I should have tried to escape earlier, she thought. As a human with a limited sense of smell, she would never be able to find her way back out of the caves. As a wolf, she wouldn’t be able to manage Charlotte.
Stupid, Phoebe, stupid.
Finally, Liam ordered a stop and stepped in front of her to go into a cave slightly to her right. He shone the light around and then gestured for her to follow him in.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” she said quietly, looking around.
He placed his lantern on the ground and then moved around the cave to light four more. The entire cave was about the size of her bedroom in her apartment, though it had less level floor and huge rocks to contend with. Toward one side of the cave, stalactites dripped down into a small pond that fed into cracks in the cave wall.
Of course. Echo Falls. He’s probably brought us somewhere near them.
She thanked whatever divine power was listening that she didn’t have claustrophobia which would have turned this nightmare turn into a complete hell. But she didn’t underestimate Liam in the least; he’d do his best to push things well beyond a boring old nightmare.
After a bit of searching and peering into the shadows, she found a level enough section of ground in front of a rock so she could rest her feet and let Charlotte rest. She reached around and felt her head as tenderly as she could. At least it wasn’t bleeding. She had that much. But what had hit her?
She remembered the ringing phone and trying to grab it… Mia. Mia hadn’t gone for the phone; she’d stepped behind her and…
She shook her head. She couldn’t remember anything beyond that, but she’d be willing to bet that Mia had hit her with the kettle. Scum piece of a woman. When she did get out of this, she would make sure Mia regretted even having the thought of hurting her or Charlotte.
I wonder if anyone suspects her.
“It didn’t take you long to start screwing someone else,” she said, watching Liam methodically clean his crossbow. It shouldn’t have stung, and she knew she shouldn’t have let him know it stung. But it came down to a matter of pride. He’d tried to kill her, his girlfriend at the time, for being a werewolf. Then he’d shacked up with another werewolf. With Mia, of all werewolves.
“A man has his needs,” he said.
“So does a wolf.”
He looked up and cocked his head to one side, as if he wanted to say something. But he didn’t and went back to cleaning.
“How’d you get her to do it?”
“Do what?” he asked, a tinge of annoyance rising in his voice.
“Get Mia to betray her pack.”
“That was simple.” He looked at her. “She wanted outsiders dead.”
A cold chill ran down her spine and she held Charlotte closer to her chest.
Please let me have turned on the recorder. Please let Aidan find the letter soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Here,” Cinder said, pointing to a dirt road ahead.
Aidan pulled into yet another one of the dirt roads heading into the mountains and dropped off three werewolves before pulling back onto the main road. He would have liked to have spread the pack out even more, but he didn’t dare when one group faced the possibility of finding the Hunter. Three might not even be enough, but at least one of them could let out a howl if it came to a fight.
He passed Will, who was in the process of dropping off another trio of werewolves, and flashed his lights to signal they would be pulling into the next path. He, Will and others had been leap-frogging their way down the highway at Axel and Cinder’s directions, stopping at every dirt road to drop off groups to search. They’d each been given one piece of Charlotte’s clothing and one piece of Phoebe’s clothing to work with. The rest of the pack would be meeting at their usual place, the familiarity of the territory making it easier to work with fewer wolves in a larger area.
That had been a small blessing in amongst all the bad news. After re-examining the murder cases and researching the surrounding area, Axel and Cinder had set a narrowed area where they felt sure the Hunter would be hiding.
The wait for sunset had been mental hell on the whole pack but especially on Elle. She had long since stopped crying and gone into a state of emotional lockdown. Even as her pack leader, Aidan hadn’t dared to suggest she stay behind at the house to wait while the rest of the pack searched. Just the thought floating around in his mind while he looked at her had earned him one of her worst glares. She rode with Will and Axel.
Squished between Aidan and Cinder in the front of the truck, Mia sulked and moaned as she tried to get comfortable with her hands still taped together behind her back. She had been shuffled from pack member to pack member as they arranged for the larger search of the area around the falls. She’d stubbornly said nothing until Aidan had threatened letting her ride with Will. Then she confirmed that they had the right idea with searching around the falls but said nothing more.
He could barely bring himself to look at her. Every time he did his mind filled with the image of the kettle swinging around to connect with the back of Phoebe’s head before she slumped to the floor. He clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white and his stomach clenched painfully.
I’ll find you Phoebe. Just hold on.
He parked the truck, turned it off and then got out to walk over to the other door. Cinder had already gotten out and walked over to Axel. As Aidan helped Mia get out to face the remaining pack members he could feel her shivering. He frowned, surprised at the degree of sympathy he felt for her. She could have been desperate or the Hunter had threatened her. Surely only those kind of circumstances could cause a wolf to betray her pack.
As she stepped onto the ground, she met his gaze. Then she spit in his face.
He wiped off his face before closing the door. Then he turned toward her and said quietly, “No matter what happens to you from this point on – no matter what – consider yourself without the protection of this pack.”
She stared at him until he took her upper arm and guided her over to where the others stood. Having already heard more than enough, the rest of the pack glared at her, some going so far as to snap and snarl at her. Aidan urged her to stand in front of the group.
