Sitting on the end of the bed, she crossed her legs beneath her. It was so fucking hard not to demand she tell him everything, but he knew he had to wear kid gloves with her. She’d been to hell and back, and there was no way he’d push his dominating alpha-male bullshit on her too.
She dropped her gaze and tilted her head a little to the side, exposing her throat. A rumbling growl filled the room, and he realized it was him. Pressing his lips together, he sucked in a deep breath through his nose, then let it out.
“How did you survive?” he asked softly, the question coming out of his mouth before he could stop it. He just couldn’t piece it together. Surely, the female in front of him now wasn’t the female that had been captured six years ago. Surely, there had to be some spirit in her that had been burned away—or perhaps beaten from her was a better way to think about it.
As another round of uncontrolled growling started, he realized there was no better way to think about it. Gia had been kept locked in a basement for six years. The miracle wasn’t that she survived, it was that she wasn’t insane from her wolf.
She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“How…” Fuck, he couldn’t even articulate what he wanted to say. Even thinking about what she’d endured made his wolf’s hackles rise. “You were abused for six years. Imprisoned. Used. I can’t imagine you were allowed to shift all that often. Just how did you come out of there with so much of your humanity left intact?”
“I…” She paused, playing with the end of her damp hair. The action drew his eyes there too before drifting to her throat, her shoulders, and her breasts hidden beneath her shirt. It was getting harder and harder to think of reasons why he shouldn’t reach out and touch her. The longer he stayed with her, the more her scent called to him and his wolf. Without thinking, he slid from the chair and reached out to stop her restless fingers.
She sucked in a surprised gasp, and he instantly regretted touching her. Why would she welcome the touch of a male? He retracted his hand, bunching it into a fist at his side.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I don’t know how I survived.” Her words were whispered and slightly hoarse.
Dylan wanted to press for more information, but he stopped himself from demanding more. Instead, he asked, “Where are you from?”
“Lewiston.”
“How far away is that?”
She met his gaze, her wolf dancing across her eyes for a brief movement. Dylan’s own wolf responded in turn.
“About three hours or so.”
He settled back into the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “What about your family? Do they know what happened?”
“Mitchell had them killed shortly after I was bitten.”
Jesus. He thought he’d understood the depths of Mitchell’s depravity, but he should’ve known better. Biting her, owning her, wouldn’t have been enough. He had to try and kill her spirit too. But he hadn’t, had he? Somehow, Gia had defied all logic and survived.
“He did it to control you?”
She bobbed her head quickly. “He did.” A tear slid down her cheek, the pain from the loss of her family was a pall hanging over her still.
Jesus-fucking-Christ. Dylan wasn’t sure he could listen to much more than this. With every word out of her mouth, the desire to decimate that fucker grew and grew until he was sure that when he stood up, his brain would unconsciously send him back to his car and drive out there to commit murder.
Long, drawn-out, bloody murder.
“This bastard won’t get away with it, Gia. He’ll never do this to another female again.”
She met his eyes, tears still shimmering in hers. “He already did get away with it.” She brushed a hand over her cheek, the action like some sort of mental reset because when she asked her next question, her voice was strong. “Tell me about what happened to Layla? How she ended up with your pack?”
With a grunt, he leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs.
Layla.
His fucking brother hadn’t even seen her coming, had he?
“Her car broke down not far from my brother, Riley’s, mechanic shop. He brought her home with him, given it was the day before Thanksgiving and everything.”
Whatever he’d said made her smile a little, and Dylan vowed he’d do anything he could to make her smile again.
“She always loved Thanksgiving. She used to sneak pumpkin pie down to me… except for this year.” She breathed in deeply, peering up at him. “Is she happy there… with your brother?”
“I left to come here only a few days after she arrived, but I watched her with Riley. She’s incredibly happy with him, and he absolutely worships her.”
“Good,” she replied, worrying her bottom lip a little as she thought.
When she didn’t ask him anything else, Dylan started talking. Not because he had to fill the void of silence, but because he wanted to tell her everything, to put her mind at ease, and to make sure she knew that she was going to be safe and cared for.
“Hunter is the alpha. He’s my brother. He’s mated to Ava, who was a surgeon in the human world. Now she’s starting up a clinic for werewolves, focusing on prenatal care. It’ll be the first one in the country. Our mother still lives with us at the pack house as does my sister, Casey. I have three brothers… Hunter, Riley, and Oliver. I also have my niece, Hunter’s daughter, from his first mating.”
“Big family.”
With a nod, he crossed his legs at the ankle, settling his clasped hands over his stomach. “Werewolves can’t easily have female children, so most couples try and try until they do. This means families are often made up of lots of sons and only one daughter.”
Gia leaned forward a little, clearly curious to know more. “Why is that?”
He shrugged. “It’s something to do with our biology, we think.” Studying her face, he marveled at the soft curve of her jaw, at the way her drying hair was starting to curl around her ears and becoming wavy at the ends. “Can you tell me about your life before you were bitten?”
