Keenan

by Catherine Lievens

  “Jonah, why don’t you tell us what you’re thinking?”

  Jonah realized that the others didn’t know where his mind was wandering, and it made it hard for them to follow his reasoning and to answer his questions. “Ellie and Stan. Are they fated mates?” Not that they had to be to mate, but no one in their right mind would have mated with Stan if he wasn’t their fated mate.

  A weird feeling passed through Jonah, something akin to fear. He frowned. It nearly felt as if it hadn’t been his feeling, as if—

  “No idea. Erskine was still the Alpha when it happened, and Ellie hasn’t come out of the house much since then,” Andy answered, distracting Jonah from whatever the hell was happening with his feelings.

  “I don’t really know Ellie, but I remember her parents, and I doubt they would have let her mate with the man, even if they were fated mates.”

  “You think he forced her?” Kameron’s eyes were angry, making Jonah grateful to be on the right side of this whole thing.

  “It might explain why Zach moved in with her. Maybe he wants to protect her.”

  “Doesn’t explain everything, though,” Nick mused. As a detective, he was already taking interest in this. “Why didn’t Zach come to one of us? Why not talk to Kameron?”

  “And why does Kameron feel the pull toward Zach but doesn’t recognize him as his mate?” Andy added.

  No one had answers for those questions, but they had something they could start working with, at least.

  Jonah’s phone rang and he smiled. He expected it to be Keenan, calling to ask him when he was coming home or something like that. Sliding it out of his pocket, Jonah frowned when he didn’t recognize the number. Not a lot of people had his number, and he had all of those people’s numbers memorized. “Yes?”

  “Jonah? It’s Jamie.”

  Jonah sat up and put his beer on the coffee table, knowing something was wrong just by Jamie’s tone. “What happened?”

  Jamie took a deep breath, but his voice faltered anyway when he started talking. “We went dancing. Keenan was dancing with Jayden, and a group of guys took him away.”

  “What? They kidnapped him?” Jonah asked with a growl. The attention of the men in the room immediately snapped to him, and Jonah saw Kameron take out his own phone from the corner of his eye.

  “Yeah. Jayden says they threatened him to convince Keenan to go with them. He says there were four and that they smelled weird, foul.”

  “They took only Keenan?” Jonah was already getting up and grabbing his keys, but Andy stopped him with a hand on his arm. He snarled, but his friend didn’t bat an eyelash. He just gestured for Jonah to stay in the house, and Jonah knew they would help him find Keenan.

  “Jayden said that... they didn’t want him, only Keenan.”

  “Why?”

  “They said they didn’t like the taste of shifter’s flesh.”

  * * * *

  Keenan had never been more scared in his life. He actually wished they had knocked him out instead of just pushing him in the back of their car and driving away. Being conscious meant he had way too much time to think about the guy’s words.

  We don’t like shifter’s flesh.

  Which meant they liked human flesh. Which meant these guys, whoever they were, were planning on eating Keenan. He kind of hoped they would kill him first, though.

  He looked around the car, trying to find a way, any way, to get out of this situation. Not that he could actually do anything. They’d known Jayden was a shifter, which meant they were paranormal creatures, too. He couldn’t even be sure they were shifters, because he wasn’t a shifter himself. Well, if he had been a shifter, he wouldn’t be in this situation, so...

  “Where are you taking me?” He didn’t actually think they would answer, but the guy who’d hit on him turned from his seat at the front of the car and looked at him, his eyes different from before. They had been dark pools, but now Keenan could see a red glint in them, and it made him shudder.

  “Home with us.” He licked his lips in a very creepy way before smacking them. “You’ll be dinner.”

  “Okay, what are you, some creepy sect or something? Are you trying to scare me?” Keenan knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help it. When he was nervous or scared, he rambled.

  The guy opened his mouth and Keenan scrambled as far away from him as he could. His... teeth weren’t teeth anymore. They had elongated in fangs, all of them, and Keenan could see them gleaming in the little light that managed to get in the car. “Are you a shifter?”

  The four men chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. It was a creepy one—one that would have been at home in horror movies. It made Keenan shudder. He was scared.

