The Silver Cage

by Ana Raine

  The Silver Cage (Restrained 1)

  Ana Raine

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2021 Ana Raine

  BIN: 009889-03208

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  Publisher:

  Changeling Press LLC

  315 N. Centre St.

  Martinsburg, WV 25404

  www.ChangelingPress.com

  Editor: Kira Stone

  Cover Artist: Bryan Keller

  Adult Sexual Content

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  Table of Contents

  The Silver Cage (Restrained 1)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  Ana Raine

  The Silver Cage (Restrained 1)

  Ana Raine

  Danny barely remembers who he is, let alone his mate. After being taken from his pack years ago by a group of overzealous hunters, Danny identifies only as “Wolf” -- the pet of the pack who helps track down other shifters for the hunters’ sport.

  When Danny tracks down a female wolf, he hesitates to help imprison her male companion. At first Danny doesn’t remember this wolf, at least not logically, but his senses are completely overtaken and he’s sure he’s met this Alpha before.

  This wolf isn’t just his former Alpha. Jamie is also his mate, and after years of believing Danny dead, Jamie’s not going to let his mate go ever again. Even if it means working together to kill each of the hunters so they can never take their lives again -- or come between their mating bond.

  Chapter 1

  I had been broken. It was a long time ago -- so long I barely remembered who I was before. Now I was only Wolf.

  Words fade easily when you don’t use them. My teeth ached most days, even when I was conscious enough to remind myself not to bite the metal of my cage. Those were the good days, the days I remembered, but for most of them I just kept gnawing. At least the pain was in my jaw and not in my heart.

  In the early days, back when I was a teenager, I’d tried to resist. But the hunter’s knives were sharp and their guns loud. It had been easier to stay, easier to retreat into my other form where there was more fur than skin.

  That was a decade ago. At least I thought so. There were few things I remembered. I was twenty-six. I had green eyes when I was a human, and still green when I was a wolf. My name started with a D, but I thought of myself as “wolf.”

  The hunters had kept me because I was skilled at tracking, and they thought it would be a waste to let me be sold as an exotic pet. Langdon, the deadliest hunter I knew, probably begged to differ on that front. He was endlessly touching the top of my head and whenever I was permitted to be in my human form, rare as it was, his eyes lingered on my skin like a trail of fire.

  There was a memory I clung to -- a wolf with fur as red as a forest fire. But he was probably dead, same as everyone else in my pack, so that was probably why the memory was faint.

  “Are we ready to go?”

  Hunter was the worst of all, and not because his name literally matched his profession. He had a buzz-cut better suited for the army and had chewed tobacco for so long, half of his teeth had rotted right out of his skull. What he didn’t have in neck, he made up for with muscles. He was huge and I thought so even when I was a wolf. The tip of his boot often found my ribs when I moved too slowly.

  Jax was a little better. He had a kind smile he only ever wore when he video-chatted with his girlfriend and son. Hunters traveled as they tracked down the hundreds of small packs around the globe. For some reason or another, probably money, he’d become a hunter, but I knew he hated being away from his family.

  Langdon was downright arrogant and awful, which completely marred his beautiful beach-ready looks. There was his father, Langdon Sr. and Savannah, who kept her hair in a severe bun at the nape of her neck and an engraved silver ring around her second finger.

  Before me, there had been two other wolves, brothers. But after I’d come around, the wolf hunters had fallen in love with how quickly I could track my kind and kept me. I didn’t exactly know what happened to the brothers, but I knew they were brought outside, there was a loud bang, and they were gone. I assumed their bodies had been left in the dumpster. It was fairly easy to discard wolves, after all. Their screams when they realized what was going to happen… that was never going to fade.

  “Just about.” Savannah loaded a gun as she cocked her head in my direction. “Wolf ready to behave?”

  Langdon crouched down in front of the cage, his dirty fingers hanging through the bars and invading my space. I’d learned long ago what happens to a wolf who bites, but I still salivated at the thought of my teeth penetrating his throat.

  “He’ll be good,” Langdon purred, wringing the leash in his hands as he stared at me. “He’s always my good wolf, aren’t you?”

  I lowered my eyes because that was how to survive.

  “Where did they say they’d be?” Hunter asked before spitting a wad of tar in an empty coke bottle. “How many?”

  “Our scouts at the border said two. One female and one male,” Langdon Sr. answered. “They’re to be broken and sold. Beautiful beasts, I heard.”

  I sighed in relief and frustration. Had they been better suited to being their pet, my life would be over as I was easily replaceable.

  “Oh, no,” Langdon whispered so only I could hear. The others were consumed with their guns and weapons. “Oh, no, Wolf, you’re my boy. And pretty soon, we’ll find a replacement for you, and you’ll finally be all mine.”