She stiffened ever so slightly, and he was sure she’d refuse him, but then she said, “I was happy. I had a successful therapy practice and clients I loved to work with.”
“You’re a therapist?”
“Yes.”
Maybe that was why she was so well-adjusted given her treatment. Perhaps she inherently knew how to work through all the shit she’d been subjected to?
Dragging in a shallow breath through his mouth, he asked the question he’d wanted to know the answer to since he’d heard about her captivity. “How did you get bitten? How did Mitchell get to you?”
She rolled her shoulders forward and ducked her chin. He was sure she was shutting down on him, locking him out.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, then winced because it was a cold day in hell when he apologized for something. “You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to. I was just passing the time.” Fuck, with the lies! He wanted to know the answer because he wanted to take that pain away for her. He wanted to know every detail of Mitchell’s story of abuse, so when he finally killed the bastard, his actions would mean something.
She cleared her throat quietly. “He was a patient of mine, actually…”
“Fuck.”
Her eyes widened a little, but she pressed on in that same soft, calm voice. “He came to me about suicidal thoughts. Somehow, I didn’t see all the other warning signs, though.”
“What other signs?”
“He was always the victim, telling me things that were outrageously elaborate, but when I pressed him for more information or asked him specific questions about the event, he would give me a vague answer. Add onto that his narcissism, and he was the kind of patient I only ever wanted to see once a month.
“You couldn’t have known,” he reasoned.
“No, but I’d dealt with pathological liars in the past, and I should’ve seen the same markers.”
“How long did you
treat him?”
“Almost a year. I never suspected what he was, or what he could be capable of, although I had felt uneasy having him in my office. That was why I only saw him during the day when other people were around.”
Dylan swallowed, unsure whether he could physically ask her the next question poised on the tip of his tongue. “How did it happen, the attack?”
Gia sucked in a shaky breath. She was close to breaking point, but dammit, he needed to know all of Mitchell’s sins.
“I’d finished up at my office later than usual. I had an emergency drop-in with a long-suffering patient who’d needed me. They had left, and I had stayed behind to type up my notes. By the time I left, it was close to midnight.” She shivered then but didn’t take her eyes off his face. “I was walking to my car when this huge brown wolf came out of nowhere. At the time, I thought it was a dog because werewolves weren’t real, right?” She huffed then added, “He attacked me and bit me on my right thigh and bicep. I’d managed to get into my car, and he bolted. I was losing a lot of blood, so I did what I could to stop it. On the way to the hospital, my car was hit, and I was sent crashing into a power pole. I awoke just as I was being pulled from the wreckage. I thought they were bystanders, but it turned out to be some of Mitchell’s pack.
“They took me to the basement where I writhed and suffered for what felt like years. It turned out to only be three days. When I came out the other end, it felt like all my senses had been turbocharged. I could smell and hear things I couldn’t before. I also shifted for the first time…” Shaking her head, she took in a deep breath. “I never set foot outside that basement again after that…” She let out a heavy breath. “Until today.”
Fury pummeled Dylan as he listened to her calmly lay out her story for him. It wasn’t that she was unaffected by it all, but he could tell she’d compartmentalized it instead. He knew all about that because he did it too. Memories of what Casey went through were stashed away in that little rusty box at the back of his head, along with Sara’s death, his father’s murder, and every single thing he’d done in order to protect the pack and its secrecy.
“Jesus, Gia,” he said, running a hand through his hair and staring at her like she was a fucking miracle. She was a fucking miracle, though. Females didn’t usually survive a bite, and if they did, they certainly didn’t survive the bite fever and the first shift. She was so strong.
He flexed his hands into fists on top of his knees. Seeing Mitchell die was going to be the sweetest satisfaction. And that was one thing he knew for damn sure—he wasn’t going to leave the Rogue Wolves’ territory without making sure Mitchell wasn’t part of it anymore.
The Helheim and Alfheim wolves could come in and decimate all the others, but Mitchell’s black heart belonged to him.
Chapter Nine
Gia studied Dylan’s face as he tried to lock down his emotions. It was no use, though. They were playing across his face from his tight jaw and tense shoulders to the way his eyes flashed almost violently with his red-eyed wolf. Her own wolf stirred restlessly within her, and her usual reaction of running and hiding warred with a new emotion—one that was tethered to Dylan, even though she knew she should be scared.
He was a force.
Dominant…
Violent…
Yet, she knew unequivocally, he wouldn’t hurt her.
She was sure it was her wolf sending her that information. She’d always been better at assessing the characters and motivations of other members of her pack. Why would it be different now? Gia had learned long ago to trust the instincts of her wolf, and although the fragile human side of her head was terrified of all the things that could go wrong, her wolf was sure that Dylan would be their salvation, which was crazy considering she hardly knew him.
But she knew relationships could be forged in two ways—time and circumstance. And this crazy rescue plan of his firmly placed them into the circumstance pile.
