by Lisa Oliver
“This place is really getting to me if I’m thinking of Percy in a compassionate light.” Rowan pushed himself to his feet, biting his bottom lip as his ankle throbbed. “I have to move, I have to move,” he mumbled, hopped around, waving his arms up and down trying to generate some heat. “La, la, la, la, la, la,” he yelled, wincing as the noise sounded so much louder as it echoed in the enclosed chamber.
“Oh, fuck it.” Rowan levered himself back to the floor again, sticking out his bad leg and rubbing it, trying to soothe the aches away. He thought back to when Percy had held him for a week. He wasn’t fed then, and only given a cup of water to drink a day. Percy wasn’t trying to kill him, just torture him and then probably kill him, but Rowan’s grandmother put the word out he was missing, and Percy let him go. It wasn’t as though Rowan was going to tell anyone what he’d done.
Would it have been better if I had died then? Rowan quickly shut down his morbid thoughts. If he was going to die, it would take weeks and surely his grandmother would be missing him by then. Not Shadow? Rowan sighed in the gloom. Shadow would realize something had happened to him when he finally hit the bed later that night and he wasn’t in it. But then, being the pragmatic and logical man that he was, Shadow would likely think he was simply working at his apartment.
“Silly bastard would probably think he was being considerate in not trying to get in touch with me, not wanting to disturb my work. Damn it.” Rowan tried to think of something else. He was worried about Talon. He wondered what his grandmother was doing, but every thought he had meandered back to his hugely muscled, definitely lacking in romance, mate.
Oh, those muscles. Closing his eyes, Rowan allowed himself to dream of his sexy mate. At least thinking about him was keeping parts of his body warm although he still needed to pee. What I could’ve done to you, if you’d only given me the chance, he thought sadly.
/~/~/~/~/
Shadow didn’t knock at the door. Hell, he’d barely waited for the SUV to stop before he was out, bounding up Elder Simon’s porch, and smashing through his door like a tornado. “Where is he?” he snarled, shocking the Elder, his wife and three children who appeared to have just sat down to dinner. The smell of hot roast beef wiped out the sniff of Rowan’s scent that he’d caught as he’d burst through the door. “Where’s Rowan?”
“Alpha?” Simon touched his lips delicately with his napkin before setting it down on the table and getting to his feet. “I must admit this is a huge surprise. Won’t you join us for dinner? My mate makes the most excellent rare roast.”
“I wouldn’t eat with you if you were the last piece of shit wolf on earth.” Shadow curled his lip as he deliberately stripped off his shirt and tossed it at Marco who was standing to the left and just behind him. “Ma’am, I suggest unless you have knowledge of where my mate is, that you and your children barricade yourselves in your bedroom. Things are about to get ugly.”
Simon’s mate, to her credit, didn’t say a word, simply getting up from the table and shepherding her children out of the room. Simon’s gaze got more wary as he watched them go. “Alpha, I must protest,” he started to say as soon as they were gone.
“I don’t want to hear anything out of your mouth except the whereabouts of my mate.” Shadow dropped his hands to his belt and started unbuckling it, the clink loud in the silence of the room.
“Alpha, come on.” Simon edged around the table. Like clockwork, Marco, Dominic and Craven moved, blocking all the room’s exits. “Look, you don’t know what you’re dealing with here...”
“I don’t want to know. I want my mate.” His belt unbuckled; Shadow then kicked off his boots. They flew up and then landed on the polished wood floors with a heavy thud.
“Alpha, Gray, Shadow, please. You’ve got to let me explain,” Simon wailed, cringing backwards. “There’s stuff going on here that have been years in the making. Deals with humans. Drug trafficking. Nothing to do with me. I’m just trying to maintain the status quo so no one gets hurt.”
“I won’t ask you again. Where’s my mate?” Shadow warned. “You have just ten seconds to tell me what you did with my mate after your little foot soldiers dropped him and Talon off here, or I will rip your throat out. Ten… Nine… Eight…”
“They’re out the back!” Simon cowered, raising his arms up to protect his head. “In the junkyard at the end of the back yard. You don’t understand, if I don’t give them something, they’ll kill me. They said you had to be stopped.”
