by Leah Knight
“Put me down!” she shrieked, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was much stronger than she. “Put me down right this instant!”
Luke ignored her, and a little while later, she heard a click and a deep grinding noise like heavy stones rubbing together. Light peeked through a small crack in the cave wall, growing wider and wider until a doorway appeared. Luke carried her through it.
Once inside, he planted her on her feet and she slapped him. His cheek reddened deeply where her hand had struck, but he said nothing, only staring at her for a moment before turning and exiting the room. The stone wall began to close, and she tried to follow him out, but the gap closed too quickly.
“Damn it,” she muttered, crossing her arms before her and glowering at the wall.
She turned to notice a fairly cozy room built within the natural stone of the cave. Clearly, this place was meant for wolves. Though it had beds in the form of creaky looking military cots, and food, and another doorway that appeared to lead to another room that Allison hoped dearly might be a bathroom, the floor was earthen and the walls were bare stone. The room was lit with the golden glow of lighting recessed into the walls.
“My, you guys are resourceful,” she commented.
Her irritation was palpable. She began to pace the floor as she waited. For what, she did not know. Would Luke and Logan stay there with her? Would they go back for Michael? She began to gnaw her fingernails as she paced.
She’d nearly worn a rut in the bare earth when the door began to grind, and she froze with her thumbnail between her teeth.
Michael, bruised and battered and with dried blood crusted in his hair and wearing nothing but black shorts, appeared in the doorway.
She twitched, her instinct to run to him, but she stopped herself just in time. Instead, she tilted her head to one side and said, “About time you showed up.”
“Nice to see you, too,” he muttered, limping into the room, followed shortly by Luke and Logan, also in shorts.
Michael rolled with a painful grunt onto a cot and stared at the ceiling as the heavy stone closed, sealing them in.
“Were you followed?” Luke asked.
“Do you think I’d have come here if I were?” Michael growled.
“Don’t be a dick,” Luke grumbled.
Michael shot a warning glance in Luke’s direction and said, “It’s because I’m a dick that you all are alive right now.”
“Sorry,” Luke muttered, plopping heavily onto a cot across the room, his face taut with frustrated contrition.
“How long do we have to stay here?” Allison wondered aloud.
Michael gripped his ribs and grunted as he pulled himself into a sitting position, and he glared deeply into her eyes. “This is our new home thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?” she gasped, offended. “You’ve got to be kidding! I didn’t ask for any of this!”
“No, but we could have just let Victor keep you,” Michael reminded her. “We didn’t need to rescue you… either time.”
Allison’s jaw dropped, and she started to fly into an indignant rage, but she managed to suppress her rage. He had a point. Instead, she dropped onto a cot and assumed the same defeated position that Luke had been glowering in.
“Logan, please lower the lights,” Michael said. “I must rest. Stand guard until I awaken.”
“Got it,” Logan said.
Moments later the lighting dimmed to near darkness. Allison leaned heavily against the wall, biting the inside of her cheek and glaring at Michael’s bare torso lying on his cot across the room. Soon, her eyelids grew heavy, and eventually she drifted into a fitful sleep.
Chapter Six
The room was still dim when she came to, but she noticed it was empty. Her brows furrowed, and she started to call their names, but Michael emerged from the back room toweling his hair with water droplets sliding down his bare midsection. She noticed his wounds were completely healed.
Allison’s eyes lingered just a bit longer than she intended, and then she quickly turned her attention to the moth-eaten blanket on her cot.
“Well, look who finally woke up,” Michael commented.
“Finally? What time is it?” she asked.
“About noon last time I checked.”
“Noon! I’ve never slept so long in my life!” she gasped.
He shrugged and continued to rub his hair vigorously with the towel before discarding it haphazardly across the back of the lone chair that sat in the corner.
“Pig,” she muttered, crossing the room and snatching the towel from the chair and taking it into the bathroom, which she was startled to see was nothing more than a shower stall devoid of a curtain, a small, rusty sink, and a rather disgusting toilet. She threw the towel over the top edge of the shower stall and quickly withdrew from the musty room.
“Don’t say a word,” Michael muttered.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Little Miss Priss, and you can stuff it,” he grunted. “If our safe haven isn’t to your liking, you’re free to go check into some upscale hotel somewhere.”
“How dare you,” Allison growled.
“How dare me?” Michael returned. “No, no, no. How dare you! I saw the way your stuck up little nose wrinkled when you came out of the bathroom! We risked our lives for you and all you can do is turn up that little nose of yours!”