  “You can say that, although we don’t shift into any fucking animals,” Keenan’s suitor replied.

  Keenan wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they shifted into though. He had learned a lot of things about paranormal creatures for his job as Dominic’s PA, but he didn’t remember any of them eating human flesh. “You... you’re going t-to eat me?”

  “I’d like to say you won’t feel anything, but we like our meat... fresh.”

  Panic rose inside Keenan, threatening to pull him under, to make him lose it, but he couldn’t let it win. He had to find a way to get out of the car, far away from these guys, but when he saw the car steer onto a dirt road so small he wouldn’t have noticed it on his own, he knew he had run out of time. What could he do? There were three of them and he was alone, and more importantly, they were shifters, and he was only human. His only hope was that someone would come and look for him. They weren’t that far away from the club, and he hoped his friends, his mate, would be able to find a way to get to him.

  Jonah!

  Keenan tried to ignore the voices around him and concentrated on the bond he could feel in his mind. It was bright and soothing, but he didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t use it to talk with Jonah, it didn’t work that way, but maybe he could still use it.

  He tried to send what he was feeling through it—a mix of fear, horror and panic. He sobbed when he felt reassurance and affection pour into him from the bond. Jonah had felt him and was trying to reassure him. He knew something had happened to Keenan and Keenan was sure Jonah was already looking for him.

  Keenan couldn’t see much since it was dark, but he could tell they were headed into the woods. That meant he probably wouldn’t be able to find his way out on his own, and it didn’t bode well for his safety.

  The car stopped soon after that and the man sitting next to him hauled him out of the car, pushing him to the ground. Keenan hit the dirt, hard, his hands scraping on it and blood starting to seep. His suitor growled and his hand shot at the man who had pushed Keenan, the claws on his fingers visible even in the moonlight.

  “Idiot! Don’t ruin him!” Keenan could see the man was barely holding on to his control as he pushed the other man down and turned to the other two. “Hassun, Etle, take him. Don’t hurt him.”

  The man started walking, moving straight into the forest. Hassun and Etle each grabbed one of Keenan’s arms. They hauled him up and started walking, not really caring that Keenan was having a hard time moving his legs as fast as they did.

  The dark forest engulfed them and he tried to find a way to understand where they were, or at least to gather reference points so that he could find his way out, but all he could see in the dark were trees and more trees. Even the animals were quiet as they passed, probably afraid of the guys who were dragging him. He couldn’t blame them, since he was scared to death himself.

  Keenan didn’t know how long they had been walking when he started seeing lights between the trees. As they got closer, he started hearing voices and growls, and even the sound of a fight. It sounded like two animals were going at it, and it didn’t do anything to reassure him.

  They finally entered a clearing illuminated by several fires, and Keenan could feel eyes following
him as Hassun and Etle dragged him along. The clearing was at the base of a rocky formation. There was a cave, and Keenan could see lights coming from inside, even though the entrance was somehow covered by a cloth.

  Several tents were standing in the clearing in a circle, with a fireplace at the center. People were milling around, most of them males and wearing only a loincloth. As Hassun and Etle pulled Keenan to the middle of the clearing, they all looked at him. It was creepy as hell, because several of them started licking their lips, and Keenan could swear he had seen someone actually drool!

  The two men pushed him to his knees, and when Keenan looked up, he wished he hadn’t. He tried to move backward when he saw the creature standing close to the fire, but his guards were having none of it. They pushed him back into place and each kept a hand on his shoulders so that he couldn’t shy away from the thing that was approaching him.

  Keenan was shuddering in a mix of cold and fear, but the fear was winning as he took in the sight in front of him.

  The creature, whatever it was, was tall, easily ten feet tall, if not something more. It literally looked like a standing and moving corpse, and Keenan wouldn’t have been surprised if it was exactly that.

  Keenan could see every single one of its ribs under the taut, ash-gray skin that was stretched on the creature’s bones. Its eyes were glowing red as it talked with the leader of the group that had taken Keenan. Its fangs protruded from lips so thin they were nearly absent. A thick coat of fur covered the back of the creature’s body, its legs and its arms, and what looked like long dirty white hair cascaded down his back. Its hands were deformed, the fingers way too long to be human’s fingers, and they were tipped by dark claws.

