by Rosko, Mandy
They were back in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, the night chill slowly reaching out with its skinny fingers to grab onto them once more.
It wasn’t safe here. They shouldn’t have even stopped for this long to do this much.
“We have to go.”
Anna didn’t let him go, but he felt her nod. “I know.”
They got up. Anna righted her clothes. Dennis looked around for what little remained of his.
His jeans were fucked. One of the legs was ripped down the side. He thought about ripping it off, but then he’d have to rip off the other, and then he’d straight up be wearing short shorts.
He might as well make himself comfortable with these. Maybe his new brother-in-law would do him a solid and give him some clean pants to wear before killing him.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, searching for his phone to let the asshole in question know he was going to be late, but then he froze. The worst kind of chill slithered up his spine.
Anna took one look at him, righting her bra. “What’s the matter?
Dennis pulled out the pieces of his phone, destroyed in the fight.
They crumbled in his hand, and Anna’s eyes flew wide.
She looked at him, and he looked at her.
“Shit.”
8
Anna stared at what was left of his phone; her heart started to pound.
“Will it still work?”
Dennis barely seemed to flex his fingers before the phone fell apart in his hand, a mess of glass and metal bits.
Anna rubbed her mouth, thinking, knowing what this ultimately meant.
Dennis’ son. If he didn’t get Anna back to her brother within the house, Garret would badly hurt Dennis’ son.
“We’ll get back in time.”
He shook his head. “No, we won’t. Not without a vehicle.”
“So we steal one.”
He raised a brow. Anna almost couldn’t believe she’d said it either. “We have to do something. We can’t just sit here and not do anything when Garret has your son.”
Dennis watched her. “You're serious?”
She didn’t like that he had to question her on this. Why couldn’t he just trust her when she said she wanted to help him?
“We’re talking about stealing a car, not murdering someone. Now come on. We can still make it if we hurry.”
She wasn’t so sure about that, but she hoped it was true, which was why she started marching through the woods before Dennis had the chance to stop her.
Dennis followed her. She felt him behind her. He didn’t say a word as she moved.
And eventually, Anna was forced to stop.
She clenched her fists, hating to have to admit this, but…
“Do you know where the road is?”
Dennis came up to stand next to her. She was almost ashamed to look at him in that moment.
“You don’t know much about tracking, do you?”
Anna sighed, shaking her head.
“Didn’t Garret ever teach you anything? How to hunt?”
“He didn’t think I needed to bother with that sort of thing.”
“Did you want to learn?”
This was the worst thing she had to admit to. Anna shook her head. “No. I never cared if I knew or not. I just wanted… to do my own thing.”
She’d run as a wolf, played as a pup, but she’d never fought for her right to learn how to hunt and track like a wolf. She’d spent more time building her collection of shoes. It never bothered her that she didn’t know how to hunt like the others.
She’d never asked, and Garret never offered to teach her.
Only now could she see what a spoiled little princess that made her, and she hated it.
Dennis put his hand on her shoulder, then brought her close.
Anna fell against his chest, strong and healed once more thanks to what they’d done. She knew she should stand on her own two feet, that she shouldn’t let this get to her, but Dennis wanted to comfort her, and she wanted to let him.
“Will you teach me how to hunt?”
He kissed her hair. “Yeah, sure. I can do that.”
He didn’t add on if your brother decides not to kill me. But she couldn’t tell if that was a good sign, or if it meant that he was just patronizing her.
She wouldn’t let him patronize her. He said he would teach her to hunt, and she was damn well going to hold him to it.
“All right. Thanks. I’m going to make sure you keep your promise, though.”
“That’s fine. Gotta start right now anyway. Teach you how to steal a car before I teach you how to do anything else.”
Heat rushed into Anna’s cheeks. She couldn’t exactly explain why. After having sex for the first time, she was sure she would never blush about anything ever again.
At least not anything that didn’t pertain to making love.
“Right. Stealing a car. Great.”
“But your first lesson, how to locate the highway when you’re in the woods at night. You ready?”
Anna nodded. “Yeah, as I’ll ever be.”
“Good. We have to hurry. Get into your wolf shape.”
* * *
It wasn’t like Derek had a clock down here to watch the time with, but he knew he was in shit when he heard stomping feet coming for him one more time down the stairs.
He pushed himself to his feet, expecting to see Garret storming through the door, and he wasn’t wrong.
The guy looked pissed.
“Come on, man, I didn’t do any-urk!”
The noise that came from his throat when Garret grabbed him was right out of a cartoon. He clawed at the man’s arms when he couldn’t breathe and was lifted off his feet.
Garret pulled Derek in close. Almost nose to nose, and despite not being able to breathe, all Derek could focus on was the red color of his glowing eyes, and how long his fangs were.
“He’s late.”
What?
Derek dug his claws into Garret’s wrists. He smelled blood, he knew it must hurt, but the guy was like a machine. Nothing seemed to faze him, and the black walls on the outskirts of Derek’s vision were starting to push in. He was falling down a tunnel, but he knew there was no tunnel there.
