I closed my eyes as he leaned in, thinking of Clay. Of Jared. Of my pack. I would kill Devin, but right now, he still had the upper hand. He could send that crew of shifters after them. For all I knew, he might have already.
Right now, I needed to play this part. Be what I promised him I would. Keep my guys safe. Keep us whole even though it felt like something inside of me was breaking as Devin’s lips brushed mine.
He pulled away a second later, and I sagged, thinking it was over, but when I saw the look in his eyes, the way they slanted with lust, I knew it was far from being over. “You can do better.”
This time he wasn’t gentle.
This time, his lips were hard and demanding, almost bruising as he deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue into my mouth until I gagged on it.
He snarled as he pulled away, rising to rake clawed fingers through his hair as though he might rip it from his scalp. “Why do you fight me?” he shouted. “Why must you always fight me?”
In the blink of an eye he had me up on my feet, supporting my weight between himself and a tent post with an arm barred against my chest. “You. Are. Mine.”
I bit back a scathing retort, trying to suss out whether or not I could stand on my own if he released me.
“I will have you, Allie, whether you want it or not, but for your own sake, don’t fight me. I don’t want to have you compelled. Don’t make me.”
If I could be compelled, it was about the only way he’d ever have me, because promise or no, I would not let this motherfucker rape me.
Devin pressed in against me, making his naked body flush with mine until I could feel the press of his hardening cock through the thin white fabric of the gown I wore and shuddered.
He ran his free hand up my thigh, finding the hem of the nightgown and pressing beneath it. “That’s it,” he cooed. “Just give in.”
His fingers gripped my hip, knocking my tailbone hard into the post at my back, and it was the perfect opportunity. In a knee jerk reaction, literally, just as his hand moved down to lift the hem of the gown, I drove my knee into his erection.
Perhaps not with as much strength as I could’ve done had I not been drugged, but it had the intended effect. His hold against my chest weakened as he buckled, holding his junk.
I slipped free of his grasp, but misjudged how much of my strength had returned. I managed two rocky steps to the left before my knees gave out under the weight of my body and I crashed to the floor. He was on me barely a second later, flipping me onto my back until his knees were pressed tightly to either side of my hips, his cock hovering over my belly button. Somehow still partially hard.
“Bitch!” he snarled, his eyes showing the wolf that lingered within. Devin’s fingers splayed over my chest, trying to hold me down while he stroked his cock back to a full head. And all the while I squirmed, thrusting weak jabs at his chest with my heavy fists.
“Get...off…me,” I managed through fits of panicked breath, gasping when I finally wiggled high enough to dislodge a leg. With everything I had, I planted my heel to his chest and kicked, sending him rocking backward far enough for me to get my other leg free and repeat the motion while he was still surprised.
Using the hard packed earth as leverage I slammed both feet into his chest and this time he flew back...right into a girl who’d just stepped through the door, a guard holding her tightly by the arm.
She shrieked as he knocked into her, and they both fell to the ground.
“Sir!” the male shifter called, grabbing Devin by the arm to try to help him up, but Devin knocked away the shifter’s hand and turned his fury on the girl.
Piper cried out as he slapped her hard across the face. “Never enter my tent unannounced,” he hissed at her as she whimpered. “And never put your filthy hands on me again.”
The girl choked on a sob and tried to sign something, but Devin wasn’t paying attention.
“I’m sorry, sir, we heard the shouts and she just darted in. Slipped right out of my fingers for a second—”
“Get out,” Devin said to the guard, settling a glare on him so malicious that I wondered if Devin might strike him down right there and then for not having stopped the girl from entering.
The shifter vanished back the way he’d come, and by the time Devin faced me again, I’d managed to army crawl nearly all the way to the back of the tent. A useless endeavor, but still, I had to try.
“You,” he hissed at Piper. “Get over there and read her.”
The girl’s dark watery gaze flicked to me in muted horror.
When she didn’t move, he kicked her, and she winced at the pain while scrambling to her feet only to fall to her knees again in front of me.
“Does she have any intention whatsoever of making good on her promise to me?” The question was for Piper, but his luminous eyes remained locked on me. And then after another moment, his upper lip curling back, he said, “Does she intend to kill me?”
My jaw clenched as I found some last morsel of strength, and I hauled myself up to a seated position so I could scooch away from the girl. I shook my head at her, feeling my wolf waking from a too-long slumber within. She was weak though, muted, and I couldn’t seem to draw on her strength.
The realization that the alchemist’s spell may have somehow worked made me sick to my stomach, and I shoved away the idea. Pulling harder on that little flicker of her I could still feel deep within.
I couldn’t let this girl read my thoughts. I didn’t think I would be able to hide them from her, and if she told Devin my intentions—that I would never let him have me, and that I fully fucking intended to not only kill him but make him suffer—then the deal was off, and my mates, my entire pack, were as good as dead.
Why hadn’t I seen this bullshittery coming?
Damn.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
“Do it!” Devin growled and the girl darted forward, making a grab for my hands. I shoved her back, and she looked to Devin for guidance.