Shadow didn’t have a clue who ‘they’ were. He just needed his mate. Until Rowan was safe in his arms, he wasn’t going to be able to think of anything or anyone else. “You can tell your friends to forget about stopping me. I’m just getting started,” he snarled as he stalked barefoot out the door.
Running around the back of the house, Shadow spotted the junk yard fifty yards away, piled high with debris. Rowan’s scent was faint, as though he’d been carried. Talon’s scent was more pronounced and there were scuff marks in patches on the grass as if he was still fighting his captors. A rusted chain link fence divided the back lawn from the junk yard, and it was there the scents split up. “Dominic, Marco, find Talon.” Shadow pointed to where Talon’s scent was headed. “Craven, you’re with me.”
Moving around the piles of junk quickly wasn’t easy. Old car bodies were stacked up in haphazard fashion, and there were iron bars, steel poles and engine parts scattered in piles across the uneven ground. The scent of gas, oil and cleaners battled with the faint traces of Rowan’s smell, but Shadow persisted, sniffing in car bodies, leaning over until his nose almost hit the ground in some places, trying to get more of his mate’s scent.
“Wait,” Craven’s hand landed on his arm. “Can you hear that? It’s coming from over there.” He pointed to the back of the yard where six huge concrete water tanks stood against the fence line.
Straining his ears, Shadow smiled for the first time that day.
“When you look at me, I can touch the sky, I know that I’m alive.”
The voice was faint, off key and wobbling a bit on the higher notes, but Shadow would know that voice anywhere. “I don’t want to hear anyone criticizing my mate’s singing voice,” he said with a smirk as he leaped over an old engine and sprinted towards the tanks.
/~/~/~/~/
“I’m alive,” Rowan’s voice wobbled, but he kept singing. “I can touch the sky. I’m alive, yeah, I’m alive. Yeah, I’m alive. I don’t know for how long,” he improvised to the same tune. “I’m as good as gone. I can’t touch the sky, but I’m alive. I’m a… What the heck?”
Rowan could hear someone pounding on the concrete with what sounded like an iron bar. “Hey,” he yelled as loud as he could, which wasn’t easy with his throat dry from his spell at singing. “I’m in here.” He slammed his open palms against the concrete wall. “I’m in here!”
Logic told him, the person outside wasn’t necessarily the good guys, but Rowan was beyond caring. He could smell his own pee from when he was forced to go, his mood plummeting even as his bladder sighed in relief. It was why he was singing. Anything to take his mind off the pain in his leg, his grumbling guts and the horror he felt at having to sit in what was effectively his own toilet.
“Help, help,” he yelled, hitting the concrete hard enough to make his palms bleed. “I can’t get out. I can’t get out!”
A loud grating noise sounded above him, and Rowan looked up, scared and relieved all at the same time. The cover to the opening of the concrete tank was dragged aside, and Rowan caught a glimpse of the pale pinks and bright yellows of the evening’s sunset before a familiar face blocked his view.
“You’ve got no idea how glad I am to see you.” Rowan said fervently, clutching his bloodied palms to his chest, his head tilted back as far as it would go.
“I know exactly how you’re feeling, little red,” Shadow’s voice cracked slightly, and Rowan wondered if his mate was actually crying. But in the next sentence, Shadow was all business again. �
�Let me find a rope and we’ll get you out of there.”
Chapter Fifteen
Getting Rowan out wasn’t as easy as simply dropping a rope down and him climbing up it like a monkey. The smell of Rowan’s blood hit Shadow’s nose as soon as he got the tank cover open. The pinched pale face, the way Rowan lurched and stumbled as he looked up, along with the blood Shadow could see on his palms and wrists all combined to create the picture of a man who was not going to be able to climb to freedom.
But when Shadow prepared to lower himself, determined to have Rowan in his arms as soon as possible, he was shocked by Rowan’s yell. “Don’t come down here.”
“Babe, you can’t climb the rope on your own. There’s no weakness in being helped with that. You’re injured. I need to help you.” Rowan had no idea just how badly Shadow needed to help his mate. “I’m coming down.” He nodded to Craven to hold the rope taut as he swung his legs into the hole.
