Luminous

by Noelle Marie

  Katherine shifted her hips, trying to ease the ache in them. Ever since her belly had begun rounding out, she’d been uncomfortable laying on her back. And at that moment, not only did it feel like a twenty pound bowling ball was sitting on her bladder, but she felt incredibly vulnerable with no way to protect her protruding stomach.

  The pain was a good thing in a way. The constant twinges coming from her hips – and shoulders, whose overstretched muscles felt like something akin to rubber – grounded her and prevented her from falling under the Sandman’s spell.

  Katherine didn’t think it was possible to fall asleep under such a circumstance – mainly, being held captive against her will – but the urge to let unconsciousness take her was strong. The room was dark and quiet – only the occasional snore interrupting the peace – and exhaustion tugged at her eyelids despite the discomfort she was in. Her body practically demanded she rest and give it a chance to begin healing her injuries.

  But she didn’t want to let down her guard. Not with her two kidnappers sleeping less than ten feet away. She was defenseless enough as it was with her hands tied above her head.

  She glanced at the clock: 12:43.

  To distract herself from the sleep that beckoned her, she tried to focus her mind on other things.

  Like the baby in her belly.

  As soon as she thought of the little life growing inside her, however, fear would cause her stomach to roil. Half-terrified she’d puke if she focused too long on the dire situation that life was in, Katherine banished thoughts of the baby from her mind. She didn’t want to end up choking to death on her own vomit, after all.

  Instead, Katherine thought of Bastian. The pack, too. Knowing how she was literally sick with worry every time she thought of her baby, she tried not to envision that they were experiencing the same feeling.

  Unfortunately, her imagination wasn’t that good. She could picture them all in her mind.

  Caleb, trying to hold it together for the rest of the pack, probably attempting to force food down their throats even though his own empty stomach was a twisted knot of anxiety.

  Zane. Katherine hoped he didn’t blame himself for her disappearance, but knew he must have. She imagined he would retrace their footsteps from earlier in the day, trying to follow her boot marks and figure out where she’d gone, all the while cursing her stupidity for wandering off alone. He’d never figure out she went to visit Melanie, of course. Her tracks had become muddled with everyone else’s when she’d walked through town.

  Markus was probably cussing her out right along with Zane, his usual sarcastic front on full display so that no one could see he had real feelings like concern. Panic. Fear.

  She imagined Sophie with her somber, cerulean eyes, simultaneously acting as the voice of reason and trying to comfort her brother.

  Bastian.

  Katherine could hardly stand to think of him, his instincts undoubtedly screaming for him to protect a mate that was no longer there. She could imagine the volatile cocktail of emotions swirling within him – anger, despair, and a twisted sort of self-loathing eating him up from the inside out.

  Katherine pressed her lips together.

  This isn’t helping, she told herself firmly, concentrate on something else.

  So she did. Katherine put her mind to actual use by trying to think of a way – any way – out of her current situation without putting her baby in imminent danger. No matter how hard she thought, however, she couldn’t think of any plausible plan.

  She strained her neck in order to look at the clock. 2:04.

  How could time be moving so slow? She was so tired. Katherine sucked in her bottom lip. Maybe if she just closed her eyes for a minute, she’d feel revived enough to focus on forming some sort of plan?

  That was it. She’d close them for a minute – two at most – just to let them rest. She was not going to fall asleep.

  Katherine slept.

  Blue eyes – a striking azure unique to one person alone – stared at her. But the eyes weren’t set in the human face that Katherine was so familiar with. It was her dream wolf. He bore a striking resemble to Bastian in wolf form, and a tiny piece of Katherine even believed it was him.

  She knew that was unlikely. Her dream wolf was probably just her brain’s subconscious way of providing comfort when she was under duress. After all, he only ever made an appearance when she and Bastian were separated or she needed the man in some way. Still, a secret part of Katherine liked to imagine that the wolf truly was him – that their connection was so special he could insert himself in her dreams and console her the only way he had available to him at the time.

