Trayis (VLG Series Book 11)

by Laurann Dohner

  Trayis would be looking for her but she was too high to find by smell. Even if she screamed, she doubted anyone would hear her this far out. It was up to Shay to save her own butt.

  * * * * *

  Trayis hated the slower pace of the pack as he followed Arlis and a few of his enforcers. Sentries had also joined them. Their numbers grew to over twenty. He kept sniffing, hoping to pick up any trace of Shay’s scent on the wind. It hadn’t happened so far.

  They reached the river and everyone began to shift. Trayis did too, standing quickly. His gaze went to Arlis.

  “This is where our territory ends. Tegan was assigned to guard this area.” His brother looked at his pack. “Spread out and find him. Keep him alive. We need to make him tell us where he’s taken Shay.”

  Frustration welled in Trayis. “What’s around here? Any caves or somewhere he could stash her to hide her scent?”

  Arlis walked toward him. “A few. The sentries know them and will search those first. We’ve all done patrol time here.”

  Trayis turned, staring at the river. “What if he killed her, Arlis?”

  His brother put a hand on his shoulder. “He wouldn’t dare.”

  “You didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to grab her, either, did you?”

  Arlis flinched and released him. “I should have locked him up instead of sending him out here. I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think he’d do something like this. He’s always been a bit of a hothead but his temper cools fast. Maybe he’ll bring her back.”

  Trayis turned to face him. “I’m going to kill him for hurting Shay. She was bleeding.”

  “We’ll find her. Everyone is looking for them. He must be around here somewhere. It’s the most remote area of our territory but more of the pack are arriving every second. We’ll cover the area faster with such a large group. Shay will be found.”

  “What if he’s seriously injured her?” It tore Trayis up inside, imagining Shay in pain, held captive by a crazy Lycan. There was so much the bastard could do to her. “If he raped her…” He snarled, killing mad.

  “I can imagine what you’re thinking. Tegan is rash but not flat-out stupid. He knows that’s a death sentence.”

  “We need to find her fast. What else is out here? He’d know we’d try to track her, right?” He stared across the river. “Is there a way to the other side? A boat your pack keeps nearby? Maybe he’d take her into another territory.”

  “Doubtful. We don’t keep boats this way. Damon’s territory borders ours here. Tegan knows that’s one alpha he doesn’t want to fuck with. The last time one of ours ventured that way, Damon had a little fun with the youth who was stupid enough to trespass.”

  Trayis scowled.

  “Damon didn’t hurt him, but he returned him with an escort and…um, the kid was wearing a dress and makeup. That’s Damon’s idea of a joke. They don’t hurt females, so rather than beat on the teenager as punishment for crossing his border without permission, they dressed him like a girl. An adult male would be another matter. Tegan knows that.”

  “What if Tegan sent Shay that way? What would Damon do to her?”

  “Nothing bad. She’s a woman. Hell, you know Damon. He already knows Shay can’t shift. He’d hear her out then just call me to have her picked up. He’d offer up some of his trackers to help find Tegan if he knew about this. It would piss him off if anyone hurt a woman.”

  Trayis nodded, agreeing. He and the alpha weren’t friends but the male had honor. “He hasn’t called?”

  “No. That’s why I’m thinking Shay is still in our territory.”

  One of the sentries rushed out of the woods. “We got a scent lock on Tegan!”

  Trayis shifted and ran toward the sentry, who turned, shifting as he ran. Arlis followed him that time, on all fours. More of the pack ran toward them and a howl filled the woods. The scent of male fear filled Trayis’s nose. It was Tegan.

  More howls rose, giving them a better location. The pack was hunting the male, and it didn’t take long to figure out Tegan had become aware of it. But once Trayis had his scent, he increased his speed. He outran all the other Lycans, swiftly gaining on Tegan.

  He spotted the male running toward a ridge and snarled, bursting into more speed. The male turned, spotted him in VampLycan form, and Trayis heard a whimper.

  Then Tegan stopped abruptly, spun around, and pulled a gun.

  Cold fury filled Trayis as he kept racing forward. Let the man put bullets in him. It would hurt but he’d still reach the bastard.

