by Jade Alters
“Okay,” I said, pretending to be placated with that. “We'll go on a date.” I wasn't lying exactly, we would, eventually go on many dates. “At least let me buy you a fresh drink,” I said, looking at her almost empty glass.
She'd never let me buy her a drink before, but I hoped she was finally comfortable enough with me that she would tonight. She looked at the glass like she was contemplating it and then at last she said, “Okay, sure. I'd like another. I'm driving tonight though, so that'll be my last for the night.”
“Perfect,” I told her. “I'll be right back.” I made my way through the crowd and to the bar. I asked the bartender for a beer and a Cosmopolitan when I felt someone standing way too close.
I turned, almost ready to fight, and came face to face with Chase. “Damn it, Chase. Don't sneak up like that.”
“Feeling guilty about something?”
“I don't feel guilty a bit. She wants me too.”
“Don't do this, Ridge.” Poor Chase worried all the time, about everything. I don't know if he had always been that way, or if his time alone on that island, always looking over his shoulder had done it.
Sometimes I thought he could use a good dose of something just to calm him down.
“It'll be fine,” I said, picking up both drinks. I had the pill in my right hand and as I pulled the glass off the bar, I squeezed it, forcing the drug out through the tiny little hole I'd made with a safety pin.
It wasn't anything that would hurt her. It would simply make her sleep until I could get her into the woods, and she and I could spend enough time alone for her to realize I was her mate and agree to becoming one of us. I was confident that she would and Chase was worrying for nothing. “Go enjoy yourself,” I told him.
“And when I get back to the compound what should I tell the alphas about where you are?”
“If they ask, and it's unlikely that they will, just tell them I met a girl. It's not a lie.”
“Ridge...”
“Beat it, Chase. I mean it. Don't screw this up for me.” I left him standing there and headed back over toward my beautiful mate, drinks in hand...ready to begin our life together.
Cheyenne
I couldn't believe that he finally asked me out...well, sort of.
He said we could go on a date, but he didn't say when or where. Maybe he was still just messing with me, still trying to get me to agree to leave with him, thinking he was going to get an easy piece of ass. I can't deny that those feelings were raging inside of me. I wanted him...who wouldn't.
He's hot, he's funny, he says all the right things. But I wasn't willing to sacrifice all I had gained in the past year, and by that I mean the confidence that the last boyfriend I had took away.
He stripped it day by day...slowly chipping off a piece every day until I was left believing I was everything he said I was, and what he said I wasn't. He told me I was fat, unattractive, not smart...all the things that Ridge was telling me just the opposite about.
But, the old boyfriend had said all the right things in the beginning too, and he wasn't half as hot as Ridge. Where the old boyfriend could have had half the women in this room, Ridge could have all of them if he wanted, and then some.
“Here we go.” Ridge sat the drink down in front of me. I automatically looked into it. I'm not sure what I thought I'd be able to see...pills floating in it or something crazy obvious. I smiled at Ridge and said,
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he said, sitting back down on the stool next to me and picking up his beer. He held it up and said, “To us spending much more time together...soon.” I assumed he was talking about the “date,” but thought that was a vague way of putting it.
My suspicious mind was working overtime. I picked up my glass and said,
“To getting to know each other.” He smiled and gave me a little nod before tapping his mug to my glass and taking a long drink of his beer. I did the same with my drink, noting that it tasted exactly the same as the last one, and I was entirely silly for worrying.
“So, how did you get into the security business?” I asked him.
“Well, I've always thought about becoming a police officer...but, I'll be honest with you, I'm not the most patient man in the world. The police academy is nine months long and I didn't want to wait nine months. I needed a job, but I like immediate gratification.”
“So you got a security job?”
“Yes, but not just any security job. The Pack is run by a group of men who are ex-military special forces. They were willing to train me, and in the year that I've been with them, I've probably learned twice or even three times as much as I would have in the police academy.”
“Well that's...” a sudden wave of dizziness almost knocked me off my stool. My head spun so hard that I actually put both of my hands on the table in front of me and held on tightly.
“Cheyenne? Are you okay?” I looked at Ridge and realized my vision was weird too. I could see him, but nothing else around him. It was like his beautiful face was at the center of a clear prism.
He was framed by a blur of lights and color. “Cheyenne?” He said my name again and I heard it, but inside my head, not through my ears. All that I could hear in my ears was the relentless pounding of the blood flowing from my head to my rapidly beating heart.
“I-I'm not feeling so good,” I said, as the dizziness and the other weird stuff was joined by a bout of nausea. I saw Ridge come out of his seat and felt his arm go around me.
“Let's get you some air.” He was sliding me off my stool and into his arms. I felt like I was going to vomit all over him and I panicked.
“No Ridge...I'm okay...” The edges of my vision changed again, and everything was gray. I could still see his face, but the gray fog that surrounded it blurred his features. I felt my legs giving out. I couldn't stand on them...but then I realized they hadn't given out, Ridge was holding me around my waist, and up off the floor about an inch, and he was carrying me through the crowd toward the back door.
