But it wasn’t just Faye Clara worried about, and Owen knew it. She worried for all of them. Anyone who displeased Rossi. Everyone on the island was half a blink and a whim away from being in these cages.
“Wait,” Clara hissed, perking up. “They’re saying the wolf spell.”
Owen’s mouth went dry. The chanting Gaelic words. He remembered those words. They’d been the last thing he’d heard as a human being.
A body flew through the air and landed with a hard thud in the cage beside Clara. The man’s back was bloody, some of his flesh hanging in shards. Owen recognized that beating.
Rossi.
Many of the men and boys—and all of the girls—who were thrown in to one of the various cages had backs like this. The mess didn’t last long, as their wolves healed them, but it was always hard to see.
Clara’s back had looked like that the day he first saw her.
“What the hell?” Gabe growled.
“Who is that?” Clara asked, half disbelieving.
She didn’t recognize him?
Owen stood and looked around Clara at the man’s heaving shoulders. He had dark hair and severe angles to his face. A blow to his head had covered one eye and one cheek in blood.
“Isn’t it Luther?” he asked.
“No,” Clara said. “Luther’s bald. Plus, he got off the island.” Her hopeful tone turned dark when she added, “I heard it from Damon.”
Owen heard more footsteps and inclined his head toward the opening in the top of the cage.
They were bringing someone else.
“Whoever the hell it is, we’d better get ready. This is usually when it starts.” Gabe’s anger was low, barely leashed. He’d made it clear over the two years Owen had known him, he didn’t care about anyone.
The stranger pushed himself up with unsteady arms and looked around the cage. “Who are you people?” His gaze traveled all over the fences, the back wall, then up to the top. His eyes went wide when he saw the opening.
“Don’t even think about trying it,” Owen warned. “The top of the cage is electrified fence.”
“But it’s open,” the stranger whispered.
“Leave him alone,” Gabe hissed in a low voice. “He’s the answer to your stupid prayers.” Owen turned around and found Gabriel glaring at him, holding the links and looking purposefully at Clara. “Do you want to help, or do you want to live?”
His throat closed around his response. He wanted to live. He wanted Clara to live, to escape.
Suddenly, another body dropped through the hole and the top of the cage dropped back into place. A black-haired woman landed near the bloodied stranger. The man crawled toward her, whispering, “Andrea.”
The woman grabbed him, relief flooding her voice. “Vadik. Oh, Vadik. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m just glad you’re alive. When I couldn’t feel you…” The man’s lips were stopped by her fervent kiss and Clara’s head turned.
She glanced back at Owen, her eyes full of emotion. He tried to reach for her, but the fence prevented him, as it always did.
He crooked a finger at her, but she turned back to the couple, who continued to whisper anxiously to each other.
Gabriel grunted from behind him.
This was all they could ever do. Watch.
But if there’d been so much movement on the island, the hunt wasn’t far off, and with the guards still hovering up above them, near the controls, it wasn’t long before those doors would pop open, and they’d all be on their own against the elements and the hunters and the collars.
“Look, lovebirds,” he said. “I hate to do this, but you’d better get up and get ready.”
The couple—Andrea and Vadik—looked frantic and harried. They embraced and continued to whisper.
Owen gestured for Clara again. After two years of hunts, he could feel when they were about to happen.
The cage buzzed and the latched doors in the front of the cages flipped open. Clara let out a tiny whine and called his name. The moment he’d dreamed of a thousand times. The cage doors were open. He ran out of his jail and offered his hand to her.
Andrea and Vadik stared at them. The poor fools. They didn’t know what was happening yet. But they’d figure it out.
Owen pulled Clara away from the fence and glared at the dark-haired stranger.
“Run,” he said, and took off into the darkness with Clara stumbling along behind him. He wasn’t responsible for the strangers. He only needed to get Clara out of there.
Alive.
This part of the island was more jungle than where Adrian Rossi’s villa lay. She was used to stone pathways and water features; food that wasn’t tossed onto the ground to eat. For almost a month, she’d been treated like an animal. Kept in a cage. She was filthy and grimy and everything smelled like the bathroom in the men’s barracks where she’d had to clean once a month.
Owen tugged her through the forest, his shaggy blonde fluttering in breeze behind him. He knew where he was going. Every step, every turn had purpose.
Gabriel’s wolf had run a few paces alongside them and then taken off in the opposite direction when the footpath split.
“What about those other two people?” What if they knew about Faye? They weren’t from the island. She knew everyone on the island.
“They have to take care of themselves, Clara. We have to go. The hunter is out here and our collars could activate at any moment.”
Clara ran her fingertips over the metal locked around her neck. Hard. Cold. And humming with energy. Owen had warned her what would happen, but the actual moment those gates had opened, her heart nearly stopped. She yanked backward, breaking Owen’s stride. “We have to go back. They don’t know what’s happening.”
He shook his head and tugged her forward again. “I told them to run.”
“Owen.” She yanked her hand from his grasp. “We can’t just let them die.”
