger snarled something she decided to take as an affirmative.
A pronged metal training collar had been wrapped around his neck, connected to a chain that was secured to the low ceiling outside the cage. Grace had seen them before on dogs—designed for the metal spikes to dig in when the attached chain was pulled and be painless at all other times. She’d never seen a collar on a shifter.
Hugo had said the wolves were territorial, but this was more than that. This was the sort of bullshit she expected from the Organization. She would almost think it was them, but the scents were all canine and she distinctly remembered the wolf in the path. Could the wolves be working with the Organization?
The other lions weren’t anywhere in the room. There was a door in the wall to her right, but otherwise nothing much to look at. If you didn’t count the tiger in the cage.
Dominec didn’t look injured, but from the pacing and the flicking of his tail, he was beyond pissed—and he had every fucking right to be. Seeing him like that was so violently wrong she wanted to scream at their captors to let him go, let him out, but exposing how badly she needed that to happen would only reveal her weak point—and you never showed your adversary your Achilles heel.
She wanted to promise him they were getting out of this. She wanted to tear the wolves apart with her teeth and claws, but when the door on the opposite side of the room opened, she swallowed down the rage and twisted to face the newcomers. A pair of slim girls glided into the room, letting the door fall shut behind them.
They looked like teenagers—which should have put her at ease, but there was something so damn creepy about the pair of them that their youth had an opposite, unnerving effect.
They were perfect carbon copies of one another—so similar she almost suspected clones rather than twins. They wore identical faded jeans, pale blue fitted long-sleeved shirts and some sort of moccasin-type shoes. With skin as white as pearl, pale blue eyes and long white-blonde hair pulled into identical braids, they were so fair they could almost pass for albino. They moved in perfect unison, each step in time, every mannerism and facial expression matching.
They were graceful—eerily so. Wolves just didn’t move right, to her feline eye. Cats prowled. They put their paws down and could feel the connection all the way to the core of the earth, grounded in that power. Wolves bounced. They glided over the surface of the world, never quite putting their paws all the way down. Skimming the surface of the world. Never quite touching down. It was just wrong to someone accustomed to a liquid feline prowl.
The girls came to stand in front of her, side-by-side, a matching set of creepy expressionless faces and deadly eyes. Those eyes, more than their flawless faces, made Grace think they might be older than she’d originally pegged them.
She had the vaguest memory of the creeper twins dropping out of the trees on either side of the clearing immediately after Tyler had hit the ground with an ominous thud. The first tranq aimed at Grace had gotten caught in the fabric of her coat and she’d had time to see how Thing One and Thing Two moved—perfectly synchronized and as fluidly graceful as elves in a Tolkien movie—before they’d tagged her with tranqs on either side of her neck.
Grace rattled her cuffs. “Your hospitality sucks.”
They tilted their heads, at exactly the same moment, to exactly the same angle. Like children of the freaking corn.
“Jesus. Do you know how creepy that is?” she asked.
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum smiled, slow and disturbing.
Okay, yes, apparently they know.
“Do you speak? Or are you just going to stare at me until you’re ready to suck out my soul and give it to your alien overlords?”
The smiles faded and an identical expression of mild confusion fell on their faces, as if the creeper twins couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t shaking in her boots.
In the cage, Dominec snarled, rattling his chain.
The creeper twins looked at him and Grace felt herself stiffening, wanting their attention fucking away from the tiger. She yanked at her cuffs again, making them clank. “Is this really necessary?” she asked, letting the words drip boredom. Not scared of you, creeper bitches. “Where is your Alpha?”
They said nothing, but at least they were studying her and not Dominec.
“Where are the other lions?” she demanded.
The door opened again. The small white wolf who had originally stopped them in the woods trotted in, followed by a striking woman with thick auburn ha
ir and a jet black wolf the size of a Great Dane.
The woman was petite, curvaceous and flat out stunningly gorgeous. Her skin was dark for a redhead—the caramel tones not quite Caucasian, though Grace couldn’t guess at her heritage. Indian perhaps? Pacific Islander? Wherever her genetic make-up had come from, those people should reproduce more. The woman exuded hotness.
