With Her Capture

by Lorie O'Clare

  Ayden searched around him. He looked past large rocks that jutted up out of the earth, across the tall grass that was everywhere. He focused on the trees at the edge of the clearing where they’d stopped. Ayden hadn’t paid attention, nor cared much, when they’d first stopped where they were exactly. Now, with his cock no longer doing his thinking for him, he recognized his surroundings. This was his mountain. His pack, his den, wasn’t far from where they were now.

  Magda straightened at the same time that there was movement by the trees. Ayden shot his attention in that direction. He caught sight of the shadow, which was the best he was able to make out at this distance even with the light of the moon. The male charged toward them. Magda growled.

  Before he had time to growl a warning in return, the earth shook underneath him. Ayden let out a fierce stream of barks. He was positive he charged at her, but not in time.

  A large boulder ripped free of the ground. In the darkness it looked like a life-size baseball, round—but incredibly heavy. Too heavy to stop, too fast to dodge or outrun. It slammed into the shadow.

  No! Ayden roared, no longer focusing on Magda. He raced toward the shadow and toward the large boulder that had stopped moving. The shadow’s scent was familiar. The boulder had squashed the shadow. It was on top of Anthony.

  Chapter Fifteen

  This wasn’t how she’d imagined it would be. They had been ready to fuck. Magda had smelled Ayden’s love for her when he’d started mounting her. Then her entire world had changed.

  In such a short time they’d come this far. A full circle. From ignorance and lack of trust, to desire and lust, to love—and now what? Would Ayden ever howl at her again?

  “My worst nightmare,” she muttered, and for the hundredth time that day it seemed, paced her prison cell.

  Magda glanced at the small window laced with barbed wire. She already knew the walls were supported with steel. The door was metal. The floor cement. This was a cage for a werewolf, designed by werewolves. There was no way to escape.

  After waking up on the bare floor her third morning in a row, she was stiff, hungry, and incredibly antsy. There had been no visitors. Although she only wanted to see one werewolf—Ayden.

  If only her gift would allow her to erase what had happened. She’d reacted to an enemy approaching. She’d smelled the hatred, the bile and contempt. It was a scent she’d never be able to forget as long as she lived, even if she never smelled it again.

  When she’d caught the whiff of it in the air, moments before they were ready to fuck, she’d reacted on instinct. Her life was finally in order. She’d fallen in love. Ayden had fought to keep her with him, had hunted her down. He was the perfect male. He’d been too good to be true.

  Magda sunk to the floor, her back sliding down against the wall as she dug her fingers into her tangled hair. “Idiot. You were such an idiot,” she snarled, closing her eyes.

  Which allowed her to relive that horrific moment yet again. She saw the huge boulder freeing itself from the ground. Even when she opened her eyes and focused on her grim surroundings, she still felt the weight of it from when she had forced it through the darkness. It had been a direct hit.

  Then a damn pack of Cariboo lunewulf had charged out from the trees. They had surrounded her. She was smothered by the overheated smell of pissed off werewolves.

  It had taken Ayden changing into his flesh, shivering uncontrollably in the freezing night air as he yelled at his pack not to kill her, which had kept her alive so far. She was sure of it. Then he’d left her. He’d returned to his fur and raced over to the crushed werewolf. Magda hadn’t known it was his littermate.

  Her gaze fixed on the small box of granola bars and the box next to it of beef jerky. She’d eaten half the contents of both so far. They were like an hour glass. Once those boxes were empty she’d starve to death.

  She’d always guessed Ayden had clout with his pack. She hadn’t known they were as close to his territory as they had been when he’d decided to fuck. Not that he would have been able to tell her in her fur.

  Why had she agreed to his stupid plan? Falling in love had been her first big mistake. Her head had been clearer when she’d only given thought to her own safety. Ayden had been convinced they would be able to run into his pack. He knew the litters who lived on his mountain. They trusted him. And he’d trust all of them with his life.

