“It was an accident,” Deacon whimpered.
“It didn’t look like an accident to me!” Xander hissed, as loudly as he could.
“I swear it was. We were out, hunting, and we decided to shift. It was a game to see who could do it fastest. But, half way through, we suddenly saw these three humans watching us.”
“What do you mean, you suddenly saw? Are you not bears? Do you have no sense of smell?”
“I d-don’t know how we didn’t notice them before,” Deacon stuttered. “There were human scents here and there, but we weren’t that far from civilization. I think we were just so caught up in playing our dumb game, that we didn’t stop to notice how strong their scent was.”
“And then what happened?” Xander demanded, his impatience reaching its peak. “Did they see you shift?”
“Yes. We were shifting back to being bears, and they caught us right in the middle of it. And then we had to shift again to capture them.” Xander slammed his hand against his own forehead. It was absolutely forbidden for humans to see shifters change from one form to another. It was one of the most sacred shifter laws, which, when violated, could mean death for those involved.
“You let them see you shift, not once, but twice. So even if they’d thought that their eyes were deceiving them the first time, there could be no doubt the second time?” he bellowed, losing control of his voice.
“I guess,” Deacon said miserably. He was one of the biggest bears, but right now, he looked like a scolded teen.
“And then you brought them back, to our territory, that we put a lot of effort into keeping secret and hidden from the human world. What the hell is wrong with you all?”
“I’m sorry!” Deacon protested, holding his head in his hands. “We’re not smart like you, Brains – sorry, Xander. After we made the first dumb mistake, we just did what we thought was best.” Xander was silent for a moment, thinking. He didn’t know what he would’ve done in their situation. Probably not make the dumb mistake in the first place.
“Are any of them hurt?” he said in a measured voice. Deacon shook his head.
“No. They were thrashing about like crazy, and one of them was trying her best to kick us in the nuts, but we held them tight so they couldn’t hurt themselves.”
“Good. And have they been asking you any questions?”
“No – but one of them kept yelling that she knows who we are.”
“What?”
“She’s seen us fight or something. We didn’t reply to her. In fact, we didn’t say a single word to them, in case we said something dumb.” A burst of adrenaline jolted in Xander’s veins at the knowledge that they were recognized.
“Okay, I need some time to think. Make sure that the women are comfortable. Tell them that they can’t leave, but don’t restrain them in any way. If they ask you why they’re being held, tell them that you don’t know, and don’t answer any other questions. Go see the chef at Rudy’s and ask if she can make them some nice food. I’ll be back soon.”
“Right.” Eyes still wild, Deacon let himself back into his cabin.
Xander strode away from the cabin, in the direction of his own home.
“Fuck!” he bellowed, loud enough for half of the clan to hear him. This was the absolute worst news.
Chapter Nine
Freya, Marin and Eloise sat lined up on a couch, glowering at two of their captors. Eloise’s cheeks were stained with tears, but Freya and Marin regarded the two hulking bear-men with defiance. At first, Freya had been terrified, but now she was incandescent with rage.
Back on the trail, after the three bears had come to a halt bare feet away from them, jaws open and teeth gleaming, and made some weird purring noises to each other which seemed to be a non-verbal discussion, they’d shifted. Right in front of them. It had been the strangest, most incredible thing she’d ever seen. Bodies hunched, bones crunched, tendons snapped. Then they rose up onto their back legs, and it was almost as if they were shedding their skin – or their fur, anyway, revealing velvety, tanned human skin beneath. As men, they were all huge. Two of them seemed to be identical twins, and all three of them had very striking looks, with taut muscular physiques. And that was all she had time to notice, before they each dived for one of the girls, and she found herself being lifted right off her feet and held in a strong pair of arms.
“Get the fuck off me!” she’d screamed, trying her hardest to elbow him in the face and kick at his crotch. She realized quickly that he was so much stronger than she was. He held her as she’d hold a wriggling kitten. Somehow her backpack had been removed from her shoulders in the struggle, and the men were now carrying the three of them off the trail and deep into the woods. “What are you doing?” she yelled. “Where are you taking us?” And she heard the same note of panic in Marin and Eloise’s voices. Marin didn’t stop struggling once. At one point, she got a hand free and scrammed her captor’s face, drawing blood. Freya tried to do the same, but her captor saw her plan and pinned her arms down very efficiently.
They were carried through the woods for maybe half an hour. It was hard to tell. Time seemed dislocated. It could have been ten minutes or two hours. Freya tried to remember everything she’d read about escaping an abduction. Try not to panic. Conserve your energy. Try to remember details about your surroundings. Look for the position of the sun in the sky. There was no sun visible. They were beneath a thick canopy of trees. Freya didn’t stop demanding answers from her captor, but he remained grimly silent, his full lips pressed together and dark eyes staring straight ahead. She picked up his scent; there was something familiar about it. Where have I smelled that rich, musky outdoorsy smell before? she wondered. And then she remembered: at the wrestling match, of course.
