by Tera Shanley
An invisible tether in her chest urged her forward. She had to get to the other side to find what she was looking for--to find relief.
Hurry, hurry, the breeze whispered, caressing her neck and lifting her long dark hair. The tree was scarred with a carving etched deep into its injured bark. It stretched to the bottom of its trunk.
Two wolves, one black, one white, with their heads tilted back as they howled at the moon together. Odd and so familiar. She ran her hands over the beautiful carving. The hairs electrified on the back of her neck as the deep, sinking feeling of dread washed over her skin. She turned slowly.
A slow fog snaked its way toward her from the forest she’d escaped, sheltering a pair of glowing eyes moving first to the right and then to the left. Something hunted her. Frantically, she pushed on the carved tree with shaking fingers, looking all around her for an escape as the fog slowly closed in on her. She pushed on the body of the black wolf and a hissing sound startled her, pulling her focus to the right. Trees, tall, slender, and so close together she couldn’t tell where one ended and where one began were carved into the space around the wolves. A rectangle of the segment slid away, revealing a door. One last glance at the glowing eyes advancing on her with alarming speed had her dragging tired limbs to the doorway and then through it. The door slammed closed behind her, leaving her in complete darkness.
Her eyes took time to adjust. A small pinpoint of light danced to her right and she walked slowly toward it. Her feet dragged across soiled earth and her arms hung limply at her sides. She was so tired, growing weaker by the moment, and the light seemed to be getting smaller and farther away. She halted. All she had to do was give in to the sleep that was dragging on her arms and legs and it would all be over. The light took pity on her burdened body and grew bigger and then bigger still. Blinding light washed over her as she shielded her eyes with the back of her hand. When she could see again, she rubbed watering eyes. A man stood at the edge of a forest with his back to her. She knew him.
“Grey?”
He turned slowly until she could see his face. His golden eyes stayed the same while his face constantly shifted from man to wolf and back again. His features shifted so readily it became a blur. Only his eyes stayed focused, staring at her.
“Hang on Morgan. I’m coming to get you.”
* * * *
Morgan jolted awake to a still darkness that gave her the sense of falling. The silence was deafening as she strained her ears for the slightest hint of sound. She was alone. The darkness swallowed her like a black hole, and she bit her lip to stifle an echoing scream. The stink of urine assaulted her nose. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to concentrate on moving her arms. A tingling hummed uncomfortably through her fingers, but she couldn’t move yet. The bastards who’d done this had drugged her.
Faint voices were muddled and far away, and she strained her ears at what they were saying. Two men were talking, voices low, but not too low for a werewolf to hear
“We’ve already called them ten times.” The voice was scratchy and dry. “That fuckin’ demon wolf killed them all. They would have made contact by now, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but he was one wolf against four of ours,” a man with a British accent said impatiently. “Just one wolf!”
“John, you didn’t see him. Trey and I watched him get out of his truck, and he was huge. I mean, bigger than you’d think possible, eyes blazing like he had come straight from the fires of hell. I watched him tear Trey up with his bare hands, and he had changed back to human by the time I was shoving that broad in the trunk. I don’t doubt her mate is dead. I saw what Trey did to him. But that mutant took everyone with him.”
Grey. They must think he’s her mate. Did they mean he was dead? A burst of adrenaline hit her and her finger twitched against the dirt beneath her. She was breathing hard and sweating. Two deep, slow breaths settled her a little. They couldn’t hear she was awake. Not until she had time to think.
Those men couldn’t mean Grey was dead. She would somehow know if he was no longer of the world. Surely she would have felt a break in the invisible string that held their souls tethered together. But then again, she couldn’t feel the heart-wrenching tension that constantly thrummed when she made herself stay away from him. Her breathing picked up again. Had he died while she was drugged? Had she missed it? Oh God, oh God, not Grey. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces, but her skin tingled all over in an uncomfortable sensation. She tried fiercely to scratch her skin but was still unable to do more than slide her arm slowly across the filthy ground she lay on.
“Well, keep trying,” the man with the accent barked out, command coming from his words with an electric crack. An alpha.
One of them walked off with echoing footsteps up a flight of creaky stairs, and a door slammed somewhere above. A sigh came from the man on the other side of a windowless door. He sat on something that groaned and gave under his weight. With a small, victorious turn of her head, she raked her adjusting gaze over her prison.
On the wall by the door there were four old and rotting empty crates in different stages of disrepair. The wall to her right was covered in boxes of what smelled like moldy books or magazines. That was the direction the smell of mildewed paper was coming from as she took account of several boxes on the bottom with dark stains to their midsections with whatever fluids they had absorbed from the floor. Was it blood? She sniffed but couldn’t make anything out over the smell of urine. Quietly, and as sensation would allow, she sat up and stretched her stiff neck. Her vision still took on the haze of three tequila shots too many, but at least she could move again.
