by R. A. Boyd
Cass took a few messy pulls from the water, spilling some of the cool liquid down her chin. “Got any ibuprofen?” she said, working her jaw back and forth to ease the ache. “Feels like he tried to break my jaw.”
“Brennon shouldn’t have done that.” Neil shook his head and stood up, leaving the water bottle on the floor next to her chair. “He shouldn’t have done any of this. I mean, my dad was hesitant when he heard about you, but he was kind of happy. Most of the shifters were, not just us ravens. We don’t know everything about the ghosts, but they ain’t bad. They were the main ones to help when New Rose was hit by a flood a few years back. Aiden came and helped me and my dad rebuild the fence to the barn and replace the roof. Damon and Jax donated money to help the town build some weird kind of irrigation thing so that Main Street won’t flood anymore.”
Cass remembered that flood. Her neighborhood had been safe, but the people one block over had to have major work done on their houses. Flooded basements, collapsed houses, mold. She hurt for the people affected by that tropical storm and thanked her lucky stars that she lived where she did.
“What are they going to do to me?”
Death was Cass’s first guess, but if they were going to kill her she would have been dead by now. What else was there?
“They’re going to vote when everyone gets here. The most popular idea is for someone to claim you. Then the ghosts can’t make you theirs.”
All the air seeped from Cass’s lungs. One of them would claim her? She couldn’t breathe and her heart threatened to beat its way through her sternum. Didn’t claiming a mate involve sex?
“Neil. Are they toying with the idea of someone taking me against my will?” Cass started pulling at the tape surrounding her hands, but the dang material wouldn’t give. “They’d better fucking kill me, Neil, because when I get my shifter strength I’m going to track down all of you and eat you.” Cass bared her teeth and tried to stand up from the chair.
They may have her, but she wasn’t going to make this easy for them.
“Miss. No. No. Sex doesn’t have to be involved to claim someone,” Neil said, holding up his hands and giving her a few steps of space. “I didn’t mean to scare you. One of them will just bite you and turn you. Then you’ll belong to that pack. They just don’t know whose going to do it.”
Fuck that. That idea was a no-go either. “Still going to eat you,” she said, managing to get some height from the chair. “And you’re in on it. I hope your dad is pissed. My mates are going to kill you all, no matter what dumbass up their bites me.”
Cass was tired from all the movement that gave no help, but she still fought to free herself. To do what? Have the shifter at the top of the steps tell her to sit her butt down? Have Neil call out for help because he was too weak to do anything else?
Her mates deserved redemption. And if she was the one person in the world that signaled that they’d receive it Cass would do all she could to get back to them. Besides, she wouldn’t let anyone claim her against her will. She belonged to her damned self.
Neil walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked over and felt sullied by his contact.
“Miss, if I could get you out of here I would.”
“Then go get Jax and Damon.”
“They won’t let me leave.”
Well dang, that took all the fight out of her. He was a prisoner here too, just like her. She started looking around the room for a back door. Anything. Nothing but walls, a ceiling, and a floor. And a sunlight hiding in the back.
Cass motioned her chin toward the spot where rays of sun were shining through. “Neil. Is that a window back there?” She whispered and hoped that the shifter upstairs watching the door couldn’t hear them.
Neil walked to the back of the large room, eyes glued to a window she couldn’t see. He stood with his hands on his hips, looked back at Cass, and then back to the window.
“Umm,” he said, his discomfort palpable. “It’s small. And… you’re… not?”
Cass chewed the inside of her lip for a moment and silently counted to ten. She wanted to wring his skinny little neck. If it meant getting free of those would-be mate stealers upstairs, well then she’d give it a go.
She blew out a heard breath and was wishing he would see her tied hands behind her as she gave him the finger. “Let me loose,” she whispered. “If I can’t shove myself through the window then you’re going to have to go by yourself and get my people. Can you do that?”
