by Cecilia Lane
She didn’t know how long they walked. Fifteen minutes, maybe. Definitely through rough terrain that left her winded. She would have kept walking forever if it meant she avoided the detention center.
The soldiers surrounding them marched them into a clearing lit by bright lights and patrolled by more soldiers with more guns. Buses idled nearby in the darkness. Dropping off or picking up, she didn’t know.
Too many faces were seated on the ground. Too many hands were bound by glinting cuffs that she knew must be silver. One by one, they perked up and called out names of their friends and family.
Trent. Holly. Gretchen. Connor. Sylvie.
“Becca?” That last came from one of Cole’s clan.
The faces of the guards ranged from impassive to hatred. Only a handful looked uncertain, but they weren’t stepping forward to help the animals.
Every single thing about it made her sick.
One soldier raised a weapon and shouted as the murmuring of names grew to a roar. “Shut your fucking mouths!”
But the shifters didn’t quiet, not until a warning shot was fired over their heads.
She and the others were shoved forward to marks hastily spray painted on the grass. The unconscious shifters were dumped and cuffed, just like the rest of them.
Rylee felt a brief flash of relief when she spotted the rest of the Strathorn clan behind them. Then that relief sunk back into despair. Leah and Hudson were out cold. Callum and the others wore masks of fury. Blood had dried in a long line down Callum’s face.
“What happened?” Cole asked quietly over his shoulder.
“Hudson went down after taking out three of theirs. They shot him up with at least four darts. Leah took one meant for me. They’ve both been out about a half hour now. I don’t know what happened to Gideon. He fell from the sky.”
“No talking!” The shouting soldier pointed his weapon in their direction.
Rylee fought the urge to cower. The voice, the utter power he exuded, pushed her to obey.
She lifted her chin defiantly. Cole had given her the confidence to stand up for herself. Smart or not, she wasn’t going to curl up in fear again. She made her choice to stand by Bearden and some glorified hall monitor with a weapon would not break her with his words alone.
Callum waited until the man moved on. “They might be dressed up and swinging their dicks around, but they’re not all soldiers. I overheard one say he wanted a bearskin rug out of this to go with his trophies from Africa.”
“Hunters, then. I wouldn’t be surprised if Delano handpicked most of the soldiers serving and filled the others’ heads with lies before calling in his pals.” Jacob flicked his eyes toward Cole. “I told you the enclaves were like lambs to the slaughter.”
“Why keep us alive? Why not just put us down now?”
“We’re valuable,” Callum answered in a harsh whisper. “Prizefighters. They talk about us like we’re dogs. The rest, the ones that are hiding, are bait or things to be hunted when they clean up in the next day or two.”
Nolan spat. “I’d love to get in the ring with them.”
“Easy,” Callum ordered. “You saw what they did to Judah and Olivia.”
He darted a look to the nearest soldier, then over his shoulder. Rylee saw both with blood smeared across their faces.
“It’s not just the tranq darts, either,” Callum went on. “Some are loaded up with silver bullets. Half the people here have fragments still in them. No shifting with those under their skin.”
“Motherfuckers,” Cole growled.
Another soldier passed and waved a gun at them, daring them to keep speaking.
The distant groan of an engine sped her pulse in her chest. More soldiers or more victims, she didn’t know which.
The open-doored vehicle pulled to a stop and blocked the path into the clearing. Five soldiers poured out, then stood waiting for the last man to exit.
Major Brant Delano stepped from the vehicle and smiled smugly around his stupid cigar. His cold, dead eyes swept over the crowd and for once, she was glad to see the claw marks on his skin. He deserved that, and more.
“Doc! I should have known you’d be in this shit.” Delano puffed out his chest and strut in front of them. “You should have gone back when you had the chance. Now you’ll be nothing more than bait for the animals.”