“For your information,” Allison snarled, approaching him aggressively, “that isn’t what I was doing! I was actually thinking that I wished I could fix things up a bit and make things more pleasant!”
He lowered his head until his eyes were inches from hers and said incredulously, “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet that is exactly what you were thinking.”
“I hate you,” she muttered.
“The feeling is mutual,” he retorted.
Then suddenly their lips collided, pushed together so firmly that Allison could have sworn she tasted the pungent bite of blood on her lip. Michael’s body leaned against hers, slamming her against the rough cave wall. His hand wrapped around her throat, pinning her against the wall as his tongue pushed its way between her lips.
Allison’s leg lifted upward, wrapping around his hip and pulling him firmly against her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he reached behind her, grabbing her bottom and pulling her upward, where she wrapped her other leg around him. She could feel him bulging against her.
His tongue probed wildly within her mouth. She was breathless, her heart pounding erratically. He took her lower lip between his teeth and nipped sharply, and she gasped.
“Oh, god, please take me,” she begged him with the faintest of whispers in his ear.
Then she heard the grinding of stone against stone, and the two of them froze. Panic stricken, the two were unable to react, and the two of them were still tangled together as Luke and Logan emerged through the doorway.
The color drained from Logan’s face, and he dropped the paper grocery bag he was carrying. Inside it, glass shattered, and some liquid began to leak through the brown paper, seeping into the earthen floor.
“You son of a bitch,” Luke murmured, shaking his head.
Michael’s body went limp, and Allison slowly slipped downward until her feet touched the floor. He backed carefully away from her and turned meekly to face the two.
“Brothers, please, let me explain…” Michael tried to begin, but Luke cut him off.
“Don’t bother,” Luke spat. “You’re dead to me. I disavow this pack. You are no longer my Alpha, and this is no longer my pack!”
Logan’s lips parted, and he tried to grab Luke’s arm as he dash past him and out the door, but Luke was too fast. Logan grunted with his mouth agape, and he looked into Michael’s eyes and quickly after his brother, and then back to Michael. Logan shook his head apologetically, and then disappeared, calling after Luke as his voice echoed into the darkness in the cavern outside.
“Damn it,” Michael muttered. Then, slamming his fist into the
stone wall, he shouted, “Damn it!”
Allison said nothing. She shrank back into the shadows against the cave wall, afraid to speak. What had she done?
Michael turned toward her with his eyes brimming with fury, and he pointed his finger toward her accusingly.
“You,” he snarled.
“Wh-what?” she stammered.
“You,” he repeated through gritted teeth. He shook his finger at her and muttered once again, “You.”
Then he turned and struck the wall again… and again, and again until his fingers were shredded an leaving bloody fist prints on the stone.
“Stop!” Allison shrieked. “Please stop!”
She rushed to his side and grabbed his wrist, pulling with all her might. His arm was rigid with tension, but as she peered with wide eyes at his mangled hand, he began to relax.
“I have to find them,” he said softly.
Allison nodded her understanding and said, “I’ll be alright here.”
“No, I can’t leave you,” he argued.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Now is no time for obstinacy! Go! Bring them back!” Allison said.
“I can’t leave you!” he shouted. “Don’t you understand? I can’t… I can’t lose you.”
Speechless, Allison’s eyes turned toward his. She could see the concern that looked back at her.
“Then we’ll go together,” she said softly.
“I can’t endanger you,” he said. “Victor and his pack are still out there, and they’ll stop at nothing to....”
“Michael, we go together,” she interrupted him. “They’re your brothers. You can’t just let them go.”
For a long, tense moment, Michael was silent. His eyes studied the bloody wall. Then he hung his head in defeat.
“Then we go,” he said.
Chapter Seven
The leaves crunched heavily under their feet as they walked. Allison was hardly dressed for such terrain, wearing nothing but a tank top and shorts that they’d obtained for her the first night she stayed with the pack, and her feet were bare. Until this moment, she’d never realized that her shoes, inappropriate that they might be with their spiked heels, had been lost at some point during her abduction and rescue.
“Are you alright?” Michael asked her, glancing down at her tender feet.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied, eager to find Luke and Logan as quickly as possible.
In truth, her feet felt as though they were being ripped apart. Every jagged stone, every briar, every sharp twig tore at her delicate flesh, so used to wearing fuzzy slippers and being moisturized nightly. But she said nothing. The pack was far more important.
Michael was careful to slow his pace, allowing her to keep up despite her aching feet. He knew she must be in terrible pain. He could see her wince now and then, and he could hear the occasional sucking of air between her lips. But he would not belittle her by asking if he could help her.
“Do you have any idea where we are going?” Allison asked.
