by Mandy Rosko
“They left about an hour after you did. I think. Did you talk to my brother?”
Dennis looked at her sharply. Anna bit her lips together.
“I spoke to him,” he said, then offered nothing else.
He was lying. Anna wanted to believe him, to believe that her brother was on his way and it would be just a few more minutes before the ransom was paid, but she didn’t believe him. He was definitely lying, and really, he was the bad guy. Why would he ever tell her the truth? It had been too long, and Dennis’ pack had taken off almost right after he’d announced he was going for a run. That had been two hours ago.
“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Dennis said. “I trusted someone to stay with you and keep the others at bay, but he apparently fucked off. I’ll deal with him, too.”
Anna hadn’t known she’d even had a guard outside her door. It wasn’t like anyone spoke to her other than to yell at her through the door itself, sometimes banging on the door just to creep her out, or to tell her to shut the fuck up.
“When is my brother coming?”
“Soon. You won’t have to deal with the guys for long.”
Anna glared at him. “Aren’t you the alpha? Why the hell are people in your own pack acting like this if you don’t want them to?”
He glared at her. “Right, because you do absolutely everything your cock-sucking brother tells you to do, right?”
Anna really had to bite her lips on that one. First, she didn’t like anyone calling her brother names, but second, Dennis was right. She didn’t always listen to what her brother said. In fact, despite how she was his sister, an omega in his pack and under his care, she made a habit of not doing as she was told.
“Well?”
“Shut up.”
She liked to think of it as her way of lashing out, of getting her independence as a woman from her older brother. It just happened to bite her in the ass because while she was disobeying her brother, she’d gotten kidnapped and locked up, which magically led to her getting chastised for it by the very man who’d kidnapped her.
Anna didn’t have much experience with Dennis outside of what she’d heard, but the fact that she was here wasn’t right. She needed to get out of here.
“You said you wouldn’t let anyone in your pack hurt me.”
“I meant it,” Dennis said.
She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t. She only wanted to believe him because she was honestly scared. Being here scared her. It put a strange quivering feeling in her stomach that she didn’t like. She hated this place.
“You couldn’t even stop the guy you left me with from leaving me alone.”
He cringed at that. “I know, I’m sorry, but I mean it. I’ll keep you safe until it’s time to hand you over.”
She glared at him before quickly looking away. As angry as she was, it seemed like a bad idea to be glaring at her captor. “Your idea of keeping someone safe involves leaving them alone for two hours?”
She might have sounded like she was pouting when she said that. It was not how she meant to come off, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now.
Dennis didn’t answer her. That was…so much worse than if he’d yelled at her and called her a brat.
Anna almost didn’t want to look at him, but she couldn’t help it. Something compelled her to do it. She just had to see what had him so silent.
He wasn’t staring at her, or anything strange like that, but he was glaring very heavily down at the floor. His arms were crossed over his large chest, and it was straining the shirt he wore at the seams, leaving not much to the imagination when it came to his muscles. His mouth was twisted in a snarl, showing his teeth.
It almost looked like he was glaring at someone else in the room. What if he was? What if he was crazy?
Well, he was the bad guy. He had to be a little crazy to be leading a group of angry rogue shifters, right?
Anna flinched when Dennis turned and stalked towards the door. She could barely get any words out. “Wh-where are you going?” He couldn’t leave her alone again. What if the rest of his pack came back and came in here?
He didn’t answer her, and when she tried to follow, she was crudely reminded of the fact that her ankle was still shackled with the silver.
The slam of the door in her face, and the heavy clicking of the lock, made her heart sink.
And she still had to go to the bathroom.
Stupid girl. What the hell did she think she was doing, asking him questions like that? Irritating him about leaving? He needed to leave. The longer he was around her, the worse this felt, the harder it was.
The more his stomach clenched and his skin felt too tight for his body.
What was this feeling? This intense pounding in his chest, as though his heart couldn’t rush enough blood to the rest of his body. He was almost lightheaded because of it, and it was because of her. Something about her.
It was irritating!
Was he insane? Was this only in his head? Why was he feeling this and she wasn’t?
Because it was only in his head. That was all. This was lust. Nothing more. Dennis was a bastard and a kidnapper, but he wasn’t a rapist. He wasn’t going to come onto a woman while she was in chains in his secret hideaway. That was a level of fucked up that he just wasn’t fine with.
He shouldn’t have left her, though. She was right about that. He’d promised to stay close. He knew that some of his men had their sights on her, and they wouldn’t hold back like he would.
The problem was being around her made him not want to hold back. That was dangerous. That was sick. He’d taken the risk and trusted her in the care of someone else so he could go and run off his frustrations, then he’d gone to get the food.
Wallace was going to get his face smashed in for this. Dennis had left the man in charge of Anna because Dennis was honestly certain Anna was stronger than Wallace was.
He kind of reminded Dennis of Peter Pettigrew from those Harry Potter movies.
Yeah, he’d seen them, but more to the point, Wallace was something of a weasel and a coward. He wasn’t from Dennis’ original group. He’d come in after, wild and changing into a wolf shape, attacking human hikers and leaving a bloody trail that was enough to even make Dennis sit up and take notice.