  For a person to actually keep a Wolf as a pet, the wolf had to be severely broken. I knew I was broken enough to obey and fear their knives, but somehow, my mind was still convinced I wouldn’t let him have his way with me. From the way he made it seem, I wasn’t far from finding out.

  “Come on, boy. Out you come.”

  Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I imagined his hand on top of my head was the boy from my memories. But the scent was wrong. Langdon was steel and blood and hate. The boy’s had been wind and cinnamon and love.

  Langdon mistook my contentment about the boy for thinking it was because of him. I didn’t really care anymore.

  The leash slipped around my collar, the steel biting ever so slightly into my fur. As a human, it was much looser, but still not enough for me to slip out of.

  “And we’re ready,” Langdon Sr. stated, pointing around the room of the small cabin. “Hunter, Savannah, you’re with me. Langdon and Jax, you take the wolf.”

  Langdon’s grin wa
s feral.

  “And you track from the south while we go north.”

  “Bet they’ll wish they hadn’t left their pack,” Jax teased.

  When I’d been taken, my pack had only been about ten wolves. Now, wolves kept in packs of at least twenty so they could be seen as less vulnerable. Why these two wolves had left the safety of their pack was beyond me.

  It was a death sentence.

  Langdon Sr. and his party weren’t meant to capture the wolves, that was my job. They were simply there to usher them toward me. But the humans didn’t need to. Wolves instinctively ran to one of their own. And if they were really alone, they would both be craving the affection of another wolf to further the pack.

  Langdon kept up with me, but only just. Jax wheezed behind us, uttering a trail of curses about how he was too old for this, until Langdon told him to shut up.

  “They’ll hear us coming a mile away,” Langdon told him.

  Jax just rolled his eyes. “They’ll hear me dying of an asthma attack long before that.”

  If we worked the way Jax wanted us to, then we would just blow up the whole freaking forest.

  I caught scent of the female first. They always smelled different, and although I would have wanted my mate to be male, females smelled pleasant.

  “Wolf’s got something.”

  And I did. It was over quickly, too quickly.

  The trees were a blur, as what was left of the sun. Her heart was pounding in her chest, like she knew she was going to be caught. Her howl bit something inside me, something I didn’t know I could still feel.

  Her leg was soft in my mouth as I tackled her to the ground. The leash was long forgotten. Langdon removed it right after we’d gotten deep enough into the woods. I always came back. The tracker in my collar was one of the main reasons.

  She was a soft beige color, and the blood from the wound in her leg stained her fur. She continued to scream and thrash, even though I was trained for bringing her down. I was slight and always would be, but I was strong.

  It was her eyes that captured me. The pupils grew fierce in the glow of the moon and I saw the exact moment she realized she was done for.

  The hatred. The betrayal. The sting of being forsaken by a wolf who could have been her friend.

  But my fear of Langdon and the other hunters outweighed my fear of what she would think of me. After all, I was already broken.

  Langdon Sr. and his party caught up quickly, but their rush of words was difficult for me to differentiate. There was the never-ending hand on my head and the fitting of the leash as I was pulled away. She was quickly restrained, ropes and chains and a collar snugly positioned so there was no way she could escape.

  With a final whimper, she seemed to give up and rested her head on her paws. Sometimes they changed back into a human so they could argue and fight the hunters. But seeing a wolf turn human only made them angrier, because how dare an animal have a human form.

  She was smart to stay in her wolf form for as long as they’d permit.

  “Come with me, boy.” Langdon was pulling on my leash, but in the opposite direction of the cabin. I sniffed the air experimentally, but I didn’t smell her companion. Only the wind as it bristled through my fur.

  His father, who had caught up, didn’t say anything but gave his son a single nod, lips pressed tightly together. The resignation in his eyes worried me but with Langdon’s hand around my leash, I didn’t really have a choice. Not that I would have run anyway.

  He led me away from the other hunters and the howls from the female wolf as she was escorted to the cabin and an empty cage.

  Long moments passed as I padded through the woods behind the hunter. He wore a simple coat with pockets filled with weapons and extra bullets. His hair was slicked back today, and even though he looked like a God, I hated him.

  How easy it would be to surge forward and rip his throat out. I wished I were strong enough to.

  He led me to an empty campsite. We were inside a state park, but at this time of year, they didn’t allow campers. Langdon dropped the leash and rubbed his hands together. “Shit, it’s cold.”

  His voice was uneven and even though he was trying to hide it, his lower lip trembled. “Phase, Wolf. Now.”

  The longer I spent in my wolf form, the harder it was to shift to a human. Neither form was my “normal” form. They both were. The songs I felt inside my head were different and the pull of my loyalty changed, but they were two sides of my soul.

