by J. L. Wilder
He shook his head. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I promise. I’m married, and I’m loyal to my wife. You have nothing to fear from me.”
It’s a lie. It had to be. No man remained loyal to another woman in the presence of an omega. Her mother had prepared her for that. They wouldn’t be able to control themselves around her. They would turn into the lowest, most animalistic versions of themselves.
“Izzy, I know you and I have gotten off to a bad start,” Robert said. “I brought you here because I want you to be one of us. One of the Hell’s Wolves. I want you to be a part of our pack. We’re a family. Wolves should have a family. Do you think you might want to be one of us?”
Mutely, she shook her head. I just want to go home.
“Another member of my pack seems to think you might feel differently if you had the chance to spend some time with some of us,” Robert said. “What do you think about that?”
She wanted to shake her head again—to tell him that no power on earth could make her want to join his pack—but she hesitated. What was he offering, exactly? Spending some time with members of the pack would mean one of two things. It could mean visitors to her room, which would break up the day in the same way Wyatt’s visits once had. Or, even better, it might mean he was considering letting her out.
If he let her out, she might be able to escape.
She couldn’t go back to her job at the gas station, or to the home she’d had at the motel. But she could run away from these wolves. Find a new place and start again. If there was even the slightest chance at freedom, Isabel would take it.
“Yes,” she said. Her throat was tight. She cleared it and tried again. “Yes. I’d like to meet the others.”
She held her breath.
Robert regarded her. She could see that he was sizing her up, looking for something. She did her best to keep her eyes wide and her face relaxed, to project innocence and trust. Let him think she was trying to fit in. Let him think there was a part of her that was open to this.
After what seemed like forever, Robert nodded and slapped his hands against his knees. “Very well. Because you’re not a member of the pack yet, of course, you’re not subject to my commands as alpha. Until the day you submit to me, you’ll always need to be accompanied by another pack member.”
So, I’ll have to give them the slip. It was still better than Isabel could have hoped for. She nodded.
“Wait here,” he said, getting to his feet. “Someone will be along shortly to help you prepare for breakfast.”
Isabel watched him go, already dreaming of the moment she managed to break free of the Hell’s Wolves.
THE GIRL WHO CAME UP to get her had short spiky hair and wore a leather vest. Isabel could see the patches on the back indicating that the girl belonged to the Hell’s Wolves. She looked to be about Isabel’s own age, maybe one or two years older.
“Here,” she said brusquely, tossing a paper grocery bag at Isabel. Isabel caught it and looked inside. It contained a change of clothes. The girl was also carrying a basin of hot water and a sponge. “You need to clean up and get changed before breakfast,” she said.
Isabel hesitated. “Can you turn around?”
With an exasperated sigh, the older girl turned to face the wall, crossing her arms as if this were a tremendous hardship. Isabel quickly stripped down and ran the sponge over her body. The water in the basin felt good, and she was refreshed, but her skin was still damp when she pulled the new dress over her head and the fabric clung to her. She tilted her head forward so her hair hung over the bowl, wrung the sponge out over it, and combed her fingers through. When she had finished, she felt not quite presentable, but closer to human at the very least.
“You can turn around,” she said, and the girl turned back to her. Her face showed no expression. Isabel would have given a lot for a mirror right now. She was about to meet the rest of the pack for the first time since her kidnapping, and despite herself, she did care what they thought of her. It seemed like her life had been building to this moment for weeks, maybe even months. How long had she been here?
She trailed behind the girl down the stairs, the scent of bacon in the air. This morning’s breakfast would be a hot one. At least there was that. She was tired of chewing cold hunks of chicken and limp vegetables.
The kitchen featured a long table, and she could see that the rest of the pack was already gathered. Wyatt was sitting toward the middle, but the seats on either side of him were already taken. Her guide brought her to the very end of the table and indicated that she should sit there.
“Thank you, Heather,” Robert said. He was seated at the center of the table, on the opposite side from where Isabel was sitting. Wyatt sat to his immediate right, and on his left was an older woman with her hair up in a bun. She wasn’t smiling.
Heather must have been the girl who had brought Isabel down, because she nodded in response to Robert’s thanks. “No problem.”
“Welcome, Isabel,” Robert said.
Should she say something? “Thank you,” she managed barely above a whisper.
Dishes were passed around the table. Bowls full of scrambled eggs and potatoes, platters of bacon and ham. It all smelled wonderful, but Isabel was too nervous to eat. What if she made someone angry? What if they locked her back in her room? She had been so eager to get out, to make her way closer to freedom, but now that she was here the world seemed too big.
Heather nudged her. “Eat.”
She took a muffin from the serving bowl in front of her and put it on her plate.
“Why isn’t she eating?” another girl asked.
Heather shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I’m not in charge of what she does.”
“You kind of are,” the second girl said. “Robert put you in charge, didn’t he?”
