I sank my muzzle down onto my paws, trying to relax into the pack bond. But the puddled water had risen too high and I inhaled a choking noseful of muddy water by mistake. Coughing, I sprang to my feet and jabbed my hip hard against another stone jutting out of the rough walls of the pit.
This is stupid, I berated myself. I should be putting every ounce of energy I’ve got into escape rather than fighting for alpha powers I don’t know how to use.
Hunter, my wolf rebutted.
Sighing, I admitted that my animal half was right. I’d already tried physical escape, so contacting the uber-alpha was my only remaining option.
If bond strength was anything to go by, in fact, I should have called out to my newest pack mate first. Now, remembering the bright thread of light that had connected me to the Tribunal enforcer, I wondered how I could have ever doubted that he really was my mate...and that I was more closely intertwined with Hunter’s animal half than I was with any other member of our clan.
Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Not the mate bond part—no, I was finally willing to admit that I’d made a supreme error in judgment sending Hunter away. He’d obviously been trying to protect me all week long, and his strong set of teeth might have provided the power necessary to sway yesterday’s outcome in the other direction.
Sorry, Hunter, I whispered to no one. I screwed up.
Past mistakes aside, though, there was one other shifter who I could be confident of contacting quickly and definitively. One other shifter who would surely come to our aid...although bringing Wolfie into the mix would mean losing the right to remain alpha of my own pack.
Hunter first, my wolf demanded and I opened our mouth into a lupine grin in response to her haste. Unlike me, my animal half wasn’t terrified of the consequences of losing our alpha powers. She was simply impatient at the delay in contacting our chosen mate.
On it, I agreed.
But before I could do more than send a lone tendril of thought wisping down the pack bond, I heard the deep rumble of a truck’s engine starting up above my head. The hatch enclosing my pit shook in sympathy, explaining why it had been impossible to move the thick wooden boards when I’d strained against the obstruction earlier. No way was I strong enough to push my way out from underneath what sounded like a half-ton pickup truck.
A tarp slapped aside, the door above my head cracked open, and light seeped into my prison cell at last.
Too late. The SSS must have stashed Lia much closer to me than I’d thought, because it hadn’t taken Quill long at all to reach my prison. Which meant I was running out of time. Once our captor joined me in the pit, I wouldn’t be able to muster sufficient focus to call upon anyone at all.
Save Lia now or save the whole pack later. It wasn’t as difficult a choice as I would have thought. Not when losing my own clan only meant I’d no longer be a pack leader, not that my friends would perish upon some crazy outpack male’s altar.
Even as those thoughts rushed through my mind, I was frantically shifting into human form and combing through the mud at my feet with fumbling fingers. I needed to call in the cavalry, but I also needed to ensure I could buy enough time for my friends to travel to our remote location.
There! A torn fingernail caught on woven fabric, and I quickly clasped Crew’s collar around my throat. Then, knowing I was losing the ability to shift again for several hours due to two transformations in quick succession, I fell back down onto lupine paws and hunched my body into the mud. Rolling my head quickly from side to side, I matted the fur there so completely that the muddy collar became completely invisible around my neck.
Now or never, I told myself, closing my lupine eyes to buy a couple more seconds of focus before the cowboy shifter took me in hand. Rather than trying to grope a final time for my elusive connection to Hunter, I instead contacted the only shifter I was 100% certain I could get through to immediately.
Because I’d been trying to take the easy way out before rather than going for the sure bet. The pack bond I’d been gifted with less than a month earlier was immature and tenuous as it strung a line of connection between me and my young pack mates. But the alpha dominance that backed those links up was sure and strong, a gift solidly granted by my previous pack leader Wolfie Young.
Just as Ginger had been able to sever her tie to me and fling our connection back in my face, I could do the same to Wolfie. But in my case, I wouldn’t just be disconnecting one strand of a web...I’d be cutting through the linkage that bound my entire clan together. Basically, I’d be severing my newfound alpha abilities from my body and wrenching my pack mates out of my soul in the process.