A growl rose from Cole, softly at first but steadily building in his chest. Bear he was, and he sounded exactly like a bear warning away a threat that kept pushing closer. She wanted to reach out and touch him. Not to calm him, but to let some of his rage flow through her.
“I couldn’t stand by and let these people be hurt.”
“But they’re not really people,” he said with a tone implying she was a simpleton. “That’s what you don’t get. They might talk like people, they might look like us, hell, they might even fuck like a person. You’d know better than the rest, wouldn’t you? Traitor to your own fucking kind.” He tucked a finger under her chin and raised her face.
“Get your hands off her!” Cole snapped.
Delano spared him a glance and a sick smile spread across his face when he returned his gaze to Rylee. “Maybe we’ll line them up for you. See what comes out at the end of nine months. That’s research, isn’t it?”
Her heart raced and her hands shook. It was a disgusting, vile idea that had no benefit. It was cruelty. She hated him and all the others willing to go along with his terrible plans.
“Oh ho, this one doesn’t like the sound of that!” Delano’s face hardened as Cole’s growl grew to a fever pitch. “Maybe we’ll let you watch.”
Cole’s eyes turned to pure, liquid gold, and he tested the strength of the cuffs on his wrists. He rose to his knees, glaring at Delano all the while.
“Sit down,” Delano ordered, fingering his sidearm.
“Cole, please,” Rylee hurriedly urged. Too much tension thickened the air. Too much could go wrong in a single second. They were better off finding a smart place to take a stand, not creating a situation with too many guns pointed in their direction. “Don’t do anything.”
Delano swung the butt of his weapon and connected with Cole’s temple. “Down, I said,” Delano demanded.
“Stop!” Rylee yelled. She struggled to her knees, still screaming the word over and over.
It fell on deaf ears. Delano struck again, then again.
A wave of objections washed over the crowd. She hated the way Delano only grinned wider. He liked causing pain, and he wanted everyone to see how much of a hard ass he could be. It made her skin crawl.
“You animals will learn who your masters are,” Delano snarled.
Soft rustles of movement behind her stole her attention from Delano’s intimidation theatrics. One by one, heads cocked to catch a noise in the distance. The soldiers glanced at one another with a mixture of confusion and worry on their faces. Fingers tightened around their weapons and adjusted their protection in their arms.
She caught the noise at the same time as the other humans. The chopping of blades through the air that signaled helicopters. Friends or foes? She slid a look to Delano, but couldn’t read his reaction. He didn’t know, either.
The first blinking lights appeared in the distance and Delano yelled to his men. “Get them loaded on the busses! Now!”
The lines furthest back were the ones first jerked to their feet. Rylee knew enough of history that no good would come from stepping on those busses.
A struggle started almost from the beginning. Rylee glanced over her shoulder, then back to the lights in the sky. Faster, she urged. Please be help.
The first line of shifters dug in their heels and refused to move. Multiple soldiers grabbed hold of arms and legs and tried to drag the resisting offenders into the darkness. Even bound and shot, they wouldn’t give in easily.
Still other soldiers murmured uneasily. Those were the ones playing dress up, just as Callum said. They weren’t real fighters. They didn’t have the training to put dow
n a growing, growling rebellion.
She prayed help would arrive before the nervous ones started shooting.
The second line was forced to their feet before the first even moved into the darkness beyond the clearing. More resistance came from even more unwilling shifters. There weren’t enough hands to drag them forward.
Spotlights brightened the clearing and Rylee tore her gaze away from the struggle behind her. Four helicopters hovered over the clearing, with more circling around the scene.
She held her breath. Friend or foe?
“Drop your weapons and put your hands behind your heads!”
Rylee nearly collapsed to her hands with relief. Someone heard their message. Help had come to Bearden.
But an eerie quiet settled over the clearing. It was loud, even over the helicopters. Everyone waited for something. Some signal to fight or kill. Some sign that the entire ordeal was over.