  Then there was the smell. Gosh, the smell. The whole clearing stank as if there was a pile of decomposing corpses somewhere close, and it made Keenan want to throw up.

  Keenan cringed when the thing turned to look at him. A long tongue came out of its mouth as it licked the place where its lips should have been, making it clear what it intended to do with Keenan. Shit, he was going to end up in the creature’s stew!

  “Put him away,” the thing growled to the man who had kidnapped Keenan. Hassun and Elte grabbed him again, dragging him away. Keenan was somehow relieved to be able to stop looking at the creature, but it didn’t last long. As they walked through the camp, he saw several other creatures, and all of them were looking at him as if they were starving, which they probably were, if their skinny bodies were any indication of how much they ate.

  They walked farther away from the fires, and Keenan tried to make eye contact with the humans he encountered—at least he hoped they were human, but he didn’t really think so—pleading with his eyes for them to help him. No one reacted, of course, but Keenan noticed a man looking at him. He was in his human form, or at least Keenan assumed he could shift into one of those creatures. He was standing with a small woman, her hand on his arm as she whispered something to him with urgency, and it almost looked as if she was holding him back.

  The man couldn’t be much older than Keenan, and he seemed somehow different from the rest of the human-looking people around the camp. He wasn’t looking at Keenan as if he wanted to eat him, but with pity and anger in his dark eyes, and he looked healthier and cleaner than the other humans Keenan could see.

  His hair was black and reached halfway to his shoulders, except for two long braids that cascaded from the back of his head. Black strands also fell in front of his eyes, and Keenan noticed black feathers embedded both in the braids and in the rest of the man’s hair.

  He had high cheekbones and skin the color of cinnamon and his arms, chest, neck and face sported red tattoos. Keenan could also see he had wooden earrings in both his ears, and his nails were painted black. He wore only a loincloth, like the others, and his tall body was thin and lean, but not sickly.

  Their gazes met, and Keenan saw the man take a step toward him before the woman stopped him. Keenan tried to implore him with his eyes, but Hassun and Etle were dragging him away, severing the eye contact between them.

  Keenan tried to resist. He dug his feet in the dirt, tried to shove Hassun and Etle off him, to run away, but he couldn’t even move them. They were careful not to hurt him, but they didn’t relinquish their hold on him, at least not until they reached a cage made of wood and cord.

  It was located in the farthest part of the camp, and Keenan was somehow grateful he wouldn’t have to have the creatures in sight all the time, but that was about all there was to be grateful for.

  They pushed Keenan inside and closed the door, carefully locking it as well as they could. It seemed so easy to break out of the cage, and Keenan was tempted to do just that as soon as his guards walked away, but the sight of several pairs of red eyes glowing in the dark of the forest stopped him. He was stuck in there.

  * * * *

  Jonah hung up the phone and grabbed his keys from his pocket, his eyes searching for Kameron. The Alpha was nowhere to be found, but Nick and Duncan were pulling their jackets on.

  Jonah hesitated. He didn’t have the time to wait for Kameron, but the man was a friend and an Alpha. He couldn’t walk away from him without saying anything.

  “Ready, guys?” Kameron asked as he entered his living room.

  Duncan and Nick nodded and Nick turned to Andy. “Can you go by my house and check on my wolf?”

  Andy nodded.

  “Wait, where are you going?” Jonah asked.

  Kameron, Duncan and Nick looked at him as if he was stupid. “We’re coming with you,” Kameron said.

  “What about Zach? You guys should take care of him. I have the pride to back me if I need it.”

  Kameron frowned, but he finished putting his jacket on and pointed to the front door. “Let’s go. Nysys is shimmering in.” He looked at Jonah. “Keenan needs us more than Zach right now. Zach... he’s been in this situation for months. A day or two won’t change anything, and Andy will be here anyway. He’ll keep an eye on him.”