He’d taken the man in, taught him control, and given him as much as he could to survive. Dennis was an idiot for expecting there to be some goddamned loyalty for that.
Anna was his.
Dennis clenched his teeth. He ran his fingers through his hair and gripped it tight enough to hurt.
No. No, no, no. That was bullshit! He wasn’t feeling this. His stupid wolf wasn’t going to do this to him because it was ridiculous.
Dennis walked away from the meat locker where Anna was being held, but he kept it within sight as he paced, hands on his hips, every muscle in his body tight as he felt the wilder side of himself, and his instincts, shining through.
He was his father’s son, but he wasn’t his father. He wasn’t his father.
But the fact that his wolf was having this kind of reaction to the sister of his enemy…it was a joke. A fucking joke. She was almost the same age as Derek. So young. It was like something out of those books he caught Wallace stealing from the grocery store.
What the fuck was he going to do? He wanted to keep her. That was fucked up beyond all reason. He’d hurt her in there when he’d held onto her wrist too tight, and it was obvious from her body language that she didn’t feel this either.
So it couldn’t be a mating. It was only in his head, and that fucking terrified him.
It terrified him that he wanted to keep her. It terrified him that he’d been stupid enough to leave her alone, and both those things combined made him growly, and a thousand times more pissy than he’d been before he left.
Which was why, when he heard the long, metallic moaning of the front doors opening wide to let his bastard pack back inside the abandoned factory, he roared, shifted, and went on the warpath.
Chapter 5
Jax walked downstairs, hiding the aches in his body, ignoring them, not willing to let the prisoner see his pain. He was more than willing to mask it with his fury. He let that show right on his face when he got to the basement.
Three betas had been charged with guarding the prisoner. Even with silver chains, alphas were still something of a problem that needed a lot of care to be dealt with.
Luckily, Jax was a dragon. He didn’t have to worry about any lingering silver poisoning by being too close, or touching the chains when he strangled this motherfucker with them.
And Garret thought Jax was the calm one. Not with thoughts like this running through his head, that was for damned sure.
The three betas were all playing on their phones, laughing excitedly as one of them announced there was a Ghastly next to the prisoner. So they were playing that augmented reality game when they should have been watching the prisoner. Lovely.
They didn’t notice Jax was there yet, mostly because of the way they laughed and held their phones up to the man chained to the chair.
Jax leaned in and looked at the screen, and then he remembered why the wording they’d used sounded so familiar. He nearly laughed at the idiocy of these guys playing Pokemon Go, and teasing their prisoner over the fact that a ghost creature was lingering around his chair.
“Not a good sign for you when Jax comes down to deal with your stupid ass,” Charlie laughed.
“He’s already here,” Jax answered, and again, he tried not to laugh when the betas jumped and backed off. They yelled in shock over being surprised, but then smiled at the sight of him, grabbing him by the hand for a loose shake.
Dylan looked like he wanted to give Jax a friendly back slap, but remembered Jax’s injuries and thought better of it.
Which was good. Jax was pissed. He was beyond furious, and now that he was here, standing in front of this man, realizing what he had done, who he had been with, and what he’d tried to do…
Jax didn’t want the guys in here to see what he was going to do. Might ruin his reputation of being the nice guy.
The man in the chair looked young. Early twenties, possibly, but he’d attacked the lodge and he might know where Anna was.
Dylan and the others hesitated. They looked at each, then at the prisoner. They knew what was on Jax’s mind. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. Go upstairs. Wait for Garret to come home or for me to call you back down.”
There was no questioning his intent this time. He clearly wanted them out of here so he could get up to some bad shit.
The betas quietly left. The young man chained down to the chair tensed. He watched the other men leave, his eyes wide before he looked up at Jax.
Jax shut the door behind them. “Yeah, you know you’re in shit, don’t you?”
The kid in the chair glared at him.
“You look good, though. You’ve got a nice healing ability, considering how bad I hear I chewed you up.” Jax stepped forward. He put his foot up onto the chair between the man’s legs, and knocked it back enough that the man fell backwards with a panicked yell.
He cried out when he landed hard. Jax shook his head at the sight. “It’s lucky the betas didn’t chain your hands behind your back, otherwise you might have two broken arms, but I swear to Christ, if you don’t man up and start talking right now, you’re going to get those broken arms anyway.”
The man on the floor groaned from the pain. “Fuck you.”
“Good, you can talk. See, I was worried you couldn’t talk, because, you know, men who can’t talk don’t need their tongues, right?”
Jax used one of his claws to scratch at his throat. He didn’t look directly at the man on the floor when he did that, but he could tell how the tension in the room shot through the ceiling. It was a small miracle the betas didn’t sense it and come back.
Jax got down to his haunches, propping his elbows onto his knees. “Now, I don’t want to be here. I have better things to be doing.”
Mainly, getting back to Katie and showing the she-wolf his belly for being such an idiot. If he could get around his pride, that is.
“What do you want?” the man said, his voice as hoarse as a chain smoker’s, likely from the pain. He didn’t look as if he could naturally have a rough voice like that.
