by Vivi Andrews
“It is when you’re playing fucking games when we’ve come to talk to you about taking down the bastards once and for all.”
The black wolf had been moving steadily throughout the room the entire time. At those words, he suddenly stopped, several feet behind and to one side of Amala, his head cocked toward Grace.
At least someone was listening.
“We don’t have time for this bullshit,” Grace snapped, jerking at her cuffs. “We need to move quickly. Unify all the shifters together and attack the bastards at their bases, all over the world. Get our people out. Including your wolves.”
“No one knows where their bases are,” Amala said.
“Your intel sucks,” Grace snapped. “We’ve been going after their bases one by one, but we need more fighters to do more. And you are fucking playing when you should be helping us.”
The black wolf moved, but only made it two steps before Amala whirled toward him and growled, the sound surprisingly deep for someone so small. She bared small teeth and the black froze like he was facing the bogeyman. His tail tucked down beneath his legs and he lowered his bulk to the ground, creeping forward in a crouch.
The white wolf whimpered, cowering from them both.
Amala covered her teeth, but continued staring down the black as she spoke. “Release the cuffs,” she snapped, and it wasn’t until Grace felt a presence at her back that she realized Amala had been speaking to the twins, not to the black. When the cuffs fell away, Grace rotated her shoulders, rubbing at her wrists with hands that were already starting to prickle with a thousand pins and needles.
Amala dismissed the black with one last growl, turning to face the twins. “Get the tiger some clothes.” The twins headed for the door and with a flick of her hand Amala sent the white and black wolves scurrying after them. She turned to face Grace, amber eyes dark. “When your friend is civilized again, we’ll reconvene.”
Grace didn’t bother to tell her that Dominec would never be civilized.
The she-bitch left the room, the door snapping shut behind her. A lock slid home. Grace didn’t care. She was already on her feet, running toward the cage.
“Dominec.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Being in a cage was like acid on his nerves, bubbling and boiling. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The shards of his thoughts kept sliding back and forth between memory and reality, past and present.
One second he was in the pit, his own blood making the dirt into a macabre mud that clung to his paws, the next he was watching the wolves prop Grace’s limp and helpless form in a chair and cuff her hands behind her back. He threw himself against the bars, choking on the sudden pressure at his throat, but his rage at seeing her restrained and unconscious was a violent, uncontrollable thing, feral and incapable of reason. Failed. He’d failed her.
He blinked and he was in the narrow wooden box that had been his primary residence for two years, splinters digging into his chin whenever he dared to lay down. Another blink and metal bars surrounded him on all sides—and there was Grace, lifting her head. Not dead. Thank God not dead. He tried to hold onto the present. Tried to focus on the words flowing around him. Her blue eyes glittered with rage as she yanked against her chains and he growled with wild pride. Of course she wouldn’t be whimpering and weak, undone by her fear, not his Grace. Pride tempered the rage. She may be bound, but she wasn’t helpless, wasn’t looking to anyone else to rescue her. She was a warrior in her own right—
The warrior slashed at his face, blood splashing as the acid—sweet holy fuck, the acid—felt like it exploded inside each wound, an eruption of pain in his brain destroying all other thought and sensation.
“Dominec.”
Grace knelt in front of his cage, free, her gaze direct and urgent as she worked the locks. How had she gotten the keys? And where were the wolves? They were alone, though the heavy canine stench still saturated the room. Hadn’t been alone long, then.
His fragmented thoughts started to slide again, but he ruthlessly yanked himself back to the present as the locks clanked, the cage door creaked, and Grace bent to step into the cage. No, not inside with me. Out. We have to get out.
But he couldn’t form the words. His lips and teeth and tongue were all still feline and only a rough cough of irritation escaped.
Grace’s hands sank knuckle deep into the fur on either side of his neck. Winter had made his coat thick and itchy and the feel of her fingers digging in was heaven. She fumbled with something and the chain above his head banged against the bars of the cage, the clang of metal against metal reverberating oddly in the dreary room.
The choke collar, he realized a fraction of a second before Grace’s clever fingers found the catch. The constant pressure against his wind pipe eased and he sucked in air.
She flung the collar away, practically hissing at it, then knelt so her face was on the level with his and plunged her fingers into his ruff. “Are you all right?”
He wanted to say no. His psyche was fractured. He’d been chained and caged and kept away from her, unable to protect her. His human side was sliding wildly between one nightmare and the next, leaving his animal side in complete control. He wanted to say all that, but all that came out was a low, snarling growl.
She bent forward until her forehead pressed against his, fur to skin, inhaling deep as if drawing in his scent. “I need you to shift.”
She withdrew just enough for him to see her eyes. The two distinct shades of blue, a pale periwinkle inner ring and the dark midnight outer, were clear with her pupils contracted. Shock or an after-effect of the drugs. It was too dark for her pupils to be little pin pricks naturally.
“Focus, Dominec,” she whispered. “I need you to calm down and put on your human skin. I know you can.”