“Let’s get straight to the point. What do you know, Mia?” Aidan asked, crossing his arms across his chest. “You need to help us. For Charlotte’s sake.”
“What do I get out of it?”
“I won’t kill you,” Elle said, fixing her with an icy stare.
Mia looked a little paler in the fading light and took a deep, shaky breath. But she still said nothing, raising her chin in defiance.
Will stepped forward, his face an ugly snarl. He reached out and no doubt would have thrown her to the ground if a couple of the pack members hadn’t stepped in to hold him back.
“Where is the Hunter? Where is he?” he yelled, fighting against those holding him back. “He has my daughter!”
She stepped back and would have fallen had Aidan not pushed her upright.
“Okay!” she said. “Alright. But nobody touches me. Nobody! Not a single scratch.” She looked around the group until she had everyone’s grudging nods. “I already told you; I don’t know where he is. But I do know he has a crossbow with silver bolts for it. He also has silver spray like pepper spray, only bigger.”
“Any guns?” someone asked.
“No.” She fidgeted. “He doesn’t like guns. He’s a traditionalist.”
“Anything else?” Aidan asked.
“I told you all I know,” she said with all the venom she could muster. Then she sighed. “He’s holed up in some cave around here with the bitch and the kid.”
Aidan resisted the urge to say or do anything he’d regret later. Will shook free of the pack and stalked toward his car.
“Let’s go,” Aidan said. “We need to stick to the falls and the surrounding caves as close as we can. If he’s used another route, one of the other groups will find him and let
us know. Let’s start searching.”
“What do we do with her?” a woman asked and pointed to Mia.
“Do with me?” Mia asked. “Do with me? I can tell you what to do with me, you worthless -”
“Mia!” Aidan snapped.
“We’re wasting time,” Elle said.
Suddenly Will walked up behind Mia and placed a cloth over her mouth and nose. As she squirmed and slowly sank to the ground, he said, “Mia Ellis, you are under arrest for assisting in the kidnapping of Charlotte Peterson and Phoebe Martin. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
Once she had been fully knocked out, Aidan and the other pack members still in human form stared at Will. A few of the wolves looked between their leader and his second, whining with uncertainty.
“We don’t have time for games,” Will said, standing up and tossing Aidan the bottle of chloroform. “And we can’t trust her. This will knock her out until we find the girls. Will you help me load her into your truck?”
Aidan gave him a look that promised reprimand later but still helped him load Mia into the truck bed. Just in case she did wake up before they wanted her to, they bound her ankles with duct tape as well. When she had been settled, Aidan discarded his clothes and took a deep breath before transforming into the wolf.
Axel and Cinder followed suit, their temporary status as pack members still holding.
Once he had become the wolf, Aidan wanted to take off to find his mate and the pup straight away, but a human held him back. Will, still in human form, maneuvered Aidan’s legs into a specially designed backpack that held food, water, medical supplies and light clothing – all of which they might need by the end of the night. Will unzipped the bag and Aidan caught sight of a stuffed purple rabbit that had Charlotte’s scent all over it before Will stuffed it in the bag and zipped it up again.
Will then turned into the wolf, the last of the pack to do so, and turned to Aidan.
Aidan didn’t like the feel of the human pack on his back, but he remembered it would help his missing mate so he tolerated the feeling. With yips and howls to his pack mates, he began the hunt.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Charlotte finally exhausted herself into deep sleep and Phoebe brushed some of her curls away from her face. Phoebe wished she could brush the bad memories aside for her so easily. Even if nothing worse happened, she would have trouble processing it all. And she had a bad feeling in her stomach that sitting in a damp cave wasn’t going to be the worst part of the night for either of them.
Had she really been at her apartment curled up in her bed with Aidan only hours ago? Had she truly, finally, satisfied the urge within both her and the wolf by making love with him? She shivered. If he was here now…
No use thinking of that. She looked over at the pond. He’s not here.
She looked up at Liam, who still cleaned his crossbow, and wondered how she had ever fallen in love with him. Those days seemed such a lifetime away and were now tainted with the horror of the past months.
He pulled on a pair of gloves before loading the first silver bolt into the crossbow. Her eyebrows furrowed together as she watched, knowing something wasn’t quite right but not being able to put her finger on it.
“Why?” she asked, blinking in surprise when the word came out of her mouth of its own free will.
“Why what?” He didn’t so much as glance up at her.
She licked her lips, already gone dry with nearly a full day without any water. “You don’t need me. I was never going to help you. Why am I still alive? And why Charlotte? Yes, you want to make her a Hunter, but why take her and bring her here? Why not just take her later?”
He looked at her. “You have never heard of ‘bait’? It just so turned out that you serve the purpose of bait as well. For the alpha male no less.” He smirked. “It did not take you long to start screwing someone new.”
She moved to look away, but she raised her chin instead. She would not be made to feel ashamed of Aidan, certainly not by Liam. He arched an eyebrow at her silent defiance, but it only amused him rather than intimidated or impressed him. She pursed her lips and looked at the ground.