“I go based only on pack instinct,” Michael said. “Unfortunately, I can no longer sense their location.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve been disavowed. They no longer recognize me as Alpha because of my betrayal, and as a consequence, our pack bond has been broken,” Michael explained.
“Oh, no,” Allison murmured. “Because of me. Michael, I’m…”
“Don’t,” Michael shushed her. “This is as much my responsibility as it is yours, if nor more so. As Alpha, I should have had the strength to resist. This is my failing.”
Allison bit her lip and struggled against her emotions as her eyes began to well with stinging, bitter tears. No, she told herself. Don’t you dare cry!
Crying would do no good. Crying would weaken her, and Michael needed her to be strong. The whole pack needed her to be strong. They were broken, and it was all because of her. She couldn’t let them down.
She swallowed hard, and the lump of raw emotion that had become lodged in her throat was pushed into the pit of her stomach. She took a deep breath, willing herself strength she feared she didn’t have.
“This pack instinct… can it really help find them?” she asked.
“I hope so,” Michael said.
She wanted to tell him how little confidence his hope inspired in her, but she knew that he himself might be lost in a quagmire of hopelessness if she did. So she did the only thing she knew to do. She lied.
“We’ll find them,” she said. “I know it.”
Michael said nothing, but she could see that his jaw muscles were tense and twitching. Not wanting to put him under any more stress than he was already bearing, she walked beside him in silence.
After several long, painful miles, Allison’s feet felt as though they were on fire. Michael sniffed the air and glanced down, noticing a path of blood trailing behind them.
“Your feet!” he gasped.
She froze and looked down, noticing the leaves beneath her mottled red. She glanced behind her and saw the trail. Her skin tingled, and her whole body began to shiver. She felt herself sinking.
Michael caught her just as she was falling. His thick arms wrapped around her and held fast, and she struggled to remain conscious.
“No, no, no…” he pleaded with her. “Don’t you faint on me!”
He needed her. He needed her to be strong. The pack needed her to be strong. She kept repeating it, and she shook her head rapidly to chase away the fog that threatened to pull her out of reality.
Her hands gripped his forearms, and she pushed herself back onto unsteady feet. Her head swam, and she swayed, but she managed to stay upright.
In the distance, thunder bellowed ominously. Even Allison, with her human sense of smell, could detect the scent of rain in the air.
“We need shelter,” Michael said.
Then, without a thought to propriety or her silly pride, he scooped her into his arms and scanned the area through narrowed eyes.
Allison, too weak to argue or protest, allowed herself to be nestled in his embrace. She laid her head weakly on his shoulder and noticed his musky scent for the first time. Perhaps it was imperceptible before, but now it was familiar and soothing.
The thunder rolled over the hill and droplets of rain thumped on the leaves. At first, the pitter-patter was soothing. Soon, the downpour was a drenching, driving force that beat down on their heads unrelentingly.
Michael’s pace quickened, jostling her as he jogged. She could hear the babbling of running water nearby, even over the torrent of rain. A creek. Michael dropped to his knees and began dragging her underneath an outcropping just feet from the creek bank.
The opening was narrow, but the two of them could just barely fit inside the tiny cave-like structure. There was nothing but soil underneath them, but at least it was dry. Bare roots formed a natural wall in front of them. They were almost entirely hidden from sight.
Michael wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. His warmth calmed her shivering, and shielded her from the chill that crept in from every angle.
Pictures crept into her mind. She fought to keep them away, but they were vivid and real. His body pressing her against the rock wall of the cave, his kiss on her tender lips, the taste of him. She couldn’t keep those thoughts from invading her head, but she knew she had to. She couldn’t let him betray the pack again. She wouldn’t.
She could feel his breath hot on the back of her neck. His lips brushed against her flesh, and her skin erupted in tiny goose bumps. His nose nuzzled against her neck as he breathed in her scent. She closed her eyes and tried to picture something else, anything else. But it was no use.
“How do I fight this?” she whispered. It was meant to be a silent prayer, but it somehow slipped from within her.
“If I knew that then I would be able to do it, too,” he whispered back, his lips pressing against her neck, tasting her skin. His arms squeezed her more tightly.
“Michael, I…”
&nb
sp; “God help me, I need you,” he said, his breath ragged behind her.
Her throat swelled with suppressed desire. The creek rushed by, filling higher and higher with water, threatening to swell over the bank and into their shelter.
“Michael,” she said.
He paid no heed, and he continued to kiss the sensitive skin below her hair. She closed her eyes and murmured pleasantly, but upon opening her eyes, they widened with alarm.