“I don’t want you to die. If we go back into the open, we’re easy targets. They’re on their own. When the collars activate, you stay with me.” He cupped her face and stared deep into her eyes. “Stay with me.” His blue eyes reflected his concern and she wanted so much to stay lost in them, but she’d never forgive herself if they didn’t at least give that other couple a fighting chance to avoid being slaughtered.
Clara nodded. “I’ll stay with you, if we go back to warn them.”
Owen growled, showing flecks of gold in his eyes. “This is what got you thrown in this hell hole to begin with. Caring about other people more than yourself.”
She smiled. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe they were able to save Faye. Maybe they know what happened to her.”
“We’re being hunted. Right now. A man with a rifle, a scope, and bullets that can separate your leg from your body is looking for us. This is not the time to play savior.”
Clara took a step backward and lifted her chin. Those two people were lost; wounded and confused. They didn’t deserve to die because no one told them they could be shot at any moment. “You can keep running, but I’m going to warn them.”
“Clara.”
She smiled again. Owen was growling her name in frustration, but his tone said she’d won. She couldn’t see the frown through the messy blond beard, but she knew it was there. “Let’s hurry.” She took off back the way they’d come, pushing herself hard.
If the collars really were going to make them shift into wolves at any moment, she needed every second to find out what the strangers knew before she couldn’t speak.
He was right on her heels as she crashed back through the trees into the flood lighted clearing in front of where the cages opened out of the pit.
The tall beaten and bloody male wolf leaned against the rock wall where they’d exited the cages.
“Who are you two?” Clara rushed toward them, halted abruptly by Owen. He grabbed her arms and kept her from getting too close. All the while he was watching every angle and listening to every rustle in th
e trees. “Do you know Luther? Is Faye safe?”
“We need to get out of the light,” Owen said, pointing up at the floodlights bathing the entire clearing. “We’re too easy to see here.”
The black-haired woman looked up. Suspicion and pain filled her blue eyes. “What is this place? Why didn’t he just kill us?”
“He doesn’t waste wolves. Big game hunters come in and leave with a new wolf pelt to add to their collection.”
The woman choked, but managed not to vomit. Impressive.
When Owen had told her what would happen she’d puked until there’d been nothing left.
Clara rubbed Owen’s arm, bathing in the warm magick that flowed between them. Stolen touches and kisses through a chain link fence had been so hard. Now they had a chance to touch…really touch and there was some asshole hunter trying to shoot them. She drank in the sleekness of his half-naked form, wishing for a quick glimpse beneath the scrap of fabric he had tied around his waist.
“Come on,” Owen urged.
The four moved south, away from the pit and the light.
Two blasts roared from the other side of the island, sending up two billows of flame and smoke into the night sky. The lights near the pit went dark.
Clara froze.
Owen gripped her hand in the darkness. “What the hell was that?”
Chapter Two
Clara’s hand was slick against his and Owen pulled her into his body. The humming was gone. The electricity. The lights.
“What the hell was that?” he hissed into the darkness.
“Andrea,” Vadik whispered. “You set the charge?”
Owen’s eyes began to adjust to the dark and he could make out their faces, and Clara, staring at them in wonder, her fingers on the collar.
The strange woman sighed. “I assumed I’d done something wrong when it didn’t go off. I wasn’t sure how long I was out.”
Owen glanced back out into the jungle and tried to tune his senses into the danger lurking out there. Somewhere in the receded, fenced-in back-side of Rossi’s island, there was a hunter. He was out there, or they wouldn’t have opened the cages.
The lights being off made no difference. They were still going to be cannon fodder as soon as the hunter had had his fun. He still needed to get Clara as far away from these two as he could manage.
“Look, Clara wanted to come back for you,” he said, looking around with wary eyes. “So here are the rules.”
He pulled Clara tighter against him. She was all that mattered.
“The rules?” Vadik said, pushing himself away from the rock and standing. He was healing much faster than Owen had. Lucky man. He might make it.
“The rules of the hunt. Or as much as we can learn about them.” Owen held up one finger. “One wolf, that’s it. Each hunter is allowed to kill one wolf. He sets his own parameters, as far as we can tell, because it’s different every time. Sometimes, they shift us first and then open the cages. Sometimes, we run around for hours, hiding, and shift just before the first shot.”
“Why don’t you shift right away?” Andrea slipped her arm under Vadik’s, holding him up so they could walk. But they still weren’t moving fast enough.
Owen was going to have to leave them.
For Clara.
“Sometimes, we do.” Owen pointed toward the western side of the island, where Gabe was undoubtedly perched at the only high ground, watching for movement. “Gabriel, the angry guy in the other cage, he always shifts right away. It’s his way of saying fuck you to Rossi.”
Clara fingered the metal collar. “They can make us be wolves, but he won’t make us be human.”
“Not until after the hunt, anyway.” Owen took her hand and pulled her along behind him. “Somewhere out on the island right now, probably with night-vision goggles, judging by the time of the hunt, there’s a hunter with a long-range weapon. He’s going to kill one of us.”
The strangers exchanged looks and Andrea gripped Vadik’s body.
They reached the edge of the clearing, where the heavy forest began, and Owen stopped.