“I know who you are!” she yelled suddenly. Her captor’s body jerked and his lips twitched, and parted as if he was about to ask a question. But then he clamped them closed again. “I’ve seen some of you fighting,” she continued. There was that twitch of the lips again, but he remained silent. “Are you one of the fighters?” she tried again, but this time he was ready for her, and his face remained blank. “Do you know Xander the Great?” This time, the pupils in his dark eyes dilated perceptibly.
They emerged from the wood and came into a clearing. More of a deep valley, surrounded on all sides by a high cliff with jagged edges. It kind of looks like we’re inside a volcano, she noted. Then they arrived in what could only be described as a village. There was a whole collection of wooden cabins, all very different from each other, and decorated in crazy styles. One looked like a mediaeval castle, another like a giant trailer, another like a Victorian-era house, with dormers and a wraparound porch. There were also stores, bars and restaurants.
“What the hell is this place?” she muttered.
They came to a large cabin, which was fronted with pillars, a bit like at the White House, and had two stories and a porch. Her captor opened the front door and they were all carried inside and deposited in front of a large, beat-up leather couch.
“Please sit,” her captor said, speaking for the first time in a deep, rumbling voice. At first, she, Marin and Eloise stood defiantly, but, discovering that their legs were shaking, they soon sat down. The three bear men stood in front of them, legs apart and arms crossed menacingly, like nightclub bouncers, but they kept shooting worried glances at each other.
And then came a very loud knock on the door, making everyone jump. Her captor shot towards the door, opened it cautiously, then darted out. Freya glared at the two remaining men. They hadn’t planned to snatch them; that was obvious. They seemed way too nervous and desperate to communicate with each other.
“You’d better tell us right now what the hell you’re doing with us!” she yelled for at least the tenth time, hoping that they’d be weaker with one of them missing. They looked at each other, then back at her again, but said nothing. She let out a roar of frustration. Then she took a sideways glance at Eloise. She looked absolutely petrified, and it
tugged at Freya’s heart. She inched her hand over and laid it on hers.
“Everything will work out okay,” she whispered, not believing her own words. Her mind was reeling, trying to compute the various reasons these shifters might have had for snatching them. And then the worst possible reason of all made her stomach lurch in horror. Are they cannibals? Is that why the security fences were so extreme at the wrestling stadium? Have they brought us here as prey? She opened her mouth to demand an answer. She was the kind of person who’d rather know the truth, however unpalatable it was, than drive herself crazy imagining all sorts of possibilities. But she couldn’t ask the question in front of the other two. They’d both have a heart attack before they even heard the answer.
The front door opened and the other guy came back. He looked scared; his eyeballs were practically hanging out of his head. He looked at his friends and shook his head. And then someone bellowed something that sounded a lot like “Fuck!” The sound echoed around the valley outside. To Freya’s amazement, all three men kind of cowered, as if the sound drove a stab of fear into their hearts. Her captor cleared his throat.
“You ladies will need to stay here in my cabin for a while.”
“What are you talking about?” Marin gasped. “What are you doing with us? You can’t just snatch us from a public place, drag us over here, and tell us we need to stay here,” she finished, imitating his growly voice.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking genuinely contrite. “You’ll be comfortable here. We’ll make sure you have food. We’ve been told not to restrain you, but please don’t try to escape. It’s a wild place out there, and things might not end well for you.” All three women’s mouths fell open.
“What do you mean, you’ve ‘been told’?” Freya demanded, recovering fastest. “You’re receiving orders?” Something flickered in his eyes, but he pressed his lips together. “What are you planning?”
“We don’t have any more information, ma’am,” he said. Ma’am? They’d just been abducted by three bloodthirsty shape shifters who called them ma’am? It didn’t make any sense. “Please make yourselves at home here, using anything in the cabin you want. But, as I said, please don’t try to escape, for your own safety.”
Avoiding eye contact, the three men filed out of the cabin, evidently relieved to be getting away. Freya immediately ran to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. But there were no locks on the windows.
“Girls, what do we do? Shall we escape?”
“Yes!” Marin said, right behind her. She opened the window wide and began to climb out. At the same moment, a powerful roar burst out from someplace nearby. She fell back into the room in alarm. “Fuck,” she hissed. “They’re watching us.” Dejectedly, they wandered back to the couch and slumped down again.
“I feel like a fucking sitting duck,” Marin spat.
“I keep thinking about all those thrillers I read where the heroine gets trapped somewhere, and sits waiting to decide what the bad guy’s going to do with her,” Eloise said in a quavering voice, hugging herself and shivering, although the room was warm.
“Let’s try to stay calm and think about why they might have decided to abduct us,” Freya said. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t planned.”
“So they grabbed us because we’re females.”
“Maybe they want to keep us as sex slaves,” Eloise wailed.
“I asked one of them if he knew Xander the Great – you know, the shape shifter I saw fighting the other day – and he reacted. I think he knows him. Maybe we can work with that.”
“Shifters live someplace secret, right?” Marin said.
“Uh huh.”
“Maybe we strayed too close to their territory.”
“So they abducted us? I don’t want to think how that line of argument ends,” Freya said.
They kept throwing ideas back and forth, nothing really making sense, until the door banged open again and a girl strode in carrying a huge tray laden with steaming plates of food.
