by J. L. Wilder
“I’m not the most valuable member of the pack.” Charity was starting to shiver now, and not because it was cold in the back of the van. Certain things were beginning to sink in. She had felt homesick in her human life at times, but she had never wanted this...
No one would miss her, she knew, until tomorrow when she didn’t show up for work. The girls at the restaurant would wonder where she was. Would they worry about her? They might, she reasoned. She didn’t have a habit of missing work, so it would be strange that she wasn’t there. And they would know she’d walked home alone last night...
But they were human. They weren’t trackers. They wouldn’t investigate the situation for themselves. At the very most, they would start watching the news to see if she was found dead somewhere. Which she wouldn’t be. The Hell’s Wolves weren’t kidnapping her to kill her.
She knew exactly what they were kidnapping her for.
But they wouldn’t see it as kidnapping, she was sure. As far as they were concerned, she probably belonged to them. She wasn’t just a missing member of the pack. She was the omega. She was their omega. And she knew how Hawk was—when he received the rank of alpha, and no omega emerged, he would have felt cheated of something he was entitled to.
He probably saw this as no more than retrieving his own stolen property.
Charity shuddered a little, and a sob escaped her.
“Charity!” Lita sounded shocked. “Charity, don’t cry! What’s wrong?”
Charity felt more emotionally confused than she would have thought possible. On one hand, she was being kidnapped, and she knew her kidnappers meant her harm. But on the other hand, this was Lita. This was her sister. And despite everything that had happened, she couldn’t help feeling a sense of safety and familiarity.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“But we’re taking you home.” Lita sounded confused. “You’ll be back where you belong, Charity.”
“No. I don’t want to go back. I want to go home. I want to go to my apartment. I want to keep working at my job. I want to go back to my life.” And to her horror, she was crying in earnest now.
Lita scooted closer and wrapped her arms around Charity, and even though Charity felt resentful of her sister for being part of this kidnapping, she couldn’t resist taking comfort. She leaned into Lita’s warmth. There was something reassuring about being with someone who knew every part of her, human and wolf, after all this time pretending to be something she wasn’t.
If only she could actually enjoy the moment. If only she could feel happy about seeing her sister again. But she couldn’t because of everything horrifying and dangerous that came along with it.
The van jerked to an abrupt stop, pitching Charity even more heavily into Lita’s arms. “We’re here,” Lita said quietly.
“The cabin?”
“Yeah.”
The van’s back door opened. This time, Charity could make out Gino’s features. He had changed since the last time she’d seen him. As a younger man, he’d had an attractive mop of curly dark hair. Since then, he had shaved it all off, opting for a close-cropped look that didn’t suit him at all. He had several days of untamed facial hair growth. He was also much taller and more muscular than the wiry kid she remembered.
“Everybody out,” he ordered. “Hawk’s waiting.”
Lita crawled to the front of the van, wrapped her arms around his neck, and swung down to the ground. As she did, Charity got her first look at her sister. The change in her was also remarkable. She and Lita had looked alike as children, but now Lita’s hair was dyed black and she had several facial piercings. She also had tattoos up and down her left arm. Charity almost wouldn’t have recognized her.
“Out,” Gino repeated.
There was no point in resisting, much as Charity would have liked to. If she made him come in after her, it would be worse for her, she knew. She scooted forward and slid out of the van.
The cabin hadn’t changed at all. It was just as she’d remembered it. For a moment, she felt so homesick for the life she’d had growing up that she almost couldn’t keep her feet. Whatever happened to her now, she knew, it would be nothing like the fondly remembered days of her childhood. Before, she had been able to disappear into the pack. She had been able to blend in. But now everything would be different. She was the omega, and that would always set her apart.
Gino took her by the arm and steered her forcefully toward the front door. She stumbled, trying to keep up. “You don’t have to drag me,” she objected. “I’m coming.”
“Hawk’s orders,” Gino said.
“He ordered you to drag me?”
“He said to make you come in.” Gino shrugged. “I’m making you.”
They made their way up onto the porch and through the door into the kitchen, where Charity was greeted by another surprise. Norma was standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot.
“Norma?”
She looked up. “My God! Charity! Is it really you?” She put down her spoon, swept across the kitchen, and gathered Charity up in a hug.
It was all Charity could do not to break into sobs again. Norma. Norma had been like a mother to her throughout her childhood. It had been Norma who had held her when she’d cried, kissed scraped knees, cut the crusts off her sandwiches. It had been Norma who had taught her how to shift and how to make the best use of her skills as a wolf. If there was one person here who loved her, really and truly loved her, it was Norma.
Now Norma held her at arm’s length. “Look at you,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s really you! You look so grown up, honey. We’re so glad you’re home.”
I’m not home. “It’s really good to see you,” Charity said.
“I’ll make you something. What can I make you? Do you still like those banana nut muffins?”
“You don’t have to—”
“She’s supposed to go right to Hawk,” Gino interrupted.
The smile dropped off Norma’s face. “She’s back,” she said. “Isn’t that good enough for tonight? Can’t we forget about the rest of this nonsense?”
