by Sarra Cannon
He prodded the girl with his foot before walking to the door, leaving behind the blanket he’d had her wrapped in. Sariel waited until he slammed the door before she left her corner. She stepped lightly, moved slowly and softly across the room. She almost didn’t want to know if the girl was alive or not. She hoped she was, prayed even, but deep down, Sariel wondered if it would be better for the girl to be dead. Whatever those monsters had planned, it involved shewolves being used in ways that evoked her worst nightmares.
Sariel dropped to her knees and crept the last few inches toward the girl, holding her breath. “Please, oh please, oh please.”
With her hands shaking, she reached for the girl’s throat. A pulse pounded slow but strong. She was alive.
Sariel didn’t know if she should be relieved or disappointed in that fact.
Chapter 3
Bez raced across the marshy ground, his claws gripping at whatever purchase they could find, his stride long and aggressive. His prey ran ahead, just out of his sight, the sounds of him slipping and sliding across the wet ground giving away his location. The animal remained just out of Bez’s reach. Not that he worried about the distance. Time had taught him many things, one being the necessity of patience when on the hunt. His body toned, his breathing measured, he dropped his head and ran harder, using his nose to guide him. The scent trail left by the animal in front of him practically glowed in the moonlight, a strong and wide light leading the way, stinking of fear and adrenaline. His prey was scared…as well it should have been.
As Bez leaped over a fallen tree, he caught sight of his quarry running through the tall grass. Dark and thin, the wolf looked too small to be a shifter, but Bez knew the truth. A man lived inside that wolf body; one Bez had been hunting for nearly three weeks. Through seedy bars and outlaw shifter communities, he’d tracked the beast before him, hunting down every clue, roughing up any witness who dared to refuse to speak. Three weeks of little rest for the hunter. It was time for the chase to come to an end.
Demanding one last burst of speed from his body, Bez lengthened his stride and pumped his legs harder, gaining on the smaller animal. Reaching, clawing, running, stretching—Bez gave himself over to his animal side, letting his wolf out to do what it did best—until the prey offered up the perfect target. Bez lunged, his teeth clamping down on the other animal’s back hock. He jerked his head, flipping the smaller wolf on his back, satisfied in his conquest only when he heard the snap of breaking bones.
Once the animal lay panting in the grass, Bez crawled over the top of him. Feet on either side of the fallen wolf, Bez pulled his lips back in a snarl, ready to pin his prey if need be. The animal didn’t fight back, though. Instead, he closed his eyes and whimpered, angling his head to show his neck to Bez. Submitting to the more dominant wolf. Knowing he had the upper hand, Bez took a step back, keeping his eyes on his fallen prey as he shifted to his human form.
“You’ve given me quite the run, Harkens.” Bez shook off the last of his change, a familiar chill going down his spine as fur turned to skin. “Now, get human; we need to have a talk.”
The fallen wolf didn’t move except to attempt to stretch out his back leg. At least that’s what Bez assumed—whatever bones had broken during the capture flip had left the animal unable to do much more than twitch. Bez stared at his prey, waiting for compliance, calm in the face of the disobedience. But after a few minutes where the wolf did nothing more than shake and whine, Bez sighed. Some people simply couldn’t accept defeat.
Bez leaned over the fallen animal, letting his wolf push past his human side enough to feel the warmth of the animal power in his blood. Focusing on his prey, Bez put a hand across the other animal’s forehead and met his watery gaze.
“Shift, now.”
The wolf’s whimpers turned first to frightened growls and then to screams of pain as his human body ripped through his wolf form. Naked and shaking, the twisted man lay in the mud at Bez’s feet. Thin…pale…weak.
“I’m not telling you shit,” Harkens spat even as his breathing turned to pained pants.
“I don’t need shit. I need to know about the missing Omega, the young one.”
Harkens groaned as he tried to roll onto his stomach, the bones in his back and shoulders not complying with the movement of his muscles. “I don’t know nothing.”
“Double negative.” Bez put a bare foot on Harkens’ ribcage.