Her head throbbed and she lifted careful fingers to a clotted wound and dry blood where her forehead met her hairline. How long had she been out? She ran her hand down the stream of crackling blood and followed it until it hit the hollow in her throat where it had pooled and dried. Her hand shook when she pulled it away and the sickly sweet scent of her fear filled her senses. She was dressed in a T-shirt that swallowed her. She sniffed the shirt’s collar but it held an unfamiliar scent.
She had lost her bladder while she was unconscious and was sitting in the puddle. The floor was filthy and damp, covered in a layer of grime and soaked with so many smells it was repulsive.
She stood, desperate to escape the disgusting floor. Wobbling dangerously, she lost her balance and threw her hand back to catch herself, wrenching her wrist painfully. She froze, listening for the man outside to get up from his noisy seat. Silence. She squatted, pulling her hand off the floor and crossing her arms over her knees. The only light source in the room was two light bulbs on strings hanging about ten feet from each other and attached to the ceiling. If only she could turn them on without attracting attention so she could find a weapon. A dirty twin-sized mattress lay on the ground behind her. Even the darkness didn’t hide the unidentifiable stains on it. The other wall was bare, with cracks snaking from concrete floor to concrete wall to dilapidated ceiling. They must be holding her in a basement of some kind.
She was exposed in only the shirt and stood again, this time swaying, but remaining upright. If she tried to walk, she wouldn’t be able to do much more than shuffle her feet, making noise in the process. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to walk to anyway, so she stood there, frightened and alone and worried about her mate and Lana.
Her mate?
Regret was her only company in this damp prison. She was so sorry and she’d never be able to tell him in person.
She had messed up. How could she have been so naïve? She’d thought she could do this on her own, that she could keep Lana safe without the pack’s help, but she’d been wrong. She had become fast friends with the pack, but there was still a small part of her that blamed them for what had happened to her. She hadn’t been there an entire night before one of their own had tried to kill her, and failing at that, they’d managed to ruin her life instead. She hadn’t wanted any more help from them. She
would be forever tied to their pack for hunts, socialization, and support for herself and her child. She had wanted one area of her life to stay the same so she could have something to call her own. She wanted a small semblance of the independence she had found and relished in. Something to be proud of. And her house in the city was it for her.
Marianna was dead because of a werewolf. Now Morgan’s life was upside down because of a werewolf, and the person she was supposed to be with was out of reach because of werewolves. And now she was sitting in this filthy stinking dungeon at the hands of a deranged, masochistic werewolf. How could she not want to live in her little house that she worked hard to pay her monthly rent on? To have a tiny corner of her life that was still normal for her and Lana? She knew the time had long passed where she was supposed to gracefully accept this new life and all of its consequences. Instead, she’d refused help, refused to listen to the pack and Grey when they’d told her this could happen. Her stubbornness had killed her.
Lana. Grey. She fought the tears. She’d never see them again. She would be gone. Grey was gone. Who would protect her baby now? Had he even found Lana? Who was taking care of her? Who was feeding her and bathing her and tucking her in at night? A quiet sob threatened to escape and she bit her lip against it until she tasted iron.
Stop it. If Grey were here, he’d tell her to fight. Change and fight. She’d trained for so long for something. She’d shoved herself through years of fight training and weapons training, for Christ’s sake, and what for? It had to be for this moment. She just needed to remember what she’d learned when she was younger and end this quickly.
She had to keep her mind from collapsing into a whimpering weak thing, threatening to give up. She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t even attempted escape yet. She padded carefully to the farthest corner away from the door, removed her shirt, and lay down. The tingling started in her back.
She needed a plan. She was still able to Change, so she’d simply have to kill them. Kill them. She hung on those two words, testing them out in her mind. She had never killed anyone before. Could she do it when it came down to looking in a man’s eyes and ending his life? Her wolf was more submissive than the wolf that filled Grey’s head. Murder and mayhem weren’t the first thoughts to come to her mind in any situation. She did have motivation on her side, however. Lana needed her.
They’d kidnapped her and taken her baby. One of them had drugged her and left her in a puddle of piss, and they’d do it again. Heat crept up the back of her neck and she welcomed the anger.
Rage was a much more empowering emotion than fear. Her Change began and pain ripped through her in waves. No matter what, she wouldn’t whimper or make any pained noise that would draw the attention of the man behind the door. She would need the element of surprise if she was to be successful in her hunt. The Change took much too long but the door remained closed. Her fear of her capturers seeing her like that, mid-Change and defenseless, kept her silent.
When it was finally over, she lay there panting and unable to move. She got up when she was able, quiet as a wolf, and trotted over, waiting behind the hinges of the door. Her nails didn’t make a clicking noise on the concrete. Instead, the layer of grime padded the noise to silence. She sat and waited.