  They would stay the night at his den. He would introduce her to his littermate. Ayden hadn’t been delusional. He’d agreed with Magda when she had pointed out that Anthony would hate her on sight. But, he’d assured her that Anthony would give Ayden his blessing, whether he agreed with whom he’d chosen as a mate or not. After staying the night at his den, they would then continue their journey to her litter.

  Magda had consented to the plan. Ayden was very convincing with his argument and he’d been right. Running to the states, to the Colorado pack, would very likely mean she’d never see Katrin or Liesa again. She’d put in the stipulation that after visiting both litters, howling their stories around a good fire and sharing in their kill, if it still smelled wise they would then run to Colorado. Ayden had agreed.

  He was an intelligent male. Magda wouldn’t argue that point. Before they’d left he’d plotted how they would enter his pack’s territory. Ayden had been up front in telling her that there were some litters who would kill her if they sniffed her out. He hadn’t misjudged his pack. The only werewolf he’d misjudged had been her.

  There was no point in going over everything that had happened again. She’d wondered enough already how things might have been different if she hadn’t used her gift, if she hadn’t dumped that boulder on top of Ayden’s littermate. She’d even questioned how things might have been different if it had been another werewolf. Still someone from his pack. Obviously Ayden cared about all the litters on his mountain, and her still being alive was proof how much they honored anything he howled. But would she be locked in this cage for going on three days now, without even picking up on Ayden’s scent, if it had been another werewolf and not Anthony that she’d crushed?

  “Damn you, Ayden. You shouldn’t have chased me down when I ran from the cave.” Magda pushed herself to her feet. “You should have let me go.”

  The cold cement topped with the harsh breeze that blew in from the small barb-wired covered window made her stiff and ache the longer she remained still. Ayden’s pack members had dumped the contents of their duffel bag and had dropped a pile of her clothes, along with one blanket, in the corner of the steel enforced shed. Long underwear under her jeans, two shirts and a sweatshirt, made the icy conditions barely tolerable during the day. At night, changing into her fur kept her alive against the harsh climate.

  Magda understood the only thing keeping her moving, that forced her to pace, to eat and to sleep was her survival instinct. She also accepted that she didn’t have a death wish. It wasn’t in her nature to become depressed and wish for death. She grieved for Ayden’s littermate, whom she had to have killed. That boulder had been a direct hit.

  Ayden had left her, running to his littermate. All Magda had been able to see, before the force of so many large male Cariboo had surrounded her, was Ayden sliding into the boulder. She’d watched him bury his nose underneath it. As his pack members herded her up the mountain to this isolated shed with no dens in sight around it, she relived the sound of Ayden howling. His pain and anguish had stuck with her, making her numb when his pack had nipped at her, bit into her flesh, then head-butted her so that she rolled head over paws into her cage.

  Less than an hour after hearing the incredibly large padlock click into place, one purchased because it was too large for any werewolf to bite his way through, a burly male had unlocked it and dumped her possessions and the two boxes of food on the floor. He’d called her a few choice names. Then he’d left. That had been her last visitor.

  Magda scooped out a beef jerky. Tearing the wrapper with her teeth, she dropped it on the pile with the other wrappe
rs and bit off a piece of the cured meat. There were thick trees outside her small window. She didn’t have a view of the sky or the mountain range that she knew surrounded her. It was several days running and climbing to reach where Katrin and her new mate now lived. Ayden had sent Jaeger Alger ahead. He would howl that Magda and her mate would arrive within the week. Ayden and Magda had agreed it best not to tell Jaeger that they only planned to visit and not stay. Magda had wanted to tell her littermates of her plans personally. When this week passed and she didn’t show up, her littermates would slowly begin to understand that something terrible had happened.

  A tear slid down her face. It surprised her in spite of the incredible pain and her love sick heart. Magda was sure she’d already cried all the tears she had over a littermate she didn’t know and a brand new mate who likely now wished her dead. Ayden hadn’t despised her kind. He’d believed himself capable of smelling the good in a werewolf. It wasn’t in his nature to condemn a male or female without knowing how they ran. And in the short time they’d been together, Ayden had been convinced Magda was a good female.