This was bad. Oh shit. He was going to get strangled to death in this shitty basement, and he couldn’t believe it, but he wanted his dad.
“Alpha! Garret!”
That guy was back, so was Katie, another woman, and the dragon.
They grabbed at Garret’s arms, pulling him away from Derek, though it was clear Garret didn’t want to let him go. He roared as his fingers released Derek’s throat just enough that sips of air could finally seep down into his lungs, but even that almost wasn’t enough. Not until Garret finally dropped him and the floor came up to meet Derek’s face.
Hard.
If he hadn’t been halfway to passed out, he might have been angry with how much that hurt. He knew it hurt, but it was such a far away feeling that it barely registered in his mind. Even the crunch in his nose didn’t bother him.
Joey hobbled next to him, pulling Derek onto his side, his face twisting as though he were the one in pain when he looked at Derek’s face.
Whatever. It couldn’t be that bad. Not that Derek had ever broken his nose before, but it was just a little blood.
Joey’s lips moved, but it took a couple of seconds before Derek could make out what he was saying through the haze.
“Are you okay?”
Derek frowned, then groaned as the rush of pain suddenly made itself known to his scrambled brain. He turned away from the guy, bringing his hand to his face.
Big mistake. His stupid nose screamed at him, and Derek snorted blood, which hurt even more as he struggled to get his breathing right.
Fuck! Okay, now he was mad. This really hurt, and he didn’t want to deal with anyone right now.
“Derek, are you all right?”
“No!”
Joey yanked h
is hand back, and now he felt guilty.
Great. He felt guilty because one of the guys who was helping to kidnap him had his feelings hurt.
This was why Laurence picked on him. Because he couldn’t get his shit together.
Things seemed to be coming back to Derek in waves because right after the pain rushed back, and then the anger, he remembered to be terrified because there was still an alpha male three feet away from him, fighting to get to him so he could rip Derek’s throat out.
“Fuck.” Derek pushed himself back as far as his silver-plated chain would allow. He stared up at the alpha. Garret’s face was twisted and monstrous, fur appearing in patches, his eyes a shade of red so bright Derek had to wonder if they wouldn’t start spouting blood.
And his teeth. Fuck, if Derek thought they were long and vicious-looking before, that was nothing compared to how they looked now.
The guy looked like a saber-toothed tiger. He could tear into a wooly mammoth or something. Or rip apart a T-Rex. This guy was the definition of monster.
“Let go of me! Let fucking go!”
His words were slurred. Spittle flew from his mouth, and Derek could make out the veins popping right out of the huge muscles of his biceps, neck, and forehead.
Derek was suddenly not so annoyed with Joey when the man hobbled in front of him, standing tall, as though he wasn’t wearing a cast around his leg.
“Garret, stop! Alpha!”
Derek blinked, shaking his head. What was he doing? He couldn’t let this guy do this. He was injured, for God’s sake, and if Garret was anything like what Derek thought he was, there was no way he wouldn’t go through one of his own men just to get at Derek.
Derek reached out, grabbing Joey around his good leg. “What the hell are you doing! Are you fucking crazy?”
Joey kicked his leg out of Derek’s grip, and he stayed right where he was.
He was so lucky Jax and that other woman held Garret back because the guy looked like he could bathe in Derek’s blood right now and go to sleep tonight like everything was hunky dory.
Katie came around to where Joey stood. She looked at Joey, then at Derek, and for some reason, decided that Joey wasn’t the one who needed saving as she knelt down to see to Derek. “Are you all right?”
“Katie! Get the fuck away from him, right now!”
Katie flinched at the shout from her alpha, but otherwise, she didn’t move.
“Aren’t you going to do as he says?”
She inhaled a deep breath. “Not right now.” Her hands reached out for his throat. Derek flinched back. “I won’t do anything to hurt you.”
He growled at her. “I wasn’t worried about that.”
She looked at him as though she knew he was full of shit.
Of course he was, but she had to know it wasn’t the best idea to touch another shifter’s neck. No shifter liked having their throat played with by a stranger, but she seemed determined, and Derek didn’t want to give the people here anymore of a reason to want to hurt him.
He looked at Garret while Katie touched his throat. The man wasn’t fighting so hard to get at Derek, but the dragon shifter wouldn’t let go of his hold around Garret’s arms, and the way Garret stared at him…
He looked like a wild pit bull, ready to lunge, to attack at the command of his master.
He was a werewolf, so maybe it wasn’t so far off to think that he looked like a starved wolf, desperate for meat.
Derek shivered. “He’s not going to do anything else, is he?”
“No.”
“No.”
She and Joey spoke at the same time. Katie and Joey both ignored each other, but Derek couldn’t help but look at the other guy.
He could smell him again, mixed in with the other scents in the rooms. Sweet and testosterone. The scent of the food and drinks everyone recently had wafted around him, but there was still that smell that seemed to rush all the way to the back of Derek’s nose.
Maybe Joey got it, too. Maybe that was why he insisted on being such a white knight when it could get him killed.
Derek refused to look too deep into that.
