And I have no doubt she’s drugged.
Fear. Guilt. They twist inside me, removing all rational thought. I would have barged into grizzly territory, stormed into every house if my brothers hadn’t calmed me, convinced me to go to the council.
What I really want to do is bring down all the grizzlies - they are hell-bent on this clan war and have brought it to a whole new level. Bear shifters may be untamed mountain men - but we don’t hurt women or children, no matter what.
There is a grizzly out there in the wilderness who has broken a sacred covenant. And that grizzly will goddamn pay for what he has done.
“I have all the proof I need,” I growl. “And if anything happens to her—”
A hand on my shoulder stops me from getting in the grizzly leader’s face and having the man against the wall.
“I promise you that I know nothing about your mate being taken. My men have agreed to the peace treaty with the Kodiaks—”
“A treaty you’ve broken several times over the past year.” Weston is beside me. “You have no control over your men—”
“I have full control—”
“Enough.” The Chief stands. “This isn’t about a clan war. It’s about a missing woman. A member of our community.” He points a bony finger at the grizzly leader. “If you know anything about this, you need to speak now.”
The grizzly shakes his head, but says, “I spoke with my men this morning, no one knew anything. But...” He grimaces.
“What?” I demand.
“Christoff hasn’t been seen for a couple days.”
I know as soon as he says the man’s name that he’s the one who has Piper. “What about his wife?”
“She’s gone too.” The man’s features tighten, and I know he’s debating how much to share.
“I want everything you have on the man,” the Chief demands, then turns back to me. “We’ll find her.”
I know we will. I just hope it won’t be too late when we do.
Chapter 14
Piper
I come in and out of consciousness, a fog settling over my mind that’s almost peaceful. But when I wake, I realize the dream state I was in was actually a nightmare.
It’s been two days since I was taken hostage. Most of the time I’m asleep, but when I wake, I cry. At first, I screamed, demanded someone let me out - but I realized it’s worthless to use my words on the grizzlies who want to hurt me. To kill me.
I’m alone in a small room the size of a closet. There are no windows, the door is solid steel and the walls are concrete. I’m in a hell hole, plain and simple. I’m on a cot, in the same clothes I wore a few days ago, and an untouched meal sitting on a tray on the floor. Cold soup, bread, and water. I won’t eat it. After one meal I got too scared that the food might be drugged.
I’d rather starve here than eat their poison. I need to be strong, so I can communicate with Bennett.
Whoever is doing this is cruel and demented - and if they believe hurting me will get them what they want - they are more than crazy. They are sociopaths. And in way over their head. The Bear Council may have outdated rules, but most of the people I met at the Summit were good men and women. They would never elect a Grizzly who did this to me.
Then again, if I’m not found soon … maybe no one will ever know who I was taken by, because even I don’t know. The few moments that I have been awake and not drugged, my head is still so damned muffled. I can hear Bennett calling for me somewhere in the fog, but it’s so far away.
What if he never finds me?
My chest tightens at the thought and I stifle my sobs, not wanting my captors to know I’m awake.
I hear them now, in the other room and I crawl along the floor, pressing my ear to door, desperate to hear their voices. Wanting to be strong enough to decipher who they might be. Before now I’ve been too drugged to identify any sounds. Now though, I hear two people speaking. Arguing, really.
“We were supposed to scare her, Christoff. Not kill her.”
I cover my mouth, alarm bells sounding in my head. I recognize the voice. It’s Abby, the woman at the spa. The woman who was callous and cruel and trying to intimidate me. It didn’t work then … but now I am being held captive by her.
Now I am intimidated.
“Now what are we supposed to do?” she asks. “Two days is more than enough time, and if they were mated, wouldn’t Bennett have come for her?”
“You gave her too large of a dose,” a man who I assume is Christoff hisses. “They might still be mated, but she’s been in a fog since we got her here - she isn’t coherent enough to call her mate.”
Abby scoffs. “So what, now you’re saying this is my fault?”
“I’m saying we don’t have all the facts.” His voice is hard and short, and I recoil, thinking of the way he pressed that syringe in my arm, taking away my ability to fight back.
“What I’m saying is that I didn’t marry you to be some grizzly’s wife. I married you to be the mate of the Chief.”
Their arguing increases, what sounds like fists hitting a table, a wall, or worse. I move away from the door, longing for the strong arms of Bennett to wrap around me and take me away from this horrible situation.
I cry myself to sleep wishing he hadn’t lied about what I really was to him.
Tears streak my cheeks as I think about him, wishing he was more than my mate. What I really want, right now, is for him to be my protector. But I don’t think that even Bennett Koleman can get me out of the mess I’m in now.
Chapter 15
Bennett
“We’ve tracked Christoff’s pick-up a quarter mile up the ridge, parked behind an old cabin that used to belong to his wife’s uncle,” the Chief says, spreading out a map on the front of his truck.
“She’s there.” I can feel it. Feel her. Even though her thoughts and presence are muddled. “We need to go now.”
My bear paces inside of me, needing to save my mate, knowing time is ticking down. What I can sense is her fear. And I hate myself right now for not growing the bond between us. Maybe if I had I could get a better read on her exact location, a better grasp on her current situation then everything would be different.
