Almost on instinct, I started to struggle against my bonds. Several sharp objects bit into the skin of my wrists and hands, sending heat shooting into me as if I had been stung by a hornet from the Jurassic era hopped up on steroids. A gasp escaped me. The talking from the front seat stopped. Holding my breath to try and stay quiet, I struggled harder. Pain exploded into me from dozens of little stings, making me see spots of bright light. It almost felt like razor wire was woven into the damn ropes.
“Fuck, Dustin, I told you to keep an eye on her. The chloroform already wore off. Put more wolfsbane on the rag this time,” came that second voice I had heard when I woke.
Recognition struck. It was James, the ring leader of the group that had cornered Ty and me on the side road coming to Missoula. Chloroform, wolfsbane… My mind spun at what that meant. A bearded face appeared over the backseat, along with a huge hand holding a rag that reeked of that fruity sweet concoction that had knocked me out before. I knew him too. He was the man Ty had caught and released when his truck was blown up.
“No, don’t.” It was a demand instead of a plea, fueled by the rage against my helplessness.
“Sorry, Leitar, but if I don’t knock you out, I can’t guarantee James will get you there in one piece,” the man whispered.
I recognized his voice as one of the men from the roadside attack too.
“Just fucking do it, Dustin. You don’t need to be nice about it,” James said.
“If she’s the leitar, James, we need to show some respect,” Dustin snapped.
A short bark of a laugh sounded. “Who cares? Our pack will soon have the uppskera,” the third man said.
“Yeah, thanks to her,” Dustin grumbled as he pressed the rag to my mouth.
I struggled and fought but it only made me breathe harder, pulling the noxious, burning smells into my nose and mouth all the faster. It hurt. Shit, it hurt. Like breathing in broken glass. Seconds later I blacked out to the sound of the three men arguing about whether or not it mattered that I was bitten or born in. I made a mental note not to hurt Dustin as bad as the others when I got loose. Whether or not I would remember that through the haze of the drugs remained to be seen.
An erratic dripping woke me. Gone were the stuffy smells of the SUV and the three men who had been in it. The pungent smell of old wood and moldy hay worked its way into my abused nostrils. A hard surface beneath my ass and back told me I sat upright. The warm feel of sunlight on my mostly bare legs, which stretched out before me, suggested it was around early evening. Just like the moon, I was beginning to be able to judge the position of the sun by the feel of its light alone. The ability felt like part instinct and part something mystical. That meant hours had passed. My hands lay in my lap, ropes still wrapped tight around them. The position—comfortable in comparison to how I’d been trussed up in the back of the SUV—suggested Dustin had been the one to leave me here.
The man would definitely retain his balls for that. I wouldn’t be so kind with the others. Not hearing or smelling anything else living save for a few mice, I slowly opened my eyes. Light poured through the gaps in the vertical boards that made up the walls of my prison, pooling on the old hay that covered most of the dirt floor. The structure was somewhere around twenty by thirty feet with a few structural posts throughout reaching up to beams in the roof. My bound hands were attached to one of those posts by a long rope.
Getting free would be a cinch. Had Dustin wanted me to? Another look at the ropes dashed that thought away. Thorns wove through the fibers, several of which dug into my flesh. It hurt bad, and seeing it made it worse. That horrible fruity smell wafted up from the rope, making me suspect it had been soaked in something similar to what they had drugged me with. Wolfsbane, they had called it. So that myth was at least partially true. I twisted my wrists slightly to test it out. Not only did a fiery pain shoot through me in a ring around both wrists, but my strength felt horribly diminished. Even as sturdy as they were, these ropes should have snapped with a simple twist and pull. Whatever they had been soaked in had to be sapping my varúlfur strength.
