The Alpha's Mark

by Elliott, Jaime

  She dug her nails into his arm, drawing blood, but she –

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t … think. Couldn’t think.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT TIME she really regained awareness, she blinked hard and groaned. Her head pounded, like someone was driving a knife into both of her temples. She opened her eyes into slits and tried to squint around the room; even the dim light hurt. She shifted, her face pressed to a damp cement floor. The room was chilled, too cold for her skin without fur.

  When she thought about shifting, she became aware of two things. First, her arms were pulled behind her back, tied together tightly around her upper arms, elbows, wrists. There was no wiggling out of it. Second, she couldn’t shift like this. The ties wouldn’t come off, and she’d dislocate her shoulders, and she’d be in even worse shape. She shoved down the fear that wanted to flood her, thick and choking. She didn’t have time for that. No fear. No panic.

  Okay, no shifting. She took a deep breath and ground her forehead to the floor in an effort to focus. Thinking was hard. Groggy and slow, thoughts slipping into her head like molasses. She tried to sort through and find the most pressing thought in her mind.

  Asher was going to be worried.

  No. She squeezed her eyes shut. That wasn’t helpful right now.

  Where was she?

  She could figure that one out. She drew herself in and focused on her senses. Now paying attention, she could hear the faint creek of floorboards above her and every once in a while, the faint murmur of a deep voice. All the sound was coming from above her, which felt like a basement. Combined with the cement floor and the cold, seeping into her bones, it felt right. She inhaled, tasting the air over her tongue. Her sense of smell wasn’t nearly as strong now as it was when she was a wolf, but it was still pretty strong.

  The scent of the place was suddenly, startlingly familiar.

  She’d lived here.

  This was the basement of the home that she’d shared with Rainer. She felt nothing but shock for a few seconds, processing it slower than usual. How had she gotten here? Rainer … she was positive he was dead. She could see it when she closed her eyes.

  She didn’t want to be back here.

  Her stomach rolled and she gasped before twisting her body so she could retch, bringing up nothing from her empty stomach, but still heaving painfully. Maybe she should stop thinking about her senses, scents and thoughts jamming up her head. Breathing hard, she pressed closer to the cold cement, which felt good against her aching head.

  “Fuck,” she whispered. She was shaking now, and she wasn’t sure if it was an effect of whatever they’d drugged her with, or fear, or cold. Maybe it was a combination of all three.

  She bit her lip, hard, and tried to bring herself under control. She was going to scare Asher.

  And that thought somehow both calmed her and scared her at the same time. It was the immediate, warm comfort when she thought of Asher. And then it was the surety that she was never going to see him again, and despair. If Rainer had found her again and brought her home, there was no getting out of this. He was never going to let her go.

  The metallic grinding of a lock in a door, and then the heavy slide of a door opening made her jump, gasping as she pulled her shoulders.

  “Oh, she’s awake. Good.” Footsteps thumping down the stairs, heavy boots. That voice. She knew that voice. It wasn’t Rainer. The footsteps stopped just inches from her face, and she looked up at the man. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” he asked. “Tenacious little shit. I told my brother not to bother with you. That you’d just cause trouble.” He laughed, a mean sound. “Didn’t think it would be me you caused trouble for.” She watched his lips stretch over his teeth in a smile. “You were always so good for me.”

  The chilling fear felt distant now in the wake of the rage that ignited in her chest. “Damien,” she said, hardly recognizing her voice.

  “Hi, sweetheart. I can’t really say that it’s good to see you.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” she said, her voice hard, eyes flinty. “Let me go.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Things were beginning to clarify for Eira. “You killed him,” she said. “You killed your brother.” She was supposed to be dead, too, but somehow she’d gotten away.

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re here for revenge,” he said. “Is that why you were wandering the forest? Coming to find me and make me pay?”