  In this instance, though, in this particular dream... Katherine couldn’t help but hope that secret part of her was wrong. Maybe the wolf represented Bastian, but he couldn’t really be him.

  Because the creature in front of Katherine was deranged – absolutely inconsolable in his grief as he dipped his head back and howled at the moon like he was in actual physical agony.

  Katherine’s knee-jerk reaction to the heartbreaking sound was to reach out for the wolf and touch him. She smoothed her hand over his thick pelt, attempting to offer the comfort he so often provided for her, but he wrenched away from her. He stared at her with the same unseeing, pain-filled eyes that’d pierced her just moments ago before lifting his snout into the air and releasing another jarring howl.

  Katherine snapped her eyes open. Her dream wolf’s grief – Bastian’s grief – felt heavy in her chest. It was like an actual weight sitting on top of her lungs, and Katherine struggled to breathe. It took her two attempts to successfully take a deep breath in through her nose. Still, the image of the wolf and his despairing blue eyes tormented her, and panic threatened to lace up her spine. Katherine quickly stomped it down. When she felt calm enough, she glanced at the clock. 4:51.

  It was nearly dawn. A sudden sense of foreboding befell her. As much as Katherine had wished for the dark of night to pass so she could make some bid of escape, she absolutely dreaded the moment the two people next to her awoke. She didn’t want to deal with them and any fresh dangers the day would bring.

  But she didn’t want to deal with her dream wolf’s anguish either.

  When sleep threatened to take her under again, Katherine clamped down on the inside of her cheek with her teeth. The sharp burst of pain did its job to keep her cognizant. For lack of anything else to do, Katherine passed the time by resuming her efforts to peel the tape off her wrists. When she next looked at the clock, the numbers flashed 6:35.

  At 7:13, someone finally stirred on the other bed. The sound of rustling blankets reached her ears, and Katherine instinctually snapped her eyes shut and feigned sleep. There was more rustling, some murmuring, then a creak of the mattress before finally the sound of feet hitting carpet. She heard two footfalls before a small hand wrapped grabbed her elbow and jostled her. Katherine peeled open her eyes to see Melanie looming over her.

  Glancing at the bed confirmed that Lukas was awake as well. He had yet to get up, however, and was using the palm of his hand to apply pressure to the bottom of his chin and crack his neck.

  “Rise and shine,” Melanie greeted, and Katherine’s eyes darted back to her. The words were offered dryly, but regardless, the girl seemed to be in a better mood than the night before. It was apparent in the way she unbound Katherine’s wrists with much more care than she had last evening.

  Despite the fact that Katherine’s arms felt like something akin to Jell-O when they were released, her hands immediately sought her sore shoulders, attempting to rub the ache away.

  Melanie watched her all the while, a frown pulling at her lips when her dark eyes traveled down to take in her belly. “Do you have to use the bathroom?” she asked.

  Holy mother of hell, yes.

  “Yes,” Katherine said, managing to restrain herself. Her bladder felt like it was about to burst.

  Melanie nodded, leading her to the bathroom much like she had the night b
efore. When Katherine had finished her business, and they’d returned to the main room, Lukas had climbed out of bed. He was pulling a shirt on over her head similar to one that Melanie had bought for Katherine.

  “Here,” Melanie said, regaining Katherine’s attention by thrusting a puffy, purple coat into her arms.

  But it wasn’t the coat she’d been wearing when she’d been kidnapped. In fact, now that she thought of it, she hadn’t been wearing a coat at all last night when she’d come to. She shot Melanie an inquisitive look.

  “Your jacket got some blood on it so I threw it out with your shirt,” she explained with a nonchalant wave of the hand, like she was discussing the weather or something equally as dull.

  “Oh,” Katherine managed to mutter, looking over the coat in her arms. It wasn’t exactly her style, but she couldn’t exactly afford to be picky, could she? She supposed she should just be grateful they were giving her a coat at all.