“I’m going to kill him,” Garret slurred through those huge fangs.
“No, you’re not.” The dragon shifter shook his head, even though he stood behind Garret. “We need him.”
“Dennis isn’t here yet. He’s got my sister.”
“And you’ve got his son. We can still work with this. Garret, come on, think about this. You don’t want to kill some kid.”
The first instinct Derek had was to point out that he was not a kid, but he forced his mouth shut.
The annoying name Laurence, Carl, and the others always called him now seemed like a Godsend.
If guilting Garret into thinking of Derek as a kid would keep him alive, then he should probably go with it.
“I don’t want to die.”
Admitting to that to his father’s greatest enemy shamed him more than he thought it would, but the fear of pain and death outweighed his need to get bro points with the others back home.
They were assholes anyway, and he doubted any of them were out there trying to get him back.
Strangely enough, when he said it, the veins popping out of Garret’s enormous muscles looked a little less fierce and gross. His body, while still tense, didn’t give off the vibe that he wanted to rip Derek’s face off immediately.
The dragon shifter tightened his grip, which didn’t bode well for Derek. “You don’t want to do this. Dennis is a piece of shit, but he’s not worth it. You don’t want this kid’s blood on your hands.”
The woman came to stand in front of him, taking Garret’s chin in hand and forcing him to look at her. “You remember what I said if you do this?”
Garret glanced at Derek one more time, growling low in his throat at him.
Dennis shivered when the alpha was finally able to shrug the dragon shifter off him. Garret glared at the other man, then looked sulkily at the woman before he snarled at Derek.
He stepped forward.
“Garret,” the woman said, her tone threatening.
“I’ve got it,” Garret grumbled, coming to stand in front of Joey, who did not move.
Garret stared the man down. Joey tried to stay strong, but it was clear he was suffering under the effects of being looked at by his alpha like that. Joey cowered, held his ground a few seconds longer than what Derek thought was normal, before he finally broke eye contact and whimpered.
He still didn’t get out of the way.
Garret grabbed the man by the back of his neck, forcing him to step aside.
And then there was no one but Katie between Derek and Garret. The fact that this alpha could treat anyone in his pack this way was enough to make Derek growl a little at him.
Katie shook her head. “Garret—”
“Will you all stop it? I’m not going to hurt him. Much as I want to.” The way he said it, looking right at Derek, was enough to make Derek shiver, but he didn’t turn his eyes away from the other man. He gave as good as he got as far as a staring contest went.
Garret was an alpha, but he wasn’t Derek’s alpha. The need to submit wasn’t as strong because all Derek had to think about was a real alpha, his alpha.
His father. That was who Derek obeyed, and he wasn’t about to let anyone else boss him around like this.
Not without a fight, at least.
“Do you know where your father is?”
“No, and even if I knew where he was or what he was doing, I wouldn’t tell you a thing.”
Garret grabbed him by the throat again. His hand moved so fast Derek didn’t see it coming even though he knew it was a possibility this would happen.
“Garret!” Katie reached out and grabbed his wrist, though Derek could sense it within her that there wasn’t much physical strength to speak of. She couldn’t do a thing against her alpha.
“Relax, both of you. I’m not going to kill him, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hu
rt him a little.”
Derek swallowed, his Adam’s Apple feeling incredibly fragile against Garret’s powerful hand.
Garret leaned in close. Derek could smell his breath and sweat. Even more so than before, that is.
Except now he could see up close the clouds that swirled within those red eyes, and once again he was reminded of the paper thin ice he skated on.
“My mate wants you alive, Katie wants you alive, Jax thinks you’re useful to us, and Joey wants you alive. You are fucking lucky for all of those reasons, but if you get in the way of me getting my baby sister back into this house, don’t think I won’t make you cry and scream for daddy before this is all over, you got me?”
Derek nodded. As much as he could, considering his throat was being squeezed. He could still breathe, but the threat was there, and he believed it. He believed Garret would hurt him if his dad didn’t get here with the girl.
Garret squeezed just a little harder, as though wanting Derek to taste what more would be coming if Dennis didn’t get here.
Derek rubbed at his throat. Joey stepped closer, as though trying to offer himself as protection, but Derek didn’t think he would be able to do too much if his alpha wanted him out of the way.
And Derek was pissed off. And hurt. His dad had been given a time limit to get here, and he wasn’t here. Garret nearly crushed his windpipe. He might have if Derek didn’t have what little strength that came with being a shifter and the regenerative abilities.
His eyes burned, but he would be damned if he cried in front of this dickhead.
He was a shifter. He was a hunter. He was a survivor. He didn’t cry in front of his enemies.
Garret snorted and rose to his feet. Derek kept his eyes on the floor. He didn’t dare look at anything or anyone other than the concrete beneath his claws.
He wanted to kill Garret for this. Wanted to make him hurt as much as Derek did, wanted to humiliate him, but he was in this Goddamn silver-plated chain. It would be a while before he could get his revenge, but he promised himself he would eventually get it.
Garret marched off, as though he was some kind of hero for showing the restraint that he did.
Derek thought he was an asshole.