He rolled his eyes before coming over and settling himself behind me. I wasn’t able to fight him as he locked my arms with his and hauled my body against his so that my back was pressed to his chest and his hot breath skated down the back of my neck.
“What are you waiting for?”
I wriggled as Piper leaned in and placed her clammy hands on either side of my face, a hopeless sob expanding in my chest.
No.
Please.
Please.
Don’t think. Don’t think.
I implored her for mercy, begged her for it with my eyes, and watched as her chin quivered.
Clear your mind, Allie.
But even in trying to clear it, the edges of my subconscious thoughts were still there. Dancing around my conscious desire for them to shut the fuck up.
“Well?” Devin demanded.
Piper dropped her hands to wring them together in her lap. Her long hair fell back as she lifted her gaze to her alpha’s and began to sign.
I studied each vague movement, studying the symbols and praying to be able to understand something of what she was telling him, but it was no use. I’d read a book on sign language once as a teen with good intentions of learning, but I’d never stuck with it. I barely remembered how to sign the letters of my goddamned name.
“Hmmm.” Devin’s chest rumbled with the curious sound as his hold relaxed and Piper rose on shaking legs to take a step back from me. “Interesting.”
Interesting? What was fucking interesting?
“That’ll be all, Piper. Go back to your tent and stay there. I’ll see to it that you’re brought a proper meal for your assistance today.”
Piper nodded her head and cast me an apologetic look before she scampered back outside.
I jerked out of Devin’s grasp and nearly fell on my face, only catching myself at the last second as he rushed to follow Piper to the door. “Is it ready?” he asked someone outside.
“Yes. Shall I take her?”
“No. I’l
l do it myself.”
Before I knew what was happening, Devin lifted me with a firm grip on my arm.
“Let go,” I snapped, still wobbling on my feet.
He jerked me steady and put his face in mine. “Keep fighting me and I’ll not just kill them, Allie, I’ll make you watch.”
So he knew…
He knew.
I felt nothing as Devin dragged my only half-functioning body from the tent out into the night. I barely registered the stares or the whispers as we passed rows of small tents and groups of naked bodies surrounding metal barrel campfires.
As pine branches slapped across my cheeks and thorny shrubs carved small wounds into my knees, I pieced together that we were entering a thicker part of the forest.
And then we were inside. It smelled of wood. Of old cedar and mothballs and metal.
Chains rattled, and I wasn’t able to claw back to myself from the pits of my despair in time to stop it.
I stared down into a dark hole in the wooden floor of what I assumed was some sort of old hunting cabin. The cloying smell of damp earth filled my nose as Devin released me with a shove and I fell.
The ground rushed up to meet me, expelling all the air from my lungs. I wheezed as I tried to get air, fingers clawing into the damp wood beneath me, trying to flip around.
Devin pulled the ladder up and discarded it somewhere up there as I fell onto my back, staring up, still unable to get a full breath.
There was a creak as the door above, so far above, began to close, and I blinked, trying to judge the distance. It had to be at least twelve feet.
“There’s something I have to take care of,” Devin told me, and the implication in his words made every inch of my flesh prickle and the back of my throat burn.
“You...you motherfucker,” I stammered, my chest still aching from the blow of the fall. “Don’t...don’t you dare—”
But Devin only smiled as he sealed me into the cellar with the smells of earth and wood rot as my only company.
Chains drew across the wooden exterior of the hatch and the chink of a lock clicking into place burrowed into my heart just as surely as a bullet might.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Devin called, his footsteps retreating until another door closed and I heard the muffled drone of low conversation outside.
“I’m going...” I coughed, my voice still so low that I doubted he could hear me. “...to kill you. I swear.”
26
It took far longer than I would’ve imagined, but eventually I was able to stand. To walk. Not that it helped much. In the pitch dark of the cellar the only things I could find were cobwebs and mouse droppings. They’d been careful, it seemed, to remove everything from the space.
There wasn’t any way I could reach the hatch above, either. I’d tried. If I could shift, then maybe...but my wolf lay dormant inside, leaving me all alone.
For so long, I’d wished to never have been changed. In the beginning I’d fought that new foreign part of myself. Hated it, even. But without her I felt lost now. Bereft.
Abandoned.
Though that wasn’t the reason I’d begun to pace. Nor was it the reason my skin was crawling, my heart fluttering against the bones of my ribs like a bird beating against a sealed window. No escape.
No escape.
Panic twisted my guts and made breathing so much of a chore that every few moments I had to gasp for it, to force it down into my lungs just to keep from passing out again.
He’s going after them.
Piper had told Devin what I was thinking, what I planned, and now he was going to kill them. He would kill them all.
I choked as bile tried to force its way up my throat, my stomach heaving, but there was nothing in there to be expelled. It didn’t stop my body from trying though, making fresh tears sting my already burning eyes.
I need to get out.
Get up, Allie.
Get. Up.