Details, details.
Meanwhile, the results would be just as extreme for Wolfie as for me. The mantle’s recoil would slap the bloodling alpha in the face with such strength it would surely get his full attention. Then, hopefully, my former pack leader would be annoyed and intrigued enough to follow that blow back to its source. In the process, he’d be able to pull Lia and Savannah out of their prison...assuming he reached us before Quill stopped chasing my tail and turned his attention to the younger halfies.
Of course, I wouldn’t be able to lead a clan any longer after breaking the bond. And without the sharp edges of my current alpha abilities to protect those I cared about from the depredations of outpack males, I’d be forced to send my friends and companions home for the sake of their own safety.
But wasn’t that the true heart of the matter anyway? If I wasn’t a strong enough leader to protect my clan while backed up by the full strength of the alpha mantle, then I didn’t deserve the extra powers in the first place.
So even as the falling rain clumped together fur and trickled down through underfluff to my bare lupine skin, I ignored the externals and uncurled my incorporeal human body within the confines of the wolf’s skull. There was the thin thread of light connecting me to Wolfie, the line stretched taut by distance and appearing easy to sever. But when I began yanking at the strand with human fingernails, an iron core resisted every effort at dismantlement.
Above my head, distant voices coalesced into words. Then light seeped through clenched lupine eyelids as the hatch above my pit opened yet further. I was running out of time.
Tool use, my wolf whispered. And despite the impending danger and diceyness of the current situation, I had to smile as the animal reminded me what separated humans from wolves.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in fur form at the moment, I bantered back. Good thing incorporeal speech didn’t require a mouth because I’d given up on prying apart Wolfie’s tether with fingernails and had since moved on to ripping with blunt human teeth. Unfortunately, my jaws were no more effective than my hands had been.
I’m in fur form. You’re not, my wolf countered.
Much as it pained me to admit the fact, she was right. I felt like I’d been squashed into miniature and stuffed down the wolf’s gullet, but my human brain was really just as ethereal as the thread of light I was currently trying to gnaw apart.
Which meant that perhaps I really could just imagine a tool and it would appear here in my virtual abode. Perhaps I wasn’t forced to rely on clawless human hands to break Wolfie’s tether after all.
Even though I’d already closed the wolf’s physical eyes, I now clenched shut my virtual human eyes as well. And I begged the heavens for the weapon that fit so perfectly into my human fingers that it felt like it had been made for me—Wolfie’s grandfather’s sword. After all, since my previous pack leader had given me the katana to symbolize my newfound alpha responsibilities, it seemed like poetic justice that I might use the same device to relinquish said powers.
My imaginary hands were abruptly weighted down by the rough, corded hilt of the katana, and I gasped out a virtual breath of surprise. Wolf intuition aside, I hadn’t really thought the gamble would pay off.
But there wasn’t time to be amazed at my ability to materialize weapons as I crouched inside my wolf’s scheming skull. My captors wou
ld be invading my more physical personal space at any moment, and the tether connecting me to Wolfie still pulsed just as strongly as ever.
So, there inside the wolf’s skin, I grasped the virtual hilt of Wolfie’s grandfather’s sword tightly with ten trembling fingers. Then I hacked at the strand of light connecting me to another.
The rebound this time around was so strong that I fell flat on my face, nostrils once again filling with water.
But it was done. I’d called for help.
Now I just needed to delay until my chosen rescuer showed up to save all of our skins.
Chapter 25
“Doesn’t look like much does she?”
I’d planned to feign weakness, but the truth was that throwing away the alpha mantle had taken a lot more out of me than I’d expected. So there was nothing pretend about my passiveness as one heavy human body after another jumped down to squelch through the muddy pit beside me.
“Looks can be deceiving.” This was Quill’s voice, his southern drawl no longer sounding so charming now that I understood the depth of his depravity. “So pay close attention.”