Once again, I panicked as he pushed through it and took me with him. I felt the rush of cool ocean air and I couldn't hold back the vomit any longer. I doubled over, emptied my stomach and I felt myself begin to cry. I couldn't stop. I was shaking all over and I realized that Ridge was stroking my hair and telling me everything would be okay. I thought he was so sweet, to stick by me the way he was. And then just as everything around me was fading to black I heard him say,
“You'll sleep it off quickly, and the rest of the night will be ours.”
Chase
“What do you mean, you don't know where he is? Chase, you know the rules. Our hard and fast rule is that no one disappears without telling someone where they are, where we can find them.”
“I know, I'm sorry. Did you try calling him?”
Chelsea frowned at me. “Of course I called him. I've called him a dozen times over the past two days. And you want to know something, Chase?”
“What's that?”
“I would be really worried about him...but since you're our resident worrier, and you don't seem to be worried about him at all...”
“I'm worried,” I told her. “Look,” I held up my hand. “It's shaking.”
Chelsea looked like she wanted to smile, but she didn't. She kept the stern look on her face and said, “I see that, but you see Chase, I believe you're worried...about yourself. You're worried about how mad I'm going to be when I find out you're covering for him. It's not like Ridge to disappear, so either something happened to him, or he's up to something that he shouldn't be. Which is it, Chase? Talk to me.”
I reached up and wiped the sweat off my brow. The rest of the pack was busy, the other alphas out on a new assignment, protection duty for a visiting politician...I was glad that none of them were there.
As intimidating as Chelsea can be on her own, the idea of Titan glaring at me, or Will sitting there with an eyebrow cocked, or Clay or Manny, interjecting while Chelsea berated me would have pushed
me over the line from nervous into nauseous.
I hated how nervous I was. It wasn't natural for a wolf, I knew...but, I wasn't quite sure what to do about it either. Telling the truth usually helped. I hated to lie.
But telling the truth in this case would get my best friend in trouble and he would likely kick my ass when it was all over.
“Chase,” Chelsea said again.
I sighed.
“He's with a girl, like I told you. He took her into the woods. She's his mate, he says.” I frowned at myself for adding the “he says.” It was just strange, when I met Cheyenne, I'd gotten a crazy strong feeling, a desire to kiss her. I'd met a lot of women I wanted to kiss in my life...but that feeling with Cheyenne was different.
It almost drove me to just do it without thinking. The more I thought about that, and from what I remembered growing up in the pack, that was one of the signs of meeting your mate. Between Ridge and me,
I'm sure Cheyenne would pick Ridge anyways. I just needed to control my impulses once he brought her back to the compound, both out of respect and for my own safety. Ridge loved me, but what was his, was his. He didn't share, and if he cared about something or someone, he'd fight to the death for them.
“In the woods? Is she a wolf?”
My stomach felt like someone was stabbing a knife into it and I felt acid rising up in my throat as I said, “No. She's human.”
“Son of a bitch!” Chelsea said. “Did he drug her, Chase?” The “drug” was a light sedative, derived from a plant in the forest. Us shifters had used it to help with sleep or anxiety for years, eating the leaves right off the plant.
Somewhere along the way, one of us figured out how to extract the drug from the plant and encase it in an edible capsule and it had been used to “capture” human mates for years. Ridge had sent me to pick it up the last time I went into Bali for supplies. I felt like a criminal, meeting with the seller in a dark alley.
The drug wasn't exactly illegal, but not exactly legal either. It wasn't on any kind of FDA or pharmaceutical data base...but they could figure out what it was and where it came from if they tried, and Chase was sure he'd be charged with something if he was caught with it. But for Ridge, his best friend, and his hero most days, he'd do anything.
“I didn't see...”
“Cut the bullshit Chase. Did he drug her? I saw a poster at the post office in town today. There's a girl who has gone missing. Is it her? Is her name Cheyenne?”
I couldn't keep it in any longer.
Chelsea would figure it out anyways and then I'd be in deeper shit. “Yes, he drugged her, and yes, it's Cheyenne.” Just saying her name tickled my core. I had to get over that for sure or when Ridge did come back, he'd sense it.
He had better senses than any wolf I'd ever known, even the alphas. That's why when he said Cheyenne was his mate, I didn't doubt him, despite my own feelings otherwise.
“Shit!” Chelsea jumped to her feet, grabbed the handle of the huge stroller her 3 babes were sleeping in and headed for the door of the meeting room. Their compound had one large cabin with a meeting room, a kitchen and a guest room.
The alphas and their three children had their own little cabin, Ridge, me and Grayson shared one, and there were a dozen or so more, shared in different ways among the rest of the pack. I continued to sit there after Chelsea left, wondering how much trouble I was in. I figured it was pretty deep shit, and that's when I decided since I was already up a creek, I'd take it further and just throw the paddle over myself. I walked over to the back door of the cabin, cracked it open and sniffed the air. There was no scent of a wolf or a human and no sounds that anyone was around. I quickly stripped off my clothes and shifted. With the pup,
Chelsea would have to drive up to the cabin in the woods. I could get there faster the back way, on four legs. I was a fast wolf, one of the fastest on our compound. It was really the only thing I had to offer...but at least it was something. I knew Ridge was going to be pissed at me, but no more so than Chelsea was and I'd survived that...so far.