“What the hell—” Harkens’ scream cut off whatever he’d planned to ask. Not that Bez would have answered him. He was too busy forcing his foot down on Harkens’ broken ribs.
“Double negative, fucker. ‘Don’t know nothing’ means you know something. I’m giving you one chance to tell me what I need to know. You do that, I kill you nice and easy right here.” Bez smiled as the man’s eyes grew wide. Harkens’ scent went harsh and slightly bitter, making Bez’s wolf practically salivate with glee. Yeah, he liked the scent of fear on this one.
When Harkens still didn’t speak, Bez nudged his foot higher, pressing harder. “You make me ask again, your death will still come, but it won’t be nice or easy.”
“Fuck you,” Harkens spat through trembling jaws.
“Wrong answer.” Bez grabbed Harkens, picking him up and slinging his broken body over his shoulders. Harkens screamed and cried, trying to wiggle out of Bez’s hold, but to no avail. Bez ignored every sound, every movement, and carried his prey out of the marshlands.
When Bez reached his Jeep, he tossed his load in the back seat. Harkens cursed and attempted to crawl out of the open-topped vehicle, but Bez had been a hunter for a long time. No one escaped him once he set his wolf upon their trail.
Keeping one hand on Harkens’ ankle, Bez reached under the passenger’s seat for the metal handcuffs he stashed there. He had another pair under the driver’s seat and two more in the very back. Bez was nothing if not prepared.
As Bez fastened the cuffs to Harkens’ ankles and wrists, essentially tying him to the frame of the Jeep, he clucked and shook his head. “I was trying to be nice, but you had to make things difficult. Now, we get to do things my way.”
“Oh, please,” the injured man huffed, still fronting as if he could somehow best Bez. “You think I’m afraid of you Feral Breed fuckers? You have no idea who I work for.”
“Nope, I don’t.” Bez clasped the last cuff to the base of the roll bar and strode to the driver’s side of the vehicle, fighting back a smile. So Harkens assumed he was a Feral Breed member? Not that he had anything against the motorcycle club Blaze used as a more localized police force. Hell, he’d even worked with some of them the previous year when the kidnappers almost managed to get their hands on another Omega. He liked the team he’d met in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but the Feral Breed had nothing on a Dire Wolf.
Bez hopped into the driver’s seat, not bothering with the door. “I’m not a Feral Breed member. I’m far worse than those pups.”
“So what, you’re a Cleaner? Blasius so afraid of us he sent out his private guard dogs?”
Bez shrugged as he reached under his seat for a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. “You could call me a Cleaner, or not. You’re dead either way.”
Harkens snorted. “Yeah, right. Give me half an hour for these bones to heal, and we’ll see who’s the one dying.”
“You’re all talk, Harkens.” Bez grinned and pulled on his clothes, tossing a rough blanket over his shoulder to cover the other man’s nudity. He didn’t need to get pulled over on the way to the safe house because Harkens was letting his junk air out.
Harkens used his legs to push himself farther up in the seat, a sure sign his bones were healing. “You’re all brawn with no brain. You think I can’t get away from you?”
“Nah, man…you can’t.” Bez met the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror, letting his wolf come forth to swirl the color around the way only Dire Wolves could. “No one’s ever escaped me.”
“Bullshit.” Harkens tried to sound strong, but his eyes we
re blown wide and his heart pounded loud enough for Bez to hear from his seat up front. “The only tracker the NALB had with a perfect record was Beelzebub, and he’s been dead for over twenty years. Fucking vamp took care of that psychopath.”
Bez grinned as he spun out on the dirt. His wolf made a stronger appearance, forcing his canines to lengthen and the corners of his eyes to pull up into their more lupine placement. Cocky fucker liked to be reminded of his last fight with a fully matured vampire, even if the story the shifter world knew was completely wrong. “So glad my reputation precedes me, but I wasn’t dead. The vamp tried, though. He tried hard.”
When Harkens made a strangled sound, Bez glanced in the rearview mirror. Harkens had gone even paler, looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Which, Bez guessed, he kind of had if the man thought a vamp had taken him down.
