"You were thinking about killing him. Don't deny it." He moved away slightly, his breath glancing my ear as he turned his head. "It looks like he's leaving again. Be ready to move."
I was, my body thoroughly melted of winter and my mind snapping back into focus.
He turned his head a little more so his beard scraped against my temple, and then he gripped my hand tightly. "Let's go."
We hurried through the crowd, and when I allowed Sasha a little peek through my coat, I realized we were rushing past the front door. Hopefully beyond it, Lager was headed back to what was left of his cabin which would rid him of the smug grin I knew he was wearing.
Thomas angled my arm gently upward just as my boot hit the edge of a step. We headed up a narrow staircase, and from the top, groans and ecstatic cries echoed through the thin walls. This was a lot more than just a town hall, then. Were all the people up here slaves who’d only been sold for their bodies? The thought squirmed beneath my skin and festered.
There had been a time not too long ago when I'd considered working at The Scratching Post in Old Man’s Den to survive winter, which was not like this at all. It was such an impersonal trade of body and money, money and body, that I couldn't imagine ever doing it. Not after experiencing not one, but two, maybe three men who helped to heal and challenge and love me in every way possible. And to be owned by someone for sex as well as anything else the owner wanted, whenever they wanted, made me want to light this place on fire. Where was Grady when I needed him?
"We'll have to listen at each door for Jade," Thomas murmured, stopping at the closest one.
I nodded as my stomach tumbled sideways.
We stood in a wide hallway with creaky boards underfoot, the air so cold, my breath plumed out in front of Sasha’s peering eyes. It smelled smoky up here, like opium and tobacco.
We listened to all sorts of noises, both pleasured and pained, as well as downright strange. One man brayed like one of my neighbor’s donkeys in Margin’s Row used to when I was a child.
"Not that one," I said, practically tripping over myself to get away from the door. "Disgusting."
The next door across the hall sounded much different from within. The sighs and pleasured moans and the slaps of flesh flamed my cheeks with how intimate and desperately needed they sounded.
Thomas came up behind me and leaned in close. "Don't tell me you're judging others' mating habits. That man in there might react like you are if he heard about wolf shifter females having their own harems."
"I'm not judging," I whispered. Why was he bringing this up now while standing so close outside a room filled with sex?
"You did at first though." His breath cooled the back of my neck and shivered down to the ache between my legs—the ache he’d triggered with his kiss. "You judged yourself when you found yourself wanting Grady after you had Archer."
"For about two seconds. When I met them, I became one of them. It was a small adjustment compared to everything else in my life."
He stayed silent, and I backed away from him and the sounds and the way my body still craved his kiss. My head spun with need, my breaths such shallow, wispy things. What was it with these wolf shifters who were able to light me up and burn me down with one kiss? This was a terrible time to realize I wanted Thomas too. I wanted to make him feel everything imaginable with my lips and tongue, but also with my being. I needed him to feel enough so he could finally forgive himself.
But now definitely wasn't the time.
I started toward the next door, but a sudden memory jolted me to a stop. Shoes, like the ones the quiet man at Margin’s inn had worn, the one who'd come to stand next to the fire. They had a loose buckle on them and clinked when he walked. So why was I thinking about them now?
"Aika," Thomas whispered behind me.
Turning, I held my finger to my lips and crept toward the door I'd just passed.
Voices, so low I couldn't hear what they were saying, and a faint clink-clink. Was it him? I thought he'd been with the man who'd spoken to me about a slave girl who'd run away and looked like me, but I'd never gotten a good look at him, never said a word to him. Had the girl been one he'd planned to buy? Did he have some kind of obsession with Far Eastern girls? If so…
I thrust my hand out to the doorknob, but Thomas caught it midair.
"Are you sure?" he whispered.
I shook my head too hard and sprang up tears. No, I wasn't sure, but I needed to make sure. For Jade’s sake.
He handed me my quiver, and after I shouldered it, I quickly nocked an arrow.