What if her clan was still unconscious on the floor and they didn’t even know she was gone? “No,” she said to herself. “Teague seems smart enough to figure something out.” He was smart enough to pick up on her being pissed off when he opened his mouth about a possible war, and he knew she had been taken.
By the confused look on Neil’s face, Cass thought he was really going to refuse her. Was he really going to let a little thing like her size throw out this awesome plan? Cass looked down at herself and then made a pathetic growling sound. She knew she was no small woman, but she knew she was shaped like a freaking hourglass, and that hot hour-telling shape of hers was going to fit through that window no matter how small it was.
Neil walked over and started pulling at the tape behind her, and with the last rip of the tape, he was nice enough to massage some circulation back into her hands. Someone who wanted her dead wouldn’t have done something as nice as that. He helped her stand up and she kissed him on the cheek.
They were going to get out of this, without her being claimed by another pack or group or whatever the heck they called themselves. If prayers counted for anything, Cass would be a member of the ghost shifters clan before the week was up.
Chapter 11
“Dean. Since you’re not sure, and I can smell that you’re not lying on that, you’ve got about three seconds to tell me where she might be or I will start tearing off body parts. Starting with your ears. I like them.”
Audra hovered over Dean Winston, Alpha of the Gold Wing Raven shifter clan, pinching and releasing her fingers as if she were a crab. A huge, toothy smile had cracked her face open but the insanity in her stare was clear. Damon didn’t doubt for a second that if he didn’t intervene, his sister would have a matching pair of ears in her possession. She’d done it before.
Jax, Aiden, and Jace were out trying to find where Brennon could have taken Cass. They’d been looking for almost an hour and couldn’t find her. Audra and Simon had come along with Damon to find out from Dean where the ravens stood. With the ghost shifters or against them. Teague went back to the firehouse to keep an ear out for any commotion around town, and Cole stayed back at the hall in case anyone called with a ransom.
Damon was doing all he could to stay level. He massaged his neck, his forehead, counted to one-hundred, and nothing was working. He might get some sick satisfaction from watching his sister de-ear the man just to make him talk. It was true Dean didn’t know where Cass was, but he knew something. Damon gave him high praise for his loyalty to his pack, but he knew the key to finding his mate and best bargaining chip was Neil.
“Dean,” Damon said after letting out a steadying breath. “I may let Audra do that to you. I don’t want to, but you have to understand. Imagine if your mate was missing and you knew a neighboring shifter group could find her. What would you do? How do you think it looks that Neil was the first one to know that we’d found our mate. And he’s missing. Along with Cass. God help me Dean Winston, if Neil has anything to do with Cass’s kidnapping I will make him suffer before I fucking gut him. So,” he said, placing a firm hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Think. Real fucking hard. Where would Brennon take Cass?”
At the mention of Neil’s possible slow and painful death, Dean’s eyes seemed to crumble to nothingness even though his face stayed calm. “Damon. It wasn’t Neil. I haven’t been able to reach him all day. It’s not like him. Brennon has to have him, too. I’ve got a few of my ravens out looking for Brennon.”
“So why the fuck a
re you not looking for your son if you’re worried about him?” Damon tightened his grip on the man’s neck and could see the strain in his eyes.
Dean leaned in toward Damon, eyes darting to the kitchen, and whispered. “Because he has a girlfriend.”
“Why are we whispering?” Audra whispered, leaning in as she massaged Dean’s ears as if he were her lover.
Dean looked back to the kitchen and then tried to shy away from Audra, only to have her extend her arm to keep the contact. Dean wasn’t stupid. He knew from talk around New Rose that Audra was teetering on the line of insanity.
“The girl isn’t a raven. She’s a boar,” Dean said.
Simon cleared his throat and got up to pace the room. “So fucking what? He’s almost twenty. He can’t date?”
Damon shook his head and looked toward the kitchen where Dean’s eyes were glued. “You do realize that Sara isn’t here, right?”
Sara was Dean’s mate and held the title of Pure Bread Raven. Most shifters dated outside their pack animal, but the Ravens coveted those who could claim to be one-hundred percent raven shifter. It was a primitive practice but some still kept it up.
