by Katie Reus
The male picked up his mattress and held it in front of him, using it as shield against the bars. He rammed his body against it full force.
Both their cages trembled under the impact of the blow, but there was no movement that Arthur could see.
Darius rammed into the door again and again, the shaking making it impossible for Arthur to think straight.
Breathing hard, after a few minutes the male finally stepped back. “I think it’s moved a little.” He shoved the mattress against the door again.
It rattled so Arthur couldn’t tell one way or another. But it was better than doing nothing. He’d already tried to slam his way through the ceiling but it was coated in silver. The floor and walls were impossible to get through as well.
“Fuck,” he muttered, picking up his own mattress. He could try to figure out a way to get out of here all he wanted. There simply weren’t any holes in security he could see. Brute force was the only weapon they had at their disposal.
Even if he expended all his energy it didn’t matter at this point. They had to get out of here. Maybe together they could break out of their cages. If they passed out, they passed out. They were already fucking helpless as it was. And he wasn’t going to die in a fucking cage.
Holding the mattress in front of him just like Darius, Arthur hurled his body at the doors.
When he got free from this prison, he was going to figure out who had taken them. And make her pay.
Whoever had done this had to have an end goal. He’d been alive centuries and had seen damn near everything. Their captor had to know that taking them would draw attention from multiple sources. Everyone wanted the peace treaty to go through, including the Brethren.
Especially the Brethren.
At least people were out looking for them. Of that he had no doubt. His mate would do everything to find him.
But he couldn’t depend on anyone else. Not when he had no idea what their captor’s goal was. She could come back here at the next sunset and decide to burn them alive.
At that thought, he barreled at the door again, throwing all his power into breaking through the cage. Spelled or not, nothing was impenetrable.
Chapter 13
The scent of death filled Aldric’s nostrils.
Faster, faster, faster. His four legs ate up the distance as he raced through the forest.
Something was wrong. His wolf scented it, felt it bone deep. Normally the familiar scent of his mate’s cooking teased the air this close to their den.
Today a rusting scent seemed to permeate the air, making the most primal part of him take over.
A snarl and howl filled the air, the sound savage.
All the fur on his body stood on end but he remained quiet. That rusty iron smell grew heavier as the trees began to thin.
The den he and his mate spent time in was on the outskirts of the human village, close enough to the home they made near the humans. But they needed the forest, needed to roam in wolf form when they chose.
His small pack had declared ownership of these woods. No other shifters should be here but…something was wrong. Desperation clawed at his insides, making him move faster, faster. His father and brother weren’t at their den yet because they were well behind him.
His mate was alone.
A rotting stench of the truly diseased now mixed with the scent of blood. Panic seized him, but he forced himself to think like a predator. It couldn’t be his mate. It couldn’t.
Moving stealthily through the trees, he kept to the shadows until he reached the clearing.
A red haze descended on his vision as blood and death greeted him. He…couldn’t process what he was seeing.
His mate’s severed head lay by their dwindling fire, her broken, bloody body a few feet away, her belly slashed open while a coyote ate…
No!
An anguished snarl ripped from him as he raced at the animal.
Glowing yellow eyes met his. The feral shifter made a keening sound, barreled right at him.
Madness gleamed in the animal’s eyes.
Aldric was barely aware of anything as he ripped out the male’s throat. The only things that existed were death and blood, the driving pain of grief and horror, as he tore the animal apart, limb from limb. Shredding the body until he was bathed in liquid crimson.
Red was everywhere, coating him as his wolf howled in agony.
The haze cleared for a moment. Looking around, he realized there was nothing left of the feral coyote. Entrails and other internal organs were strewn across the forest floor. Soon there would be nothing left of him at all.
Just as soon there would be nothing left of his dead mate and unborn child.
His child who’d never had the chance to take a breath, to open his eyes.
He couldn’t look in that direction, couldn’t look at what that beast had done. He and Isla might not have been bondmates, but they were mates and he loved her. When he thought of the terror, the pain of her final moments, a howl ripped from his throat as he tried to push the pain out of his body. Though he knew that would never happen.
He never should have left her alone. It was his fault she was gone, his unborn cub was gone. He should have protected them. He clawed at the ground, tossing up dirt and grass as he continued howling.
She’d been so tired when he’d left, had been insistent he go into the human village and get bread for her from the local baker. Isla had so many cravings over the course of her pregnancy, but he still shouldn’t have left her.
He shouldn’t have—
A familiar scent made him swivel toward the woods.
A scream of noise ripped through the air, angry and horrifying. He realized the sound was coming from him as all his rage and grief poured from his body. He was shaking. Nauseated, the pain of loss stealing the breath from his lungs.
Killing the feral animal who’d taken everything from him had done nothing to assuage the wrath that lived inside him.
Nothing would ever do that.
When he saw his brother loping toward him from the forest, his beast took over. He grasped at his animal, trying to wrest control away but it was too late…
Aldric’s eyes popped open. Breathing hard, he stared at the ceiling. He forced himself to take a deep, calming breath.