"I go in first," he murmured, but when he tried the knob, it didn't turn. He backed into me, stumbling me into the opposite wall, then a great crash ripped through the hallway. The door, I realized, caving in around Thomas's huge foot.
Out of my borrowed eyes, I saw too much. Too much bare skin of a man strapped to the bed's headboard. Too much of the man with the buckled shoes standing across the room with his pants undone and his fist locked around his length. And too much black hair hiding the naked body of the small form huddled in the corner.
I didn't know if it was Jade, but I'd seen enough. So had Thomas, apparently. He charged at the shoed man.
"What the—" The one tied to the bed wrenched sideways to reach behind the headboard, his round eyes fastened on Thomas who easily wrestled the other man to the ground.
But I was the one he should've been worried about. I released my arrow and punctured his hand, sticking both it and my arrow to the wall above his head and making him drop the gun he'd just grabbed. An unholy scream tore from his throat, but I was already on the move. Perfectly steady, I took his gun from the floor at the same time I fished out a sock from the pile of clothes beside the bed. My movements felt separate from myself, my emotions wiped clean. Thomas must've been wearing off on me. Either that, or I'd gone numb because I felt too much and was about to blow, the pitiless calm before the storm.
"Nnnngaah!" the man screamed as I drew closer. His cheeks shone with sweat and tears and blood as his gaze darted from my face to the gun in my hand.
Archer’s distraction magic trick had worked yet again. He didn't see the wadded-up sock in my fist coming until I'd already started to stuff it into his mouth to smother his cries. With him quieter, I turned to face Thomas. He stood over the man with the buckled shoes, who lay motionless.
"He's fine," Thomas rumbled, looking like he hadn't broken a sweat. "Just unconscious and his limp dick hanging out."
"Sure enough." I turned away from the sight and found the figure in the corner staring at me.
Long black hair nearly covered her large dark eyes, rimmed in red and swollen from crying, and her creamy skin looked blotchy.
I had no idea who this girl was.
“Gahnnnn!” the man screamed again, this time around his sock gag.
Without a sound, Thomas crept up behind me and punched him the face. The man’s head smacked the wall and he slumped, now silent.
"Aika?" A whisper, hardly an exhale.
My heart hitched, and I sucked in a sharp breath at the familiar voice. Of course I had no idea what Jade looked like. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been a baby, only four years younger than me, and I didn't even remember her then. She was so beautiful, even now, with a whole lifetime of torment lurking behind her eyes that would haunt me forever.
I took a cautious step closer, my bones splintering under the crush of sudden relief. "Jade?" My voice broke, and then the rest of me did too.
I threw my bow, quiver, and gun onto the bed, and then we hurried toward each other and flung our arms around one another. My sobs burst through my chest again and again. Here was the storm of emotion I'd been waiting for, an uncontrollable deluge like winter itself. Jade leaned against me, both her naked body and her cries frail and weak.
"I'm dead…aren't I?" she pushed out. "Or are you really here?"
"I'm here." I squeezed her harder to convince her, and Sasha squirmed between us.
"I
wished— I wished I was dead. So many times."
"I'm sorry." That didn't begin to cover it, but it was the best I could do with my throat pulled so tight. "We need to get you dressed and out of here."
"Here," Thomas said softly behind me. The corner of the bed creaked as he placed something on it. "The naked guy isn't using these at the moment."
Jade tensed and jerked away from him, her eyes shining bright with fear as she took in his size. "Who are you?"
"That's Thomas," I said. "He won't hurt you."
"I'll wait outside," he muttered.
Her gaze flicked from Thomas stepping out into the hallway, to Sasha wriggling out of the neck of my coat, to me, and then to Sasha again. "A baby wolf? How…? How are you here? There are too many things I don't understand."
"I'll explain later. We need to go."
"Where's Lee?" she demanded, her voice desperate.
"I don't know." The admission slumped my shoulders with sorrow, and then wilted the rest of me when her face crumpled. "But we'll find him. I swear it."