  And a hat, Katherine took note, as Melanie handed her one of those as well. It was plain black and looked like it would fit snugly over her head.

  “Put that on. Then why don’t you stretch?” Melanie suggested. “It’s a long drive to where we’re going.”

  Her almost friendly demeanor was completely at odds with the business-like air she’d put on the night before. Katherine wasn’t about to complain, though, and heeded her advice, taking a moment to touch her toes and then pull her calves tight behind her thighs.

  When she was finished, Melanie stepped into her space. “Okay, this is how this is going to work,” she said, completely straight-faced and suddenly sounding very stern. So much for affability. “Lukas is going to go check us out of the motel. When he comes back to the room to retrieve us, we’re going to walk you out to the car. I’ll be on one side of you and Lukas the other. Lukas is going to keep a hand on your lower back under your jacket. In that hand, he’ll be holding his knife. If it even looks like you’re going to make a break for it, he’s going to slice you open, got it?”

  Katherine stared.

  “Do you got it, Katherine?” Melanie repeated. “You can’t run.”

  Katherine managed to force down the strange mix of alarmed horror and righteous indignation forming in her gut to offer Melanie a jerky nod.

  “Good.” The girl seemed honestly relieved with her compliance, and if Katherine didn’t know better, she’d have thought she might actually care, at least a little, about Katherine’s well-being.

  As it was, Melanie was one of the main reasons she was in the bind she was in in the first place.

  Katherine played the part of a good, little hostage as Lukas did precisely what Melanie said he would do and checked them out of the motel. When they escorted her out the door a few minutes later, she could feel the cool, flat edge of Lukas’s blade through the thin fabric of her shirt. It was enough to deter her from running. Still, she had hoped to be able to meet some stranger’s eyes in the parking lot and mouth some sort of SOS at them, but the tar lot was empty and thus, that plan foiled.

  Katherine knew they had reached Lukas’s vehicle when they stopped in front of a beat up, 1980’s Buick, and Melanie manually unlocked the doors. She only recognized the make and model because her grandfather had used to own one before he’d died. Lukas’s was even uglier than his had been. There was rust present by all four wheels, a sizable dent in the hood, and no other word described the car’s color better than... brownish.

  Still holding the blunt side of his knife against her back, Lukas shuffled her towards the back passenger side door, opening it with his free hand. “Get in.”

  With no other choice, Katherine reluctantly obeyed. The car was as outdated on the inside as the outside, featuring crank-operated windows and a fabric ceiling that drooped in places.

  Lukas lowered himself into the back seat next to Katherine, and she scooted as far away from him as the cramped seating allowed. Melanie smoothly slid into driver’s seat before relocking the doors. She dug her hand into a duffle bag Katherine assumed she’d either packed from Heaven Falls or had picked up at the same store as the other supplies, and pulled out a roll of duct tape similar to the one from earlier, handing it back to Lukas.

  “Give him your wrists, Katherine,” she ordered.

  Katherine stiffened. Being tied up would make escaping substantially harder.

  “Melanie, please, I promise not to-” Katherine rushed to try to persuade her.

  “She said to give me your wrists,” Lukas said, roughly grabbing at them. “Life’s going to be hard for you where we’re going if you can’t follow simple instructions.” He wound the tape around her wrists several times before deeming her sufficiently bound and ripping the tape from the roll with his teeth.

  “If you’re quiet, we can forego taping your mouth,” Melanie offered from the front seat.

  “I don’t know. You think she can behave?” Lukas mocked.

  Katherine fought the urge to roll her eyes.

  “Probably not, but I don’t see the harm. It’s not like she can scream for help; well, she could, I suppose, but it’s not like anyone will hear her.”

  “I guess,” Lukas agreed before startling Katherine and grabbing her by the chin. He squeezed her cheeks, forcing her lips to pucker. “Anyhow, it’d be a shame to have to cover that pretty mouth.”

  Katherine’s heart leapt into her throat, but Lukas just released her face with a laugh. “Let’s hit the road.”