But all I know is that she’s in that cabin, drugged and terrified.
And I’m going to kill the bastard who took her.
I’m coming, I push into Piper’s mind, hoping she hears me, that she trusts me to get her out of this mess.
“We have bears surrounding the cabin on all sides,” the Chief says. “And a medical team will be waiting.”
I give a hard nod, then turn toward the ridge, my bear stirring to be released. But I can’t let my animal control this fight. I need to keep my wits about me, not let the feral anger that stirs in my chest rule my actions. Because only one thing matters now - Piper.
There are over a dozen men, including my brothers who flank the mountain, and as we get closer, my mate’s fear becomes my own. I can sense the panic, and I although her thoughts are muffled, I hear her thoughts, They’re going to kill me.
Those words beat against my skull, and all restraint is gone. Ignoring the order of the Chief, I shift and race up the hill, my momentum giving me the strength to barge through the old wood door of the cabin, wood splintering around me.
A woman shrieks, but it’s not Piper, it’s Christoff’s wife. The man isn’t in the room, but being this close, I know where my mate is. The door to the bedroom is slightly ajar, and I can see Christoff’s form and the weapon he holds in his hand, a gun that’s pointed at a lump on the bed.
Piper.
But my presence has him turning toward me, dark, wild eyes train on me, and in a flash, so is the gun. He lifts it and pulls the trigger.
The blast echoes through the small cabin, and the woman screams again, a window shatters.
Everything happens so fast. I don’t give him the opportunity to shoot again, I’m on the man, teeth and claws biting into flesh before the man has a chance to shift
. His bear growls in pain as his own animal emerges.
His large jaw clamps down on my leg, but I don’t feel the pain. I can sense the other bears surrounding the cabin, hear the woman shrieking, feel Piper’s gaze on me, her hazy thoughts, she has the gun.
Another shot rings out, and I roll just in time, the bullet barely missing my head. But it does find a target, just not the one it was meant for. In bear form, Christoff grunts, then stills, a dark patch of red forming above his right eye, before his massive form collapses on the ground.
Dead.
The woman killed her mate, and the howl of pain that fills the room would almost have me feeling sorry for her, if she hadn’t just moments before wanted to take my own mate’s life.
Men barge through the fragments of the door, and it’s my brother Blaine who seizes the weapon from the women’s hand. Chaos and commotion surround me, but all I can see is Piper.
She’s shifted slightly, trying desperately to sit up. Leaning against the corner of the wall, the dirty mattress beneath her, her bottom lip trembling, I can tell it takes all her effort to remain upright. I move toward her and with what little strength she has, she wraps her arms around my neck, fingers digging into my fur, and begins to sob.
I’ve got you.
She just whimpers, clinging to me. I shift back into human form and pull her to me, letting her tears soak my chest.
“Are you hurt?”
She shakes her head.
We stay like that for a time, ignoring the commotion in the other room. I can still hear Christoff’s wife yelling from outside the cabin.
I tilt her chin up to look at me and search her eyes, which are still cloudy from whatever drug they gave her. “God, Piper, I’m so—”
“Bennett.” Gunnar is standing at the door, a pair of jeans in his hand. “The Chief wants to talk to you.” The strain on his face tells me whatever it’s about is serious. He tosses the pants on the bed.
When he’s gone, I place Piper back on the bed and shove the jeans on.
“I-I want...” Her voice is slurred, and each word seems like it hurts her. “I just...want to...go home.”
“I know.” I lift her up, cradling her against my chest. This close I can feel her turmoil and confusion.
As I carry her through the cabin, I keep her head averted from the lifeless body on the floor, the thick pool of blood that stains the floor. But outside, the scene isn’t much better.
Christoff’s wife is in full hysterics now, and it takes two men to subdue her from charging at us.
“Ask him.” Her voice is shrill, eyes wide and crazed. “She told me herself. They’re not mates. It was all a lie for him to become chief. Ask him. We were doing you all a favor.”
Piper tenses in my arms.
The woman continues to rant, and while I know her accusations are going to open a whole other set of problems, all I can think about right now is making sure my mate is okay.
Despite her small protest, I allow one of the medics to take Piper from me when we get back down to the bottom of the ridge where an ambulance waits.
“Bennett.” The Chief approaches, his frowning telling me he has questions that I’m not ready to answer yet. He gives a small nod toward Piper. “Is she all right?”
“She’s shaken up. But she’ll be fine.” At least physically.
His mouth thins, and he waits a few seconds before asking, “I need to know if there’s any truth to what Abby said back there.”
I drag my fingers back through my hair and glance over at Piper. She looks up, and I know she heard the Chief’s question. It’s time to end the lies, to come clean. No more deception.
“Partially,” I mutter, knowing I’m digging my own political grave. But that doesn’t seem important right now.
“What does that mean?” There’s accusation in the man’s voice now.
“Piper is my mate. But I lied...to her. Made her believe she wasn’t. But if you want proof, I can’t give you that. I won’t subject her to any testing. Right now I just need to be with her.”