“Holy shit, you’re…”
Bez gunned the engine as he hit the highway, growling into the wind. “That’s right, Harkens. You’re dancing with one of the devils of the breed tonight. ”
Chapter 4
Three days later, Bez stood in the kitchen of the hunting cabin he’d holed up in, sipping coffee and looking over emails on his phone. The house was one of Blaze’s property holdings, little cabins to large mansions scattered across the country and beyond. All in secluded locations, all stocked to the rafters with weaponry and supplies in case he needed a place to hide, most with shifter-proof safe rooms as added protection for his mates. The president had a plan for almost anything, and the Dires were the only men on his private security team to not only have access to each property but to have the passcodes and weaponry inventory for each and every house. Something that came in handy when they were hunting down a target. Or trying to get one to talk.
A gurgle from the living room made Bez sigh. Another day, another fight not to kill the fucker in the other room before he got what he needed. Bez put his phone back in his pocket and drank down the last of his coffee. He washed out his mug in the sink, making sure to dry the heavy ceramic vessel and place it back in the exact spot where he’d found it. A second gurgle and a moan sounded as he wiped down the counters, removing all traces of his presence. Humming while he worked, Bez cleaned every inch of the kitchen until it sparkled. When he finished, he reached into a drawer and grabbed what he needed before turning toward the space most people would use for a living room. Bez had used it in a bit of a different way.
“You ready to talk yet?” Bez looked over Harkens. The shifter hung midair, suspended by a chain around his ankles and secured to the ceiling. His head down, arms tied to his chest to keep from dangling, Harkens rocked slightly over the tarp Bez had put down to keep the floors clean.
Shifters were a hard breed to kill, though not as hardy as some of the monsters Bez had hunted over the years. Still, shifters had a regeneration ability that defied human logic. To kill a shifter, you needed to stop his blood from flowing. There were two ways Bez liked to do that. The first, tearing out the heart of the aforementioned shifter, offered a quick and relatively painless death, though it wasn’t really a choice if you needed information and the target refused to speak. Like Harkens.
The second way had been Bez’s only option given the situation.
Bez had been bleeding the shifter slowly over the three days he’d had him suspended from the ceiling, killing him bit by bit, a handful of strategically placed slashes and artery nicks added every day. It looked like a gory and painful way to die, but that tended to make lips move. And Bez’s mission was to find the Omega, not to help his informants make a peaceful transition to whatever afterlife they were due.
Harkens coughed, spraying blood across the tarp below him as he did. Bez glowered at the mess until a weak whisper reached his ears.
“Attakapas.”
Bez moved closer, circling Harkens. His wolf perked up and pushed against the human mind, finally seeing an end to the wait for the next hunt in sight. “What’s Attakapas?”
“Camp.” Harkens coughed again, choking this time on the blood pooling in his mouth. “She was to be taken to a camp near the Attakapas refuge. Please. Please let me down.”
“How many men?” Bez waited for an answer before using his foot to swing the man around. He squatted and tilted his head, growling as his wolf wrangled for control. The beast was ready to end this…to kill the weaker animal and move on to the next hunt. But Bez still needed information. “How many men guard the Omega?”
“A handful. Spread too thin. Four, maybe.”
“That sounds like bullshit to me.”
“The camp is in the swamp, deep in. Boss thinks no one can find it, plus he sent—” Harkens coughed again, his entire body swinging and jerking with the force.
Knowing his time was limited, Bez ignored the mess. “Who’s this boss? What’s his name?”
“Don’t…know. Call him…The King.”
“Someone thinks highly of themselves.” Bez stood and circled his prisoner, considering. “So that’s it? Attakapas, somewhere in a bayou that stretches over what…probably a hundred miles? Four men guarding the Omega. Anything else?”
Harkens hung quiet, eyes open but unfocused. Alive and yet…not.
“Your usefulness has ended.” Bez struck fast and hard, brandishing the knife he’d been palming and slitting the other man’s throat in a single swipe. Without a pause, he dropped the knife and grabbed his phone, pressing a button as he walked out the front door.