There was a knock on the door, causing Dylan to leap from the bed with a curse. As he walked toward it, he ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up. She was unable to take her eyes off the way the muscles in his back rippled with each movement. His gait changed too. It became more of a swagger, and she realized he was donning his disguise once more. He opened the door, only leaving it wide enough to wedge his body in between it and the jamb.
“What the fuck do you want?” Dylan asked with his accent firmly back in place.
Sliding off the edge of the bed, Gia moved toward the door.
“Is she okay?” Ben demanded softly.
She shivered as the power in his voice rushed over her skin.
“Why are you here, beta? I have not yet had my fill of her.” Dylan’s voice was dark and menacing. It skated along her skin, and she worked hard to remind herself that this was not him—this was just a part he had to play.
Sucking in a breath, Gia approached Dylan and touched him between his shoulder blades. He tensed before peering at her, his wolf staring. She felt him like a physical presence, but like before, she knew he would not hurt her intentionally. Wordlessly, she begged him to let Ben come with them. If he was left behind, then her friend would be killed—if not for helping them, then for his sexual preference.
With a growl, Dylan grabbed the front of Ben’s shirt and hauled him into the room. With quick, efficient movements, Dylan slammed the door and threw Ben against it, pinning him in place with his forearm against his throat. Ben’s eyes bulged, darting to Gia, pleading with her to run.
“It’s okay, Ben,” she told him. “Dylan is here to rescue me… maybe rescue us both.”
Her beta’s eyes widened even further, jumping between her face and Dylan’s. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
“Dylan, please let him go. Let him speak.”
With a growl, Dylan did as she’d asked, first easing the pressure off his forearm, then dropping it. Ben stumbled forward a step, gasping for breath. Before he could catch it all, Gia slammed into Ben, hugging him fiercely. Wrapping his arms around her, he dropped a kiss onto the top of her head.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered against his chest. Inhaling deeply, she dedicated his scent to memory.
“Shift change. I’ve come to take the next six hours while Tanner rests. Lucas hasn’t returned home yet.”
Stalking further into the room, Dylan dropped into the chair. “I wouldn’t hold your breath on him making it. I incinerated his body about thirty hours ago.”
Under her hands, Ben’s whole body became rigid, and she was sure there would be a physical fight. “Good. One less fucker to worry about.”
The smile Dylan gave him was frightening in its darkness.
“Your name isn’t Diego?” Ben asked.
She was still wrapped around him, but as soon as she let go and stepped away, Ben walked farther into the room.
“Dylan.”
“And what pack are you from, Dylan?”
Dylan shook his head. “No.”
Ben frowned. “What do you mean, no?”
“I’m not telling you anything more than my name right now. Once I get you both out of this fucking nightmare, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
The tension between the two males was thick in the air, and to break it, Gia said to Ben, “Layla made it. She’s okay.”
His head jerked around. “What? How do you know? Did you—”
“I spoke to her,” she confirmed. “She’s happy. She’s mated, in fact.”
“Mated? To who and how? She’s been gone less than a week.”
“To my brother,” Dylan answered, stretching out his legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankle. “She mated my brother.”
“She went to your pack?” Ben asked. “Helheim?”
Dylan remained silent, studying Ben with an intensity Gia was beginning to recognize. He was waging war within himself, trying to decide whether to pick up the fight or simply let it go. She hadn’t seen it before, had she
? The strength in him. As she watched him, a new feeling began to stir. Sure, he was her savior in more ways than one, but this feeling was something more—something deeper.
Even though it had only been a matter of hours, she trusted this male to do what he said he would.
Because it was right.
Because he kept his word.
Because he was honorable.
“Are you getting her out of here?” Ben asked.
“He’s getting us both out of here,” Gia said. “Isn’t that right, Dylan?”
Dylan’s eyes flashed with annoyance, but he nodded. “That’s right, and if Tanner is really gone, now is the time to move.”
Chapter Ten
Dylan squeezed his hands into fists a few times to fight the urge to punch something. Having Ben here was setting off all his fucking alarms. He hated how easily Gia had gone to the other male, had hugged and touched him. He hated it even more that Ben had kissed her. Fuck. He hadn’t had this sense of jealousy and ownership that was surging through his body like a tsunami wave on the warpath before. He had to get his emotions locked down tight. Otherwise, shit was going to get messy.
He looked up when Gia came back into the room, struggling to carry the weight of her bag. Of course, that fuck Ben swooped in and took it from her before Dylan could act, but he was cool with that. He’d rather have both hands free to fight than be tangled up with luggage.
“I’m going to get changed. Are you ready to leave?” he asked them both, moving to his own duffels. He pulled out a pair of black BDUs and a black t-shirt, then zipped things up. Moving to the bathroom, he quickly got changed then returned to arm up. Before he walked back out there, he dialed his brother’s number.
“I’ve got them both. We’re leaving as soon as I get off the phone with you.”
The Helheim Wolf Pack Novellas: The Complete Collection Page 19