“Your male will come looking for you along with the strongest of the pack, I suspect, for the child,” he went on. He sounded like he was giving a university lecture or thinking about a strategy game rather than plotting the murders of innocent people. “I will kill them as well as any others who come along either to their rescue or yours. In one night I will have eliminated most, if not all, of the pack. Easily. Then, of course, you.”
Of course.
“Do you remember the night I killed your brother?”
She closed her eyes.
“You do. How could you forget? The night I found out about your betrayal and killed your only family.” His voice took on a darker tone. “Do you remember biting me?”
She looked up sharply at him. Bit him? No. She couldn’t have. Or did she?
“Before you ran away and let me kill your brother, you bit me.”
Her mouth fell open slightly. “You’re one of us. That’s why you can’t touch your silver bolts without gloves. You’re a werewolf.”
No wonder he not only pursued her but played with her mind. He didn’t just want to kill her; he wanted revenge on her for turning him. It had all been an accident; she would never willingly insult her kind by making him one of them. But she had bit him nonetheless, and now he had known two full moons as a werewolf, the thing he hated the most.
He shot to his feet. “I am not one of you! I am not your kind. You made me ill when you bit me, but that will soon be taken care of. Once I have exterminated all your new friends using the abilities my illness has given me, I will come back and have the enjoyment of killing you. I will restore my humanity.”
“What?”
“You are not only bait, Phoebe, but the means for me to restore my complete, pure humanity.”
She laughed, a guttural, abrupt sound. “Being a werewolf doesn’t work like that, Liam. Don’t you think that if it did, there would be a lot fewer packs and a lot more of us killing each other?” She laughed again. “You’ve been reading too many books. About vampires!”
“Keep your mouth shut.”
“It’s the truth! You’re thinking of vampires in books. Wolves are wolves. Once bitten, forever wolf.”
“Quiet!”
She laughed even harder, genuine mirth flooding through her. “There is no cure! Killing me will do nothing. You are a werewolf for as long as you live!”
He stalked over to her, crossbow in one hand. He raised his other hand and slapped her. He raised his hand again, and she moved to protect Charlotte in case his fury land on her. But he only looked at her for a few moments before lowering his hand.
“You had better hope you are wrong.” He spit on her and grabbed a lantern, walking out of the cave far enough to leave only his shadow in her view.
Clenching her jaw, she placed one hand against her stinging cheek. The urge to laugh still bubbled up inside her. Liam couldn’t be the figure of terror in her nightmares anymore. She’d finally stood up to him and he’d revealed himself as a desperate, misguided fool.
She looked down at Charlotte. On her own, she might not have found the strength, but Charlotte was a child. Not just any child but her friend and pack mate’s child. If nothing else, having a pack meant that she protected the pack as they would protect her and as they all would protect Charlotte.
She took a deep breath, finally releasing what she had spent years trying desperately to control.
The wolf was more than ready. Finally Phoebe was as well.
She slowly unzipped her sweater and took it off, shifting Charlotte from one arm to the other as she kept her gaze locked on Liam’s shadow. Wrapping Charlotte in her sweater, she carefully put the sleeping girl on the ground where she would be mostly hidden by a boulder.
Careful not to make any noise, she bega
n to take off her clothes, and the wolf waited for her opportunity.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
A howl cut through the mountains as easily as wind through the trees, making all the wolves stop and look in the direction of the sound. Aidan took just long enough to give a shorter, answering howl before taking off at full speed, the other wolves following closely.
They reached the cave entrance within minutes and found the Hunter had already struck. A wolf whimpered while two pack members, who had transformed back into their human forms, comforted her and tried to remove the silver trap caught around her leg. Aidan whimpered at the sight of it, his human side not sure if the female would lose part of her leg or be able to keep it.
Finally they got her free and wrapped her leg with some of their emergency clothing. Recognizing his leader even as a human, one of the men walked over to Aidan and knelt down.
“I think this is only the beginning. We’ll take her to help. Be careful in the caves.”
Aidan licked the man’s hand and then led the now reunited groups inside. In his wolf form, he could smell Phoebe, Charlotte and a third scent. He paused and snuffled at the ground. The third scent had the strange combination of both human and wolf that only Weres had. And he knew this scent. In his wolf form, it came strong enough so he could finally place it in his mind.
The Hunter who’d kidnapped Phoebe and Were who’d attacked her were one in the same.
He moved forward slowly, sensing an even worse enemy than he’d anticipated.
***
Phoebe crouched down low to the ground, carefully placing one paw then another on the cave floor as she moved forward. Liam had moved out of sight, but she could still smell him and hear an occasional shuffle. She pricked her ears forward to hear the slightest movement. She stood up over his supplies, trying to get a glimpse of him.
She heard him laugh before he came around the cave wall, swinging his lantern around. She whined and jumped back as the pain screamed through her head. Blood ran into her left eye and she raised a paw to try to wipe it away before the wolf took control once again, focusing her on her enemy rather than small distractions.
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