“I have orders, Norma. So do you, actually.”
Norma looked very out of sorts. “He’s right,” she said to Charity. “I’m under strict instructions to stay in the kitchen and make the lasagna. You’ll have to face him alone, I’m afraid.”
“I can handle him,” Charity said, even though she wasn’t at all sure she could. She would have loved nothing better than to have Norma in her corner. She still wasn’t sure how much she could rely on Lita. Her sister seemed genuinely happy to see her, but she also seemed unaware of the danger Charity was in.
Gino propelled Charity out of the kitchen and into the den. Hawk was there, seated in a massive recliner that hadn’t been part of this room the last time Charity had been in it. He had cropped his hair in the same close style as Gino had, and he was, if anything, even more muscular than his brother.
“Charity,” he said.
His voice had been high pitched when they’d been younger. Now it was gravelly, even ominous. “Hawk,” she managed.
“So, you’ve come back.”
“I didn’t come back. I was kidnapped back.”
He waved a hand dismissively, as if to say that one was more or less as good as the other. “And now that you’re here, what should we do with you?”
“Do with me?” A thrill of fear. “What do you mean by do with me?”
“Well, we can’t very well have you running off again,” he said, a malevolent grin spreading across his face. “Not now that we know what you are. Little Charity, our omega. And all these years, I never suspected. Foolish of me, but there you have it.”
“I was allowed to leave,” she said. “Karl never said—”
“Karl never thought he had to say it. But I’m saying it now. I forbid you from running away from us ever again.”
Charity’s breath caught in her throat. She waited, expecting to feel the oppressive weight of an alpha�
�s command on her psyche. But to her surprise, she felt nothing. Had she simply been away so long that she’d forgotten the feeling?
Or was it possible that Hawk had no power over her anymore?
Hawk now turned to Gino. “Put her in lockdown,” he said.
“Why?” Gino seemed edgy. “You ordered her not to go. Isn’t that good enough?”
Maybe Hawk suspected that it wasn’t good enough, or maybe he simply wanted to flex his authority. “I gave you an order,” he pointed out to Gino.
And that was strange too, Charity realized. Gino hadn’t obeyed the order he’d been given right away either. Did Hawk not have power over him?
She thought he must. Norma would have stood by her if there hadn’t been an order forbidding it. Clearly, Hawk had some power here.
But maybe he didn’t have as much as he thought he did.
It didn’t stop Gino, though. He pulled her out of the den and down the hall to a door that hadn’t been there in Charity’s memory. “What is this?” she asked.
“New addition to the house.” He opened the door to reveal an unfinished room. There was a rickety metal bed frame with a thin mattress pushed into one corner, but other than that the room was completely bare.
“In you go.” He propelled her in with a shove that was neither violent nor gentle; it was merely functional. Knowing there was no point in fighting back, Charity went inside.
Gino hesitated. “Listen, I am sorry about this,” he said. “I don’t know why it has to be this way. But—”
“But you’ve got orders.”
“Yeah.”
“Gino, I was happy.”
“You’ll be happy here,” he said. “This is where you belong, Charity. We’re your pack. Those people in the city, they were nothing like you. And you’ll never be a human. The human life isn’t for us. Shifters who go and try to live that way never settle in. They don’t last. You would have been back eventually.”
“I wasn’t coming back. I had a job. I had a life.”
“This is your life,” he said. “You’re our omega. You can’t just run away from that.” He shook his head, looking half sad and half disgusted, and shut the door on her. She heard the bolt slide home and knew she’d been locked in.
She sat down on the bed and let the horror of the situation wash over her.
Hawk had found her. He had taken her back, brought her here to be his mate. And no one in this pack, no matter how much they might care about her, was going to be able to help her.
She belonged to them. That was what they believed. She was theirs, to use however they liked. This was why she’d run away. This was what she’d been most afraid of. And now it was happening, and Charity knew that they’d learned from their mistake. They would never let her escape again. There was no way out.
Chapter Seven
WESTON
He burst into the house, half-mad, unthinking, and would have charged right into the den to speak to Hawk had it not been for Norma in the kitchen.
She planted herself in his path, eyes wide with concern. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
Weston shook his head. He would have liked to tell Norma, both back in the day and now, about the relationship he and Charity had had. He trusted her. She was like a mother to him. Her advice would have been good, helpful, and she probably would have had some words of comfort. But of course, he couldn’t talk to her. Not about this. And especially not now that Hawk, not Karl, was in charge. The more people that knew, the more danger he and Charity would be in.
Nevertheless, Norma seemed to understand how upset he was. “Sit down,” she told him.
“I need to talk to Hawk.” And say what? It wasn’t as if he would be able to tell Hawk to let Charity go. Would hearing the circumstances of her capture really make him feel better?
“Let me get you a glass of water first,” Norma said. “You’re heated.”
“I’ll take a beer.”
She frowned, but her desire to calm him down won out over her desire to discourage his drinking habit. She passed him a bottle. He flicked the cap off with his calloused thumb and took a long swallow.
“They’re back?” he asked her. “The others?”
“Most of them. One or two are still trickling in.”