“Attakapas Refuge,” he said when Dante answered. “That’s the holding spot, some camp in the swamp. Four guards, tops.”
“Need backup?”
“No, I should be able to handle the initial hunt alone. Alert the closest Feral Breed den just in case, and call Mammon to put the Dires on standby for the phase two hunt. Last I heard, he was over in Fort Worth keeping an eye on the Russian shifters.” Bez strode across the lawn toward his Jeep, taking one last look over the property. “I’ll be selling the house at my current location.”
“Selling? May I ask the reason?”
Bez smirked. “It’s not clean enough.”
Dante didn’t answer, the sound of clicking keys telling Bez he was typing something. “Tracking you now. Take care of the sale; I’ll handle the residual paperwork.”
“Understood.” Bez grinned and ended the call. He always loved their version selling a house, though it wasn’t something they did often. Eyes on his phone, looking up the closest property to Attakapas Refuge, he hopped into the Jeep. Bez cranked the engine while reaching for a black remote in the glove box, having already set up everything he needed to “sell” this place with a flourish. When he reached the end of the driveway, he lifted the remote and pointed it over his shoulder toward the structure. Bez grinned as he pressed the single white button on the face of the little device.
After a moment’s delay, the cabin exploded, the resulting blaze hot enough to burn Bez’s nose as he inhaled. He dropped the remote, grabbed his shades from the visor, and turned onto the main road. Attakapas Island Wildlife Management Area was a little over six hours away. The Omega was within grabbing distance.
Chapter 5
Sariel woke from her nap suddenly, her heart racing in her chest. God, her dreams…such wistful, heartbreaking visions of the past playing out as her mind surrendered to fantasy. Pictures of home dancing through her head, the feel of hard earth under her paws, and the exhilaration that only came from running in her wolf form across the harsh yet beautiful terrain. She missed it, missed everything terribly. In her dreams, she was home in the desert, surrounded by her pack. But when she woke up… Well, that was when she fell into an entirely different reality. One that had been forced on her. One she didn’t know if she could survive.
The sound of sniffling from across the room whispered in the thick, humid air, just loud enough for her sensitive ears to pick up. Angelita was crying again. The little shifter who’d been tossed into the houseboat only a week before had been doing that on and off for days, hiding her face i
n her pillow and sobbing, thinking no one knew. But Sariel knew… She heard the muffled cries, and she worried for the young girl. Possibly even more than she worried for herself.
The teenager had woken up terrified, screaming and crying on the floor of the houseboat not long after their guard had left. It had taken Sariel almost an hour to get the girl to calm down enough to speak. Another two to get her to tell Sariel her name. It took Angelita three days to finally admit how the men, assumedly the same ones who had whisked Sariel away in the middle of the night, had attacked her pack and killed her family. The little girl had been made an orphan and a prisoner within a matter of hours, and Sariel’s heart broke every time she saw the overwhelming grief on Angelita’s pretty face.
Sariel ran her hand over her eyes and sighed, somewhat frustrated. She couldn’t blame Angelita for being upset, but tears did nothing but make the men around them want more. And the animals that’d kidnapped them both—that had swooped into their regular lives and dragged them away to this humid, stinky hell in the middle of a fucking swamp—would get those tears from the pup one way or another if she didn’t stay quiet. They considered it a game, one they played with their captives whenever they got bored. And the bastards got bored often. Sariel had learned that quickly, and she’d make sure the young one knew it too. Buck up, don’t give them anything to work with, tuck your emotions under your inner strength, and pretend to be submissive to their wolves to keep them from trying to prove their dominance. Sariel would make sure Angelita learned how to survive this place without the harsh lessons Sariel had endured.
As another sob wrenched through Angelita, Sariel glanced at the chair by the door. Empty. She turned back toward the young shifter’s cot, thankful their guard had left them alone for the moment.
“Angelita,” she hissed, keeping her voice as soft as possible. “Honey, you need to calm down.”