“Samantha!” he snarled as everything went red and he struggled to break the chains, but they wouldn’t fucking break. “Samantha!” he screamed, trying to get to her, but he couldn’t reach her.
He couldn’t fucking reach her!
“Did you miss me?” the voice that had haunted every single minute that he’d spent in that tomb said, drawing his attention to find a beautiful woman with flawless pale skin, perfect hair and cold blue eyes that he’d once foolishly convinced himself were filled with warmth watching him.
He’d been such a fool.
“Fucking bitch,” Trace bit out, keeping his eyes locked on her even as he continued struggling to get to his wife.
“Is that really any way to greet an old friend?” Mary asked with what he’d once thought was an adorable pout as Trace focused his attention back on his wife, trying not to panic as he searched for the source of the blood pooling around her and felt his stomach drop when he found it.
Oh, god…
He ignored the terror threatening to tear him apart as he slowly inhaled, taking in her scent and praying that they hadn’t-
“Don’t worry. We didn’t give her any blood. We just needed her to give you a reason to leave the house. Besides, we have something else planned for her,” Mary said as Trace ignored her, knowing better than to trust the bitch in front of him. He closed his eyes and slowly inhaled, taking in her scent and did it again, needing to be sure and once he was, he opened his eyes and stared down at his beautiful wife.
Swallowing hard, he looked to his left to find Kale and a shifter that he didn’t know chained to the wall in another cell with Nathan barely hanging onto consciousness next to them, his eyes locked on his sister before his gaze shifted to Trace.
“Get her out of here,” the Sentinel bit out.
Nodding once, Trace shifted his gaze to the rest of the cellar, taking in the vampires, what he thought might be demons, and shifters guarding the cells and found his attention drawn to the small female struggling to stand back up and when she did-
“Fucking look at me, Indie!” came the shouted demand that had Trace taking his eyes off the woman that was struggling to bite back a sob as a flat board was brought down across her back and found himself watching as the man in the other cell fought against his chains to get to her.
“Father?” Trace said, unable to believe his eyes as he moved to stand up only to curse when he remembered the chains stopping him. For a moment, he sat there, content to stare at the man that he never thought he’d see again, until even that wasn’t enough, and he found himself saying the words that he’d been waiting three and a half centuries to say to his father.
“I’m sorry.”
Chapter 42
She wasn’t sure if it was the stabbing pain in her leg or the pounding noise that was making her head hurt that woke her up, but once she opened her eyes, Samantha wished that she hadn’t.
Swallowing hard, she found herself watching in horror as a man carried a small, unconscious woman over to one of those large hard plastic kiddy pools that she used to play in with Nathan when they were little as several men dumped bags of ice in it and-
Oh, god…
Dropped the small woman in the pool and held her underwater.
“Don’t fucking do this!” someone yelled as Samantha struggled to get up only to realize that her muscles wouldn’t listen.
“Stop,” she barely managed above a whisper as she was forced to close her eyes as her head started to spin and mumbled, “Please, stop,” as the sounds of the small woman gasping for air followed her into oblivion.
*-*-*-*
“Get her out of that fucking cell!” she heard Nathan yell the next time she opened her eyes.
For a moment, Samantha laid there with the side of her face pressed against the cool metal floor, numbly watching as Trace grabbed hold of a set of chains secured to the thick metal cuffs wrapped around his wrists and roared as he tried to tear them out of the wall only to hear a woman say in a taunting voice, “I think Daddy had those reinforced.”
Blinking, Samantha slowly turned her head to find a small woman curled up in a ball in the cell next to them while the man chained to the wall seemed to be losing his mind, struggling to break free to get to her. Frowning, she found herself looking for the source of the pounding and felt her stomach drop when a terrifyingly familiar scene played out in front of her eyes.
Across from her, several large men were tearing apart the wall, shoving chunks of cement and rocks aside as others continued to carry bags of cement into the basement and stack them against the wall next to a large wooden mallet. For several minutes, Samantha watched as they worked before she turned her head to find Trace sitting there, watching helplessly as they dug a new tomb.
She opened her mouth to say his name only to have him cut her off when he said, “I’m not going to change you.”
“W-what?” she asked, trying to make sense out of what he was saying.
“I’m not going to change you, Samantha,” he said more firmly.
“You fucking asshole!” Nathan shouted from somewhere nearby, letting her know that he was okay.
At least for the moment.
“I’m not going to change you,” Trace said more firmly as he turned his head and met her gaze.
“We need to make it wider so that we can fit them both in there,” one of the men said as Trace’s grip tightened around the chains as he watched her, looking like he wanted to say more, but he’d said enough.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes,” she answered hollowly.
They were going to put her in that hole with Trace and she was going to die. He wasn’t going to change her, which meant that she wasn’t going to spend eternity dying of suffocation, starvation, and forced to try to claw her way free as she watched her body waste away.
