by Marcy Jacks
Collin sighed, as if this was something he didn't want to deal with. "I have to go."
"I thought you said the other wolves here can take care of themselves."
"They can," Collin said, rubbing his face. "But you don't understand. Dennis is my friend. I don't want him to get killed because he's trying to avenge Trevor."
Trevor being the wolf shifter who died the night the hunters came to attack the pack.
Sam flinched at the mention of the man's name. "Right."
A heavy silence followed the exchange. Sam couldn't look at Collin without thinking he was being a nag, and Collin wasn't going to change his mind.
"Is this something I'm going to have to think about when I'm with you? That you're going to run off without giving me any notice to go and hunt or fight?"
"It's not to fight," Collin said, his voice kind, yet firm.
He wasn't backing out of this. That much was clear.
"This is to make sure a friend is being safe."
Sam nodded, hating himself for forgetting about that.
"Do you promise you'll be safe?"
Collin smiled at him. Even his eyes changed. The air in the room was different as the other man walked over to him and pressed his hands to Sam's shoulders, and that rush of positive energy filled Sam up.
"I'm always careful. I have something to come home to now anyway, so there's a bigger reason for me to take care now, right?"
"You'd better." Sam had trouble not being positive when his mate held on to him like this. "I need you to fix this new addiction you gave me."
Collin tilted his head a little. "Addiction?"
There was no way Sam could say it. He felt his blood heating up even now. "You know what I'm talking about."
Collin's grin showed off the whites of his fangs. Sam shivered. "Yeah, I know what you mean, and don't worry, I'll be back to give you plenty more of that."
Sam exhaled a hard breath. God, his mate was hot. He leaned up onto his toes, curling an arm around Collin's neck and bringing him down for a kiss.
His mouth was as perfect as it always was. He was perfect. Sam didn't want to lose him so soon after getting him.
Sam hadn't known Trevor at all, but his death had proved to Sam that even a strong alpha werewolf could be killed.
He didn't want Collin to be killed. He didn't want anything bad to ever happen to him.
Which was why it hurt so much when the other man had to walk away from him.
Sam sighed as he watched Collin drive off. The man was going to park somewhere inconspicuous and then head out in his wolf form. Sam didn't understand that, but there was apparently something to werewolves going out into the real world in their human forms.
Maxwell had explained to him that, when hunting for the hunters, if someone happened to see a wolf shifter driving in and out of town, or anywhere, there was less of a chance to look at that person with suspicion for being a shifter.
It was going to be a long time before Sam got used to all of this. He just wanted to take it easy.
He went back inside, checked his emails, and was pleased when he saw there was a response from the dean of the college he'd applied to.
There was a position open for a new art teacher, and he was apparently impressed with the portfolio Sam sent him.
When Sam showed off his credentials, and gave that glowing recommendation from his previous boss, apparently it had been enough for him to want to hire Sam.
He jumped up and started pacing around the living room. He was so excited. He got the job! He actually got the job!
The first person he wanted to tell was Collin, but he wasn't here.
Fuck. Sam almost pulled out his phone and texted the man, but then he decided that would be a stupid move. He was going to have to wait for him to come back.
That sucked a little, but there wasn't much he could do about it.
Either way, he knew Collin would be proud of him when he got back.
Actually, what was he thinking? There was someone he could tell right now. His dad.
Feeling only slightly guilty for forgetting that his dad might want to get in on this, Sam gave him a call.
The phone rang and rang. He thought the voice mail would pick up, but then, at the very last second, Sam was put out of his misery when the phone was finally picked up.
"Dad! Hey! I've got great news! You're going to love this. Guess what."
He didn't get the chance to say anything else.
"You're the son?"
A voice that Sam didn't recognize, one that sounded so cold and uncaring, made his stomach clench.
"Uh, yeah. Can I ask who this is?"
And why the hell was this guy answering his dad's phone? That made no sense.
But he was sure he was worrying himself over nothing. This had to be a friend. Or a mistake.
"You come to us with the werewolf, or your father dies, you understand?"
Sam's heart thudded hard and heavy in his chest. "Who is this? This better be some kind of sick joke."
"It's no joke. We've been here since yesterday. You've got a nice dad here. He wouldn't tell us a word about what he'd seen or how to get onto the territory without you fuckers noticing us. Not even when we started to peel strips off him."
Sam was going to be sick. He felt it in his gut. He was going to be sick.
"Listen, you motherfucker, you're right, I am his son, and I'm also the mate of an alpha werewolf. You lay one finger on his fucking head and I swear to God I'll make sure you never rest easy at night ever again. Do you hear me? I will find you and kill you. I will fucking kill you."
"Big words. All right, fuck it, come on and get your dad. Alone. We'll be at the factory where you and those other little twisted bitches were kept. You bring any of your shifter friends and I will slit his throat before they kill me. You got that?"