She was tall, statuesque, and lithe, with the body of an athlete. She had long red hair, plaited into braids, and wide green eyes that tilted upwards at the outer corners. Her bare arms and legs were covered in bruises and healing gashes as if she’d recently been involved in a vicious fight, but her manner was careless, as if they didn’t bother her at all.
“Hi!” she said perkily.
“What are we doing here?” Freya said immediately. The girl frowned.
“I don’t know, hun. Deacon just asked me to bring you some food.” She stepped closer to them and cleared the coffee table of all the objects on it with a swipe of her hand, before laying the tray down. There was something feline about her, and her strength was superhuman. She’d been holding the tray balanced in one hand, while Freya knew that she would’ve struggled to carry it in two.
“You all really are humans,” she said, regarding them with some interest. “Damn, you’ve gotta be the first ones to have set foot in the valley.”
“We are?” Marin said, but she didn’t say anything else. She sat cross-legged on the floor opposite them and gazed at them like a big cat watching some prey that it was deciding whether to hunt or not.
They stared at the food. It looked and smelled delicious, but they all feared some trick. Maybe the plan was to sedate them or something, Freya wondered.
At last, the girl leapt to her feet.
“It’s okay. It’s not poisoned or anything. Rudy made it. She’s the best chef in the entire hill. You all are lucky,” she said. When they still didn’t move to pick up the plates, she darted forward and with a sigh, picked up a fork, dug it into the food and put a big dollop into her mouth, before chewing and swallowing with some enjoyment. She licked her lips. “See. It’s all good.”
Slowly, they edged forward. It did smell incredible, and Freya’s tummy rumbled. She grabbed a plate and the others followed, eating slowly at first, then ravenously. The woman watched them for a while, then slipped out of the door, smirking, like a satisfied cat, slinking off for a nap.
“She didn’t know anything, did she?” Freya said, as soon as she’d gone.
“I don’t think so.”
“I kind of liked her,” Eloise said, and the heads of the other two snapped toward her in surprise. “I mean, she’s kind of kick-ass.”
“We should have gone for the female solidarity angle and got her to help us,” Marin said with a sigh of impatience. “But I was too busy eating.”
“Eating is important. We need to keep strong, and I, for one, was starving,” Freya replied. “Besides, she’s a shifter. I’m sure that shifter solidarity is more important than human female solidarity any day.”
“How do you know?” Eloise said, wide-eyed.
“Have you ever seen a human that athletic and powerful-looking before?” Freya replied.
“So she’s a bear as well?”
“I don’t think so. I was getting big cat vibes from her. But I could be wrong.”
“I feel sleepy,” Elise said. “I had no idea it was possible to be scared shitless and sleepy at the same time.” Freya looked around the room.
“Let’s sleep,” she said. “Whatever they’re planning, I don’t get the sense it’s going to happen anytime soon. We should get as much rest as we can.”
Eloise and Marin took the couches, while she volunteered to curl up on a chair. She watched as the other two fell asleep quickly, but she stayed wide awake, her mind whirling.
She could see a kitchen at the back of the cabin. She got up and went to investigate it. It was large and surprisingly tidy for a guy’s place. The morning’s plates were piled up in the sink, but otherwise it was clean. There were a few knick knacks here and there. She picked them up, examining them, wondering if someone who kept things like those could also be a cold-blooded killer. He might be a wrestler, she reminded herself. If he knows Xander, there’s a good chance he’s also a fighter. He’s used to ruthless violence. She opened the cupboards and found a glass, snif
fed to check it was clean, before filling it from the sink and drinking it straight down. Then she tried the latch on the kitchen window. It opened easily. On impulse, she clambered onto the kitchen sink and stepped through it, jumping down onto soft earth. She froze, but there was no roar, no sign that she’d been discovered. She took a step and paused again, and then another. There was only the sound of birdsong. Taking a deep breath, and having no idea where she was going, she started running blindly into the forest right ahead of her.
Chapter Ten
Xander had called the twelve most prominent members of the clan to his cabin. Normally he would’ve used the meeting hall, but he wanted to be discreet. He laid out the details of what had happened, while Deacon, Gunner and Mikal hung their heads. The other clan members clenched their fists and snarled at the news, but Xander held up his hand.
“How could you have let them get close enough to see you?” Maximus bellowed, echoing everyone’s thoughts.
“They said they don’t know. They weren’t used to seeing humans there, although there’s some kind of trail not far away, so they thought the scents came from there,” Xander said, before any of them had a chance to reply. He was keen to maintain as much distance between them and his hot-headed brother as possible.
“Are you retarded? Do you need me to rewire your noses for you?” Maximus spat, glaring at them in turn.
“Let’s deal with them later. Our first task is to decide what to do with the girls,” Xander cut in.
“I vote we put them down,” Zanko said immediately.
“I agree. This is a very serious breach of our privacy and our livelihoods,” Maximus agreed.
“But what happens when they get reported missing? There’s a chance their families are going to know whereabouts they were when they were taken. If humans start searching around that radius, how long is it going to take before they find Broken Hill?” Xander said.
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