I tried to slow my thundering heart and think. If they wanted me dead, I would be. They must want to hold me here until after Raul’s trial. My lack of attendance there might be able to sway the Council into forcing Raul into marrying the woman from this pack. It sort of made sense, I guessed. But what if it had nothing to do with Raul? It could have to do with them thinking I was this leitar. The fact that they may not be planning on killing me didn’t make me feel any less murderous toward them. Raul’s trial was still six days away. If they kept me in here for five days it wouldn’t end well for any of them, including Dustin.
The rumble of Harley engines reverberated up through the floorboards beneath my feet. They grew louder, then shut off. From a distance came the sound of heavy weeping broken by an occasional plea. Soon the words became clear as the sound drew closer. Along with it I heard the shuffle and drag that indicated someone was being forced in this direction. Three other sets of footsteps accompanied it. Through the gaps in the barn wall I could smell James, Dustin, and the third man who had been with them.
“Please don’t do this. I don’t want this, I’ve never wanted it,” sobbed a woman.
While the voice had been distorted from crying, I was sure it wasn’t Candice. Who could it be? What the hell were those bastards up to? Why did they think I was this leitar thing? Wait, leitar… Maybe it was Icelandic for something. They had said the leitar was the one who found those who had been bitten and tried to help them. Like I had found Candice and the guy they had used to lure me out. Find…no, seek. Leitar had to mean seeker. The birthmark on my hip… Chills raced across my skin as if in hot pursuit of one another.
Were these guys the ones biting people? If so, why? The mark, could it be why Raul had bitten me? I leaped to my feet, putting my back against the post I was bound to. The muscles in my legs protested, proving I hadn’t been unbound and out of the back of that SUV for long. The post was rough enough that it might wear at the cotton ropes. Cursing myself for not thinking of it sooner, I turned and began to rub the ropes binding my wrists against the wood.
“Shut up, ylva. This is your duty. The moon is nearly full, the leitar is here, it’s time,” a man’s voice that I recognized from the SUV said.
“Yeah, and since the moon ain’t up just yet, that means your power ain’t fully awakened, so you can’t stop us,” said another voice, dropping off into cruel laughter after the last word.
One of the ropes around my wrist popped and broke. Three more to go. I sawed faster. The footsteps drew closer, the crying louder and more desperate, pleas melting away into incoherent sobs. That horrible, defeated sound made me want to hurt the men even more. Another of the ropes broke, freeing my left wrist. The thorns and blood kept the damn thing glued to me, but I tore free easily enough. A few twists of the rope and my right wrist was free as well. Angry red gouges peppered both wrists, but the moment the thorns left my skin the pain began to fade.
The footsteps paused right outside the barn. I grabbed the rope and wrapped it around my wrists. Sunlight poured in as a huge door—more the size of one wall really—slid open on rails of some kind. Eyes adjusting, I had to blink several times before I could make out the figures silhouetted by light. Dustin pushed the huge sliding door the rest of the way open while James and the third man, a broad blond, dragged a young girl into the barn. The men all wore black leather jackets with AVW on the top rocker. At odds or not, they belonged to the same umbrella pack that Raul did, and that worried me.
Thin to the point of being almost waif-like, the woman couldn’t have been a hundred and ten pounds. Long, almost white-blond hair obscured her face, hanging all the way down past her B-cup chest to her tiny waist. In an admirable show of defiance, she yanked away from James, flung her hair back, and bit the third man’s arm. From the Norse tattoo on the back of her neck to her mature blue eyes, she looked fierce, and far older than I had first thought. Small as
she was, she was no girl. This was a woman of at least twenty years old. And the long fangs embedded in the man’s arm told me she was a varúlfur as surely as the strong pull of her power.
Cursing in Icelandic, James backhanded her so hard it sounded like a thunderclap. Head snapping to the side, the woman went flying to the ground, tearing a good-sized chunk out of the blond man as she went. Blood flavored the air. Part of me was proud that the girl didn’t make a sound, while the man screamed bloody murder. Growling, he moved toward her, leg rearing back as if to kick her.
“Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!” I yelled.