  Jonah could see how hard it was for Kameron to say that, but he knew that once his friend made up his mind, nothing could sidetrack him, so he just nodded. “We’ll help Zach as soon as Keenan is safe.”

  They all walked out of the house. Nysys was already standing in the middle of the clearing, his bright yellow pants visible even if the only light was coming from the porch lamp. The moon was hidden behind thick clouds, and Jonah hoped it wouldn’t rain. They needed dry weather if they wanted the scent trails to be intact.

  Nysys looked worried as Jonah came up to him, and Jonah’s eyebrows shot up when the Nix launched himself into his arms. He awkwardly patted the man’s back, unsure about what to do or say, but fortunately the hug didn’t last long. The Nix moved away and looked up at Jonah, squeezing his arm. “We’ll find him.”

  Jonah smiled. “I know.”

  The shifters gathered around Nysys as he held his hands out. Jonah took one of them while Kameron took the other and Nick touched Nysys’ arm, but Duncan just looked at them. “What should I grab?”

  Nysys gave him a lopsided smile. “Whatever you want, handsome.”

  The flirting was a little out of place, but Jonah didn’t mind it. It helped relieve the tension, and everyone was tense right then. He did huff and scowl at Duncan, though, and the who hurried to grab Nysys’ waist, earning himself a bright smile and a wink from the Nix.

  Jonah didn’t know what to expect since he had never shimmered, but it felt a lot like going on a rollercoaster. His stomach lurched in his guts, seemingly moving up and down, and then he was in the parking lot in front of the mansion. Duncan looked a little green and he clutched his stomach, but the other men were fine.

  Jonah walked to the front door, not surprised when Nate opened it for him. The Beta’s face was grim as he directed them to Dominic’s office. Ward was there, sitting on one of the couches and tightly hugging a worried Jamie. Jayden was huddled on one of the chairs in front of Dominic’s des
k, Finn crouched next to him as he murmured reassuring words to him. Ani stood behind Dominic, a frown on his face, while Dominic talked with Casey, Derick and Nolan. Oliver stood in front of one of the windows, his eyes focused on the dark night while Sebastian looked at him from his chair. Isaiah sat on the couch, a laptop on his knees while fingers flew on the keyboard.

  They all looked at the door when Jonah and the others came in, and apart from a raised brow or two, no one seemed particularly surprised to see Kameron there. Derick went up to his brother and hugged him, and Jonah stopped in front of the desk. “What happened?”

  Jamie looked at him. “I’m not sure. I didn’t notice anything until Jayden came up to me and told me some guys had taken Keenan away.”

  Jonah looked down at Jayden. He looked terrified, his pale blue eyes wide and his face frozen into a shocked mask. Finn grimaced at Jonah. “I’m not sure how much he can tell you. He’s in shock.” That he was. Usually it took a miracle to get the man to shut up for more than a few seconds.

  “We danced together until Sebastian cut in. Keenan went to dance with Jayden after that. I know I should have kept an eye on him,” Oliver said, turning to Jonah. Jonah could see the guilt in his eyes, and while he was angry with his mate being kidnapped, he knew it was no one’s fault but the kidnapper’s own.

  “Not your fault, Oliver.” He crouched next to Finn and grabbed one of Jayden’s hands. “Jayden? Can you tell me what happened?” he asked softly, hoping the man would snap out of it.

  Jayden’s gaze briefly met his before moving back to look at his hands. “We danced. A man tried to hit on Keenan, asked him if he wanted to follow him to the bathroom. Keenan said no and the guy walked away. After a while Keenan went to the bar while I stayed on the dance floor.” Jayden trembled and Jonah squeezed his hand harder, trying to convey the fact that Jayden was safe now. “I was dancing when a man came to me from behind and grabbed me. He... he sniffed my neck before shi-shifting one of his fingers into a claw. The guy who had hit on Keenan was talking with Keenan near the bar and he grabbed him. He pointed at me and Keenan put his beer down before the man dragged him away. Keenan didn’t—he didn’t even scream. Then the guy who had me said it was a pity I was a shifter because our flesh wasn’t as good as human flesh.”