The Chief’s gaze is hard, searching, then he just gives a hard shake of his head. “We’re going to talk more about this.”
I nod, knowing I just lost the one thing I always thought I wanted. But turning back to Piper, seeing the distrust in her eyes, I have a feeling that I also lost the one thing I didn’t know I needed.
The one thing I now know I can’t live without.
Chapter 16
Piper
The cab of Bennett’s truck is small, but I keep my gaze diverted out the window the entire time, refusing to look at him, not knowing how I feel, how I want to feel. The sky is so dark, the empty Alaskan highway seems to sprawl forever, and I realize we are still hours from Bear Valley.
Silence stretches as long as the road and I wish there were words to say. But I’ve spent my life not trusting men. My father abandoned my mother and me so many years ago, and after that happened, I swore I would never, ever, let that happen again.
My mom, she let man after man into her heart - but it’s never been whole again. Me? I have kept men at a distance my entire life.
Until now.
Until Bennett.
And look where that has gotten me.
I feel him trying to penetrate my mind, the thick fog that has covered me the last few days from the drugs has been lifted and now I sense the connection to my mate.
I don’t want it. It scares me, unnerves me. Makes me feel like I’ll never be the woman I want to be. Strong, independent, enough on my own. I refuse to turn toward him as he tries to press thoughts into my head. Instead, I push him far away with all my energy, my eyes fixed on the road ahead. If I look to my left and see the man who saved my life, I’ll remember that under the lies there was something else.
Love.
Eventually, exhaustion overtakes us, and we’re forced to stop at a roadside motel. Bennett kills the engine, looking over at me.
“I could get us separate rooms, but I don’t want you to be alone, Piper.”
“Why’s that? You think because I was kidnapped I’m weak, that I can’t hold my own?”
He shakes his head, the moon shining enough light over us that I can see his eyes. They are dark, bruised. Broken.
I won’t let my heart break for Bennett Koleman. Not now, not ever.
“Hell no,” he says. “You’re not weak at all - it’s me who’s a fucking wreck, Piper. It’s me who can’t bear to be apart from you.”
I blink back the hot tears filling my eyes. I reach for the door handle, pushing it open. “No, you don’t get to be sad. You tricked me.”
Walking briskly, I head to the motel lobby to check in, but Bennett is at my side, his hand on my arm. “Stop running from me, Piper. Let me in.”
“You want me to let your thoughts in? Why? So you can lie to me some more? So I can be played the fool?”
“No,” he says, facing me. The parking lot is empty, the whole night feels desolate, lonely, dark. “I want to be let in so I can apologize.”
“For what part? The lies or the…”
“Or the what?” he asks softly.
I cover my face with my hands, not wanting the words that fill my head to escape my mouth. But it’s too late.
He hears my thoughts.
You broke my heart.
“Let me fix it,” he says, cupping my face with his hand. “Let me try to fix everything.”
In the motel room, Bennett draws a bath for me. I stand in the doorway, watching him, wishing there wasn’t a divide between him and me.
“You’ve had a hell of a few days,” he says not looking at me. “I should have been there for you. What kind of bear lets his mate get kidnapped like that?”
My chest constricts as I absorb his words. The drive here, I’ve been so focused on the fact he’s lied about us being mates and that he has known this whole time that a wedding was imperative for his plan to work.
Meanwhile, Bennett is torn up over the fact t
hat he wasn’t there when I needed him. That is why there is pain in his eyes, why they are dark and wounded. He thinks he has let me down.
Even though he is the very reason I was saved at all.
“You found me when I needed you, Bennett.”
“If anything had happened to you, Piper…” He shakes his head, tormented by the last few days. From what I can tell he hasn’t slept a wink since I went missing. My heart twists at that reality. Bennet doesn’t want to lose me.
I sit on the closed lid of the toilet, watching him. His body is a work of art, taut muscles pulling at his flannel shirt, a backside that makes my belly flip-flop, but it is the thoughtful way he tests the water, the way he takes my hand and tells me to stand that has me undone.
“It’s time for your bath,” he says as his eyes rake over my body. He kneels before me, and I run my fingers through his coarse hair. My body craving to be closer to this man. To be consumed by this man.
“You need to relax as much as me,” I say. “I bet you paced that mountain for days looking for me.”
I’ve messed everything up.
I look into Bennett’s eyes, hearing his words in my head, as a single tear slides down my cheek. We are connected in ways I don’t understand, in ways I am scared to accept.
I want to forgive Bennett, to tell him it’s fine, to say it’s all water under the bridge, but deep down I know it isn’t that simple.
Deep down I’m still unsure of what I want.
I can tell by the look in his eyes that he heard the words I didn’t mean to share. I can tell they kill him to hear, as much as they agonize me to admit. He stands, tucking back a loose strand of my hair, kissing my cheek so tenderly that every chord in my heart strums with want.
“I’ll be in the bedroom,” he says as he walks out of the bathroom, leaving me alone.
I undress and step into the bathtub, and as I sink into the warm water, my body relaxes, but my heart? It’s tied up in a thousand knots.
Untamed Fiance (Mountain Men of Bear Valley Book 4) Page 7