“There’s really nowhere to hide. Not forever. It’s best to stay on the move, we’ve learned.” He offered his hand for them to shake. “I’m Owen. This is Clara.”
Andrea took it first, then Vadik.
“That’s the best advice I can give you. Stay on the move. And good luck.” He yanked Clara along behind him and took off, running. She dragged at him, but he wasn’t going to listen anymore. They’d done what they could do. They couldn’t save everyone.
“We can’t just leave them.” She pulled hard on him, yanking him to a stop.
He rounded on her and grabbed her shoulders. “Look at me. If we don’t get out of the open land by the cages and get to the valley with the stream, we’re going to be sitting ducks. We have to keep moving. We told them that.”
“But that guy, Vadik. He’s wounded.” Her eyebrows drew together. “We’re going to leave him to die?”
“Better him than you.” Owen gripped her hard.
Her compassionate eyes looked back toward where the other couple had been left behind. “Better no one.”
“That’s not an option.” He pulled her into a run again and they dodged branches and moved through foliage. Owen kept running until he couldn’t hear the other couple anymore. He needed to put enough distance between them that he could focus on hearing the movements of everyone.
“Are we going to the stream?” she called from behind him.
“Yes,” he grunted, ducking around a low branch that popped into his vision. He wasn’t fast enough, and it caught him in the face. It struck Clara a moment later and a groan followed.
“Can’t we slow down?” she moaned. “Just to avoid those sharp branches.”
“I need to get you to the valley first. Then we can slow down.”
He needed to get Clara to a place where she could hide. There was only one place, and they usually left that for the children, when there were children. Gabriel certainly wasn’t going to use it. He wanted to survive on his wits alone. Owen had never used it himself, but he needed to get Clara to that little cave so she could hide there until someone else died.
They kept running along the hillside and then down through the heavy brush until he felt the ground level out under his feet. Finally. Water.
He stopped at the edge of the stream, where it crossed their path, and knelt in the water. It was the only time he got an honest-to-God opportunity to bathe. The guards hosing them down didn’t help much. He pulled the little square of soap from the little pocket he’d made in his loin cloth, and handed it to Clara.
“We should wash here. Clean off our scent so it will be harder for him to track us.”
“Is he… a wolf?” Clara’s voice wavered.
“I don’t know. But if he is, smelling like a sewer will make his job too easy.” Owen splashed cool water over his face and it dripped down his beard onto his chest. Clean water.
She glared at the square of soap and turned it over in her hands. “Where did you get this? This is from the villa.”
“One of the guards gives it to Gabe, probably about once every month or so. I think it’s one of the ones who remembers him.” Owen untied the cloth from around his waist and let it fall into the water.
“I remember him.” Her voice was so small and quiet, he had to glance up at her. There was emotion under those words. She had her hand on the neck of her cream-colored dress and stared off into the night.
“The soap.” He held out his hand and she walked through the water to hand it to him.
When their skin touched, the same familiar flare of heat washed through him.
She continued to stare into the night, and Owen rubbed up a lather, cleaning his loincloth and rinsing it. He had lathered his hands to wash his skin, and she still hadn’t moved.
He knelt in the water and rinsed off his lower half, careful not to spend too much time handling his dick. It was already half-hard just bein
g around Clara, but he couldn’t afford to get caught up in his lust. If the collars activated while they were in the water, he’d lose his loin cloth, and the soap, and not only would he lose the ability to clean himself, but he wouldn’t be able to hide his erection in the folds of the natural fabric when he was aroused by her. If they had to spend another day in those cages, he needed the loin cloth.
He rinsed his skin, his chest, his hair, his beard, and Clara still hadn’t moved. She continued to stare at something in the middle distance, no doubt remembering the villa, or something that had happened with Gabriel when she was younger. He wrapped the loin cloth around his unmentionables and tugged at her dress, but she didn’t respond.
With cold, wet and quickly disintegrating soap, he worked up another lather and moved his hands up her legs. She didn’t flinch, and he continued to clean her, rinsing the skin after he washed. Her eyes stayed locked in the forest.
When his fingers reached the folds of her sex, she finally moved her hips. She spread her legs, spreading her feet in the stream for better traction.
Owen put his hands back in the stream and worked up another lather. He rubbed soap between her thighs, then around her pelvis and up her ass to her back. She leaned against him when he worked soap around every inch of her.
He brought water up to rinse her off, with both hands, and she shivered. His fingers brushed over the little, swollen nub and her moan ignited an urgency in him that had been building for twenty-four days. He needed to make her cry out. Wanted to hear his name on her lips. Wanted her to come.
There had been a moment, days ago, when he’d woken to her quietly touching herself. He would never forget that moment, his whole life long. With her fingers buried deep in her pussy, and one hand squeezing a hard nipple through the light fabric of that almost-see-through dress.
That moment had made him so hard, he had forgotten Gabriel’s light snore in the next cage, and he’d wrapped his hand around his own dick and seen his fantasy coming to life behind his eyes. Clara’s scent on him. Clara’s sex clenching around him. Clara’s nipples in his mouth.
Broken Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Seven Page 14