Dean finally put his hand on Audra’s to still her fingers. “Sara comes in through the kitchen, and she doesn’t know that Neil is dating a boar. She’d have a God-damned fit. Look,” he said as he stood. “I don’t care if he dates the girl. Hell, he can marry and mate with her for all I care, but that’s why I didn’t get him involved and go out looking for him. He might be with her, and if Sara finds out… Well, it would be bad.”
Damon was fighting to keep calm. Fighting to let Dean say what he had to say before he decided to kill this man telling him things that didn’t concern him. Damon gave zero fucks about who Neil dated, but he could tell that it was something that weighed heavy on the boy’s father. But he listened. He listened to give Dean a chance. Most shifters were already afraid that the ghosts would take over, even though he didn’t know why, so if he started killing people it may draw the other shifters away from them.
At the end of the day, Damon and Jax and the rest of their clan were going to be shifters just like them. That’s it. They were already strong and almost indestructible, and he could only imagine what strengths they would gain after the Alpha Triad was complete. But that was it. They wouldn’t take over. They couldn’t take over. Why the fuck would they?
So instead of letting Audra have with Dean, and to gain an ally, Damon patiently listened to him talk about why he didn’t want his mate to find out that their son was dating outside of the raven shifter gene pool. And yeah, he understood where the man’s hesitance was coming from. He might be Alpha but everyone knew that Sara Winston would be his second if she cared about Gold Wing politics. She enjoyed her life of volunteering at the library and helping the shifter families around town who had little ones to tend to. But Sara was fierce. He hadn’t witnessed it himself, but he’d heard that Sara beat a gorilla shifter into submission. Gorilla shifters were notoriously huge and aggressive, and Sara was almost a small as Audra.
“A raven just arrived,” Simon said, motioning toward the kitchen to the back door with his chin. “Maybe it’s your wife.”
Damon could hear it too. The heavy flap of wings getting closer to Dean’s house. The light thump of two feet hitting the back porch as the shifter shifted, most likely, in midair and landing. Once the feet landed, they broke into a run and crashed into the back door. Something was wrong.
Neil burst through the back door and scrambled as he slipped on mud covered feet. He was out of breath and covered in scratches. “Dad,” he yelled, but when he saw Damon he turned and almost feel at his feet. “They got her.” He was panting and practically clawing at Damon’s arms. “Brennon and the others. They got her. I tried to carry her but he came at us. And I dropped her.”
“Where?” Damon gritted out, his body filling with fresh adrenaline and making him dizzy. His heart raced and his chest rocked with the effort to keep breathing. They had a chance of finding her now, but Neil had dropped her. How far had they been up? “How… is she okay?”
Neil nodded and then covered himself with his hands when he noticed Audra staring at his dick. “We weren’t that far up. Brennon attacked us in the air, and I tried to fight him, but I couldn’t. Not while I was holding Cass. She started fighting him, too. After she fell he dived for me and we fought. I hurt him good, Dad. His arm is broken.”
“Good boy,” Dean said, handing his son a blanket to wrap around himself.
“Cass told me to get help, but I didn’t know if you were still out from what the witch did. So I came to get my dad.”
“Now we got a witch involved?” Simon said, poking Audra’s arm to keep her focused on what was happening and not Neil’s ass. “Fucking great.”
“Yeah,” Neil said breaths finally starting to level out from the panic. “Last I saw, Cass was in the woods down at Bedder’s Creek, right before the bridge. They had us in the abandoned hunter’s lodge near there.”
Damon shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Jax. Bedder’s Creek near the bridge. That’s the last place Neil saw her. She might be in the old lodge.” He looked over at Dean and Neil. “I won’t forget this. Thank you for trying to help her. Either of you ever need something…”
“I’m coming,” Dean said, taking off his clothes. “I can fly and get there faster than you. I’ll keep her safe and punish the ones in my clan.” He turned to Neil and grabbed him by the back of his head, holding his forehead to his son’s. “You did good, boy. Stay here.”