  Without further ago, Melanie started the vehicle.

  Katherine stared down at her bound wrists as they drove down the highway.

  She was grateful that Lukas had been foolish – or maybe just overconfident? – enough to let her keep her hands in front of her instead of binding them behind her back. She was determined to make him pay for the mistake. He wasn’t even watching her, really. He was leaning back into his seat with his hands behind his head as he bragged to Melanie about his prowess as a hunter. “I’m not as good as Gerard is, of course. No one is. But I’m a close second. You should see some of the beasts that roam the woods where we live.”

  Katherine thought, very briefly, about using her fingers to manually unlock the door and simply jumping from the car, but ultimately dismissed the idea. Not only was leaping from a moving vehicle not worth the risk of hurting her baby, but the fall would almost certainly injure her as well, and there was no way she could hobble away fast enough to escape.

  There was no way around it. Katherine was going to have to get them to stop somewhere.

  “Just last year, I took down a buck with twenty-some points,” Lukas continued to talk next to Katherine, oblivious to her scheming. “Man, that venison was some of the best I’ve ever tasted.”

  Katherine’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food. She hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours, but the direness of her situation had masked any hunger she may have felt... until now. A painful twinge shoot through Katherine’s belly as it demanded sustenance.

  And just like that, a light bulb went off in her head.

  “I’m hungry,” she blurted, interrupting Lukas mid-brag if the disgruntled look he shot her was any indication.

  Melanie nodded from the front seat. “I figured you would be; you slept through supper last night.”

  Katherine supposed that was true if one counted being knocked unconscious “sleeping.”

  “Here.” Melanie tossed a box of granola bars in the back seat.

  Crap.

  Katherine bit her lip. She recalled Melanie’s numerous glances to her belly the night before. Maybe...

  “Please, Melanie, my baby needs real food.”

  Melanie frowned, a genuine hint of concern glimmering in her eyes for perhaps the first time that morning. “What do you want?”

  Bingo.

  “I don’t know, a burger or something. We could stop somewhere and-”

  “No,” Lukas immediately cut her off. “We’re not stopping anywhere,” he reiterated, shooting Katherine a suspicious look.

&
nbsp; “I guess we could go through a drive-thru,” Melanie said, “but you’ll have to be quiet. Say a single word, and I’m stepping on the gas, burger or no burger.”

  Katherine could work with that.

  “If you don’t trust her, we could always stuff her in the trunk,” Lukas suggested.

  Katherine stiffened. She couldn’t quite tell if he was kidding or not.

  “She’s pregnant,” Melanie scolded lightly.

  The next town they came across had a McDonalds. It was too early in the day to get a hamburger, though, so Melanie ordered her a breakfast sandwich with extra bacon. She also insisted on getting Katherine a large orange juice.

  “I’m sure the vitamin C is good for the baby,” she explained.

  Katherine wrinkled her forehead at the strangely thoughtful gesture, but nodded.

  As they approached the drive-thru window, Katherine tried to catch the eye of the pimply teenager working the cash register. She succeeded in making eye contact, but before Katherine could mouth some sort of message to him or flash him the tape around her wrists, his eyes flickered back down to the register. “That’ll be C$7.59,” he said, a red flush crawling up his neck.

  He didn’t look back up.

  Katherine deflated. So much for that idea.

  At least the sandwich Melanie handed her was a consolation prize of sorts. The biscuit that made up the outer parts of the sandwich was practically saturated with grease and the cheese was half stuck to the wrapper the sandwich came in, but Katherine didn’t care. She wolfed it down within minutes. To make up for it, she took her time nursing her orange juice, the sweet taste washing away the aftertaste of liquefied lard.

  Less than an hour later, it felt like the baby in her belly was trying to play a game of soccer with her rapidly filling bladder – with her bladder as the ball, of course – and, another idea came to Katherine.

  “I have to pee,” she announced bluntly.

  Lukas, who had closed his eyes and was attempting to sleep next to her, snorted. “Good for you.”