“Shut up, Val. He didn’t give an order.” Heather eyed Isabel, then shrugged. “It’s her own problem if she doesn’t want to eat, if you ask me. I brought her to the table. I did my part.”
“Robert wants us to look after her, though.” This from another girl, who might have been about seventeen and was clearly the youngest one at the table. “We’re supposed to help her integrate into the pack.”
If that was true, Isabel thought, they should stop talking about her as if she couldn’t hear every word they were saying. It was incredibly awkward. She crumbled a bit off her muffin and put it in her mouth.
“I heard they’re going to do an opening ceremony tomorrow,” the young girl said, breaking a strip of bacon into bite sized pieces. She popped one into her mouth. “Do you think we’ll be invited?”
“I’m not going even if we are,” Heather said. Val shook her head in agreement.
“Why not?” the younger girl asked. “Don’t you think it’s kind of exciting?”
“I think the whole thing is ridiculous,” Heather said. “And I think you’re going starry-eyed, Caitlin. With the way the men are losing their minds over this, we’re the only ones with our heads on straight. We can’t afford to have you get sucked in.”
“Come on, Heather,” Val said. “It’s not that big a deal, is it? It’ll be one guy in the end.”
“How many guys do you think we have here?” Heather snapped. “How many of a decent age? How many who you aren’t related to, Val? She’s going to end up with one of them. And every single guy here wants to be that one. None of them want us when they could have her.”
“It’s not that big a deal—”
“It is that big a deal. It is exactly that big a deal,” Heather said. “How are you going to fall in love with someone when you know you’re his second choice? How are you going to be with someone when you’ve watched him compete—and lose—for her?”
They’re going to compete for me.
The women of the pack resented her, Isabel realized. And they had good reason. “I don’t want it,” she said softly. “Any of it. I don’t want to take them from you.” If she could persuade them to her side, maybe they�
��d help her—
But Heather looked as if she were about to spit. “You see what I mean?” she said to the others, still not deigning to address Isabel directly. “All our men throwing themselves at her, and she doesn’t even want it. She’s too good for us. And I guess she’s too good for our food, too. So, let her starve. Not my problem.” She punctuated this statement by draining her glass of juice.
Val and Caitlin looked a little uncertain, but they both turned their attention back to their plates.
Isabel broke off another piece of muffin. She was determined to eat, determined not to starve. She would need all her strength to make her escape.
Chapter Nine
IZZY
Robert was as good as his word. Isabel was never alone, not once from the moment she was released from confinement.
It wasn’t all bad. Some of the pack members handled her presence well, quietly letting her trail after them like a younger sibling might. She sat out in the backyard and watched as the young men of the pack practiced wrestling in the dirt. She helped Robert’s wife Lena in the kitchen, learning for the first time how much work went into preparing dinner for a whole pack. Hardly anyone spoke to her for anything more than the most basic and trivial of reasons. Lena might ask her to pass the cheese grater, or one of the men might pause in their fighting to mutter, “excuse me.”
It could have become lonely very easily, but Isabel found she preferred them to keep their distance and leave her alone with her thoughts. Most of her thoughts centered on how to escape.
The best opportunity seemed to come at night. It was the only time she wasn’t watched. Isabel had been assigned to sleep in a large room with all the other single women of the pack, and her bed was all the way against the back wall, so she would have to sneak by all of them to get to the door. But, at least, while they were asleep, they wouldn’t be able to stop her. Maybe she could make it.
One night, she decided to try.
Waiting for everyone to fall asleep, knowing what she was going to do once they had, was agony, but finally Isabel heard the deep sighs and snuffling from all the beds around her that meant it was safe to make her move. She rolled off her mattress and placed her feet carefully on the wood of the floor, shifting her weight slowly, hoping that the floorboards wouldn’t creak.
They didn’t. All remained silent. In the bed beside Isabel’s, Caitin mumbled something and rolled over.
Slowly, carefully, Isabel picked her way along the length of the room. She moved in a stooped, awkward position, as though hunching like a gargoyle would protect her from being seen. I’m going to get a drink of water, she thought to herself, rehearsing the lie she’d come up with in case she was caught. Just getting a drink. I didn’t want to bother anyone.
She would be in trouble for it. She wasn’t supposed to go anywhere alone. But she wouldn’t be in too much trouble, she thought, if she could get them to believe her.
Of course, the ideal scenario would be simply not getting caught.
She could hardly believe it when she made it to the door. She gripped the knob and turned, slowly pulling it open, and slipped out into the hall. Then, agonizingly, inch by inch, she eased the door closed again and let the bolt slip into place. She drew back from it, amazed. She’d accomplished it all without a sound, and no one inside seemed to be stirring.
She was free.
She turned on the spot and ran.
She knew she had only a short window of time to make her escape. The best-case scenario was that no one would realize she was gone until morning, at which point the entire pack would set out after her. She would need to be far away by then, and well hidden. She knew they would be able to follow her scent.
And that was if they didn’t discover her absence until morning. If someone were to wake up and realize she was missing before then, the pursuit would begin even sooner.