  Honestly, that thought hadn’t even occurred to her. If she had loved Rainer, or been happy with him, perhaps. But no, the thought of revenge hadn’t been a factor in anything. “No,” she said honestly.

  Damien was tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair and dark eyes. He was younger than Rainer, but still significantly older than her, and he was the meaner of the two. He made a dismissive sound, like he hadn’t really cared about her answer. “My thought at first was good, we can finish the job.” He smiled at her. “Right? You were supposed to be dead. But now the talk is that Rainer’s bitch killed him. And that’s pretty convenient for me,” he said. “Except that you were a loose end.”

  And she wasn’t a loose end any more. She closed her eyes. “You’re not going to kill me,” she said.

  “I’m going to let the pack carry out justice as they see fit,” he agreed. “People like something to rally behind. And right now, the pack can rally behind me. I hunted down my brother’s murderer relentlessly, and brought her here to face justice. All while stepping up as Alpha and taking care of my pack.” He put his hand to his chest and looked sympathetic. “It’s tragic.”

  Cold dread and resolution filled her. Damien knew exactly how to frame everything so that she was the Alpha-killer, and the pack would play directly into his hand.

  She was going to die.

  “This is insane, Damien,” she said helplessly.

  “What’s insane about it?” Damien asked. “I’m Alpha of the pack. I’m living where he was. What was his is now mine.” He spread his hands. “From where I’m standing, it looks pretty good. And you’ve just cleaned up the loose ends. I can hand the pack justice for my brother. Easy. Neat.”

  “I’m not a loose end,” she snapped.

  “You’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t have been a consideration at all.”

  And that was what she was to him. Not even something to be considered while plotting his brother’s murder.

  He left again, footsteps heavy in the silence. After he’d gone, she rolled up onto her knees, and shuffled forward. It was dark, but there was enough light to see. He must have cleared the basement out before they’d brought her down here, because where it used to be cluttered with enough sharp things that she could have broken the bindings, it was now empty.

  She sat back and closed her eyes, still feeling nauseous and aching. “Fuck,” she said quietly.

  The empty room said nothing back.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW how long Damien left her alone for. She felt a little bit better, whatever drugs having cleared her system, but instead of groggy and sick, she just felt awake and anxious.

  And angry.

  It was a directionless anger, flooding through her and escaping in a chewed-bloody lip and restless legs, but there was not actual outlet for it.

  It could have been a day later when Damien came back. It probably wasn’t. Hours, though. He didn’t say anything to her, just grabbed her by the upper arm and hauled her up.

  She tried to bite him, but he twisted away and grabbed her hair so she couldn’t turn to bite him. “Fucking feral little bitch,” he muttered as he steered her through the house. It didn’t take long for her to figure out where they were going. He dumped her in the living room and he threw her to her knees, skidding on the threadbare carpet. She gasped as he manhandled her and she found herself tied to the leg of the marble-topped table, too heavy for her to lift.

  Damn it.

  “Damien, what are you doin
g?” she demanded, flicking her head to get the hair out of her face. There were others in the room; she’d been able to scent them immediately. Three others. One was Thomas, the local enforcement of the pack. A cop for all intents and purposes, but he reported to the Alpha. He’d always given her a weird feeling, but he hadn’t ever done anything outright awful to her knowledge. The other two, she didn’t know. Their faces were recognizable as friends who hung around Damien, but she’d never made an effort to acquaint herself with his friend group.

  Damien didn’t answer her. Didn’t even look at her.

  “Here, Tom, I told you I found her,” he said, kicking at her. She jerked her legs away and glared at him viciously. “Been hiding out in the woods the whole time.”

  Tomas leaned back, regarding her from above. “Yeah, you did.”

  She bared her teeth, unable to help the response, feeling like a caged animal.

  One of the others laughed. “She looks like a killer, huh?”

  “You can’t do this,” she said.

  Again, Damien ignored her. He was going to disregard her, pretend she was nothing more than dirt.

  “What are you thinking?” Tom asked.