Then another.
It had been a long damn time since he’d relived the familiar nightmare that wasn’t a nightmare at all. The only thing he was grateful for was that he hadn’t finished it. Because it always ended the same.
He tore his brother’s face apart because he’d been in agony, and he’d lost everything. He’d not only lost his mate and unborn child, but severed the relationship with his brother until centuries later.
He rubbed a trembling hand over his face. His entire body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Still shaking, he sat up, cooling off as his heart rate returned to normal.
He wished it was nothing but an actual nightmare, not a memory he’d lived through.
A soft knocking at his bedroom door made him pause. He didn’t think he’d cried out in his sleep. This place was insulated anyway.
After a glance at the clock he saw he’d only slept a few hours.
His eyes were gritty when he opened the door but when he saw Natalia standing there he straightened. If he’d been fully functioning, he would have scented her. But his senses were all screwed up after that nightmare.
Her dark hair was down around her shoulders in soft waves and she had on those same pajamas with the bicycles on them. They were so fucking adorable, so her. After the flashback he’d just had, he wanted to pull her into his arms.
“Is everything okay?” Her voice was low, the concern in her eyes palpable.
His first instinct was to say he was fine, but he didn’t want to lie to her, didn’t want to keep her out anymore. Now that he’d made the conscious choice to claim her, he knew he needed to let her into every part of his life. Even if she never reciprocated what he truly wanted, he still wouldn�
�t regret being honest with her. “I… I had a nightmare.” His voice was raspy.
Her eyes widened slightly and her scent gave away her surprise that he’d been honest. Without pause she stepped into his room and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.
Fuck him.
Even when she was angry with him, didn’t trust him, didn’t even want to be friends, she was still comforting him in a way he’d never let anyone. He’d been alone for so fucking long, had pushed everyone away because he hadn’t thought he deserved any comfort. Somehow she’d sensed he needed her and now she was giving him the gift of her touch. His wolf needed soothing on the most basic level, and simple skin-to-skin contact was healing to all shifters. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t bare, this was what he needed.
She made him feel as if he wasn’t alone anymore.
Breathing in her scent he wrapped his arms around her, buried his face against the top of her head as she laid her cheek against his chest. Her sweet cherry blossom scent filled his lungs and enveloped him, comforting him.
The secure way she held him made him want to never let go. He’d been craving this on every level. Deep down he worried that she’d think less of him if she knew the truth, knew how he’d failed the two wolves he was supposed to protect.
“You want to talk about it?” she whispered.
His heart cracked open even more. “Not right now.” But he would later. He needed to tell her about his past, to fully let her in. Right now he simply wanted to hold her. Even if her touch was making his body flare to life in a way that would be hard to miss.
In response she rubbed his back in a sweet, soothing gesture. Her touch was a balm for his soul. This female was the perfect mix of sweetness and sass. If he’d wanted to come up with the fantasy woman for him, he never could have imagined someone like her. He would have fallen short.
She fit snugly against him, her petite body curving into his so that it would take nothing to hoist her up against the wall. His hands slid down her back and suddenly he wasn’t just holding her because of a flashback, his hands were…on her ass. And there was no hiding his erection.
She froze.
At least she wasn’t pushing him away. He couldn’t help or hide his reaction to her. Not right now. Breathing erratically, she kept her face buried against his chest, her arms tight around him.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to rasp out. Even though he wasn’t sorry at all. He wanted this female more than his next breath, wanted to bury himself deep inside her, to share that intimate connection with her. But friends didn’t get hard-ons for one another. And he was walking a tightrope with her, trying to build their friendship back before he even broached the subject of a relationship—of mating.
“It’s okay.” Clearing her throat, she took a step back but kept her hands on his waist.
Her touch made him want to rub up against her, beg for more. He wanted to feel her hands over every inch of him, teasing and caressing. Make him forget his horrific memories. Give him something pure and beautiful to focus on instead. Give him hope that he no longer had to roam the earth alone for the rest of his existence.
At the sound of a door being opened down the hallway, she released him as if she’d been burned and stepped back. Disappointment lanced through him, but he reined in the reaction. He didn’t want her to feel guilty.
Aldric took a step into the entryway so he could see who it was. Immediately his gut dropped when he saw his brother’s grim expression from down the hallway.
“Leigh Dawson has been murdered. The scent of a shifter is all over the crime scene.”
* * *
Aldric kept his voice low as he spoke to Ivonne. The female was in a state of shock, staring at Aldric blankly as he asked her questions.
Questions he hated even asking but he had a job to do. With two vampires missing and one now dead, this did not look good for the Kinley pack. And people had started to notice that Arthur and Darius were missing by this point. There was no more hiding the situation from either the Clifton coven or the Kinley pack. The vampire leader and pack Alpha were in the next room, waiting for Aldric to finish.
“How do you think someone got into your house?” he asked again when Ivonne didn’t answer the first time.