It took every ounce of control I had not to run to her side. His leg halted, relaxed, and returned to the floor. If he had kicked her I wouldn’t have been able to hold myself back. As it was, my fangs and claws had extended. Knowing I might need them, I didn’t try to retract them.
“The Reinhard’s little leitar is awake. Good, she should see this,” James said.
Dustin moved to help the young girl to her feet, putting himself between her and the man who had been about to kick her. For that he moved up on my list of people not to kill.
“I’ve never seen anyone burn through chloroform and wolfsbane so fast. It’s amazing,” Dustin said in an almost reverent tone as he stared at me.
The third man kicked Dustin in the back hard enough to make him stumble as he helped the young woman to her feet.
“She’s to be a Reinhard, you idiot. Don’t sound so smitten,” the man said.
Fangs extending, Dustin growled at him. “You know I don’t swing that way, Calder. She’s the leitar, she belongs to all packs and none, just like Ayra here will. They are above even the Alpha Council. You would be wise to remember that, because she’ll soon be far more powerful than you. You shouldn’t treat her the way you do,” he snapped.
Hands curling into fists, Calder took a step toward Dustin. “Don’t tell me how to treat my own sister, mutt.”
“Someone should, ylva,” Dustin said, sneering at Calder upon the last word.
I recognized the word. It was Old Norse for female wolf. Probably his way of calling Calder a bitch, which I was torn between wanting to applaud and taking offense to. Detestable as he was, I cringed to think the man treated his own sister so badly. Now I really wanted to hurt him. Something Dustin said struck a chord and distracted me. Ty had an old book he wanted to check after he saw my birthmark. Oh Gods, Ty. He had to be half out of his mind right now. This was all my fault. I took a deep breath. One problem at a time.
Calder growled, baring his fangs as he stepped toward Dustin. “You’re calling me a ylva? In your fucking dreams, queer!”
Though he stormed toward Dustin, it was Ayra who cringed as though she expected a beating. Abusing his own sister and now insulting the sexual orientation of one of his own pack members, I’d had it with this guy.
“You want to hit someone? Hit me, you son of a bitch,” I snarled.
Light reflected off his eyes as his head whipped my way. His lips pulled up into a grin that showed fangs. “You want some of me, Leitar? That’s fine, we don’t need you in one piece. Until your first full moon, you won’t be at full power, and I’m guessing you haven’t even shifted yet. Which means you’re that much weaker. We’ve got a few more minutes before it rises.”
Steps light, he strode up until he towered over me, broad chest heaving with pants that hinted at more arousal than anger. Then again, by the dark look in his eyes, I had to guess the two went hand in hand with him.
He brought his face close to mine, breathing in deep as if savoring my scent. “I’d love to ruin what the legendary verndari of the Draupnir pack has been dipping into,” he said, low and husky.
Oh, this guy had so much pain coming. A low growl began to rumble in my chest as I bared my fangs at him. It was all I could do to keep my hands low and twined within the ropes that were supposed to be restraining me. The moment was not now. It was close, but it wasn’t now. My control almost slipped when Calder took a lock of my hair and held it up to his nose.
“You even smell like power. I can’t wait to see the look on Tyler’s face when he learns that I split his little wolf in two,” he said.
I pulled back from him, not out of fear mostly, but because I was too close to losing my temper. This was testing me in ways I had never been tested before, not even by the verða. At the very least I worried that I would give away my element of surprise too early. Not only did these assholes not know I was loose, they thought I hadn’t shifted yet. The problem was, I hadn’t figured out fighting as a human, let alone as a wolf. While moving as one was instinctual, fighting, probably not so much. But I had to try it. Or maybe something in between…
“Calder, no. Even you wouldn’t stoop to such a level,” Ayra spoke in a voice that held far more confidence than I expected from her.
She thrust her head up, her long white-blond hair spilling back over her shoulders like fine silk. The defiance on her face was mixed with surprise, almost as if her own words and boldness shocked her. Calder’s dark gaze shot to her.