Sam's stomach clenched again. The old pencil factory? That was where they went? Made sense. They couldn't hold his father in the apartment where he lived. There would be too much of a chance he would get noticed.
So they'd picked him up when his dad had left the pack. Maybe even minutes after he was out of sight.
His dad liked to help people. All it would have taken was someone looking like they were in trouble with their engine or tire on the side of the road and he would have pulled over to help. They could have grabbed him like that.
Sam wanted to throw up. He couldn't handle this. He couldn't handle knowing these monsters had his father for days, and Sam never knew about it. Christ, what if they had been answering his dad's texts? Did they only just now think it would be a good idea to get his attention? Was that why they were answering his dad's phone and talking to him now?
"How do I know you have him? This could be a trick. You could be fucking with me. It’s been days and you’re only letting me know this now."
There was a silence on the other end of the line.
"Hello? Talk to me!"
At first there was nothing, but then Sam heard what could only be described as flesh smacking against flesh. Then he heard his dad shout in pain.
And then shout some more. And more, right before he started to curse at the people who had him.
Then his dad started to yell at Sam.
"Don't even think about it! Don't you dare come here! Don't come here!"
He stopped yelling at Sam only when he started to cry out in pain again, and Sam couldn't stand to hear that. He couldn't handle listening to his father being tortured.
"All right! All right! Stop it! I'll come to see you! Just stop, please don't hurt him!"
The phone went back to whoever it was Sam had been talking to.
"You've got a half an hour to get here. We’re done fucking around. Come alone or he will die."
Sam swallowed. He had to think this through. There had to be a way out of this. "How do I know you'll let him go when I get there?"
"You don't."
The phone went dead. Sam pulled it away from his ea
r, horrified. He tried calling again, wanting them back on the phone, wanting his father back on the phone. At least if he could hear his dad, it would be proof he was still alive. He might be able to distract the people who were hurting him and keep their attention off his dad for a little while.
Maybe.
They didn't pick up the phone, and now Sam paced around the living room for an entirely different reason. He couldn't get a grip on himself.
He wanted his dad. He wanted to save him. But he didn't know anything about fighting. He didn't know a thing about self-defense. He'd wanted to get Collin to teach him something about it, but in the two days Sam had spent as his true mate, there hadn't been much time for him to do anything with the man other than roll around in bed with him.
And Sam had been doing that while his father had been a hostage. Held against his will in that same horrible place Sam had been. He was being tortured by the same people who'd taken Sam, Noah, Gus, and all the others. They were clearly pissed.
What the hell was he going to do? What the fuck was he supposed to do?
Sam was going to need a vehicle. He needed to make up some sort of excuse as to why he needed it.
If he didn't think of something, his father was going to die.
Sam took exactly three minutes to think over his plan, his lies, and his reasons, and then he got to his feet and decided to get moving.
Chapter Eight
Sam arrived at the factory in less than a half an hour. The car he'd borrowed was an older model, and he was lucky it had been able to drive at all on the dirt road leading down to the old abandoned factory.
There had been massive weeds growing out of the cracks in the road that made Sam honest-to-God terrified that they would get stuck to the bottom of the car and keep him from getting here.
But here he was.
Even in broad daylight, the factory looked as evil as Count Dracula's castle. Sinister and decaying. It would almost look appropriate if bats started flying out of a hole somewhere in the roof.
The only thing missing were the dark towers.
Sam sucked back a heavy breath, killed the engine, and then stepped out of the car.
He didn't know if anyone was watching his dad's cell, but just in case, he sent a text announcing that he'd arrived.
A minute later, the longest minute of his life, he was instructed that he was to use the back doors if he was planning on getting in there.
Sam started the engine back up and drove around to the back. The doors were wide open. The police Caution tape was still up, and right there, before Sam even got out of the car, he could see his father.
He sat in a chair, hands behind his back, face pale in the places that weren't bloodied.
He raised his head when Sam stepped out of the car, and a noise Sam had never heard before left his throat when he spotted Sam.
He sounded like a dying animal. He pulled against whatever it was that held his hands behind his back, but it wasn't enough and he was stuck there.
Sam's heart ached for him. He wanted to run to his dad and put a stop to this before those men really hurt him.
He was stopped when he tried by the business end of a gun being pointed right at him.
"You stop right now, or I will shoot you."
Sam froze. He looked at his dad and then looked at the man with the gun.
There were three of them. Three that Sam could see.
"I came here. You can let my dad go now."
The man with the gun smiled at him, as though he'd never heard anything so amusing in his whole life. "Why would I do something like that?"
Sam inhaled a sharp breath, desperate to keep himself from panicking. "Because you're going to need someone to go back to the pack of wolves and let them know you have me. They're the ones you really want, right?"
The man looked back at his friends, and then he turned to Sam and shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. The original point to this place was to get as many of you freaks as possible in one place and kill you, sell you. Whatever we wanted so long as you didn't end up breeding with those filthy animals."