My head spun as I found my footing again, going back to the wall to search for any sort of handhold nearest to where I could see the tiniest bit of light filtering through a fissure in the wooden hatch above. Judging by the light, it was day. Had been for some time, though I could only recall a few hours. I’d passed out not long after Devin locked me inside.
My body folding to the first wave of anxiety like a cheap tent.
I wouldn’t let that happen again.
I knew they were still alive. I could feel it in my bones. And as long as my mates drew breath on this earth, there was no way in hell I was going to stop fighting to save them.
My shaking hands brushed over the rough wooden surface of the wall, catching a couple of splinters I ignored. There were no shelves. No tables. Nothing.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d have to assume I was in an oversized wooden coffin. Sure as fuck felt like one.
Getting an idea, I steeled myself, spreading my legs wide and swinging my clenched fist into the wood paneling. The wood splintered and snapped and my fist went through. My triumph was quickly muted as my knuckles smashed into hard brick.
“Fuck!” I cradled my fist to my chest, testing the knuckles for breaks. It seemed fine, but the pinky was questionable. I’d have to worry about setting it later.
I gripped the edge of the wood, and a small grin pulled up at the corner of my lips. I’d made a handhold. If I could just do that about eight more times, I could reach the hatch.
My smile faltered.
Then what, genius?
The hatch was chained shut. And every twenty minutes or so someone entered the cabin above, did a sweep, and then exited the front door again. I had to assume there were at least two out there at all times.
If I made a ruckus trying to break through the goddamned hatch, they’d just come and stop me. And the commotion from that would draw even more of them.
Doesn’t matter, I told myself. You still need to try.
I shook out the sting still lingering in my split knuckles, giving it another couple of seconds to heal before throwing it through the wood again.
I whimpered as my knuckles struck the brick, the pain radiating up through my forearm.
I could use a little help, I whispered inwardly, still drawing on my inner wolf. I’d all but forgotten how bullshit human strength was. At least I was healing quickly though, at least there was some sign that the alchemist hadn’t succeeded in binding my wolf. At least not fully.
Footsteps charged inside from above, and I crouched, eyeing the hatch, holding my breath.
“You hear that?” one asked another.
A pause.
“Nah, what was it?”
“Not sure.”
Silence.
“It’s gone now. Probably just the bitch throwing herself against a wall.”
“A lot of good that’ll do.”
They shared a laugh, and rage burned through my veins as they retreated back to their posts outside the old hunter’s cabin.
There was no way I was going to be able to punch seven more holes in this damned wall to reach the top without them coming to investigate. But...maybe that was a good thing.
If they opened the hatch…
Ugh.
Without my wolf, I was useless, who the hell was I kidding.
I leaned back against the wall and sank, pulling my knees into my chest and closing my eyes to focus.
“I can feel you,” I whispered. “I know you’re still in there.”
She was in pain. We were in pain.
But we would keep being in pain for the rest of our miserable lives if we did nothing to save them.
Please.
A scratching sound, like tiny claws on wood, brought me back out of my head.
I squinted into the dark, trying to figure out where it was coming from and wondering absently if I was hungry enough to eat a raw rat. Shudder. I may not be, but if my wolf would cooperate, she wouldn’t hesitate to gobble it up.
Feeling my way, I crawled across the dirty floor,
listening intently as the sound came again. Louder this time and followed by the familiar sound of dirt and small stones trickling down to the ground. Along with the knock of one brick being set atop another.
A dim light shone through one of the hollow knots in a panel of wood, and I gasped, hearing someone grunt on the other side.
Hurriedly, I pressed my eye to the notch, peering through to see the silhouette of someone moving. Behind them I could make out what appeared to be a stretch of space and stairs leading up.
It was another entrance to the cellar. One the hunter would’ve used to haul in big game so he wouldn’t have to track it through the house. I wanted to smack myself for not thinking to check for it, but clearly this entrance had been sealed up a long time ago.
I tried to get a better look at who was attempting to burrow into my makeshift cell, but when they moved, dirt sprayed into my eye and I fell back, trying to blink it clear.
The wood panel groaned as though they were pushing on it, and I scrambled to my feet, readying myself for a fight.
It looked like there was only one. Even without my wolf, I could take them. I had to.
The panel snapped free, and I clamped my jaw shut to silence the sounds of my haggard breathing, praying the shifters guarding the cabin upstairs didn’t hear.
A slender shape slipped through the opening, and I blinked into the second-hand light, bending low in preparation to tackle them.
Piper held up her hands, her eyes going wide at the sight of me. She put her finger to her lips.
I looked past her to the short tunnel and stairway, unable to stop myself from moving toward it.
The girl launched herself at me, gripping my arms frantically to stop me from leaving. I shook her off, resisting the urge to shout. Couldn’t draw any more attention than Piper likely already had.
She moved her hands, trying desperately to tell me something that I wasn’t understanding. I shook my head, confused. “I don’t understand.”
Not just what she was trying to tell me, but what the hell she was doing here. I had to assume she was helping me, but...why?
Shifted Scars: A Wolves of Forest Grove Novel Page 24