Tension grew the longer Delano stayed silent. He glanced at his men surrounding the captured citizens of Bearden. One tiny hand gesture was all it took for them to raise their weapons toward the helicopters. The crews in the sky responded by drawing weapons of their own.
In that confusion, Rylee’s cuffs bit into her wrists and she was hauled to her feet. The stench of Delano’s cigar and sweat curdled her stomach. And something hard pressed against the base of her skull.
“I’m walking out of here, or she gets a bullet to the back of her head!”
Coward. Yellow-bellied weasel. Terrorist. He couldn’t put down his weapon and accept he’d been caught ready to sell Bearden into slavery and death. He had to take everyone to hell with him.
This was how she died. Even if both sides took extreme care, the firefight would surely stray into the innocent crowd.
She accepted it. Internalized it. And met Cole’s eyes for the final seconds of her life.
At least she’d known him. At least she started to heal. He helped with that process, and she had so much gratitude and love for him. Finding people who could change into ferocious beasts and getting close to a man again seemed like equally far off possibilities before she journeyed to Bearden, but Cole filled both roles. He’d taken a weak, damaged girl and given her the strength and courage to face death on her feet.
But he wasn’t about to let her go so easily.
Cole surged to his feet with a feral challenge on his lips and ripped her out of Delano’s grasp. With a quick twist of his body, he placed himself between her and the madman.
A crack of gunfire reached her ears just as Cole stiffened.
Chaos and confusion erupted all around. Small groups banded together and targeted soldiers. Still others grabbed children and ran for the tree line.
For every person who ran, more streamed into the clearing. Backup had arrived and worked with the humans trying to put down Delano’s hateful mission. Partial and full shifts struck against guns. Real bullets, not just tranquilizers, fired into the attack and more bodies fell to the ground.
Then a roar pierced the night, followed closely by another. A jet of fire shot into the air. Trees shook and bent until they broke. Two dragon heads broke into the clearing, halting the escape of some soldiers.
Ropes dropped from the helicopters. The low whizz of cord passing through gloves preceded bodies thunking down to the ground.
Rylee ignored it all. She leaned over Cole and pressed her hands over his heart. “No, no, no,” she muttered over and over.
There was a limit to shifter healing, and she feared she’d found it.
Blood seeped out of the wound that didn’t look like it was closing in the slightest.
Cole sucked in a quick breath and his eyes snapped open. “Let me up,” he wheezed. “Need to shift.”
“You’ve been shot!”
“Need to shift!” He jackknifed upward, then tugged the cuffs on his wrists as far apart as he could manage. “Need keys or to break these off.”
Good Lord, his voice sounded too raspy. Syllables dropped out of his words, like there wasn’t enough air in his lungs to push past his vocal cords. His face was drawn and ashen and terrifying.
She moved even before her mind could process what she was doing. The Strathorns were with her, hauling Delano to the ground. She didn’t care who made the killing blow or how. She just needed in his pockets.
“Keys, keys, keys,” she chanted, diving into one and then the next. Four pockets and an eternity later, her fingers brushed against cool metal.
Then she threw herself back to Cole.
He’d managed to rip one cuff off his wrist. It pained her to look at the broken fingers and raw skin on his hand from scraping metal over himself. She nearly had to pin him to the ground to insert the key into the hole on the remaining cuff. He shoved her away as soon as the metal fell from his hand.
His mouth stretched open, and a roar tore out of his throat.
Chapter 26
For two long days, Cole was kept hostage in his own bed by a woman who could barely reach his shoulders. She was the gatekeeper to his home and harsh mistress of his diet. He doubted he could sneak past her if he even tried.
“Rylee, please,” he laughed and tried to pull his arms out from the blanket she insisted on tucking around him. It was more like a straight jacket than a comforter.
She pursed her lips and adjusted her glasses. “You need to rest.”
“I’m healed. Look!” Cole threw back the blankets she’d just tucked around him. A tiny, pink pucker marred his chest just below his heart. He had worse marks from his last brawl with the clan.