She knew more than he did. The tiger had broken away from him. Separate. Stronger. It didn’t want to yield control. And he didn’t particularly want it to.
He remembered it now. The way his human brain had retreated during the worst of the pain, leaving the tiger in command. He’d borne the torture, but it had split him in two. No, more than two. A thousand little fragments. But the tiger was whole. The tiger was strong. The tiger would protect her when he failed.
“Dominec,” she said again, blue eyes fierce and firm as she stared him down—never afraid of him, his Grace. “Concentrate. You have to shift for me.” The words were commanding, but her touch was soft. She stroked his fur, past his ruff, over his shoulders and down his flank.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone had petted him. Both his tiger and human thoughts went still, fixating on the movement of her hands. Smooth and steady and soothing. It felt good. Beyond good. She stroked him like she could brush his cares away—and perhaps she could. Grace was magical. She petted him—long, hypnotic strokes, her face pressed close to his—and murmured, “Please shift, Dominec.”
It wasn’t some significant clicking-into-place feeling. He wasn’t even aware of it happening, but while he had been focused on her touch, his split selves had somehow realigned—not a perfect alignment, his broken pieces didn’t fit together perfectly anymore, but enough that he could reach for his human skin and it came to his call.
Slowly. Painfully. But it came.
Her hands were running down his neck and stroking over his shoulders when he came to himself again, crouched in a cage that wasn’t tall enough for a man to stand. Her two-toned blue eyes met his steadily. “Are you all right?”
I’m sorry. I failed you. “I don’t like this place,” he rasped.
She released a low, humorless laugh. “I don’t blame you.”
He put his hands on her waist, needing to feel that she was all right. But as soon as he felt the taut muscles of her abdomen beneath his hands, his arms seemed to develop minds of their own. They wrapped around her, drawing her snug against him as he knelt
to mirror her position. He moved to kiss her—the instinct so strong it was a need—but she turned her head to the side at the last minute. Yes. Of course she would. Don’t deserve her.
“They could be watching,” she murmured and he buried his face against the soft skin of her neck instead, breathing her in.
She was alive. She was whole.
She was in a fucking cage.
Unacceptable. The thought translated to action and he was surging out of the cage, half-carrying her with him, before he even realized what he was doing.
“Whoa.” Grace broke away from him and he let her because they were out now, though the room still pressed tight against his skin.
He prowled the space, taking in the various scents and cataloguing them, matching them up against the wolves. His thoughts seemed to have settled in the here and now and he used his newfound focus to study their surroundings. Low ceiling, inadequate light, cement and drywall. Nothing fancy. It wouldn’t take long to build a place like this, but this was obviously not a new addition. There was dust in the corners and the beginnings of rust on the bolts that secured the chair that had held Grace to the floor. The cage was also bolted down, but the screws looked newer and there were other studs in the floor where the bars could be attached if they wanted to make the cage larger or smaller. A very versatile torture chamber.
Or that’s what he would have thought it was, if not for the complete absence of even the slightest whiff of blood.
He eyed the cage and the chair. A torture chamber that wasn’t used for torture. “What the fuck is with these people?”
“I think we may have arrived in the middle of a power struggle,” Grace said. He cocked his head, silently asking for more and Grace went on. “The black one. Her second. Did you see how he looked at her? Something is about to go down and I’m not sure it would be wise for us to be here when it does.” She paused in her own circuit of the room, frowning. “If she’s even the Alpha. Have you ever heard of a female Alpha?”
“No,” he said flatly. “But she feels like one.”
“The power. I know. She’s got that. But she’s tiny. And I don’t think Blackie the Behemoth likes bowing down to her will.” She shook her head, dismissing the subject. “Never mind. Hopefully it won’t affect us.” She reached for the hem of her topmost shirt. She was wearing several layers of thin thermal—as they all had been for the hike. She stripped off the top layer and tossed it at him. “Here.”
He caught it against his chest, arching a brow in question.
“She-Bitch told the others to bring you clothes, but this will work until then.”
Shifters didn’t see nakedness as vulnerability the way humans did—their animal form was always just a shift away—but Dominec took the shirt without argument and tied it around his waist like a loin cloth.
He didn’t like this place. He was out of the cage, but the room was still a fucking prison cell. He was tempted to attack the walls just to see how long it would take him to claw his way out—or for one of the guards to come in and try to stop him. But that was Organization thinking. He needed to keep it together and remember that this was a different beast. A different battle. A battle to take down the Organization once and for all.
The chair was in his path. The chair where they’d bound Grace. A growl rippled up his throat.
“Dominec.”
He stopped in his prowl a couple feet from Grace, turning to meet her concerned gaze. “What?”
“Your eyes are still doing that thing.” She closed the distance between them. “Are you all right?”
He would not tell her about the nightmares, about the echoes of the past waiting to drag him under. He wouldn’t mention the blind, animalistic panic he’d felt when he saw her fall or the way his being had splintered with the fear. No one could know.
“I was worried about you,” he said instead. Which was true—in a grossly oversimplified way.