But he would.
*-*-*-*
He wasn’t going to change her.
He was going to rip her throat out and shove her in that fucking hole, Trace decided as he watched the bitch standing in the corner, tapping her fingers on her phone, looking bored before he shifted his gaze to the small woman who’d been forced to sit in ice-cold water until her lips had turned blue and she’d finally stopped trembling.
She hadn’t said a word while they’d beaten her until she’d passed out or when they’d forced her to sit in ice-cold water for hours, or even when they’d dragged her into the cell, but she was talking now.
“P-p-please don’t,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut as her body continued to tremble.
“You’re free to go,” Mary said, not bothering to look up from her phone.
“Go!” his father snapped, but she simply shook her head and curled back into herself as Trace glanced from her to the cell door they’d opened a few minutes ago with the news that she was free to go.
“Are you sure?” Mary asked, finally looking up from her phone.
Instead of answering, the small woman simply laid there, biting her lip as her heart raced, letting him know that she was fucking terrified. His gaze shifted to his father briefly before he forced himself to look away. His father had barely looked at him since he’d apologized, but that was to be expected, Trace thought as he-
“You never thanked me,” Mary pointed out as she walked past his cell while he struggled not to look at his wife, knowing that it would break him if he did.
He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her.
“Why would I thank you?” he asked, staring straight ahead at that tomb that they wouldn’t be able to get him in unless they weakened him.
He didn’t think that they’d shoot him in the heart again, not when that meant that he would miss everything and there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that she wanted him to watch as they buried him alive. Why else would she have given him blood to wake him when it would have been easier to keep him unconscious?
She didn’t want him to miss anything.
She wanted to make sure that he suffered and what better way to do that than to force him to-
“Because you would have died if it hadn’t been for me,” Mary said, cutting into his thoughts with a bored sigh.
“I hit my immortality. It had nothing to do with you,” Trace bit out angrily as he took in the shifters in the room, noting that they weren’t Alphas and neither were the ones that he could sense upstairs or the ones surrounding the house. The Alphas that he’d sensed earlier had left a long time ago and so had the vampires and demons, which made him wonder what she was up to. She had two Alphas, a vampire, a Sentinel, and a Pyte locked up that she wouldn’t be able to handle on her own, so why send away the only ones strong enough to protect her?
“True,” Mary conceded with a nod. “But if I hadn’t pulled the rock free, you would have suffocated before you reached your immortality.”
When his eyes shot back to her, she shrugged it off. “They measured you for the hole, but by the time that they stuck your body in there, you wouldn’t fit. When they pulled you back out, I’d noticed that your sleeves were too short for your arms. I considered telling them, but I wanted to see what would happen.”
“You…fucking…bitch,” his father bit out coldly as Trace sat there unable to believe what he was hearing.
“I was curious,” she said, shrugging it off. “I’d asked my father about you and he explained what you were. So, when I realized that you’d slipped into your immortality, I decided to see what would happen. I knew that they wouldn’t be able to leave anyone behind to make sure that the rocks set correctly, not with the sun setting and your father coming to look for you.”
“So, when the others went back to camp, I pulled one of the stones loose so that you could breathe. They were holding off on building the house until fall, so I knew that I had some time before anyone found you. I wasn’t able to get back for a few weeks, but by then, you’d changed and I knew that my father was right. I was able to sneak away from camp a few more times before we had to leave for good. I didn’t want you to follow us, so I put the stone back and sealed it.”
“You knew that he was alive and you left him in there?” Trace heard his wife whisper, sounding horrified, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the woman that had made sure that he’d fucking suffered.
“Yes.”
“Why was he put in that tomb in the first place? What did he do to deserve that?” his wife demanded, asking the one question that he’d wanted to know since he woke up in that tomb.
“Because he’s a leech,” Mary said, sounding unconcerned as Trace slowly allowed the rage that used to consume him to take over as he watched the bitch.
“He was a child!”
“He was a monster who didn’t deserve to live!” Mary snapped back.
“You sent those men to check knowing that he was still alive,” Samantha bit out angrily as everything suddenly made perfect sense to him.
She’d fucking used him.
“We’re not allowed to kill our mates and I needed him gone. He was holding the Pack back and that just wasn’t something that I could allow,” Mary explained as she glanced back to see how the men were making out with that hole.
“You sick fucking bitch,” he heard Nathan weakly mutter.
“That explains it then,” Kale managed to get out on a pained groan.
“Explains what?” Trace asked, watching her every move.
“She’s dying.”
Chapter 43
“Shifters aren’t allowed to hurt their mates directly or indirectly,” the man chained to the wall next to her brother managed to get out as his eyes turned silver.
“I was hoping that I’d found a loophole, but here we are,” the woman that had destroyed Trace’s life said as Samantha laid there, noting the strain around the woman’s bloodshot eyes, her pale skin, the expensively tailored clothes that didn’t quite fit, and realized that she was sick.