  Maybe Magda and Ayden had been fooled into believing she was good. After all, if the entire world believed genocide was the only answer for Malta werewolves, maybe so many werewolves smelled the truth better than the two of them did. Magda understood now that although what she did had been terribly wrong, a werewolf was the ultimate predator. It didn’t matter what breed of werewolf. Any werewolf would attack if so many angry werewolves had suddenly leapt out of the trees and charged.

  “You only smelled the one werewolf,” she muttered and bit off more of the jerky. The other males hadn’t charged until the boulder had done its damage—until she had made the boulder do its damage.

  Magda understood her charges. She also knew that werewolves didn’t have jails, or a legal system that held criminals until tried by a jury of their peers the way humans did. There was one punishment for any crime that smelled bad enough to turn a pack on a rogue male or female. Magda was who she was and accepted the way of her kind. Ayden and his pack would kill her.

  She only had her imagination, however, when it came to understanding why they hadn’t done so already. Magda didn’t know why this shed they’d brought her to and locked her inside existed. She’d given thought to the possibility that there was leniency in this pack. Possibly if someone stole, or wronged another werewolf they were put in here instead of killed. Maybe Ayden didn’t come from a large pack. It was possible if the majority believed a rogue might conform, they were locked in here instead of killed. Isolated packs only survived if they had the numbers to fight to keep their territory. Magda already knew that leopards ran on these mountains, and owls. If the Cariboo lunewulf killed every male or female for smaller offenses they would lose their breeding stock and eventually not have the strength in numbers to hold on to their hunting ground. In time they would die off.

  It was only a theory. Her cage didn’t smell of anyone else. The entire time she’d been here she hadn’t smelled another male or female. Possibly the shed had been used for some other reason. Her imagination hadn’t been able to conjure up what that might be.

  Although she’d done it many times already, Magda strained to see out the window as far as possible. She leaned forward and pressed against the gnarled wire until it poked into her flesh. Then looking outside, Magda tried seeing past the trees. They were too thick around her. Wherever she was, it was far from where his pack lived. She hadn’t detected fire places burning, or even an open fire. There were no smells other than that of the trees around her. There weren’t even the sounds of small animals scurrying. She was alone in her imprisoned, cold world.

  It would have been better to have been ripped apart by his pack then to die in isolation like this. Maybe that was the point—to die dishonorably without a fight or a pack around her.

  Another tear fell. Magda chewed the rest of her beef jerky and thought about opening a granola bar. It wasn’t the best diet. She’d lived off worse, however, before meeting Ayden. And, she reminded herself, almost starved until she barely had the strength to hunt.

  Stepping from the window, she took a granola bar, tore the wrapper and tossed it with the rest, and counted ten bars left. It seemed imperative that she hold on to her strength. Magda had slept as much as she could and had eaten. She’d paced, done calisthenics, believing if she maintained her strength and stayed alert that somehow she would get out of here. And she’d tried every means possible to escape. Magda was in a werewolf-proof cage.

  It was becoming clear that she’d die in here with the smell of her pain and remorse strong enough it would probably reach anyone before they smelled her decaying body. And there was so much remorse. It tore at her as much as trying to cope with losing Ayden. Even now she still smelled the terrible pain that had ripped him away from her.

  “Ayden,” she said, staring again out the barbed window.

  Breathing in the breeze when it hit her face, the cold burned her cheeks. She shivered but didn’t move. There was no warmth in her prison. She wouldn’t huddle under a blanket and wallow in pity. Instead she took in another breath and swore she smelled him.

  “Ayden!” she yelled.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d howled for him. He was out there, possibly not too far from her. Possibly around a cliff, down in a valley, just far enough on the side of the mountain for his scent not to be obvious.

  “I was protecting you!” she yelled. There wasn’t any malice. She hadn’t meant to kill his littermate.