“You can’t come down here.” Rowan was panicked, glancing to the side of the tank and wringing his hands. “It’s not… I… It’s not nice down here.”
“I’m used to not nice.” Shadow had a fair idea what was upsetting his mate. Blood wasn’t the only smell his nose had picked up when the cover opened. But he wasn’t going to discuss something so obviously distressing to his sensitive mate with the others hearing. “We’ll have you out of there in a minute. Hang on.”
Trusting his friend to have his back, and to ensure the rope didn’t fray on the edges of the concrete, Shadow moved down the rope easily, his bare feet landing on something soft. “Rowan?” He looked down at Rowan’s jacket that was under his feet, and then at his mate who was shivering in a thin t-shirt. “Oh, little red,” he said with a groan, tugging his mate close and wrapping him in his arms. “If I had to wade through an ocean of piss to get to you, I would,” he whispered against Rowan’s ear.
“Please don’t.” Rowan’s voice wavered and a splash of tears fell on Shadow’s bare chest. “I thought I was going to die in a pool of my own pee if I was down here too long.”
From the size of the tank, Shadow thought that was highly unlikely, but he was wise enough not to say so. He recognized the signs – his mate was cold, tired, hurt, and hungry. He was entitled to his breakdown. All Shadow could do was keep his mate close, letting his scent soothe Rowan’s jagged nerves, while his body heat would help warm his mate’s thin body.
Craven, to his credit, said nothing from his post at the top of the tank. Shouts Shadow could hear, indicated Talon had been found and he was spitting angry, and worried sick about Rowan. But it had to have been ten minutes, maybe more, before Rowan lifted his head and asked, “Are we going to stay in here all night?”
“I need you to climb on my back.” Shadow used his hand to brush Rowan’s curls back from his tear-stained face. “All you have to do is hang on, and I’ll get us out of here.”
“I’m so glad Talon’s okay,” Rowan said softly, sliding his hands around Shadow’s waist as if he didn’t want to lose contact. “It was my fault we were taken. He tried to stop me going to Rogue Alley.”
“You got taken a couple of hundred meters from your house. Wanting to go to Rogue Alley had nothing to do with it.” Shadow crouched down so Rowan could get a firm hold around his neck. He scowled as he saw the mess of Rowan’s hands and wrists. “Hold on as best you can. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
Rowan didn’t let out so much as a murmur as Shadow quickly climbed up the rope, although Shadow knew his mate was in pain. As he doubted Elder Simon had gently lowered Rowan into the tank in the first place, it was likely his mate was hurting more than he realized.
Grabbing Craven’s hand as he reached the top of the tank, Shadow heaved himself out, reaching behind himself to pull Rowan back around to nestle against his chest. He ran his hands over every part of Rowan he could reach, noting every sharp inhale, or pained gasp. Simon is going to pay for every bruise my mate has suffered, he vowed.
“The alpha mate needs medical attention,” Craven said quietly. “His boot looks like it’s about to burst it’s seams.”
“I twisted my ankle. It’s okay.” Tears still clung to Rowan’s long eye lashes, and Shadow vowed he’d do better as a mate. Hell, he was all for handcuffing his mate to his side and probably would’ve done, except Rowan’s wrists were bruised and cut as well.
“We have a lot to talk about, you and I,” he said gravely, brushing away a tear that fell down Rowan’s cheek. “But you need food. You need rest…”
“I need to know you found Talon too, and then I need a shower,” Rowan said with a burst of spirit, which must have cost him because the shadows were almost black under his eyes.
“A bath,” Shadow could be just as firm. “You’re not standing on that ankle until you’ve shifted. As for Talon, he’s fine. Look for yourself.” He pointed over the edge of the tank. Talon was in his wolf form sniffing around the edge of the concrete. Shadow had no doubt the canny wolf was memorizing scents and hoped Talon wouldn’t be too upset that their attackers were still breathing.
Rowan peered over the edge and then snuggled back against Shadow’s chest. “Please just take me home,” he whispered. “I really can’t take much more of today.”