Neil went to take off the blanket, but after sliding a side eye to Audra he decided against it. “I’ll fly with you. It’s a lot of them. Ravens, wolves, bears.”
As Damon and his small group were getting into their car, he saw Dean and Neil taking to the sky. Jax and the others should get there before them. It didn’t matter how many shifters Brennon had with him.
Cass better be safe or he was going to let the rage have him. He would give in to it and let it roil its way through their clan. And once it did, no one would make it out of this town alive.
Chapter 12
Jax could smell her now. He could smell Cass, and he could smell blood. Shifter blood. Blood of the one who’d taken Cass. When she’d taken a handful of Brennon’s hair she managed to get some bloodied skin along with it. And now, as Jax raced along the side of the creek dodging hanging tree limbs, drifts of snow, and bushes, their scent was getting stronger.
He could see his warm breath punching from his mouth in foggy ringlets as it hit the freezing air. But he couldn’t feel the cold. Couldn’t feel it burn in his lungs as he ran closer and closer to his mate. The sound of his clan mates running behind him filled his ears. They’d driven as far into the woods as they could, and when the truck couldn’t breach the trees and mounds of snow he and the others ran.
“I’m coming, Baby,” he said, knowing that she couldn’t hear his words. He was coming for her, and so was Damon. So was their entire clan.
The bridge was in sight. So was blood. Blood splatters everywhere. There had been a fight, and as long as he didn’t smell the iron of his mate’s blood he knew he would survive.
A body. A naked body lay in the snow just up ahead. Brennon. His arm was bent at an odd angle, so was his leg, and there was a dent in his skull. A bloody, heavy rock sat near his body. But he couldn’t find his mate. But the bits of her blood that had been on the rock invaded his senses. Had she done this? Killed Brennon and then ran away.
Good mate. Good, strong mate. Good, strong woman.
“Oh, my… Jax. Look,” Aiden whispered, his voice heavy as the stone covered in Brennon’s blood. And fear.
Jax looked to Aiden and followed his eyes.
There she was. His mate. Lying face down in the creek.
She wasn’t moving. The current was trying to move her downstream, but she was caught on something.
Oh, God no. Please, please no. Jax ran to her. Ran to he
r lifeless body as she swayed in the moving water. His boots splashed and broke the patches of ice that had formed around the bank of the creek. He fell down on his knees and pulled her to him, ripping part of her sleeve that was stuck on a jagged rock as he dragged her out of the freezing water. He could smell his blood now. His knees had been scraped up on sharp rocks that lined the creek.
He couldn’t feel it. The sound of the rushing water wasn’t there. There was silence. He couldn’t hear her heart beat in her chest. Her beautiful heart.
When he turned her over, she was pale. The freezing water and lack of oxygen discolored her magnificent mocha skin. And her eyes. They stared back at him, unblinking, unseeing.
His vision blurred with tears as he looked at her. His chest was so empty. So heavy. He couldn’t breathe. Not if she wasn’t breathing. God, how he wished he could stop breathing now and just end it all. A snarl rushed through his lips and a deafening roar filled the air.
She had killed the man who had taken her. And then, someone had killed her.
Chapter 13
Damon was closing in on Jax and the others, and right as he saw the bridge in the distance it was as if someone had knocked all the air out of him. The sound of Jax’s hidden beast bellowed through the snow-covered canopy. Damon stumbled as a hopeless fury filled his mind. Something was wrong with Cass.
He pushed his legs, running harder than he ever thought possible in this human form. The sound of his pouncing breaths and booted feet thrashing through the snow were all the filled his head. And then he saw it. Cass’s wet, lifeless body as Jax was pounding on her chest.
“Breath, damn-it!” Jax yelled.
Every time one of the others tried to get close to him to help, to calm him, he would bat them away or snap at their hands with his human teeth. A low and constant growl emanated from Jax’s chest and only stopped long enough for him to force air into Cass’s mouth. Into her lungs.