  Again, not for the first time, she glared at the barbed wire. Studying the knarled path of the wire, she pictured it unraveling in her mind. Magda willed the wire to fall from the window. She shifted her gaze to where it was secured to the steel on the window frame. Someone had welded it. Why would anyone create such a secure prison like this?

  “Fall away,” she snarled, her teeth clenched, her focus wrapping around her gift. She ordered the barbed wire to disconnect from the window.

  Sucking in a deep breath, determined to make it happen this time, Magda was instantly distracted when she again smelled her mate.

  “God damn it,” she hissed, and backed up. She doubled over and pressed her cold hands to her forehead. “His scent is on you. That’s why you smell him.”

  Her stomach clenched, forming a knot of pain. The food she’d just eaten suddenly burned like acid in her gut. Ayden’s powerful, all-male aroma—the smell of his flesh, of his sweat, of his confidence and determination that never swayed—surrounded her until it seemed to coat every inch of the small shed. She started breathing harder, sucking in each breath with a vengeance. It was so strong. If she inhaled fast enough she might not lose any of his scent on the next breeze.

  “Magda.”

  “Ayden,” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her fingers hard against her temples. Her gift allowed her to pull giant trees free from the earth, roots and all. She was able to hurl other objects with her mind. “Including large boulders,” she wailed.

  What good was any of it if she wasn’t able to bring her male to her?

  “Ayden,” she whimpered, and her stomach twisted harder in pain when she heard the pathetic sound of her voice.

  “Magdaline.”

  Magda straightened, her eyes wide and suddenly burning. There were sounds outside her prison. She heard twigs breaking, dried pine and leaves crunching. It was footsteps. She smelled werewolves. Males. She choked and began coughing. Their anger was so spicy her eyes watered. Not tears this time. She smelled her own anger as well. Hers was as justified as theirs. Magda didn’t want another male ruining Ayden’s scent in the air.

  “Magdaline, answer me,” Ayden ordered.

  She flew to the window, moving so fast she slammed her body into the wood that covered the steel walls of her prison. Barbed wire pricked her nose. She touched herself with her finger, feeling the trickle of blood from where she’d just scratched her nose.

  “Ayden,” she howled.


  Magda didn’t smell her own blood. She didn’t care about the scratch, which would mend soon enough just as the bites and scratches left by his pack members had after being in her prison for three days.

  “Are you okay?”

  He was really there. They weren’t planning on leaving her to die alone in this awful place. Magda’s heart swelled and she almost laughed. It came out more like a choked cough.

  “I’m sorry, Ayden,” she told him.

  Ayden wasn’t alone. Two other males, their hostility so strong she had no way of sniffing out which one was angrier, stood on either side of him. Like Ayden, they were tall, very muscular, and blond. Unlike Ayden, neither male held her attention.

  She stared into Ayden’s blue eyes. They were flatter than she’d ever seen them. It dawned on her that she smelled the other males’ anger so well because there was no emotion coming from Ayden. Other than his scent, the natural aroma created from his physical person, she detected nothing. Her heart imploded making her short of breath.

  All the pain she’d endured during her three days of imprisonment hit her tenfold when she lost herself in Ayden’s pain-riddled, dead eyes.

  “These males are going to ask you questions,” he said without ceremony.

  Nor did he acknowledge her apology, or even appear to hear it.

  Magda nodded once. Her hands were pressed flat against the wooden wall. She pulled them away and felt how damp they were. Rubbing them on her pant legs only made them itch. She smelled her nervousness but didn’t have the strength to weigh in her emotions. Instead she shifted her attention from one male, to the other. Her eyes burned.

  “Where is your pack?” the male to Ayden’s right demanded. His face was puckered with scars and his cheekbones wide. His thick barrel chest and stocky build forced his arms away from his sides. He stood with his legs spread and his hands fisted. He narrowed his eyes to slits and sneered at her. One of his front teeth was missing.