Natalia sat next to Ivonne and placed a gentle hand over hers. The action seemed to pull Ivonne out of her catatonic state.
She cleared her throat. “I…I was with Crystal.”
“She lives here?”
The female shook her head. “No. Leigh and I have—had—an open relationship.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She swatted away tears. “I asked Crystal to stay today so we could…” She cleared her throat again. “Leigh didn’t want to join us. My mate was alone, hurt, dying, and I was…” Her voice broke again and she buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as she silently cried.
Aldric might not understand how anyone could have open relationships, but her grief was real. A plethora of emotions rolled off her, too many to sift through, but the grief stood out. An emotion he was intimately familiar with.
Natalia murmured soothing sounds and wrapped an arm around Ivonne’s shoulders. She didn’t tell her everything would be okay or spout stupid fucking platitudes. But she did give comfort, just as she had him a little while ago.
Natalia had lost too many of her own people recently. Her parents and two cousins had all been murdered. And he’d simply added to her pain when he’d left her with no word. God, he’d fucked up. No wonder she didn’t want him in her life.
“I know this is difficult,” he murmured. “And I’m sorry for your loss. Would you like me to call Elian in here?”
Shaking her head, she straightened and looked at him. “No, I want whoever hurt my mate to pay.” Something he recognized well bled into her gaze. Rage. “A shifter murdered my mate. It had to be a Kinley shifter! They need to be brought to justice.”
Aldric nodded, shooting a quick look at Natalia. She’d scented shifter in the bloody bedroom as well. They all had—Jayce, Kat and the two leaders. He recognized who the scent belonged to but he wasn’t going to tell Ivonne that. She would immediately want blood, and if she didn’t recognize it right now, it would keep the peace at least a little longer. Until they could figure this mess out.
Natalia’s expression was worried too. He hadn’t told her he knew that scent but she’d told him it was definitely a shifter. Lupine.
“I’m going to have to ask a lot of questions. Are you sure you don’t want your coven leader in here?” If she’d been a shifter she would have asked for her Alpha as support. It was more or less the way things were done.
Another sharp shake of her head. “I’m sure. I need to get through this. I’ll break down once we’re done. My mate deserves justice.” Her words were resolute.
Nodding, he dove right in, asking question after question. Who had access to their home, who knew about their open relationship, on and on.
“How far away is the room you were in earlier from your bedroom?”
“We have a playroom. It’s only a floor down but it’s well insulated. I…” Jaw tight, she seemed to steady herself. “It’s locked both when in use and when it’s not, so no one could have bothered us.”
“Who else on the premises entered the bedroom after you found him?” He hated asking but he needed to know how contaminated the scene was.
Someone had driven a silver stake straight through Leigh’s chest, piercing his heart. The killing blow. The silver would have injured him, but vampires and shifters couldn’t live once their hearts were shredded. Not usually anyway. The male had been ripped apart, ripped to pieces by claws. But from what Aldric had seen, he hadn’t struggled. There were no defensive wounds and the blows had been vicious. An autopsy would tell for certain, but he was sure that the male had been clawed up postmortem. That was odd.
“No one. I called Elian immediately after I found…”
“Were you and Crystal together the entire time in the playroo
m?”
She started to nod, but quickly shook her head. “No. She got blood for us after a couple hours because we were tired.”
“Around what time was that?”
As she continued to answer questions, Aldric jotted down her answers. He had an excellent memory but keeping detailed notes was necessary for everyone involved in this case.
After twenty more minutes of questioning her, he met with Crystal while Natalia left to help Kat and Jayce search for scents on the property. Crystal’s story lined up with Ivonne’s, but didn’t sound rehearsed.
Once he was done with her, he continued questioning the rest of the staff, the tediousness necessary, if time-consuming. It was more logical that someone inside the house or someone with access to Ivonne and Leigh’s schedule had been involved.
Especially since Ivonne was certain that she’d armed their security system. He’d have to check the records, to see when it had been disabled.
What really mattered though, were the scents in the house. Because scents didn’t lie. Not to shifters and vampires.
Scents couldn’t be faked—not that he knew of anyway. And he had no doubt that Constance Kinley’s scent was in that bedroom, all over Leigh’s dead body.
Aldric nodded once at Craig Kinley as he exited the study. The Alpha’s entire body was like a tightrope, all his muscles pulled taut. With a dark expression he fell into step with Aldric and headed down the hallway to the front door.
They stepped outside to find two shifters from the Kinley pack waiting, but Craig continued past them without a word. Aldric scented traces of Jayce, Kat and Natalia nearby. Scenting Natalia soothed his wolf. He liked having her near, wished she was with him now.
But she didn’t need to be here for this conversation.
“You know what I scented in there,” Aldric said as they moved into the middle of the expansive front yard. He wasn’t going to spell it out, not with shifters and vampires in the near vicinity.
“I do. But it wasn’t her.” The Alpha’s voice was tight, rage vibrating in his words.
Aldric didn’t bother arguing because there was no point. “I’m going to need to talk to her. Now. Where is she?”