She couldn’t hope to outrun them. They’d be on bikes, most likely, or they’d track her as wolves. But Isabel wanted to run as a human. Not only would her omega scent be somewhat muted by her human form, hanging on to her logical side would help her figure out how to get safely away.
So covering a lot of ground wouldn’t be the key. She needed to find someplace to hide.
All this went through her mind as she flew down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the yard. She was thinking that perhaps the river would do for a hiding place when she collided with something massive and fell to the ground.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” an amused voice asked.
Isabel’s stomach dropped. No. She’d been caught. Caught already. Caught in a position she couldn’t explain away. She looked up into the eyes of the man she’d collided with. It was too dark to see who he was.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he said. “You could get into a lot of trouble.”
Wasn’t she already in a lot of trouble? She waited, not daring to speak.
Then he crouched beside her and took her arm, and she got her first good look at his face. Wyatt. He had never been one of the babysitters assigned to her. Since her release from her prison room, she had gotten only passing glimpses of the man who had once tried to be her friend.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“You were trying to escape.”
She didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to need her to.
“It wouldn’t work,” he said. “It’s not a good idea, Izzy. Gunner is an amazing tracker. Lots of them are. They’d be on your trail as soon as they realized you’d gone. And when they brought you back, they’d be far less accommodating to you than they have been so far.”
She couldn’t help it. She snorted.
Wyatt raised his eyes. “You don’t think they have been?”
“I think that’s ridiculous,” she said. “They’ve locked me up. Barely fed me—”
“But they did feed you,” Wyatt interrupted, and his gaze held hers with a somber magnetism. “They gave you a warm, dry place to stay. No one has lifted a hand to you since you’ve been here. And now you’ve been allowed out, invited to join the family. I know it isn’t what you want, Izzy, but you have to admit it could have been much worse.”
He was right. She didn’t want to say so, but she knew it.
“And it could also be much better,” Wyatt continued. “It’s getting better, isn’t it?” When she still didn’t speak, he released her arm and stepped away. “Don’t run, Izzy. Don’t run right now. It’s not safe. It’s not a good idea. Go back in the house. Go to bed.”
He was letting her go, she realized. “Are you going to tell them I was out here?”
“No.”
“If I try to run—”
“I won’t stop you,” he said, his face twisting with what looked remarkably like pain. “But they will. I’m warning. Believe me.”
If she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t stop her. There was still a chance, then.
But Isabel’s determination had left her. Doubts had crept in. She searched Wyatt’s gaze for a few more moments, wondering what his motivation here might be. Why would he try to save her? Why would he care what happened to her?
Had he always cared? He had tried so many times to win her friendship, after all...
But what reason would he have to care for her? He was a member of this pack, after all, well liked, respected by the alpha and the other members. And she was nothing but an omega.
He could never be friends with someone like me.
So then, why? Why the effort to protect her? Why the refusal to harm her, even to restrain her, when he knew he would be commanded to hunt her down and bring her back the following day? Why would he give her a chance at escape when it would anger every member of his pack?
Isabel crept back up the stairs, moving more confidently on the way in than she had on the way out. What did it matter, after all, if she was caught sneaking in to her bedroom? No one could suspect her of running away.
But no one woke at all.
Before she knew it, Isabel was back in her bed with the blanket pulled up to her chin, her heart racing from the stress of her flight and being caught by Wyatt.
It took her a long time to fall asleep. When she finally did, it was with thoughts of Wyatt still in her head.
WYATT
She’d tried to run.
Wyatt walked beyond the tree line, gathering fallen wood and trying to process what had happened last night. He’d assured Robert that letting Izzy out was a good idea, and she’d tried to run at the earliest opportunity. He couldn’t have been more wrong about her.
The front door opened. Heather emerged, striding purposefully across the yard, and it took a few moments before Wyatt realized that Izzy was there too, trailing behind her. Izzy looked tired and nervous. Wyatt stepped out of the cover of the trees and met them on the grass.
“She’s with you today,” Heather said without preamble, waving Izzy forward.
“Really?” Wyatt hadn’t been given guard duty over Izzy so far. He’d assumed that Robert had worried he was too invested. It was a valid concern. He was worried about that himself, if he was honest.
Heather shrugged. “I guess Robert trusts that you’re not going to do anything inappropriate.”
“Were the others?”
“Are you kidding? She’s an omega.” Heather rolled her eyes. “They can’t control themselves. If you ask me, we shouldn’t even have one here.”
“You know it’s what’s good for the pack.” Wyatt was mystified. He’d thought everyone was in support of keeping their omega close.
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Heather said obliquely, and then turned and loped off, leaving Izzy behind her.
Wyatt turned to Izzy. “What was that about?”
“She doesn’t like me,” Izzy said. “None of them do.”
“None of whom?”
“The women. They think I’m here to narrow the available pool of men.” She shrugged. “They have a point, I suppose.”