  Damien shrugged. “Is a public execution too medieval?” he asked.

  “She did kill your dear brother,” one of the others said.

  “I think they could go for it,” the second one said.

  Eira took a deep breath. No. She wasn’t going to let this happen. She didn’t know how she was going to get out of here, but she knew that she wasn’t going to let this be her end. She had fought when Damien had killed Rainer, she’d gotten away, and she refused to believe that this was going to be how it ended.

  Besides, she had to think about Asher, now. There was no dying.

  The four of them talked for a long time. Time dragged on. Her sense of time may have still been messed up, but it seemed to crawl by. Her hands had moved past pained, to numb, and now she couldn’t feel anything, tied as they were. They’d long since stopped talking about anything interesting, moving on to drinking beer and chatting idly. After a while, Thomas left, and then Damien went upstairs, leaving her with just the two she didn’t know.

  She put her head down on the carpet and closed her eyes, let her senses warn her if there was any new immediate danger. She focused on her resolution, on the calm feeling of acceptance.

  She was going to kill Damien.

  Then she really would be a murderer after all. She wondered if Asher would care. It was different than before, when she may or may not have killed Rainer in self-defense. This was pre-meditated. She was going to plan this.

  She thought that, as long as she was alive and home, Asher might not care too much.

  That was awful. Was that awful? She knew she didn’t care, but well, she was a little more damaged than Asher. Being bonded to a murderer isn’t what he deserved, and she didn’t want to do that to him. But, the resolution had settled into her bones, and she knew what she had to do.

  She knew where the knives were, in the kitchen.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to reach for that small window in the back of her mind, wanting to check on Asher. She could sense that it was there, he was present and alive, but she couldn’t tell anything beyond that.

  On an inhale, she caught a scent, faint, but growing stronger.

  Smoke?

  A different kind of smoke than the sort that came from a hearth. This was heavy and acrid, invading her nose. What was on fire? It took a few more minutes for either of the others to notice the smoke and say anything, and by that time, Eira was actually becoming worried.

  What was on fire?

  If it was the forest, that would spread so quickly, that would be devastating, not only for Blackwater but for Woodhaven. It could destroy everything, especially if it got too close to the houses –

  The house seemed to shudder under her, and she realized the floor underneath the carpet was hot.

  The house was on fire.

  The other two seemed to realize it at the same time. One jumped up and went to the door, hissing as he grabbed the handle and wrenched open the door. Thick, black smoke barreled into the room, immediately flooding it with an acrid haze. They both immediately pulled their shirts up to cover their faces and made for the door.

  Eira was stuck there.

  This wasn’t part of the plan. She wrenched at her bindings, causing a sharp stab of pain into her shoulders, but they didn’t give, and the table didn’t move. She was breathing too fast, and her chest hurt, and this was not how she was going to die.

  Damien was in his bedroom. The master bedroom. What used to be hers and Rainer’s. The smoke probably hadn’t reached him yet.

  She twisted her hands as best she could with her limited range of motion and tried wrenching on the ties again. It wasn’t working. Nothing was working – and then someone was leaning over her, shoving her forward so that they could reach the ties. With a sudden release of pressure, the tie binding her to the table released, and she gasped. She twisted to see who it was and tried to swallow down a well of disappointment.

  She didn’t know why she expected Asher, but it wasn’t him. It was one of the friends of Damien’s that she didn’t know. So, willing to publicly lynch her, but not as willing to leave her tied up to die alone in a fire. Great. He was frowning, but he was letting her free, so she let him grab her arms again and –

  The release of the ties around her arms felt amazing for only a few seconds. By the time he’d gotten to the ties around her wrists, which were stained with blood from where she’d rubbed them raw, the blood was beginning to return to her arms, and it hurt.

  He released her and stood up, not giving her a backward glance.