He thought he won when her eyes darkened and her breath hitched in her chest. Wildflowers and fresh rain filled the air, slowly thickening as her blood heated to a simmer. A growl worked its way out of his chest, low enough that she couldn’t hear. The thought of her wanting him turned him on.
Two fucking days with her constantly hovering nearby was pure torture when she wouldn’t let him touch her. And sure, he’d been pretty weak those first twelve hours after his shift, but that mostly passed after a good sleep and breakfast. He was getting antsy in bed and unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling. His bear wanted out. No, that wasn’t right. The beast wanted Rylee.
Mate.
Cole’s growl took on a new pitch of contentment.
“You could still have a fragment inside,” she insisted. “Or a tear to the muscle. You lost so much blood and there’s very little known about your healing abilities.”
“I shifted, didn’t I? Which means no fragments—”
“No silver fragments,” she interrupted.
He hated even thinking about that entire fucking day. Beaten, seemingly betrayed, then captured again. A rollercoaster of emotion was entirely too accurate. He could have lost her so easily at multiple points.
At least they’d won. The message she’d worked to get to the outside summoned a force ready to take down Delano and his disgusting friends. The war wasn’t over by a long shot, but they’d managed to win one battle.
He had another fight to win. He didn’t care how many skirmishes it took. Rylee would be his mate. He’d claim her just as soon as she gave the word. He didn’t care if she wanted to stay human or asked for a bear. He simply needed her heart.
“I’m healed, Rylee. You’re stuck with me now. No shuffling me off the mortal coil. You’ll have to do better if you’re leaving me.”
“I am not leaving—” She snapped her mouth shut and shook a finger at him. “No changing the subject. I want to do an ultrasound to make sure you aren’t bleeding internally.”
Cole rolled his eyes and sat up. She tried to push him back into bed, but he set his feet on the ground. Standing up to his full height dragged her to her feet with him. He managed one step before she wrapped herself around him like an octopus.
They crashed to the floor in a jumble of limbs. Cole turned to take the brunt of the fall. Maybe on purpose. Maybe so she’d spill over his chest. His eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head when he fel
t the faintest trace of her heat against his groin.
Two long fucking days.
Rylee propped herself on her elbows and stared down at him with those big blue eyes he loved. “You could have died.”
“I will die, one day.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t talk like that!”
“It’s part of life. We’re not immortal like the vamps.” She opened her mouth to object, and he hushed her. “Okay, okay. I didn’t die, and I will not die from this. If something was wrong, we’d know by now.”
She rolled her shoulders and released a fraction of the tension she carried. “You’re sure you feel fine? I’d still like to have a doctor look at you.”
“I have a hot one looking at me right now.” She growled at him. Growled! He struggled to keep his laugh contained. “I’m fine. Wounds and fights are part of being a shifter.”
He leaned up and caught her in a slow, simmering kiss. The scent of wildflowers exploded around him and he laid bare his soul. “I’m going to spend every second I have left in this world worshipping the ground you walk on. I hated needing to watch you when you came here, and now I can’t imagine doing anything else. You make me a better person, Rylee. You calm my bear when I need it, challenge me when I’m being stubborn. I didn’t think I had a mate, and you proved me wrong. There are some scary big changes coming for us all, you included if you stay, but I’m ready for them if I have you at my side.”
It was a good speech if he had to be the judge. But it was for her and only her opinion mattered.
Her eyes softened when he met them, and she leaned forward. Cole skimmed his hands up her back and settled one in her hair and the other against her cheek. She felt so good to touch, and even better to kiss.
He sipped at her lips slowly. Deliberately. Giving her every chance to pull back, just like the first time he pressed his lips to hers. Each second she didn’t step back tied him more firmly to his decision. She belonged with him. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth. Air to breathe, food to eat, none of that mattered if he didn’t have Rylee.