Then the cowboy shifter’s firm tone flickered into laughter as he caught sight of my underwear. I hadn’t taken the time to rip the thin layer of cotton off my wolf’s body during the minute recently spent in human form, instead choosing to focus on hunting down and then donning Crew’s collar during my last seconds alone. Now, as I realized how absurd my bedraggled wolf must look in her Tuesday undies, I regretted the oversight.
“Nice granny panties,” the nameless sidekick said, slipping one finger beneath the waistband to pull it taut, then letting the elastic snap back against my fur.
I almost growled, but restrained myself in time. Sorry to disappoint, boys, I thought instead. If I’d known you were going to kidnap me and stuff me in a hole in the ground, I would have sprung for classier lingerie.
“Let’s get her up where we can see her,” Quill commanded, the moment of merriment past. My supposed pack mate clearly remembered how I’d taunted him with Lia’s stolen lips a few minutes earlier, and even my days-of-the-week panties weren’t enough to sidetrack him from his mission.
Two sets of rough hands settled beneath my shoulders and hips, and my wolf twitched despite my efforts to remain completely unmoving. At least I wasn’t two-legged while these monsters touched my bare skin. Instead, I felt absurdly grateful for the animal fur that buffered my wolf from our enemies’ malicious fingers.
Then my stomach swooped as I was heaved up to land on the edge of the hole. Until this point, I’d kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut, feigning slumber. But with my captors still in the pit below me, I knew my chance to escape had finally arrived.
Rousing my wolf with an effort, I reminded the animal of her marching orders as succinctly as possible. I’m not going to weigh you down, I told her. Because you’ll need all the fleetness of foot you can muster. We’ve got to find cover before we’re recaptured.
She and I both knew that the wolf brain would only be responsible for the first few minutes of our retreat. After that, I’d take back over and buy us more time, keeping the SSS members away from Lia and Savannah for as long as possible. But, for now, our success or failure rested on the head of the wolf.
My animal half didn’t answer in words, but I felt her willingness as I carefully disentangled my human mind from her senses and dropped down her throat toward her belly. I didn’t want to go so far that I wouldn’t be available if she needed me. But I also wasn’t willing to repeat my usual mistake of not trusting the animal half to command her own skin, slowing our reaction time in the process. We’d need every bit of skill we could muster to tease the SSS males without being caught.
Then my lupine form was on her feet, running through wet grass that felt heavenly beneath our mud-caked paws. The sensation was distinctly different from my usual experiences of either being in charge or being entirely lost within the darkness of her insides. This time around, I could see our surroundings, albeit at a distance, the sensations similar to watching a movie rather than participating in the action.
As I’d suspected, my prison pit had been located beside a small house surrounded on all sides by trees. An inholding in the national forest, most likely. Probably no more than an hour’s drive from the hotel where our pack holed up, I mused.
Which meant we were roughly eight hours distant from Wolfie’s territory. If I’d had a body, my stomach would have sunk into my shoes. As it was, my human brain drifted a little lower down the wolf’s esophagus as I realized I’d made the wrong decision. I should have tried harder to track down local assistance rather than spreading my net so far afield. My new task of keeping Quill and his buddies busy for a third of a sun cycle seemed like an eternity.
“Shit! She’s awake!”
Speak of the devil. I didn’t look back, but from the sounds behind me I gathered that the second male had emerged from the pit and caught sight of our lupine form streaking away through the rain. Then Quill must have joined his comrade aboveground because energy began gathering in the air between us.
The tingling, hair-raising sensation was similar to the moment just before lightning struck, when electricity accumulated in the earth in preparation for spearing through the unwary. Although not as natural, our current reality was equally dangerous. My ex-captor was preparing to hit my wolf form with an alpha compulsion that her submissive nature had no chance of fighting against.
