by Lynn Hagen
“Did you see Edward, Isabelle, and Howard?” Rick asked.
Deluca nodded as he moved closer to Brooke and Harmony. “They said they would meet us by the trucks.”
“Who attacked?” Mason asked.
“No one knows,” Deluca replied.
“Then we need to get moving,” Rick said as he began to head toward where they had left their vehicles. He wasn’t sure if the people attacking were friend or foe, and he wasn’t sticking around to find out. They needed to get to the detention center, and Rick needed to get a phone so he could let Nate know he was no longer in the mountains.
As they grew closer to their destination, Rick felt someone gaining on them. He spun around to see Clyde emerge from a dense part of the forest, a large group of men following him. Deluca and Brooke immediately backed away, Deluca grabbing Trisha’s hand and pulling her close.
“What the hell?” Rick asked as he grinned widely. “Was that you making all that noise back there?”
Clyde chuckled as he grabbed Rick and hugged him. Rick’s eyes nearly bulged, but he allowed the show of affection.
“You’re damn right.”
“How did you know we were being held captive?” Rick asked. He could see Deluca and Brooke relaxing, marginally.
“Word gets around fast.” Clyde’s brows pulled down into a frown as he stared at Rick. “Don’t you know every breed of changeling is keeping a close eye on you, making sure you win this war?”
Rick had no clue.
“Do you think you have been meeting with the different changelings and not making any progress?” Clyde asked.
“I didn’t think anyone was listening,” Rick admitted.
Clyde shook his head. “Man, you have so many people ready to back you that it isn’t even funny. What’s more surprising is that you have a hell of a lot of humans ready to fight on your side as well. You’re famous.”
Rick didn’t want to be famous. He wanted the government to stop taking his species and locking them away, or worse. He wanted the bloodshed to end and peace to reign. But he knew they were all empty wishes. Even the White House itself was in on this. There was not going to be peace until the body count rose so high that there would be no one left to care.
“But you need to get moving,” Clyde continued. “Garrett isn’t a happy man, and even now he is rallying his pack to come after you. I heard on the wind that he had planned on selling you and your group to the werehyenas.”
Rick’s anger exploded. “He was going to do what!”
“He’s one fucked-up individual.” Clyde waved a hand. “Let’s go.”
The men with Clyde surrounded their group, boxing them in, protecting them as they made their way to the vehicles. Rick just hoped like hell Garrett hadn’t done anything with their trucks. They were the only way out of this place.
“How are Kara and your cub?” Rick asked.
Clyde beamed. “They’re fine. Thank you for asking.”
“Have you found a new place to stay?” He hated that Clyde lost all of his belongings in a fire that was started by a mercenary group of changelings in order to kill Rick.
“We’ve relocated outside the city. The only reason we were in that apartment building was because we wanted to appear human.”
And that was something Rick hated. Changelings shouldn’t have to hide who they were in order not to be persecuted.
The werelion who had outed the nonhumans was still the number-one most wanted man in the changeling and vampire world. Rick had no clue who the man was, but he knew if his species or the vampires got a hold of him, there wouldn’t be anything left to identify.
He spotted Edward, Isabelle, and Howard standing by Deluca and Brooke’s Humvee. Relief washed over him. Rick knew Edward would protect Isabelle and Howard, but that hadn’t stopped him from worrying.
Rick pulled his sister into his arms, holding on to her for a moment, inhaling her scent and relieved she was okay.
“I’m taking Isabelle and heading out,” Edward said. “She’s carrying our babe, and I can’t risk her involvement any longer.”
Rick could see the dark circles under Edward’s eyes and knew he hadn’t fed. The man refused to allow Isabelle to feed him since they found out she was pregnant. It worried him. “Why haven’t you fed?”
Edward gave him a droll stare.
That pissed Rick off. “If you try and starve, you’ll attack Isabelle in a hungry rage.”
Isabelle released Rick and took a stand next to Edward. “Edward is going to break into a blood bank. We just need to get out of here first.”
“Where are you going?” Rick asked.
“Someplace remote,” Edward answered. “I don’t want to say in front of all these strangers.” Edward moved closer, dipping his head low. “But if you need me, call. I’m not deserting you. I’m just getting my mate someplace safe.”
Rick nodded. “I’m glad she won’t be on the front lines. You better protect her with your life.”
Edward gave Rick another droll stare.
“I had to say it,” Rick admitted. “This is Clyde.” Rick pointed to the werebear alpha. “He’ll take you anywhere you need to go. You can trust him.”
“Sure, don’t ask me first,” Clyde said, but Rick could hear the light teasing in the man’s deep voice.
He stood by and watched as his baby sister and her mate were taken away by one of Clyde’s pack members. A large part of him was glad she would be safe, but another part of him missed Isabelle already.
And although Rick would never admit it out loud, he was going to miss Edward as well.
“Call me if you need me,” Clyde said. “I have some business to take care of in Ohio, so I won’t be too far away.”
Rick nodded and then hurried toward his truck. They had to get out of here before Garrett and his men showed up.