“To teach that packless son of a bitch a lesson, yes I would,” he said.
Threatening me I could take, insulting Ty, I couldn’t.
“Clearly you haven’t seen the size of Ty’s cock, because trust me, yours is bound to be smaller and totally incapable of splitting me in two,” I snapped.
Even before his face burned red with fury I knew it was the exact wrong thing to say. From what he had said, though, I needed to distract him until the moon rose. I didn’t know if he was crazy or telling the truth about me becoming powerful. That was a risk I was going to have to take. The other option would be to let him hurt his sister again, and I wasn’t about to do that.
He leaned closer, his bodybuilder bulk blocking out all light. I knew I couldn’t take this guy. Being stronger and faster than I had ever been as a human had given me a little more confidence than was healthy for me at the moment. This guy at least doubled my weight, and from the looks of how his shirt fit, it was all muscle. The element of surprise alone might not be enough. I suddenly felt very underdressed and vulnerable in only my cutoff shorts, tank top, and Ty’s flannel. The hard-on bulging out the crotch of Calder’s jeans didn’t help either.
“I’ll split you in two no matter what I have to use,” he snarled.
As he reached for me, I sidestepped and moved around the post I was pretending to still be tethered to. It was too soon. I needed James away from the door before I fought and tried to make a break for it.
“Is this really why you brought me here, James? To threaten me and try to rape me?” I called out to him, letting my anger fill my voice so it hid my fear.
Finally, he came closer. “No, it isn’t. Back off, Cal,” he said.
A muscle in Calder’s right cheek twitched. “I will take what I have earned.”
Long fangs bared, James leaned into him. “Becoming monsters wasn’t part of the plan, Cal. We’re doing this to take our rightful place in the world, in the light.”
Chest puffing out, Calder’s hands closed into fists. “You don’t even know the whole plan.”
I could hardly believe my luck. They were going to do half my work for me. They growled and began circling each other. Though Calder bared his fangs right back at James, he did so through a huge grin. I had a bad feeling he was going to win, and then I would have to fight him. And if I lost… A shake of my head dislodged the thought. Couldn’t let my mind go there. That way led to fear, which would dissolve my control. Hopefully James could put up a good enough fight to at least wear Calder down so I stood a chance. They launched at each other and my attention shifted to Dustin, but the man only watched them with wide eyes.
“Dustin, please, get me out of here,” Ayra said, her small voice holding an authority that hinted at a hidden power.
Eyes filled with indecision, Dustin looked from the small blond woman to the fighting pair, and back again. I had a feeling if she had made it a command
and not a plea, he might have complied.
Overly long dark hair brushed his brows as he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ayra, but you know my standing in the pack. I can’t disobey Calder.”
The only reason I could hear their soft voices over the growls and curses of the two men fighting was because they stood close to me. Too close. They were now in the way of the door as much as James and Calder. Oblivious to the three of us, the two men punched, kicked, cursed, and growled at each other, using not only their fists but their fangs and claws as well. Blood spilled from more than one wound on both, its coppery scent filling the air.
“Calder only said to bring me here. You’ve done that, now take me home,” Ayra said with a bit more force.
Good girl.
Like a rat in a cage, Dustin’s eyes traveled between them all again. “I’m not sure it’s enough, just having brought you to her.”
“But I don’t want this, Dustin. Please, you were my friend. Don’t do this,” Ayra begged.
The desperation in her voice, the catch at the end as her words turned into a sob, tore at me. What possible reason could they have for bringing her to me, even if I was this seeker they talked about? My eyes flicked back to James and Calder. Sweat and blood poured from James’s brow. He seemed to be dodging and blocking a little slower than the last time I had glanced their way. On the other hand, Calder bounced on the balls of his feet, dodged and wove with a seemingly endless flow of energy.
“Calder is going to win. She doesn’t need to see what happens after that. Get her out of here,” I said.
Bitten & Beholden (Children of Fenrir Book 2) Page 25