After a moment, she nodded as she swiped at her tears and then began to dress with slow, shaky movements. I drew in a quiet gasp at the bruises on her arms, neck, and hips and turned to give her privacy. My stomach churned. I didn't want to know how those got there. It had been about a month since I'd last seen her, and she'd become so thin during that time, so traumatized, that I couldn't imagine the horrors she'd been through.
"I should've never left you," I admitted to the quiet room.
"You didn't know what would happen."
"I was trying to save us when I went to Old Man's Den."
"You made a choice, Aika. A hard one. There’s no way I can be mad at you for that."
Hearing her say it coursed fresh tears down my face. The girl I'd always thought of as a sister, whether by half blood or not, forgave me, and it made all the difference in the world.
"I have so much to tell you," I said between sobs.
"And I'm dying to hear it, especially about your wolf and the stranger outside." She came up next to me, took my hand, and squeezed. "But please, not here."
Thomas slipped inside then, as quiet as ever, and closed the door behind him. "The neighbors must've complained about the noise. It's past time to go."
Jade swept the blanket off the bed, an ugly green floral pattern, and swept it around her shoulders. “Ready.”
I coaxed Sasha back into my coat and armed myself with my weapons again, the gun secured in a different pocket as my poison. "Ready."
But when we slipped from the room, Jade's hand firmly gripped in mine, we quickly realized the hallway had grown much too crowded. Voices filtered out from open doors, and several people milled about the hall. Smoke curled in graceful arcs from some of their lips, and with the very next inhale, they drew deeply from the roll of lit paper plugged into their mouths.
A boy hardly older than Jade with an obviously drawn-on mustache nodded at us. “Trouble in paradise?”
Loud footsteps thundered up the stairs toward us.
“You could say that,” Thomas growled. “What’s the fastest way out of here.”
One man stopped when he reached the top of the steps about twenty feet away. He was a big man, not nearly as big as Thomas, but four more large men joined him at the top of the steps.
Next to me, Jade stiffened.
The boy lifted his eyebrow and pointed the opposite way we’d come, his gaze travelling the length of Thomas. “That way.”
With their fingers flexing at their sides as though they were looking for a fight, the men charged forward. The crowd in the hall scrambled back into their rooms.
Thomas stood between the men and us, and he tossed over his shoulder, "I'll stall. You run. Now."
No, not this again. This splitting up. I grimaced in pain. Sasha whimpered as I tore myself away from Thomas’s powerful gaze and turned, the physical ache of not being right next to him chewing through my chest. It made no sense, but it almost seemed our fingers had hooked together like they had several times before, and we were holding on, holding on for dear life.
We ran. I shot a glance behind us just as Thomas braced his hands on both sides of the hall and kicked his feet out toward the charging men. Could he take on all of them?
"What's down here?" I hissed.
"I don't know,” Jade said, her voice trembling. “I've never been here before."
Loud bangs and crunching bones bounced down the hallway—as well as running footsteps heading straight for us.
Shit. I didn't risk a look back. I knew who it wasn't since Thomas made no noise.
But Jade must've looked because she sucked in a harsh breath. "Aika…"
"I know." I gripped her elbow and hauled her away faster. I had a gun but felt more confident with a bow, but a gun would be faster. But a gun could also aim wild and go for Thomas.
Ahead, the hall branched right and left. On a whim, I spun us left. A dead end, for fuck's sake. Nothing except a small cabinet. But the right branch was no better, empty except for a frosted window. We were trapped.
The footsteps crashed toward us, nearly upon us.
“Quick, the dumbwaiter.” Jade lunged toward the cabinet and opened it.
“The what?” I hissed.
"Just get in."
I threw myself inside, having to draw up my knees and duck my head at a painful angle so it wouldn’t knock against the pulley system at the top.
Jade followed me in and somehow folded herself into the few inches next to me, her sharp bones grinding into mine.
"Help me pull!" She reached up to the pulley rope.
I pulled down on the rope to help, but it wouldn't budge.