“I’m fine,” she soothed. “It takes more than some wolves on a jumped up power trip to rattle me.”
“I know. But I still want to kill them all for touching you.”
Some emotion flickered behind her eyes, gone before he could identify it. Replaced by a smartass grin. “Did you really bite one of them?”
“Nearly took his arm off.” He shrugged. “I was trying to kill him.”
“You should probably try to sound a little more apologetic when you say that to our new wolfy friends.”
“They aren’t our friends. And it’s not like you’re a shining example of tact and diplomacy.”
Her gaze slid sideways to the door, before coming back to his and when she spoke her words were nearly subvocal. “Do you think they’re working with the Organization?”
“It doesn’t smell like it.” There was a stench to the Organization facilities that wasn’t present. Here there was only the scent of wolves and rock and damp. Even the tranquilizers they used had a different scent than the Organization’s preferred chemical cocktail. “But I still don’t trust them.”
“Yeah,” Grace agreed. “Me either. But what better choice do we have?”
The door burst open and the double-vision twins entered, along with Kelly who surged in, eyes frantic until he spotted his prize. “Grace, thank God.” He rushed toward her, arms outstretched.
Dominec growled.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“This one insisted on seeing you.” A deep voice rumbled from the door, the light behind him casting his massive form in silhouette.
“I was so worried about you,” Kelly murmured, his bright green eyes intent as he reached for her. The words sounded so different somehow than they had when Dominec said the same, but she didn’t have time to analyze the difference. Or for sappy reunions.
Grace brushed Kelly’s hands away when they would have cupped her face, annoyed. “I’m fine.”
Kelly was pride, and touch should be traded easily among pride mates—it was the shifter way, and part of why the physical distance maintained between Amala and her second had seemed so wrong—but Kelly couldn’t stop pushing for more, so now she felt she couldn’t accept even the slightest comforting touch from him without opening the door to all his irritating hopes for the two of them.
The deep-voiced shadow came into the room, hunching his massive shoulders and ducking his head to fit through the door. He was nearly as large and muscle-bound as Hugo, but there the similarities ended. His skin was so dark it was hard to see where his black T-shirt ended and his bare skin began. Dreadlocks were pulled back from his face and tied in some kind of thick ponytail, falling down to the middle of his back. His cheekbones wouldn’t have looked out of place on a male model and his eyes had a slight exotic slant that made him even more striking. But the most striking thing about them was the color. They were a bright, sky blue, standing out sharply against his midnight skin.
He might have been the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but what mattered most about him right now was his scent. Human forms didn’t always share physical characteristics with their animal forms—though it was considered desirable among shifters. Just another way this man was attractive. His scent identified him as the big black wolf.
“Dare, I presume?” Grace said to him, looking past Kelly.
The wolf inclined his head, his smooth lips curving with a hint of ironic amusement. “I’m to escort you to a meeting with our Alpha, where we will pretend you didn’t attack us and you will pretend we didn’t cage you and everyone will pretend we can be diplomatic and civilized.”
Oh, she could almost like this guy. Why couldn’t he be Alpha? Grace was all for girl power and everything, but Amala was not on her list of favorite people at the moment and this guy…this guy seemed like he would be fun.
“You were caged?” Kelly asked, gawking at the bars in horror. “They wouldn’t tell us where you were, but I thought it was be
cause you accidentally got too high a dosage of the tranquilizers and might have suffered side effects. I had no idea you were captive.” He glared at the wolves as if they’d betrayed his trust.
“I take it you didn’t wake up chained to a chair?”
The twins approached Dominec, extending the clothes they held and Grace kept one eye on the three of them, making sure no one bit anyone else. Dominec snatched the clothes from their grasp and began pulling them on—clothes that looked to have come right out of his pack from the way they fit.
“I woke up in an infirmary with Zoe and Tyler. They fed us breakfast.”
“Lucky me. I got the executive treatment.” Grace eyed the twins. They were still standing too close to Dominec, heads cocked at exactly the same angle as they stared at his scars. Just stared like he was a freaking sideshow act. She took a half step toward them and snapped, “Knock it off.”
Dare had been watching Grace and Kelly, but now his gaze flicked to the creeper twins. “River. Cadence. Behave.”
Authority thrummed in his voice and the two wolves bowed their heads and moved back, breaking their eerie synchronicity for the first time since Grace had seen them. They both still moved with liquid grace, but they no longer looked like two bodies being controlled by the same remote on a glitching video game. They split apart, moving to flanking positions. And thank God they stopped their fucking staring.
Grace returned her attention to Kelly. “So the others are fine? You’ve been welcomed as guests?”
“Not exactly invited guests, but we’re all fine. They implied you were in another room in their infirmary. Everyone was civil and we thought things were going well.” He eyed the cage. “The only frustration was the way they kept us away from you and the fact that every time I tried to bring up the reason we’re here, they would tell me that I need to talk to the Alpha about payment. Whatever that means.”
“Come,” Dare said, and Grace realized Dominec had finished dressing. “I’ll take you to the Alpha and she will tell you.”