“And is Hawk telling the truth?” He held up his phone. “They really found Charity?”
“They really did.” To his horror, Norma’s eyes became misty. “She’s grown up so much since she left. She was just a little thing.”
He thought of Charity as he remembered her—short, slender, soft hair, wide eyes. What would six years on her own have done to her? What would she be like now? Did he even want the answer to that question?
“It’s for the best she’s back,” Norma said. “She’s better off with us, her own people.” Was it Weston’s imagination, or did she sound like she was trying to convince herself?
“We haven’t brought back any of the others who left,” he pointed out. If being kidnapped and brought back into the pack was really what was best for everyone, why weren’t they going after the other packmates they’d lost?
Norma didn’t seem to have an answer. She rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “You control yourself in there,” she told him quietly.
He’d always had the feeling that Norma could read his emotional state. He allowed himself to take comfort from her as he finished the dregs of his beer. Then he tossed the bottle into the sink. “Don’t clean up after me,” he told her. “I’ll come take care of it later.”
But she was already moving toward the sink. “Nothing to worry about,” she assured him. “Just try and keep your cool, will you?”
He would try. But he couldn’t guarantee success.
Hawk was alone in the den. Good. Weston had been afraid of finding him with Rick and Gino as usual. It would be harder to talk to him if he was surrounded by cronies. Finding him on his own was a stroke of good luck.
Not that he had any idea what he was actually going to say. How could he hope to tell Hawk anything that would be helpful here? He couldn’t. He had no control. Not for the first time, he longed for Karl, who had always tried not to abuse his power as alpha and would have been willing to listen to anything his pack had to say.
Hawk sat slumped in his recliner, staring at the TV. “Can you see about my dinner?” he asked Weston without looking up. “Norma was supposed to bring it in here.”
“She’s still cooking,” Weston said.
“Well, she’s taking her time about it. She ought to hurry up.”
“So, you found Charity, then?”
“First time out. It’s like it was meant to be. Pretty wild, right?”
“Pretty wild.” He felt as if his blood was boiling beneath his skin. “Where is she now?”
“Oh, Gino locked her up in the spare room. We can’t have her escaping again, right?” He laughed. “Not that she’d try, once she realizes how good she’s got it here. But you know, it’s her first night. Makes sense she’d be a little freaked out. Which reminds me.” He sat up. “I need you to take a shift.”
“Take a shift? What kind of a shift?”
“What kind do you think? Guard duty. I need you to go stand guard over her.”
This was the very last thing Weston wanted to do. Seeing Charity again would be bad enough. Seeing her when she was at such a disadvantage would be pure hell. He was angry with her. He wanted to dwell in that anger. He didn’t want to have to deal with feeling sorry for her, which he was sure he would if he had to face her in lockdown, where she’d be afraid and possibly pleading for escape.
“I don’t think I’m the best person for the job,” was all he could manage.
“Well, I’m ordering you to do it,” Hawk said, and sure enough, the tug of compulsion was suddenly there. He had to obey. He had no choice. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
“When do I have to guard her?” he ground out, furious with himself for coming in here in the first place. Norma had been
right. He should have kept his distance. He should have known Hawk would do something like this. And Hawk didn’t even know how agonizing this was going to be for Weston.
“Go now,” Hawk said. “Gino’s there, but you can relieve him. And you’ll stay the night.”
“What, all night?”
“Yeah. Just don’t go to sleep.”
Fuck. Great. Now he wouldn’t be able to go to sleep because he’d been given the order to stay awake. And Hawk was always lazy and forgetful about countermanding those orders. The last time he’d ordered Weston to stay up all night for a job, he’d forgotten to give the okay, go to sleep now command until halfway through the following day. Weston had almost had a nervous breakdown.
He slumped out of the room and down the hall, dragging his feet as much as he could while still being propelled forward by the weight of Hawk’s command. The spare room was a new addition to the cabin, having just been built the previous fall, and nobody actually lived there yet, hence the moniker. Hawk had made noise at the time about the possibility of Gino and Lita having a baby or two and needing a nursery. Gino and Lita had both insisted that such things weren’t on their radar at all, though, which made Weston think that perhaps the motivation for building the room had never had anything to do with babies.
Now Gino sat on the floor outside the room, his back pressed against the door, fiddling with his phone. “Hey, Weston,” he said. “You getting any service?”
“Haven’t looked. Is she really in there?”
“Yep,” Gino said, a note of pride in his voice. “I was the one who found her. Couldn’t believe it myself. There was a scent on the air, I thought it seemed omega-y, but what do I know about it? I’ve never met one before. And then I turned the corner and there she was, walking down the street. I just about died.”
“How’d you get her to come back with you?”
“Just picked her up and put her in the van.” Gino shrugged. “It was easy.”
Weston itched to ask Gino for more details—had he hurt Charity? Had she tried to run? Had he had to tackle her or hit her to get her into the car? But he couldn’t ask those questions without risking arousing suspicion. After all, what motivation could he have for wanting to know unless he specifically didn’t want her hurt? And what possible reason could he have for worrying about that?