Her long auburn hair fell in a thick red-gold wave down to the small of her back. Long amber earrings dangled toward her shoulders, matching the amber necklaces, bracelets and rings she also wore. Her extravagant curves were barely contained by a snug, creamy blouse that laced up her front and a sliver of light brown skin was exposed between the hem and the top of the brown linen harem pants that clung to her hips. Her feet were bare and glided over the floor in that annoying not-quite-touching way the wolves seemed to have.
Her eyes, Grace saw when she was close enough, were the exact color of all the amber she wore and were framed by thick, black lashes. Grace couldn’t decide if she looked more like a courtesan or one of those big-eyed baby-talk girls all men seemed to fall all over themselves to protect.
Maybe a little of both.
Red smiled. “You wanted to see me?”
Grace nearly swallowed her tongue. Holy shit. This was the Godfather.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You’re the Alpha?”
The white wolf came to sit at the redhead’s ankle and lean against her leg. The big black continued to circle the room in a slow lope. Thing One and Thing Two had fallen back to lean against the wall on the edge of Grace’s vision, arms crossed in exactly the same way.
The woman buried her fingers in the white wolf’s ruff. “This surprises you?”
“Well, yeah, you’re like three feet tall.”
The white wolf growled, but the Alpha just laughed, a throaty chuckle that was equal parts humor and sex. Perhaps that was how she ruled. With sex.
Hugo had said the Alpha’s name was Wayland, but rulers were toppled all the time in shifter communities. That wasn’t what made this hard to swallow. It was her. She was impossible.
It wasn’t just her size that made her an unlikely Alpha. She was young—probably upper twenties—but many Alphas were young because they needed to be in peak physical condition. In nearly every pack and pride Grace had ever heard of, the Alpha needed to be able to fight all comers to hold the position.
This woman wasn’t a single inch over five feet. Sure, there was an aura of power that pulsed off her—not unlike the way Greg used to project his Alpha-ness over the pride—but Grace had almost fifty pounds of solid muscle on the little princess and could probably take her with one hand tied behind her back.
There were no female Alphas. None. Because to hold the position, princess here would have to be able to take the big black wolf in a physical fight. Grace just couldn’t see that happening.
Which meant one of two things. Either this chick was lying about being Alpha, or she held the post some other way—like by fucking the strongest men and making them fight for her. But the big black wolf wasn’t acting like a lover. The two of them didn’t even look at each other, let alone touch.
The “Alpha” continued to stroke the ears of the white wolf—but that one was too small to be much use as a pawn.
“Size isn’t everything,” Red murmured.
For a moment Grace thought she must’ve said something aloud about the white wolf being too small to be useful, but then she realized the woman was responding to her previous statement.
“That’s not a sentiment you hear very often in shifter communities,” Grace said conversationally.
Red just smiled.
“What happened to Wayland?”
Red’s smile died. “Old news. Not even worth the breath to discuss him.”
“You got a name?” Grace asked, tired of thinking of the woman as Red.
“How rude of me,” the woman cooed, for all the world like she wasn’t speaking to a prisoner chained to a chair. “I am Amala.” She inclined her head regally. “You’ve already met River and Cadence.” Thing One and Thing Two smiled creepily in unison. “Behind you is my second, Dare.” The big black wolf continued his circuit. “And this is Melissa.” The white wolf growled. Amala smiled, stroking the furry white head. “You’ll have to forgive Melissa. Your friend there almost killed her mate.”
Dominec chuffed with what sounded a lot like pleasure and the white wolf came to her feet, snarling.
“Soren is an artist by trade,” Amala went on, soothing Melissa. “A lover, not a fighter.” Her amber eyes hardened. “We hope he regains the full use of his arm.”
It might have been smart to grovel and apologize, but Kelly was the diplomatic one and Kelly wasn’t here. Grace glared. “We just wanted to talk. You attacked us, remember?”
“We don’t take chances on our land,” Amala said. “I would think a Lone Pine lieutenant would appreciate that.”
So the wolf knew who she was. Or had guessed. Kelly had mentioned Lone Pine and Three Rocks. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out the details.