Based on the evidence of his elongated shift and his supposedly gentle persona, I hadn’t thought the cowboy shifter had it in him to order another wolf around. But now I realized that his supposed weakness had only been part of the act, just like his drifter persona and the tale of lost love. All had worked together to lower my defenses and prompt me to accept the cowboy shifter into our clan against both Lia and Hunter’s better judgment.
Now, I could finally sense the truth—Quill wasn’t a passive, laid-back shifter like Cinnamon. Wolf senses didn’t lie, and my animal body’s fur was standing on end even as she strained to put more distance between us and the power-hungry male.
We only had one chance of escape left. If I could squash my wolf as I’d done for most of my life, then the upcoming alpha compulsion would roll right off our back just like Hunter’s had when the uber-alpha appeared in my life for the first time. Quill’s superior dominance wouldn’t matter if I had no lupine nature to vanquish.
So I clawed upwards, struggling to dislodge my animal brain before Quill could recapture us with a single word. But it was too late.
“Halt,” the cowboy shifter commanded, the directive calm and even as if he knew exactly how his prey would respond.
And he was right. I guess all those stolen halfie hearts paid off, I thought as my wolf’s muscles froze to the earth.
Once again, we’d been caught effortlessly in Quill’s trap.
Chapter 26
The pounding rain had picked up even more in the seconds I stood frozen to the earth, so I could barely hear the outpack males advancing. Still, I knew my wolf had only run about fifty feet before our muscles stopped working. Which meant I had roughly thirty seconds to get my act together before we ended up back down in that dark, dirty hole.
“Why are we taking her out now if moon-rise isn’t for another six hours anyway?” the nameless partner grumbled as the duo advanced on my frozen form. I felt my stomach rumble as I realized it had to be Saturday afternoon already, meaning I’d lost nearly a day to drugs and claustrophobic dazes. My legs abruptly weakened, and I rolled my eyes at my own psychosomatic reaction.
Wait a minute—I rolled my eyes?
Sure enough, taking stock of my physical sensations proved that my human brain now shared our lupine body with the animal. Which meant I might be able to push the latter aside after all and take to my heels before our captors reached our side.
Here goes nothing.
I strained with all my might against the wolf’s usually weak persona. Generally, it took n
o more than a flick of a virtual finger to toss her back down into the darkness of our shared subconscious. But Quill’s compulsion appeared to have locked the wolf in place just as thoroughly as it had pinned our paws to the earth a moment earlier.
But maybe.... Rather than straining against Quill’s command, I opted to work sideways this time around. Short of uber-alpha levels of control like Hunter’s, a compulsion didn’t usually halt involuntary body movements. Otherwise, underlings would all keel over from lack of oxygen to the brain.
So while Quill’s barked order made it impossible for me to move my legs or neck, my heart was still pumping and my lungs were still billowing. Plus, I maintained that other involuntary lupine reaction...the urge to scratch.
I tunneled my attention down to an imaginary itch directly beneath Crew’s collar. First, I pinpointed it in my mind—just under my left ear, midway down my neck. And as I focused, the creeping sensation slowly became real.
Muddy fur hung up beneath harsh fabric, I thought and felt those wrong-directed hairs tweaking nerve endings in my skin. Wet, heavy, I noted, paying attention to the way the collar chaffed against my sensitive flesh. And was that a flea burrowing into the warm cavity underneath?
The imagined itch had become nearly unbearable by the time my wolf reached up with one hind leg to jab at our neckband. But I could have danced and sung inside her body with sheer relief. My ploy had worked!
Now, I’d just have to hope that the SSS’s banana extract was oil-based rather than water-based and hadn’t been completely washed away by the collar’s dunking. And that the wolf’s relentless clawing would be sufficient to dislodge whatever trace was left behind.
Scratch, scratch, scratch. The collar moved in a circle around our shared neck, easing the itch and spreading relief through our nerve endings. But I didn’t relax because Quill and his partner were still moving ever close behind us. It might already be too late.
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