They also had some planning to do. The detention center was where they were headed and Rick knew they couldn’t take this mission lightly.
Chapter Eight
Willow finally understood the true meaning of terror as she was forcefully marched through the doors of the infamous detention center—at least the main one. Willow knew two more had been built.
When Garrett had taken her outside, Willow had known things were about to go badly. She thought she was going to be greeted by the female pack members ready to beat her to death.
Willow wasn’t a fighter. She never had been. Her mother had raised her to be a gentle and kind woman. If the female coyotes had come after her, Willow would have been dead.
She was more of a nurturer—an adult who had responsibilities.
But instead of female coyotes, there had been a small sedan with tinted windows waiting. She knew fighting would be futile, but she had tried anyway, only to receive a vicious slap across her face.
Garrett had hit her so hard that Willow’s head had lolled to the side.
Now she was staring at what amounted to a prison. The ominous feeling kept building as she was escorted down a monotonous hallway in shackles. She had no idea why they had shackled her until she heard one of the guards call her an animal.
The bleakness began to settle in her chest and then radiated throughout her body, making her inwardly shiver. She wasn’t going to get out of here. She knew this. Willow was going to die behind these walls. Garrett had indeed sentenced her to death, but it was a death that would be slow in coming if the tortured screams were anything to go by.
The sounds echoed through the hallways and shouted through her mind. Hopelessness. Despair. Agony. Pain.
And then finally…death.
The sounds chilled her inside and out, and Willow began to shake. She was terrified. The cruel eyes of her guard told her that she was going to suffer greatly here.
Willow had to at least mentally escape if nothing else. She couldn’t take the oppressing doom that was weighing her down.
Her thoughts began to go back to that brief moment when she was in Brooke and Deluca’s arms a
s she passed doors with just a small window to see into. But the windows were covered with a sliding plate, keeping her from seeing who was held captive.
She thought about the kiss Brooke had given her and how every single fiber of her being inhaled his scent. Willow knew in that moment that she wanted not only Brooke, but Deluca as her mate. It was crazy. She wasn’t even sure if they wanted a commitment. They had just met. Then Brooke’s softly spoken words came back to her.
Deluca and I will protect you. I promise that you will be safe.
If only either of them could have kept that promise. She wouldn’t hold it against them. It had been out of their hands. Garrett had once again taken something very precious from her, and now she was about to lose her life.
The pain of what she had lost screamed out in her mind. Hope was dying inside of her. Even if Brooke and Deluca knew where she was, there was no way they could penetrate these walls to rescue her. The place was fortified, and dogs patrolled the grounds. There were guards everywhere, and she had even seen cameras all over the place.
There would be no rescue.
“Here’s your cage, animal.” The guard stopped, yanking on her hands to pull her closer as he looked down at her with evil intent in his murky-brown eyes. “But you are a cute one. I’ve never seen an animal that looked as good as you.”
When he tried to close the distance to take a kiss, Willow spit in his face. She knew it was the wrong thing to do, but Brooke had been the last one to kiss her, and Willow was not about to have that kiss taken from her by this degenerate bastard.
The guard wiped the spit from his face, but instead of being angry, he smiled at her. “I like them feisty.”
His words terrified her even more than this place did. She knew what he was planning, and Willow would rather die than let him lay one hand on her body. He waved a hand in the air, and then a clicking sound was heard. The guard opened the door and pushed her into the closet-sized room.
“I’ll be back to see you after the doctor catalogs you.” The door slammed shut with a finality as the guard strode away. He hadn’t even taken her shackles off.
Willow glanced around and felt bile rise to the back of her throat. There was a soiled mattress on the floor and a toilet so grimy that she feared something lived inside of it. The sides of the porcelain bowl were rusted and green, and the seat was smeared with things she would rather not try to figure out.
Willow walked over to one corner, as far away from the toilet as she could get, and slid down to her bottom. She pulled her arms over her legs and hugged them close as she closed her eyes, trying her best to block out the screams she could hear.
After ten minutes, all fell silent.
“Whatever you do, don’t scream.”
Willow glanced around, but didn’t see anyone. Great, now she was hearing voices.
“They like it when you scream.”
Willow pushed to her feet the best she could with the shackles around her wrists and ankles. She scuttled to the door and tried to see out. The guard hadn’t slid the plate into place, but no one was there.
“Who’s talking to me?”
“My name is Lillian.”
Willow looked around. The voice wasn’t coming from the hallway. She moved around the tiny room, looking for cracks in the walls. Maybe Lillian was using some sort of tiny hole to speak to Willow.
“What breed are you?”
Willow turned around and stared at the monstrosity that was her toilet. There was no way someone was using that thing as a pipeline. She wasn’t going anywhere near it. She would probably catch something just from being in the same room as the sorry excuse for a commode.
“Why?” Willow asked, speaking a little louder so she wasn’t forced over into the other corner.
“Because,” Lillian said, “they treat each breed differently. The predators have it the worst, and most don’t come back once the doctor takes them for cataloging.”