The anticipation was torture. Every second seemed like a minute, and every minute like an hour. When the lock turned, she was wound so tightly she was frozen in place for an important split second. The door opened and the man hesitated, swiveling his head in search of her. He stalked farther into the room and pulled the string on the ancient light bulb, illuminating the room with a dingy light. She could better reach him there. He turned his head in her direction when it was the only place left to check.
She lunged, missed his neck but landed her teeth into his shoulder, biting down and using her legs against his body to tear into him. Something touched her rib cage and her body went rigid as pain seared through her, and she landed like a sack of flour onto the concrete floor below the man. He yelled out an expletive and held his shoulder with one hand like such a futile gesture would staunch such abundant bleeding. In his other hand, he held a small black box with a blue electric current visible at one end. Before she recovered, he kicked her in the ribs and tasered her again.
“Bitch!” he screamed. “You ripped half of my shoulder off. I should kill you for that.” He leaned down toward her but another voice interrupted.
“You’ll do no such thing. She’s mine.” a blond man growled from the doorway.
The dark haired man backed off and handed the man in the doorway the taser. Morgan could only watch as all of her nerve endings were fried and her ribs screamed for relief. The blond man, John the other had called him, looked at her curiously.
“If I had any doubts about you being silver wolf before, they have been put to rest now.” His feral smile sent a chill down her spine and into her gut, turning it cold.
“You are magnificent,” he said in his thick British accent. “Generally, I don’t go for blondes, but for you I think I should make an exception. Don’t you agree, Marshall?” John turned to the other man, waiting until he nodded his head, eyes downcast. “She got you good, didn’t she? Go clean that up. I need alone time with my girl.”
Marshall hesitated, but John waved the taser at him. John turned cold green eyes back toward her as the door closed behind the other man.
“I like my women feisty, but that was a bit extreme. Change back.”
She bared her teeth and emitted a rumbling growl from her depths. No chance.
John made a clicking sound behind his teeth. “Now I’m going to have to give you a lesson in manners. You see, the faster you learn to do what I say, the easier this will be for you.” He paused and sighed. “You’re right. We should probably have a discussion about why you are here and what I want. That way you won’t get confused when I expect something from you. As you know, you are the only silver wolf, and therefore can give full-blooded werewolf puppies to the lucky man who claims you.” He sniffed the air. “It is obvious you haven’t been claimed by anyone. Surprising really. You aren’t half bad looking.” He put the back of his hand to the side of his mouth as if he were letting her in on a secret. “It’s probably your temper.”
He crossed his arms again and paced in front of her. “The way I see it, when everyone figures out what you are, every wolf in fighting form will be looking for you, ready to lay down his life to claim such a treasure. So I got to you first. If you are still confused about why you are here, my dear, I’m claiming you. All I need to do is fill you with my scent and you will be mine by right. Aw, I know you don’t like me much right now, and that’s okay. I don’t like you either, but I will have you. As it stands, whoever has the silver wolf has the power. And currently, that’s me,” he finished with a smile. “Now Change back,” he ordered, voice elevating, “or I will taser you until you do it involuntarily.”
As a show of good faith, he touched her with the hot shot again on the shoulder. He was lightning fast and her weakened muscles were tensed but unwilling to react. Recovery from two hits back to back left her muscles twitching. Body wracked with spasms, she slunk back into the corner and started Changing back. It took a long time, and John’s impatience was visible with his sighs, pacing, and foot tapping. As soon as she was in human skin again, he left her no recovery time. He grabbed her by the back of the hair and painfully wrenched her up on her feet and moved her toward the dirty mattress.
In the dark, she hadn’t seen the chain. The clinking metal rings sprung from the floor directly beside the vile mattress, and at the end was a metal collar that would fit snuggly around her neck when locked.
“Can I at least have the shirt back?” she asked, voice flat and as emotionless as she could make it.
He shoved her roughly against the wall and pointed the taser at her as he walked back, eyebrows lifted and daring her to move. He threw the wadded up T-shirt at her face and she caught it. It had soaked the grime
up off the floor and was now wet and smelled of a combination of offensive odors. She fought the temptation to give in to her anger and throw it back in his face. But she was vulnerable and open to his sneering stare, and as repulsive as his shirt smelled, she was desperate to cover her body. When the shirt was over her head, he clanked the metal collar around her neck and fastened it with a lock. He grabbed the back of her hair again and tilted her face up to look into his.
“You might want to pay attention to this. If you Change again, your neck will grow too large for the collar and it will suffocate you. Now that would be unfortunate for me, but make no mistake, I would rather you die than have the threat of a wolf attack every time I want to chat.” He turned and left the room, locking the heavy door behind him.
She let out a sigh. The short length of the chain only gave her enough room to crouch uncomfortably on her hands and knees on the floor or lie on the mattress if she kept her head at the very edge. After pulling on it with as much force as she could muster for half an hour, she sat back down. Her awkward position annihilated any efforts to use her new werewolf strength to pull the chain free.