Around the corner came a man running at full speed. When he saw us, he poured on more while baring his teeth in a ferocious grin.
My stomach shuddered into my spine. My blood crashed between my ears.
He had no weapons. He didn't need any with those meaty fists.
Even if I could release an arrow, there was no way I could angle my bow in here for a decent shot.
"Good thing I like the chase almost better than fucking," he said, reaching for us.
But then his body flew right, then left, his head slamming hard into each wall. When he slumped, Thomas stood behind him, his face twisted in fury.
I'd never seen that face on him before. So much raw, scary emotion. Never wanted to again. He looked terrifying.
"Meet you outside." The door slammed shut and suffocated us with darkness.
We pulled, and the rope in the pulley finally moved, its mechanism somehow locked while the door was open. The crank squealed as it turned, so loud we might as well have been screaming our location as we sank down.
We stopped with a hard jolt.
"Get ready to run," I whispered.
Jade opened the little door, and light voices from a bustling kitchen filtered through. Women with the same hollow look as Jade stopped to stare, the flour on their faces hardly thick enough to hide the bruises.
We clambered out and spilled to the floor, our hands instantly finding each other’s again. No one tried to stop us as we wound our way through long wooden tables covered with dishes, breads, and cooked meats.
Jade led me around a fallen pan lid even though Sasha spotted it beforehand. "They won't let us walk out of here."
"Good thing I brought my bow."
"You can't shoot everyone who tries to stop us."
"Not everyone will follow if I say my arrows are doused in four-step poison," I said, reaching over my shoulder for an arrow.
Jade turned to gape at me. "Poison? What are you talking about?"
I handed her the arrow. "Stab this toward anything that moves threateningly."
We stopped inside the kitchen doorway, and Jade peered beyond it.
When she turned to me again, her pretty mouth flattened into a hard line. "You really do think we're getting out of here alive, don't you?"
"I've gotten out of wor
se."
"To find me?"
"To save you."
She swallowed hard as she stared at me with tears in her eyes. "That's… I never…" She squeezed the arrow I’d given her and nodded. "Okay."
"I need you to be my eyes though," I said, stuffing Sasha farther down into my coat where she squirmed and grumbled.
"That's the least I can do."
My muscles tight, my teeth gritted, my heart quaking inside my chest, I retrieved another arrow and nocked it. “Let’s go.”
Jade took my elbow and led me through the doorway.
It sounded less crowded in here but not any less dangerous.
"What are you doing?" a female voice hissed from about three feet ahead to the right. "You're going to make it worse for the rest—"
"You think you're going somewhere?" a brisk voice asked from behind her.
The girl immediately retreated, her footsteps a whisper compared to the man's as he drew nearer.
I swiveled my arrow toward him. "Don't stop," I muttered to Jade.
"That girl there is someone’s property, and it looks an awful lot like you're stealing her,” the man fumed. “That makes you a thief, don't it?"
My ears burned for anyone else coming near us. The click of a gun. The staggered breath of someone about to do something stupid.
Jade kept us moving, her hand still at my elbow, and I turned to keep my aim on the room.
"I'm no one's property," she murmured, as if to herself.
"You walk out of here with her, I go get the sheriff," the man warned.
"Do whatever helps you sleep at night," I fired back, "but owning slaves like this won't last."
The man stomped toward us. "Says who?"
"Says this arrow in your dick if you come any closer."
"She won't miss," Jade said.
"No. I won't."
Jade's steps faltered and then she stopped, swinging my arrow a little to the right. "Gun."
One word. One shaky word was all it took for my hope we’d get out of here to shrivel and die.
"I bet you know Lager, the bald guy who was here earlier?" I asked the room. I nudged my elbow into Jade's grip, urging her toward the door anyway. We had to be almost there. Almost there and not dead yet. "Ask him how he lost his finger. Ask anyone about the four-step poison I doused my arrows with." I hadn't. There hadn't been time, but no one needed to know that. "Four steps, and then the men I shot, grown men, fell dead."
Winter's Rage (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 3) Page 5