Sam was too caught up in his worry for his father to care that this asshole, whom he'd never met and had never seen before, to care about what this guy said about Collin.
He hoped Collin never came here. He hoped the other man could forgive him for this, too.
"You're telling me you don't want to get back at all those wolves for what they did to your friends?"
The man with the gun suddenly wasn't smiling. He looked back at his friends.
The little guy, both slim and short, smacked Sam's father in the back of the head with something heavy enough to make a hard noise when it made contact.
His dad yelled from the pain of it. Sam's gut clenched.
"All right! All right! I get it! Stop that! He's not a wolf soul! You don't have to hurt him!"
"You mention one more word about those men and he dies, you got that?"
Sam nodded quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, I got it."
"They were good men! They didn't deserve that shit. Death at the hands of a bunch of fucking monsters or prison time. We're the ones out here doing work that no one else will do!"
"I get that."
"Don't you fucking talk to me about what you get and don't get. You don't get shit. You don't care. You're out there fucking those monsters. You're the one who wants to act like they're all right. That they're natural."
"I don't think they're natural. I don't think that at all."
And Sam was willing to say anything, including that he thought the grass was blue and the sky was green, to get his father out of here. He wanted to set his father free. He didn't care what this man's motivations were for any of this. He just wanted to make sure his dad got out of here alive.
"Sam. You get back in that car and drive away right now. You hear me, boy? Right now!"
Sam cringed. The part of him that had grown up hearing a voice like that made him want to do as he was told. To turn around and make a break for it while he still had the chance.
The other part of him, the part that knew his father was in pain, that he was only saying this because he was just as scared as Sam was, forced him to stay.
"It's all right, Dad. I'll get you out of this. I’m sorry."
He meant it, too. He just wasn't sure yet how this would be possible.
He took another step closer.
The man with the gun pointed it back at him. "Not one more fucking step."
Sam was starting to get irritated with this. "If you wanted to kill me, then you would have done it by now. You're not going to do it because you're scared of what my mate will do. You want me alive. Let him go. He can take the car and head back to my pack and let them know you have me. I'm the one you really want. I'm the one who got away."
He heard another helpless noise from his dad. He tried to pull against his bonds one more time, but he couldn't move. It was as though he had no energy to spare.
Sam held his hands open. "Come on, man. You knew that was where this was going to go when you called me."
The man with the gun wet his lips. He glanced at the old car then back at his friends. "Let him loose."
The little guy blinked at him. "Are you serious right now?"
"I said let him loose, you fucking swine! Hurry it up! Right now!"
Both men standing at either side of Sam's dad tensed. The taller of the two men hurried and pulled a key out of his pocket. Handcuffs. That made sense. That was why his dad couldn't get away. Handcuffs tended to be a little trickier to handle than ropes.
He was angry with them all over again.
His dad wasn't elderly. But to think that all three of them needed to handcuff him before they were comfortable with beating him up…it pissed Sam off to no end. He wanted them to pay for this. He wanted to kill them for this.
But he couldn't. Not now and maybe not ever. There were other things that needed to be taken care of first. Like getting his dad to safety.
; Sam would worry about his father swiping him upside the head for this if they happened to get out of this alive. For now, he wanted his dad to live.
The two men pushed his father out of the chair. Sam sneered at that, watching his dad, his strong, proud dad fall to his face on the hard concrete floor.
Damp and filthy. That was the place that had made Sam sick for so many days. He'd thought he was going to die when he was here, and he didn't want his dad in this place either. He wanted him to get out of here.
They prodded at him again, none too gently getting him to his feet and shoving him forward. He fell to his knees again, and Sam couldn't take it anymore.
"Stop that!"
"Relax, he's just tired."
Sam didn't believe that for a second, and if he was tired, it was because of everything these fuckers had done to him.
So Sam watched and waited. He let his dad come to him, but before he could reach out his hand and help him up, Sam was grabbed by the back of the neck and yanked away.
"Hey!"
"You let him go, you fucking bastards! You cocksucking cowards!"
"Dad! Stop!"
The other two men rushed to him, but thankfully, they didn't kick his father when he was down again. They grabbed him and yanked him up, dragging him to the little car Sam had taken here. They shoved him into the driver's side. Sam had left the keys inside. He was barely able to watch as the two men leaned down and peered into the windows.
Probably threatening all kinds of things if he tried to drive into them when they walked away.
Sam hoped his father would run them down and kill them right then and there.
But he knew his father. He wouldn't want to risk the man with the gun did anything to Sam while he got his revenge on the two of them.
The rumble of the engine starting got Sam right in the chest, but he was glad for it. So long as his dad got away, then he could handle anything these fuckers threw at him.
He'd survived this once before. He was going to do it again. He wasn't going to let them break him.
Even if it turned out he didn't have much of a choice in that matter, he was sure as hell going to make it difficult for them in the long run.
If they did end up killing him or torturing him until he broke, then he was sure as hell going to make sure they regretted it when they were done.