  She took another few seconds to get to her feet, feeling shaky with the pain and sudden return of sensation. The urgency wasn’t lost on her, though. She couldn’t breathe. The thick smoke in the room made her eyes water, but she took a second to gather herself and figure out how to get out. Away.

  Going out the back was the best option. It was even hotter in the hallway, the smoke thicker. She ducked her head down and tried to cover her nose and mouth with her arm, hiding her face in the crook of her elbow. She closed her streaming eyes and felt along the wall, guiding herself by memory, her feet stumbling too fast. The wall was hot, her fingers barely grazing the surface before skittering away. Was this the doorway to the kitchen now, or was it the hall? It was too hazy to see, and she couldn’t tell.

  Someone grabbed her with a strong grip on her upper arms, and she couldn’t help it, she screamed.

  Mo’s voice cut through the smoke and panic. “It’s okay! It’s okay, Eira, it’s okay!”

  “Morgan, oh my god!” She clutched him with both hands, and he was already dragging her forward. She trusted that he knew where he was going better than she did, disoriented by the smoke and pain.

  Stepping out the back door was like jumping into a lake. It felt like a rush, and maybe it was just the clean air in her lungs, and maybe it was seeing Mo, because Mo meant Asher. Asher was here.

  And, it took a few seconds for her head to catch up to everything else, to process past the panic, but suddenly, like the clean oxygen had fed it, her rage burst up in her chest.

  It hit her like a ton of bricks, and it caught her by surprise, but it was a clarifying rage. Mo pulled her forward, but she dug her heels in. “Eira,” he said, turning back. “What are you—”

  “I have to go back,” she told him firmly.

  “What?” he cried. “No.”

  “I have to do something,” she said. His hands didn’t release her, but she pulled herself out of his grip, and he didn’t fight her too hard.

  Eira ran back into the fire.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE FLAMES SEEMED to have gained intensity in just those few seconds she had been outside. She ran back inside and turned into the kitchen, fumbling to find the right drawer by feel alone. Everything was exactly how she’d left it – had
that only been days ago? – leaving everything with a wildly surreal feeling of familiarity as it burned. Her hands danced over handles until – she pulled the drawer open.

  She wrapped her hand around the handle of a boning knife. A knife she knew, a long metal blade, one that she knew she’d kept sharp. She wrapped her fingers around the handle, holding the butt of the grip toward herself, blade jutting down toward her elbow.

  She knew how to hold knives like this, though they were usually smaller. She wasn’t sure if her hands were still numb and unresponsive from the ties, or if it was just unwieldy to hold a knife so large. She hoped the pain in her hands would go away.

  Damien was still in their bedroom. She hadn’t seen or heard him come out, which wouldn’t be surprising if no one had thought to tell him. If he was asleep, he might not even have noticed.

  Their bedroom. Her lips curled derisively. Maybe this was a kind of poetic justice. Maybe the bastard deserved to burn to death.

  But no, there was a part of her, some dark, hidden part that she didn’t want to address, that wanted to be the one to do this. It seemed like there was some kind of equity in the idea. That he’d done this to her, he’d taken her life and slashed it open, left her with nothing. He’d ruined her life like this, and she would take his.

  No matter that she hadn’t had very much of a life to begin with. No matter that Damien had been her nightmare anyway, even before this. No matter that she had something to walk out to, now.

  She could hear Damien in the bedroom. The smoke was clearer up here and, like she’d thought, he was only just beginning to realize that there was a problem. She reached out for the handle – it wasn’t hot – and let herself in. Damien turned to look at her from where he stood by the window.

  “You bitch!” he yelled. “You did this!”

  Oh he was furious. She could tell that he’d realized the extent of the damage that the fire was doing; the house was done. He’d been thinking about going out the window. He came toward her as if he could take out his rage on her, as if that would help. She felt a blinding flash of anger and instead of caging back against the wall, she surged forward to meet him, adrenaline driving her, and the knife found a home in the meat of his shoulder.