  My heart still echoed painfully in my skull. And my eyes still fell to the ground in Langdon’s presence.

  After a moment of painful popping as my joints and bones rearranged, I was standing in front of the hunter. Without my fur, I was cold, but not freezing. My toes were dangerously close to shattered glass I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Who do you belong to?”

  My eye twitched. Words were difficult these days. “Y-you.”

  “Good boy.” His hand was underneath my chin as he tilted my head back. “Look at me.”

  I did as I was told, because the scars from his torture still hadn’t healed. They never would.

  “I always forget how fucking beautiful you are,” he told me as he traced my lips with the tip of his thumb. “Fuck. Your skin, it’s like porcelain. And your hair… like dark silk.”

  I swallowed.

  “After months of asking my father --” He sounded angry, his blue eyes way too close to me. “-- He finally relented. You’re going to be mine now. We’re going to find that male today and he’ll be your replacement.”

  Death.

  “No.” After torturing me for nearly a decade, he could read my mind. “I already told you, I wouldn’t let them kill you. We’re leaving, you and I. I’m going to go look for wolves on my own, the ones only suited to be pelts, and you’ll help me.”

  He stepped closer, his hand closing around my throat as he did, “And you’ll be my bitch while we do it. What do you think? Finding and killing wolves by day. Fucking you into the mattress at night. Yeah.” His voice was hoarse with want. “Sounds perfect.”

  I just closed my eyes as the pain slid through me like a snake.

  He’d released my neck and was trailing a line down my chest to my smooth, nearly concave stomach. “Need to feed you more,” he muttered, and I knew where he was looking, where he was going to touch next.

  I braced myself for the pain of his hand touching me where I had only ever wanted my mate. But a low growl from the tree line beside us stopped his movements entirely. His hand was on his gun, aimed at the trees.

  “Get ready to phase,” he told me, the leash slapping my thigh as I maneuvered so I was standing beside the very man who had only broken me with the intention of one day claiming me. The irony wasn’t lost on me. “But not yet.”

  Maybe if I had, I would have seen what was coming.

  A wolf the color of crimson blood leapt from the trees, his mouth open in a wild snarl as spittle dribbled from his chin to the snowy ground. His eyes were blazing, like his fur, but the color was fading between the crimson red and a soft green. When they turned to me, I could almost see his gaze soften.

  “Phase now.”

  I did as Langdon commanded, my leash knocking against my ribs as bone and tendon snapped against each other to recreate my other self. It was maddening to go through the shift so soon, the scents overwhelming me as I tried to gain my bearings.

  The wolf’s snarl turned into a wide-toothed grin when he caught sight of me. And even as I watched him sink his teeth into Langdon’s arm until there was the sickening snap of bone, I was helpless to come to the hunter’s defense.

  His blood splattered onto my cheek and desperate to get it off, I rubbed my face on the ground. The snow at my paws dyed red stared back at me, warning me to leave.

  Instead of worrying about bloody snow, I should have worried about running.

  This wolf, the presumed mate of the female I’d tracked down, had every right to end me. Langdon was o
n the ground, favoring his arm as he howled in pain and barked orders at me to help him.

  “Leave the male and come here,” he screamed, his voice cracking in pain. “Wolf, come here.”

  I pawed the ground, turning my head from side to side until I spotted the wolf again. He was off to the right and then he was in front of me. Had he moved any closer, we would have been nose to nose.

  I felt his hot breath on my face and noticed that even though I’d always thought of myself as large, he towered above me. His paws were massive as he bumped my head with one.

  Langdon was still commanding me to fight, even as he writhed on the ground with his gun somewhere several feet away. He looked from me to the wolf and just as instinct was about to kick in, I heard his voice.

  Come.

  I sucked in air as I tried to keep my eyes gazing into his. The red was so intense I felt my knees getting weak and the urge to drop, belly to the ground, was overpowering.

  He was an Alpha. And if he wanted me to come, I would.

  No amount of torture or punishment would ever have been enough to make me able to ignore an Alpha’s call. It was absolute, an innate desire deep with me to follow.

  To obey. To serve.

  Luckily for the hunters, I hadn’t met an Alpha since my capture. The wolves we chased and hunted were rogues searching for a pack and, essentially, an Alpha to call them home. For an Alpha to be with only one other wolf… It meant something was wrong.

  Come now.

  He was irritated with me, frustrated I wasn’t listening the first time. Although he was able to hide his private thoughts from me, I sensed his indecision at making me follow him. His confusion about whether or not there was any part of me worth saving.

  I didn’t know the answer to that question anymore. But I did know that hearing his deep, husky voice in my mind had left me feeling more alive than I had in years.

  Langdon had fallen silent. His eyes went wide as he moved into a defensive position with his wounded arm positioned beneath him.