Mason's Mate

by Abigail Raines

  It’s only then that I can pick out her fear.

  She’s afraid, mortally afraid. It’s been there along. It’s an undercurrent. It’s like picking out the notes of a perfume. Only now that we’re close enough am I sniffing it out. I can’t tell if my brothers have picked up on it. They’re more focused on the two wolves eating meat. They are not afraid. I don’t smell fear on them at all. That makes me think that they’re not good guys. If Alice is afraid, they should be afraid. If they weren’t so focussed on the meat, they would have noticed us so close by now.

  Even as I think that, the two of them look up.

  We’ve found her. She’s so close. She’s alive. I can smell her blood pulsing.

  All we have to do is figure out what’s going on with these two.

  Xander’s still the alpha. We all look to him now. He tosses us a nod and trots out from around the boulder. He stays well back. He’s not aggressive. I can’t see what’s happening but I hear soft steps in the leaves on the ground and the squish of mud. He’s trying to introduce himself. I hear the sounds of sniffs. The two would know the rest of us are back here and that they’re outnumbered.

  That doesn’t seem to matter to them because they start growling. Aaron looks to me quick and nods back in the direction of the cave. I take that to mean the three of them will take these two and I can go find Alice, which I’ve been wanting to do, but I wouldn’t without the go ahead from my brothers before a potential fight. I nod back at him and take off through the mud just as they run around the boulder and then there are snaps and growls and the sudden riot of a wolf shifter fight behind me as I chase the scent of Alice’s fear, darting between pines and jumping logs. All of it is familiar. I don’t know these woods as well as the woods behind the estate but that’s kind of like saying I don’t know the top of my foot as well as the back of my hand. There’s something comforting to that.

  It’s getting dark now as the scent becomes strongest, the rain pouring down. I catch sight of a duffle bag hanging from a tree branch. Supplies maybe. And then I’m at the mouth of the cave. I can hear her heart beating and I trot inside, quiet and soft. I can hear her breath too.

  My heart breaks when I find the girl. I feel as if it’s cracking inside my chest. If I didn’t know I was looking for a young woman, I wouldn’t be sure I was finding a human. Alice is a crouched up lump of limbs. She’s up against the cave wall in the dark, her long, muddy hair hanging in front of her. She looks like she’s trying to become as small as she can as she tightly hugs her knees. Then I see the rope binding her ankles and her wrists. The rope tying her hands is tied to a tree outside the cave. She could crawl her way outside if she wanted to, but not very far. She’s shaking like a leaf. I don’t know if she’s sniffed me out and she’s scared or if she’s even aware of her surroundings. I’m guessing she’s unable to shift for some reason. She’d be in better shape if she was a wolf.

  It occurs to me she might be scared of an unfamiliar wolf and it would take longer for me to abate her fears showing submission as a wolf than if I just shifted back into human form and spoke to her. I shift back and run back to the duffle hanging from the tree. I have to half climb the thing to get it down and paw through it, but I find a switchblade to cut the rope with. I stick it in my back pocket so I’m not approaching the poor thing with a weapon.

  When I come back to the mouth of the cave, Alice is looking up at me. I can just barely see two big, wide doe eyes peeking out from that curtain of muddy hair. I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender and stay well away.

  “Alice,” I say softly. “My name is Mason Tremblay. I’ve been searching for you for a month. Do you remember calling me?”

  She doesn’t say anything. She just shakes, staring at me with those big, pleading eyes.

  “My brothers are taking down those two wolves who I think have been keeping you here?” I approach slowly. She curls up more, but she doesn’t yell or scramble away. I guess that’s something. “You’re safe now. I just want to cut your ropes. So I can get you out of here. Is it okay if I cut you free?”

  Nothing. Well, nothing is better than freaking out. I approach slowly and just as slowly take the knife from my back pocket. She’s shaking even harder as I cut her ropes. Her wrists are red and raw from where she was tied. At least she doesn’t fight me.