“How long have you been planning this?” Ethan, and she was assuming that the man in the other cell was Trace’s father, asked as Samantha glanced around the cellar, noting that there were fewer men in here than before.
“A little over twenty-five years.”
“Is that why you hid her?” Ethan asked, making the woman who was planning on killing them frown in confusion as Samantha raised her head so that she was looking at the small woman curled up on her side only a few feet away from that open door that she should have used when she had the chance.
“Hid who?”
“Don’t play fucking games with me. What is she?” Ethan snapped, drawing her attention.
“Human,” the woman announced with glee as Ethan sat there, staring at the small woman curled up in his cell as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
“I needed a way to keep you distracted. We found an unwanted baby, put her up in a house with the Pack members that were holding us back and made sure that you found out about her so that we could keep you busy for a while,” the woman admitted as Samantha laid her head back down, wondering why her leg didn’t hurt anymore. In fact, nothing hurt anymore, but she was cold, really cold, she thought as she curled into herself.
“Why did you grab us?” she heard someone ask as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
“I always have a backup plan. I wasn’t sure if he’d changed her or not, and if he had, then I was going to have to go with Plan B and see if stealing Alpha blood would be enough,” the woman explained as Samantha found herself watching Trace.
She didn’t want him in that wall.
She didn’t want him going through that hell again.
She didn’t want him to be all alone.
She didn’t want him to suffer.
She didn’t want…she didn’t want…
She wanted him.
She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, wanted to show him all the things that he’d never seen before, and Samantha wanted…
She just wanted him to be happy and have a chance to do all those things that he never got to do.
“What about me? Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” she heard her brother ask.
“I need you for something else.”
“And what’s that?”
“I need you to find your mate so that I can kill the bitch.”
*-*-*-*
“I will fucking kill you!” Nathan roared, fighting against his chains as Trace watched the shifters carrying more bags down to the basement, looking for a way to break the fucking chains and get his wife far away from here.
“You owe me,” the bitch that was out of her mind said.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Trace said, chuckling without humor as he sat there, feeling like the fool that his father once called him.
If he’d changed her and shoved her in that wall…
He would have gotten his revenge, would have relished in the knowledge that she was suffering the way that he had, but then he would have also worried that she would get out one day and…
He didn’t even want to think about what she could have done. It had been a child’s revenge, something that he should have realized a long time ago and let go. It was time to let go, Trace realized as he watched her, noting the hard set of her jaw, the pained expression around her eyes, and listened to the sound of her blood slowly making its way through her body and realized that she was getting exactly what she deserved.
She didn’t matter.
Not anymore, Trace realized as he focused on the only thing that should have mattered to him. He never should have stayed here. He should have taken his wife and got as far away from here as-
“Trace?” Samantha whispered as she closed her eyes and released a shaky breath before she opened her beautiful brown eyes and…
“I love you.”
“Samantha, I-”
“I love you, Trace, and I want you to go. Get everyone out of here and go somewhere safe. I don’t want this for you, Trace. I don’t…I don’t
want this for you,” Samantha said as the first tear rolled down her face.
“Please don’t do this, Samantha. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t go,” he said, straining against the chains that wouldn’t fucking give! “Goddamnit, Samantha, I love you!”
“I love you, too.”
“Samantha, I’m not leaving without you!” he bit out because she was going to be fine. He was going to take care of her and make sure that she knew how much he loved her. He was going to live the rest of his life with her, raising little girls who cheated at board games and little boys who adored their mother.
They were going to live.
They were going to fucking live!
No one was going to take that away from them.
“Trace, I-”
“Don’t,” he bit out as everything went red.
A broken sob tore at his heart as she mumbled, “Please, Trace. Please just leave. Just…leave…”
“Don’t you fucking die on me, Sammie!” Nathan yelled from his cell where he was struggling against his chains.
“P-please…” Samantha said as her eyes slowly slid shut and-
“Samantha?” Trace said, licking his lips nervously as he watched her, unable to breathe as he waited for to take her next breath and-
“Samantha!”
Chapter 44
“Samantha!” came the heartbroken plea that had Indie laying there, feeling like her own heart was breaking.
“Samantha!” Trace roared, his eyes bright red as he struggled against his chains to get to the woman that had stopped breathing.
Indie heard the other man screaming for Samantha, begging her to open her eyes, but she didn’t move. She didn’t open her eyes or take another breath. Not when Trace screamed her name and not when the woman that she’d been raised to fear opened their cell door and walked inside.
“It’s not too late,” Mary said with a smug smile as she held up a small key as the two men that had been digging the wall joined her, waiting to do what they were told, which was probably to get her out of there as soon as she got what she wanted.
“Don’t do it, Trace,” Ethan said, “Don’t fucking do it!”
Tall, Dark & Furious (A Pyte/Sentinel Novel Book 6) Page 25