  Instead, the crazy Lycan raised the muzzle of the gun to his own head, using a bandaged hand to grip the trigger. “I’ll blow my brains out! Stop!”

  Trayis came to a halt with just ten feet between them. He shifted, rising to his feet. “Where the hell is Shay?” he shouted.

  “You’ll never find her on your own! You need me.”

  Trayis glanced at the gun pointed at the male’s head. “That won’t kill you.”

  “It’ll take days for me to heal, if I don’t scramble my brains. Days Shay won’t have. She’ll die. You’re fucking her, right, VampLycan?”

  The other Lycans approached from the woods, and Trayis held out his hands, motioning for them to stop. They did, staying behind him. Only Arlis shifted and reached his side.

  “What are you doing, Tegan? Where’s Shay?” At his silence, Arlis growled, “Answer! That’s a fucking order from your alpha.” He threw vibes toward the male.

  Tegan trembled but didn’t lower the gun from his head. “I should have become your enforcer. Not Kale! He and that cunt Marcia plotted together so you’d pick him instead of me!”

  Arlis stepped a foot closer, frowning, his tone quieter. “Tegan…are you still doing drugs?”

  “What do you think? You broke my arm in two places, and my fucking fingers! It hurts. Especially since I have to keep using them.”

  Trayis wanted to lunge and grab the asshole, rip the gun from his fingers, and then torture the truth out of him. He couldn’t risk the gun going off though. The bastard was right. A bullet to the brain would put him down for a few days and he’d be unable to answer questions until the injury healed. Even then, that kind of damage to his brain might make him forget shit. Like where he’d put Shay.

  “Tegan,” Arlis pushed more vibes at the male, “drop the gun and tell me what you did with Shay. You’re pack. We don’t harm females. Especially our weakest member. Enforcers would protect her. Not hurt her. You want to be an enforcer? Show me you have the instincts to be one.”

  Tegan shook his head and stared at Trayis. “Kill Arlis—and I’ll give you Shay.”

  Trayis gawked at him, beyond stunned by the demand.

  The crazy Lycan nodded. “She’s still alive. You want her, right? Kill that unfit fucker who calls himself our alpha, and you can have Shay.”

  “You fucking moron,” Martin muttered behind them.

  “You always hated me!” Tegan screamed, lifting his other arm and motioning toward Martin. “Kill Arlis and all his enforcers! I’ll make a better alpha.” He glared at Trayis again. “You get the bitch. I get the pack. Sounds fair, right? Do it now. Kill them all! Show them just how brutal a VampLycan can be.”

  “Lock your knees,” Trayis hissed to Arlis—then he unleashed every drop of his rage, sending vibes in every direction.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Arlis sway but manage to stay on his feet. The Lycans behind them hit the ground fast, going to their knees.

  Trayis lunged as Tegan began to fall…

  The gun went off before he reached him.

  He caught the bastard and used his claws to rip the gun away. The weapon and part of the Lycan’s hand flew out of sight, into the bushes.

  Tegan didn’t scream from the pain. He was already out cold, his body slumped. The bullet had hit its mark and blood poured out of a hole in his temple.

  “FUCK!” Trayis roared.

  Arlis struggled toward him, still swaying like a drunk. “Control it!
”

  Trayis leashed his emotions. It was hard to do at the moment.

  His brother gripped his shoulder and crouched next to him, taking a few deep breaths. “Shit.” He felt Tegan’s neck. “He’s still breathing but he might bleed out. I see you took most of his hand… Who knows what the bullet did inside his skull? I don’t see an exit wound.”

  Trayis carelessly dropped Tegan. The Lycan was out cold. “I thought I could get to him in time.”

  Arlis glanced over his shoulders at his pack. “You put every last one of them on their knees. Damn, I forgot how powerful that Master Vampire blood amps up your alpha side. I damn near went down, too.” He stood, turning to the recovering Weres. “Get the healer, fast. Don’t let Tegan die. I want him guarded at all times. The second he wakes, I want to know.” He crouched next to Trayis again. “We’ll find Shay. I’m only picking up his blood. None of hers. That means she’s probably alive. I can’t see her not putting up a fight if he’d tried to kill her. And he needed her alive. You heard him. He wanted to use her as leverage to get you to kill us.”