Cheyenne
“Let me go!” I had been alone with Ridge in a small cabin in the woods for at least two days. I was a little disoriented, since he refused to let me go outside. I'd tried to run, more than once.
I was halfway out one of the narrow windows one day when he caught me and another time, while he was sleeping, I'd stolen the key to the door.
At least I thought he was asleep. He let me get the key in the door before he grabbed me, put me back in my room and locked me in.
He was so maddeningly polite about it all too...at least most of the time.
I kicked him once, pretty hard in the shins and he growled at me. It was a literal growl, like an angry dog. That scared me, but not enough to lay down and be docile. If he was planning on raping or killing me, I would fight to the death. And if he was planning on any of that, I wished he'd just get it over with. Being locked up and not knowing what might happen was the worst kind of torture...at least that I knew so far.
“I'll let you go, if you promise to stop trying to run every time I open the door.”
He had opened the door to bring in my food. I had to admit that he fed me well. The first day I refused to eat anything. I was afraid he was drugging me again. But my hunger got the best of me.
I was never one of those girls who picked at a salad and worried about calories...as evidenced by my “curvy” stature. He'd fed me barbecued rabbit for dinner last night and some kind of fish that was really tasty for breakfast this morning. But by lunch time I was antsy again and when he opened the door I charged him.
Now the tray of food was scattered all over the floor and some of it was on the wall. He had caught me so easily too, it was almost embarrassing. One big arm around my waist had me lifted up off the floor and completely in his control.
“I don't promise anything!” I said, defiantly. “How dare you do this to me? Who do you think you are? Put me down!”
He carried me over to the bed and dropped me.
The bed indented and I bounced up and back down. As soon as I stopped moving, I tried to get back up again. Ridge sat down and took hold of my wrists, pressing me down into the bed and putting his face right in front of mine.
“Stop this.”
“Why don't you just get it over with?”
“Get what over with, my love?”'
“Don't call me that! I am not your love! I think you're a little bit crazy. Just do whatever you brought me here to do and get it over with. Rape me or kill me or boil me in your stew...whatever! Just do it!”
He was laughing. It really pissed me off when he did that, like my angst entertained him. “Boil you in my stew? Do I look like a cannibal? I'm hurt.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know kidnapping maniacs got their feelings hurt.”
“You're so feisty.” He was grinning, like we were on a date and he was giving me a compliment.
“And I won't stop fighting, ever. So just shoot me already, or slit my throat or...”
“Cheyenne, stop. I'm not going to kill you.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
“I want you to be mine...my mate.”
It was my turn to throw my head back and laugh. When I finished laughing I said, “How pathetic are you that you have to kidnap a woman to convince her to be your...mate? And why do you call it that? It makes you sound like a...like a...”
“An,” he said with a sarcastic grin. I narrowed my eyes and said, “Excuse me?”
“An. Mate, sounds like talking about an animal's better half. Which is what I'm...” The sound of the door in opening in the outer room got both of our attention. He jumped to his feet and I started screaming.
“Help! Help me! He's holding me hostage!” Ridge reached down and placed one of his giant hands over my mouth. I tried to bite him, but he was pressing down too hard. I brought my hands up to scratch at him and I heard a voice from the other room say,
“Ridge! Is everything ok
ay in there?”
Relief washed over me.
Surely there couldn't be two of them crazy enough to believe they could get away with this. I wasn't encouraged by the fact that Ridge took his hand off my mouth. That told me that he wasn't afraid of whoever was in the other room, finding out that I was in here. “Everything is fine, Chase. Don't open the door. I'll be right out.”
“Chase? Your cute little friend is in on this too?”
Ridge's features changed suddenly.
The look on his face grew much darker and the frown he held caused a deep line to appear out of nowhere between his eyebrows. “You think Chase is cute?”
“Are you kidding? Are we in middle school again?” He turned his head sideways as he looked into my eyes, like he was trying to understand what I said. I thought it was simple and self-explanatory. He had me hostage and he was going to worry about me calling his friend “cute”.
“Do you?” he asked again.
“You're insane.”
There was a knock on the door and Chase's voice sounded urgent as he said, “Ridge, I need to talk to you, now!”
Ridge rolled his eyes and looked back down at me. “Don't move,” he said. I sneered at him as he got up. He walked backward to the door, making sure I wasn't going to charge him. I waited until he opened the door and I got a glimpse of Chase on the other side, he was naked.
What the hell?
I felt my head spin. Was he here to join in on the rape and torture? Why else would he be naked? My thoughts were racing and tears were streaming down my face.
Every so often I had to let out a sob and I hated that. I didn't want to appear weak to him, or his naked friend. They were out there plotting and soon, they'd be back in here...with me. I wasn't going to let them rape me. I had to find a way out and I had to do it now…
Ridge
“Chelsea is really pissed.”