Shadow knew exactly how his sweet mate felt.
/~/~/~/~/
The Shadow who ran him a bath and gently tended to his wounds, was a totally different man to the one Rowan mated. His actions were slow and designed to soothe. The arousal so often present in his mate was in the air, but that was the only place it was noticeable. When Rowan opted for bed, rather than shifting as they waited for a meal, Shadow didn’t push him to do otherwise. He simply nodded and reached for the biggest and fluffiest towel on the rack and dried him tenderly as if he was the most precious being on earth.
Even after they were in bed, and Shadow explained how the inner circle had worked to track down the drug dealers that seemed determined to make Rogue Alley their home, Shadow didn’t flinch from his short comings, delivering his message in the same calm voice, even as he relayed Elder Simon’s betrayal. Likewise, when Shadow voiced how he’d deliberately set Talon up to keep Rowan away from the action, his tone didn’t change. He was telling it how it was, to him, as if Rowan would understand.
“Why?” Rowan asked when Shadow came to the end of his story. Inside, his mind was reeling over the duplicity of certain pack members and the worry that the lure of drugs and fast money had caused the rot in his pack to spread. But the pack wasn’t in their bedroom. The damage done to his mating was the most important thing to Rowan in that moment. “Why did you keep all this from me? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? I would’ve stayed at home today, if I’d have known, then neither Talon nor I would’ve been taken. Didn’t you trust me?”
“I trust you with my life,” Shadow said, but he was staring at the wall beyond the foot of the bed, an action that didn’t fill Rowan with much confidence. “Not telling you had nothing to do with how much I trust or care for you.”
“I’m calling bullshit.” Pushing Shadow’s arm away from where it was draped over his chest, Rowan struggled to sit up. He wanted to see his mate’s face, full on. “Your inner circle all knew about this investigation including the meeting you had planned for today. Hell, Harry knew and so did Talon. I bet even my grandmother knew…”
“She didn’t know why it was better for her to be out of the house today,” Shadow interrupted quickly. “I just told her I wanted her to help feed the workers at the community hall. That was it.”
“Great, so my grandmother didn’t know, but everyone else I’ve mentioned did. I’m the alpha mate. I thought that automatically made me part of the inner circle.” Rowan reached out and turned Shadow’s chin, so they were facing each other. It was the only way Shadow could feel the full brunt of his glare.
Like any ex-military man, Shadow didn’t even flinch. “I know you’re angry with me,” Shadow started to say, but Rowan had had enough of his Zen mood.
/> “You have no idea how angry I am with you. I might look like a weak simpering omega who doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together, but I have skills.” Rowan wanted to punch Shadow’s shoulder to make his point, but he didn’t think his fist would make much of a mark and he didn’t want to embarrass himself.
“Not only that, but I have every right, as the alpha mate, to be involved in every single decision that affects this pack, or my mate. You, running off to meet a known drug dealer, trying to pretend you’re human – that’s a joke and what’s worse, it’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. And I was right, wasn’t I? It was a stupid idea because you damn near got yourself killed and what would have happened to me then? Drowning in my own piss would seem like a day at the park if you died. Don’t you get it, you big lug? You could have DIED!”
Suddenly the enormity of the day’s events hit Rowan hard. He started gasping, unable to catch his breath. He shuffled around on the bed, trying to open out his chest so he could breathe easier. But all that did was jolt his ankle, which sent pain screaming up his leg and into his thigh. And then suddenly that scream was everywhere. He opened his mouth, trying to take in more air, but his full-body scream came out instead.
Rowan couldn’t stop. It was as though he was watching himself from the other side of the room. The sounds coming from him sounded like a pissed off banshee – his mouth was wide open, teeth exposed, his eyes were scrunched up and his nostrils flared seeking the air his chest couldn’t take in. Rowan’s face was so heated he thought his skin would split, and black spots filled his vision. He knew, on some cognitive level, he was going to pass out, but there was no way to put the brakes on what he was doing. Every slur against him since he shifted, all the pain Percy and his friends inflicted on him, the sheer terror at believing his precious mate had died that day all came out in one long, long, and incredibly loud scream.