  “Alice…”

  Micah appears in human form at the mouth of the cave, sounding breathless. His eyes are big when he sees the state of Alice but he just says, “Hey, Aaron and Xander have those two taken care of. We should get off this mountain-”

  I’m crouched in front of Alice who is now completely untied and still hasn’t moved but for her trembling. “She needs a hospital,” I say. “Immediately. You and I will take her, then you’ll drive back to pick them up?”

  “Sounds good,” Micah says, nodding. “Sorry we didn’t think to take another car.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  Shoot, he’s right. I wish I’d thought of that. But at least we’re getting Alice out of here first.

  “Alice,” I say, speaking softly again. “Can I help you up? So we can get out of here?”

  I offer my hand and she looks up finally, blinking at me. I get the feeling that she doesn’t believe what she’s seeing as she stares at me but her own fingers twitch and she swallows as she very tentatively reaches out. I take her hand as gently as possible.

  “Can you stand?” I ask her.

  She tries. She’s definitely making the effort as I help her to her feet, but she’s too weak and shaky. Because she’s being agreeable I take the risk of sweeping her up into my arms and carrying her. Micah watches, his brow furrowed as I carry Alice out. He grabs the duffle bag.

  “Hey, Alice,” Micah says softly. “I’ve met you before.”

  Alice seems pretty content to burrow her head in my shoulder. To be fair, the rain is also pouring down on us as I tromp through the woods, following Micah.

  “Go around them,” I say quietly.

  “Of course.”

  I trust Micah to take us back to the car while avoiding the sight of Alice’s captors and he finds a short cut, first up a steep incline that’s taxing as I’m carrying Alice in my arms, though she is quite thin, through some woods, and back down toward the road.

  “Just wait here,” Micah says. “I can drive up. Be right back.”

  Micah leaves us under the partial cover of a thick pine’s canopy as he shifts again and runs full speed down the road toward Xander’s car. We’re drenched by now and Alice could just as well be shivering from cold as I hold her tightly. She’s fisting my shirt and I watch the puff of our breath as it mingles, fat drops of rain spilling from tree branches and hitting my temple. I wonder how long she hasn’t been able to shift. I’m sure she’s stuck. She was out here alone and at those assholes’ mercy, tied up in a cave. I wonder when the last time she ate.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long, Alice,” I say. “I looked. I really did. I should have come up farther, I should’ve… I’m so sorry.”

  The SUV comes roaring up the road and Alice stiffens a little. It takes a few minutes to get her comfortable, seated in the back. She looks so feral and wild and fearful of just about everything. I feel tense, as if all this might still go down badly, and then we’re speeding down the mountain road away from her prison and my childhood playground, her captors left behind under guard by my brothers. I have no doubt Xander and Aaron will be able to keep those two contained until Micah can return.

  When we hit the main road, I relax. I’m seated in back next to Alice, who has managed to crouch up in a ball on her seat. We’ve completely messed up Xander’s interior, the three of us soaking wet and Alice in particular covered with mud. I don’t think Xander will care much. I’m sure it can be fixed anyway. I keep my eyes on Alice but try not to seem like I’m gaping at her. I haven’t been able to get a very good look. I can’t tell if she’s injured. She hasn’t expressed pain, but who knows. Though when her hair shifts a certain w
ay, I see a black eye, and clench my fists. I’m guessing Micah knows more about those two wolves, and that Xander was able to get some info out of them once they were subdued. But Micah’s smart enough not to mention anything in front of Alice. We can talk about that stuff later.

  I sit back in my seat and make myself look away from the scared girl shaking next to me. Absently, I reach into my pocket and find the rabbit’s foot keychain. I take it out and smile.

  “Hey, Alice…” She’s staring out the window, but I lean forward and gently tap her arm. She jumps a little and gazes over at me through her curtain of hair.

  “A friend of yours sent us your backpack,” I say, holding up the rabbit’s foot. “Thought maybe you might want to hold onto this.”