  Trayis hung his head, closing his eyes. “Fuck.”

  “We’ll find her. Let’s go. He’s not going to be any help. Maybe we can backtrack his scent. He wasn’t worried about hiding his trail once his scent was caught and the hunt began. He was running for his life.”

  Trayis opened his eyes and stood. “He’s insane, Arlis.”

  “I know. He’s on drugs again. I smell those, too.”

  Trayis had to pull himself together. Shay was out there somewhere. And he’d just lost his chance of making her kidnapper tell him where she was.

  He turned, staring at the other Lycans. “I’m sorry about the vibes.”

  Martin spoke first, and he actually grinned. “Don’t be. I’ve never been put on my ass like that before. It was an experience.”

  Some of the other enforcers chuckled, and Trayis relaxed. They didn’t seem angry with him for pulling that stunt. He turned to hold his brother’s gaze.

  Arlis nodded. “You had to try. It was all you could do. Let’s see if we can find Shay by backtracking him.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shay lay on her side and twisted, the ropes tight on her wrists. She rolled her shoulders, curled her upper body into a tight ball, and wiggled her ass. It hurt but she was making progress. Her body didn’t want to contort enough but she kept straining, inching her hands along her ass, trying to get them out from behind her back. If she could get the rope in front of her, it would be a game changer.

  She was certain her wrists were bleeding, rubbed raw by the ropes and the pressure she was putting on them. Her shoulders were on fire. She was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to move that way. Even her back ached.

  She slowly continued, though, until she’d worked her hands under her ass to the backs of her thighs. Now she was stuck in a ball.

  “Shit.” She panted a bit, uncomfortable, but it was working.

  She slowly turned onto her back, brought her legs up high so they were lying against her chest and she was folded in half, and inched her arms upward. Then she twisted each foot to free herself. She grinned, hurting but triumphant. Her arms were in front of her now.

  Shay stared at her wrists. They were indeed bleeding, and her hands had begun to swell from the tight ropes.

  She sat up and stared at the knots. They looked super complex. “Fucking Tegan. Asshole!”

  She used her teeth to try to loosen them but it only hurt her mouth. She cursed some more and stared at the rough hole in the wall, where the rope ran outside of the treehouse. Maybe the other end was close and not knotted so tightly. If she could dismantle more of the wall, her hands would still be bound but she wouldn’t be stuck inside the structure.

  She wiggled around yet again, bent her legs, and leaned back. The rope kept her braced so she didn’t fall backward. Shay kicked out hard at the hole.

  The wood gave and a bigger hole opened, letting more breeze in. She lifted her legs again and kicked higher, to widen the hole even more. The rotten wood gave easily, breaking apart and falling away.

  She kept kicking until the wall in front of her was mostly gone. It revealed an even better view of just how high she was in the trees. The river flowed noisily below. Thanks to her foster father, she quickly figured out where she was. At least, she was pretty sure. She was facing north, the river was the territory border, and that meant most of the scenery she could see across the water belonged to Alpha Damon. Behind the far mountain in the distance would be the largest human city in the area.

  She rolled, got on her stomach, and carefully wiggled forward until her face was peering over the edge of the floor. The rope trailed under it, and she wiggled out more, careful to not lose her balance. With her head and shoulders out of the treehouse, she got a good look under the floor of the treehouse. The rope was attached to a thick branch a good ten feet below.

  “Shit.”

  There was nothing to grab hold of to climb down. The treehouse floor jutted from the trunk it was built into, with no sturdy, usable branches nearby. She stared at the thick branch she was attached to and softly cursed.

  There was only one thing to do. It was going to hurt. And if the rope broke, she’d fall to her death.

  Shay closed her eyes, breathing in fresh air. The branches far below blocked any clear view of the ground on her side of the river. If any of her pack were down there, she couldn’t see them. That meant they couldn’t spot her, either.