Jax could use a cigarette himself right about now.
“I want to know why you were attacking the pack.” Jax picked at his thumbnail, faking that he was calmer than he actually was. “Is Dennis bored? Wants to send a message while Garret’s out looking for his sister?”
The man on the floor laughed. Jax’s fury immediately spiked to the point that his fist flew without even thinking about it. The man’s teeth on his knuckles hurt him probably as much as it hurt the spineless shithead he just punched in the mouth.
Jax shook out his hand. “Fuck, that smarts.”
The young man groaned, then coughed blood. He kept right on coughing, his body spasming and jerking in his chains.
Fuck. He was choking on one of his teeth.
Jax grabbed the chair by the arm and flipped it around. He thought he was going to have to loosen the chains and slap the man’s back a bit, but luckily, it didn’t come to that. The act of flipping him around was enough to jar the tooth loose. He spat it up in a small puddle of blood, coughing for breath. He cursed to high heaven at the sight of his bloody tooth on the blue-grey cement flooring.
Jax flipped him back around, silencing him. “If you want to keep the rest of your teeth, you’re going to start talking. Understand?”
“You’re fucking crazy. No wonder he hates you all.”
Jax lifted a brow at the man. “You’re the one who’s taking orders from a guy who would have you attack a house full of omegas and children. What the hell is your problem?”
“You’re a bunch of thieves. Fucking dishonorable, cunty thieves.”
Jax wasn’t getting this at all. “Uh huh, and what did we steal that belongs to Dennis?”
He had to sit down. His back was still killing him and now his knees were starting to get it from being in this position for too long. He was getting old.
“Laurence said you all kicked them out of the pack. Sent everyone packing without letting them so much as take their shit right before winter.”
“So you’re a new member of the pack. How did you get pulled in?” Jax asked. “Your last alpha didn’t want you stinking up the pack? Or were you turned and just possibly fell in with the wrong people?”
Not that Jax was going to give the guy any credit for that.
“I was born in it.” The man stopped talking. He turned away from Jax and decided to glare at the ceiling instead.
“Gonna cry now? Go ahead. It’s good for you. Get’s some stuff out of your system. Might make you feel better about being in silver chains in the basement of the place you tried to attack.”
“Dennis is gonna come for me. He wouldn’t leave me behind. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
“Uh huh, does that include the rapists who live in your pack?”
The kid frowned and looked at him funny. He shook his head. “There’s no one like that in our pack.”
Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he really thought his pack were the good guys. Hell, for all Jax knew, this kid was a product of a rape if he’d been born into Dennis’ shitty pack. Jax was pretty sure he’d never seen any females during any of the raids.”
“Have you seen a blond girl? A woman?” he asked, just in case this idiot happened to think he was talking about a child. “Blond, slim, might be yelling a lot wherever she is.”
Assuming she was alive and well-kept enough to feel safe about yelling.
“I saw her. Obnoxious bitch.”
Jax growled at the man.
He tensed in his chair, seeming to remember that he wasn’t in the right position to be saying that shit.
Jax wasn’t going to let it go. He didn’t punch the man this time. He just open palm
slapped him, showing him what a little bitch really was.
“Don’t say stupid shit and I won’t have to teach you any lessons. Got it?”
The man glared at him, a pouty-looking thing. It was kind of pathetic, but he was young.
“I asked if you understood?”
Jax loved Anna. Not in the way she wanted him to love her, but he’d been around since before she was born. He’d watched her grow up. He didn’t want anything bad happening to her or anyone saying shit they shouldn’t about her.
“Yeah, I get it.”
At least his stupid words meant one thing. “So she’s alive?”
The man frowned at him, as if he was thinking about something, then he shook his head. “Are you serious?”
Jax clenched his teeth. “What? Serious about what?”
The man in the silver chains looked at him full in the face, his eyes twitching slightly from the pain of being under so much silver. “Did my…did Dennis not send out the ransom? Laurence said he didn’t, that he was pussyfooting around, but I didn’t…I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Really?” Jax asked, setting his claws on top of the man’s head. The kid grunted when Jax pushed the tips into the skin hard enough to make drops of blood bead at the punctures he made. He did this until lines of blood slid slowly down the man’s face, around the bridge of his brows, over his nose, and down his lips.
He was tense, lips tight as he glared at Jax, stubbornly refusing to ask Jax to stop.
Jax didn’t care. “Do tell me more about what Dennis has been up to, and I might go easy on you.”
Katie wasn’t going to mope around waiting for Jax to come back upstairs. She got to work. The house was still a mess, and the guns needed to be cleaned and rounds checked. The betas were still on high alert. Some prowled around the house in their wolf shapes. They were the purists who preferred to fight in their animal shapes instead of using the weapons that were on hand.
Katie preferred the guns, and not just because she was an omega, though that was a big part of it.
Even if she’d been a beta, or an alpha, she liked long range weapons. It kept the enemy on their toes, for one thing. For another, it gave her an advantage she wouldn’t have in her wolf shape. It almost put her on equal footing as the shifters who wanted to hurt her.