  She blinks at the rabbit’s foot. She doesn’t form what I would call a smile but the corner of her mouth twitches and she reaches up to take it. She’s so tentative, she looks as though she expects me to yank it away again. I expect her captors did that a lot. I smile softly and press the key chain into her hand and sit back in my seat. She seems content with that and stares down at it, fidgeting with it in her hands. The sleeves of her shirt are pushed up now and I can see more clearly how red and raw her wrists are. At some point they bled a little.

  I take a deep breath and stare out my window. I don’t know what will become of her captors or how that fight went down, but I’m hoping they’re in pain right now.

  Chapter Four: Alice

  I know in my head, or at least in the part of my head that’s thinking rationally, that the thing I’ve been wanting so badly to happen has actually happened. Mason Tremblay appeared with a gentle touch and carried me out of that cave. I kept thinking I was dreaming or hallucinating, even as he held me in his arms on the road and actually apologized for taking too long. If I’d been able to get my brain connected properly back to my body, I would’ve told him it wasn’t his fault and that he doesn’t have to be sorry at all.

  It was in the car when he handed me the rabbit’s foot that I realized this was truly happening. I wasn’t going to wake up in the cave having dreamed it all. He came for me. He found me.

  I’m free.

  My brain feels sluggish as a couple EMTs help me onto a gurney. I’m not a complete ragdoll. I know what’s happening, it’s just that it’s a lot of light and noise and strange people and I’m delirious from hunger and stupid with fear so it’s all pretty warped as they take me inside and try to ask me questions. I want to talk, I really do. I can’t seem to make it happen and my head is pounding worse than ever.

  They let me hold onto the rabbit’s foot at least. I think Mason quietly says it’s important. I’m not sure how he knew that. Maybe he guessed. But the rabbit’s foot feels like something familiar and real that tells me I’m alive and awake. It’s wet in my hand as I clutch it, rubbing the fur back and forth with my thumb, the feel of cold little ball bearings in the keychain another sensation that brings me to earth.

  A lot of people are talking and I can’t stop shaking from fear or hunger or both but I try to be brave and obedient and lay down and move like they tell me too even as the walls seem to be moving around me. They stick me with a needle and I just turn my head and grit my teeth. They poke and prod and examine my wrists and ankles and seem satisfied.

  Mason disappears and that makes me panic so much I have to bite down on my tongue and shut my eyes. I wonder if he went away because I didn’t tell him I wanted him near, I didn’t tell him… I squeeze the rabbit’s foot.

  He’s busy. He’s saved you. That was his job. Now he must go.

  That’s the dark little voice in my head but it’s probably right. He did do just what he said he would. He and Micah both found me just like they promised. They don’t owe me anymore than that.

  The doctors and nurses hover around and time feels like it stretches and then goes slack again. Sometimes they leave me for awhile on a gurney behind a curtain, and then they come back again. They talk about blood tests and dressings and IV fluids. They talk about malnourishment and dehydration. It’s probably good that I can’t shift. If I wasn’t able to control it in my state, it would be quite the exciting hospital visit.

  I breathe in and out and focus on the feel of the rabbit’s foot in my hand and tell myself that I will be okay, but I will be alone.

  I’m just going to have to get used to it.

  At some point my head stops pounding. It might be the IVs helping me out. I fall in and out of sleep as time passes and tests are done in a haze of semi-consciousness. They take me to a room and I’m sure I’m dreaming when they help me into a real bed.

  I’ve never slept in a real bed in my life. Hardwidge was all about us living as wolves and we never did completely adopt that pure shifter life but they sure tried to get us as close to it as they could. My “bed” was a thin mattress made of a big sack stuffed with hay and grass. I got used to it but it wasn’t like this proper bed with its soft sheets and pillows. The nurse shows me a control that makes it move up and down or something but I’m already dropping off to sleep as my head hits the pillow. I think about when I’d get my hands on books and magazines that the kids and mates would pass around on the sly at Hardwidge. There was rarely TV and nobody ever had a computer that I can remember but sometimes we’d go down into town and see a bit of the real world. There were times when somebody was injured enough that the alpha had to suck it up and let them go to a hospital like this one and they’d come back with stories. But there were only ever glimpses of life beyond Hardwidge now and then. We always saw just enough to know how much more was out there. So I’ve heard about beds like this, sure. I never really thought I’d get to sleep in one. I only dreamed it, just like I dreamed of Mason Tremblay finding me.