  ‘Think,” she murmured. “Worse case, the rope breaks. I’ll fall to my death. Second worst thing, I break my wrists. Then again, I might reach the branch safely, and then somehow manage to get free and climb down.”

  She wiggled back onto the platform until her head wasn’t outside and sat up. She stared at the rope attached to her wrist then gripped it with both hands. It was rough and would probably mess up her skin when she fell. She needed to hold on as tightly as possible, though, to avoid breaking her wrists when she fell.

  Tegan was crazy. She couldn’t trust him not to kill her. It would take him time to get close enough to the territory to check his texts. Then he’d be back. She needed to be gone before he was. There was no choice. She needed to save her own ass.

  “This is going to hurt. Please don’t break, rope. I don’t want to plunge to my death.”

  She scooted closer to the edge and closed her eyes. “Just fall. You can do this.”

  Fear kept her in place…but then she thought of Trayis. He would have the courage to do whatever it took to survive.

  She opened her eyes and stared out at the view. “Trayis, I’m coming back to you. I’m not going to allow that moron to kill me.”

  Then she sucked in a sharp breath—and then took the plunge.

  Her body tilted. She stared in terror at the branches below as she tumbled off the platform. Her body dropped, she clutched the rope tight…

  Then agonizing pain ripped through her arms and shoulders as the rope halted her fall, her arms yanked above her head. Momentum swung her forward, and Shay’s chest slammed into something painfully hard and solid. It knocked the air from her lungs. Her wrists and palms burned like fire.

  She opened her eyes, realizing she’d crashed into another dense branch several feet below the one she’d been tied to. She sucked in air, forcing herself to breath. She was bruised for sure, maybe had some broken ribs, judging by the pain each breath caused, but she wasn’t dead. It took her a few seconds to push beyond the pain and evaluate her new situation.

  She lifted her leg. It took two tries but she managed to get her foot high enough to catch on the branch. She hoisted herself up, getting more of her body onto the branch, slowly and painfully, and then sat up to take some of the pressure off the rope.

  Blood coated her wrists but the bones weren’t broken. Her palms had gotten torn up, just like she’d suspected they would.

  And she was able to see the ladder Tegan must have used to climb to the treehouse.


  It was about ten feet away, and it wasn’t a ladder, really. Just spaced-apart rungs hammered into the trunk.

  She scooted along the branch until she was under the knot tying her to the branch above. “Damn it.” There was no way she could reach it from where she’d landed. It was too far up. She’d been lucky to climb onto another branch after she’d fallen.

  She straddled the limb and stared at the rope. She had a couple feet of slack. “Try again,” she muttered, lifting her wrists to her mouth and began to bite into them, yanking with her teeth at the knots. One of them began to loosen.

  She grinned. “Fuck you, Tegan.” She also kept looking down the thick trunk, watching and waiting for Tegan to come back as she used her teeth again on the knots. The base of the tree was hidden by too many branches, but she could see the rungs for a good thirty feet.

  She finally got her wrists free.

  The damage to her skin looked bad. She removed her shirt, used her teeth again to rip off strips, and wrapped her wrists as best she could. Her blood damped the material quickly, so she applied gentle pressure, tossed the cloths, then tore more strips. She wore only a bra with her jeans now, but her hands were free and wrapped.

  Shay touched the still-sore spot on her temple. She could feel dried blood on her skin and hair on the left side of her head. It’s where Tegan had struck her before leaving the cabin, ultimately knocking her out. That was the least of her worries. No fresh blood, so she’d worry about that injury later.

  Her gaze went back to the makeshift ladder. Tegan wasn’t climbing the rungs, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t down on the ground. She scooted on the branch, moving closer to the trunk until she reached a rung. Shay held on to it as she stood, staring down.

  All quiet. Still no sign of Tegan.

  Now she had to make a choice: climb down the tree using the rungs, or use the branches to reach the next tree, and try to climb down that way. Nerves made her hesitate. “Shit.”

  She remembered Tegan’s hands, how messed up they were. So was his face. And she’d be above him. With her shoes on, she could try to kick the shit out of him if they met up on the ladder. He’d have a hard time holding on to anything—her or the rungs—with those bandages.