“We aren’t in the habit of handcuffing our guests at Lone Pine. Or putting them in cages.” She let her anger flash in her eyes.
“Guests are invited. You were not.” The amber eyes were unforgiving. “And he savaged Soren.”
“I don’t think he liked your welcoming committee’s tranquilize-first-ask-questions-later policy.”
“He was quite resistant.” Amala’s glittering gaze locked on the cage where the tiger paced. “What is he?”
“What does he look like? He’s a fucking tiger.”
“No, he’s more than that.” The woman who called herself Alpha walked toward the cage, the white wolf moving at her side. “My wolves shot him up with enough tranquilizer to take down a herd of rhinos and he still kept coming. And he woke up hours before the rest of you. Now, why is that?”
“Pure ornery stubbornness would be my guess,” Grace said with a sugary smile.
“No,” Amala said, so close to a purr she could almost be feline. “I think there’s more to it than that.”
“Where are the others?”
Amala flicked her fingers dismissively, amber rings flashing. “They’re fine.”
“I want to see them.”
“Tell me about your friend and perhaps I’ll bring them here,” Amala said. “How did he fight off the tranquilizers? What makes him so special?”
“Ask him yourself.” Irritation was snapping in her blood. She was getting pretty fucking tired of playing with little Amala. They didn’t have time for this bullshit.
“I can’t. He’s stayed in this form since he was captured. I don’t suppose you know why.”
“He’s not really tame, you know,” Grace said dryly. “And I think you might be pissing him off. Maybe if you took the choke collar off, he’d be a little more inclined to chat.”
“If he shifts he can remove the collar himself. The clasp is simple enough if you have thumbs. And yet he doesn’t shift. Why is that, Grace?”
Grace jolted. So Amala knew her name too. Okay. Kelly or Zoe or Tyler could have told her. Or she could have intel on Lone Pine. Black Lake was all about the intel.
“Haven’t the foggiest. I’ve given up trying to figure him out.”
Amala smiled. “So he is your mate.”
Grace snorted. “Wow. That’s quite a leap.”
“Is it? Would you like to see something?”
“I have a feeling the safe answer to that question is no.”
Amala just smiled and turned her gaze to the creeper twins. She gave them a slight nod and they pushed off the wall. They walked behind Grace and she fought the urge to twist around to try to see what the hell they were doing back there. Having those two at her back was almost as wrong as seeing Dominec locked up.
They came
into her field of vision again carrying a large screen, which they proceeded to place between Grace and Dominec’s cage.
She couldn’t see what happened next, but she could hear it. The snarling. The roars. The scraping of claws across metal and awful hacks as if the tiger was choking himself on that goddamn collar. Christ, he was killing himself.
“Stop!” she shouted over the racket—not sure whether she was shouting at Amala or Dominec.
The she-Alpha, who had dropped back so she could see them both at the same time, gave a nod and the twins collapsed the screen, putting it back wherever they’d found it.
“Now.” Amala smiled smugly. “Do you still want to try to tell me he isn’t your mate?”
Grace glowered at the Alpha bitch. “Release me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re as bored of this stupid game as I am.”
“Am I?”
“You know who we are. You probably even know why we’re here. You only put me in chains because you figured out it would rile him up and you wanted to poke at the tiger to see what he would do.”
“He did bite my wolf,” Amala said with cool reprimand.
“Your wolf tranqed us.”
Amala studied her, the black wolf still circling. “What makes you so certain I know who you are?”
“Other than calling me by name? You’re Black Lake, aren’t you? Aren’t you supposed to know everything about everyone?”
“I do try.”
Grace decided she just might hate the uber bitch of Black Lake. “Why do you have an artist doing patrols?” She was wagering it was the same reason they had half-trained soldiers who were barely old enough to shave guarding the perimeter at Lone Pine.
Fear.
Amala arched a brow. “Pardon?”
“You’ve expanded your perimeter and now you have artists running patrols. Big fucking patrol groups too. Did you have a few sentries get snatched? Has the Organization been visiting?”
Amala’s superior expression faded into icy rock. “Our security isn’t your concern.”