  I can’t seem to open my mouth and talk and I can’t seem to calm down but two whole dreams have come true in one day. That’s what I think about as I drop off to sleep.

  It almost makes me forget how desperately alone I am now.

  I’ve often not remembered my dreams in the past, or if I did they were boring. I didn’t have nightmares so much as dream constantly about running through the forest chasing prey or doing some chore my brother delegated to me from someone else. They were always tedious and boring dreams. They were unpleasant but not terrible. Sometimes I would dream I couldn’t complete the task and wake up scared that I’d be punished for it but that was as bad as it got. I didn’t have nightmares about Hardwidge because Hardwidge was just my reality.

  Now that I’m free, I think I’ll likely have nightmares about Hardwidge.

  Anyway, I do today. I wake up in the hospital bed screaming because Dax is alive and he’s come to take revenge on me for betraying the pack to Xander Tremblay. It’s so real that I think I must have to escape and I thrash and howl in my bed. Nurses come to hold me down. I can’t pick apart reality from the nightmare. Everything is confused and frightening. I swear I see him there in the door… he’s coming!

  The sting of the needle makes me snap at the nurse, smiling sadly all in white. But then I fall back onto my bed, sluggish and sleepy as quickly as I was hysterical. The nightmare fades away and I fall back to sleep again.

  It goes like that for a while. I can’t tell how much time passes. I wake up in a panic and everything seems wrong and scary and they put me out again. One time I wake up and I see Jason and Kyle coming and then they’ve found my friend, Andy, and they’re beating him. I dream that Mason finds me and then just walks away, leaving me in the cave. I dream all kinds of things that make me scream. I want Mason to come back. I want the nice wolf...

  “Take this, sweetie.” A nurse has found the rabbit’s foot in the drawer of the nightstand by my bed. I’d forgotten about it in the haze of drugs and confusion. She presses it into my hand. “Hold onto that. I’m going to find your friend you were asking for? Okay, honey? I’ll do my best.”

  I don’t know who I’ve asked for. I don’t remember asking for anyone. I hope I asked for Mason Tremblay though. He’s
probably done with me. I know that I want far too much from the Tremblays. But selfishly, I hope he comes. His voice was low and kind of quiet. He wouldn’t talk too loudly like everyone else in this hospital.

  I shut my eyes and curl up in the bed and clutch the rabbit’s foot. I focus on that and how comfy the bed is and I think about Mason who really did appear at the mouth of the cave.

  “You’re safe now,” he said.

  Chapter Five: Mason

  “Mason.”

  I’m sitting in an uncomfortable orange vinyl chair in the hospital lobby. I always expect people in a hospital to look sad but people don’t seem very sad here. Maybe I’ve hit on a day when everyone is getting good news or maybe nobody is here for anything very serious. Maybe, I think idly, they’re used to whatever is serious. I ask myself whether what Alice has is serious… Yes, I decide. She may not be about to die, but it’s definitely serious.

  I felt like I was in the way as soon as we got here. I explained everything I could to the doctors - or rather I found the same shifter nurse we talked to when Micah was here after we freed him from Dax, and she translated things for the doctors. Cops aren’t going to be dealing with the people who did this to Alice and we can’t be the ones held responsible.

  Now I’m just sitting here, because I don’t quite know what happens next. Micah’s left to pick up Xander and Aaron and the two wolves who were keeping Alice captive. I think they’ll drive straight out to the nearest pack safe-house and keep them there until they can be dealt with.

  Alice’s backpack sits at my feet. I should take it to her now that she has a room, but I want her to feel settled in. I’m just never sure what the right next move is in this situation. I did what I was supposed to do. I found her. But I don’t consider the job finished. I have to help her until she’s well enough to take care of herself. We all do. She saved Micah and Luna. We owe her everything.