Willow swallowed around the scream that was forming in her throat. She was a changeling coyote. Her breed was categorized as predator. She glanced around, wanting desperately to go home.
No, she wanted desperately to be back between Brooke and Deluca. Never before had she felt so damn safe. The two feral males would protect her from the harshness of the world if they could. She knew this. She had scented not only their desire to have her intimately, but both had wanted to keep her.
Her mouth pulsed with the faded imprint of Brooke’s lips, hard yet soft. Her neck tingled as she remembered the solitary kiss Deluca had placed there. She couldn’t die here. Willow wanted more from those two. She wanted to know what it felt like to be surrounded by both men and consumed by their desires.
“You there?”
“Yes,” Willow answered. “I’m coyote.”
“What’s your name?”
“Willow.”
Willow moved to the other side of the room, but kept her distance from the toilet. She squatted down and noticed the seal around the pipe leading into the wall wasn’t caulked. There was one light-brown eye staring back at her. The sight of that lone eye was eerie, yet in a strange way, it comforted her as well. She didn’t feel so alone.
“I’m sorry,” Lillian said.
Willow shook her head as she sat down, once again pulling her legs to her chest as she stared up at the ceiling. “It isn’t your fault.”
“No, but what they are doing is wrong.”
“What breed are you?” she asked.
“Human,” the woman replied.
This shocked Willow. Why would they have a human in a detention center for nonhumans? It didn’t make any sense to her. “I wasn’t aware they were capturing humans.”
“They’re not,” Lillian replied with anger in her tone. “I’m here because I was caught with a group of changelings. They seemed to think I know where Enrique Marcelo is hiding.”
Willow crawled over to the wall, trying her best to ignore the germ-infested commode. “I was just with him.”
She could hear Lillian moving, and then her voice came out in strained desperation. “My sons and husband are with him. Did you see them? Are they still alive?”
Willow could hear the raw fear in the woman’s voice. “Describe them to me.”
“My husband has salt-and-pepper hair. He is six foot one and around one hundred and eighty pounds.”
“I saw him. He’s with Enrique.” Willow could hear a choked sob coming from Lillian.
“My sons,” she said, and Willow could hear the tears in her tone. “Dorian is Enrique’s mate. He’s around five foot seven, has cinnamon-brown hair, and light-brown eyes.”
“He was there, too,” she confirmed.
“And Ian? He’s five foot five.” Lillian gave a tear-filled chuckle. “He’s the baby of our lot. He has dark-blue eyes and dark-brown hair. It’s shaggy. The man doesn’t like to get haircuts.”
Willow felt her chest tighten. She hadn’t seen anyone that fit that description. She knew this woman, this mother, was going to cry. She would. She had. “I’m sorry, Lillian, but I didn’t see anyone with them who looked like Ian.”
The silence grew between them. Willow knew that Lillian must be over there going through a nightmare. It was bad enough to be locked up in this place, but to not know what was happening to the ones you loved was the worst kind of torture. A torture Willow knew all too well.
“Thank you,” Lillian whispered. Willow could tell the female was crying. Not only could she hear in in the woman’s voice, but she could feel the worry and sorrow, even through these thick concrete walls.
“I’m sorry,” Willow felt compelled to say. It seemed they were both sorry for different reasons.
Willow crawled over to the mattress when the cell door opened and a man walked in, flanked by two guards. One of the guards was the one who had promised to return later. He winked at her, and Willow felt like she was going to be sick.
“Your breed?” the man asked.
Willow refused to say a wo
rd. Sheer terror filled her as the man stepped closer, squatting down in front of her as if inspecting her. She curled up as tightly as she could.
“It doesn’t matter to me if you tell me or not. But the test to find out which category of changeling you are is very painful. It would be better if you volunteered the information.”
“Go to hell,” Willow snarled.
“So be it.” The man stood and gave the guards a nod. Willow shouted and fought as the two men grabbed her from the mattress and dragged her from her cell, taking her into the unknown, where she feared she may never return from.
Brooke hurried toward the wall, dodging the cameras as he went.
“Eye in the sky at your three,” Jordison—one of the soldiers who had been on standby, waiting for Brooke and Deluca’s call—said into the mic in Brooke’s ear. He glanced up and saw the camera. Brooke stilled, waited for the camera to rotate away from him, and then hurried along. He pressed a metal disc against the wall, securing it in place.
He repeated this action until he had completed the entire perimeter of the wall. When he was finished, he hurried back to the black van hidden in the woods. Deluca was already out of the van, waiting for him, Rick, Mason, and Howard standing next to him. It had surprised Brooke and Deluca when Howard told them he was an ex-Navy SEAL.
He wished like hell Howard had told them sooner. Brooke had been worrying the whole time about the older man. He had no clue Howard could take care of himself. It was a good thing, too. Brooke needed as many knowledgeable men as he could get on this suicide mission.
“Everyone remember what they are supposed to do?” Brooke asked as he geared up.
“With crystal clarity,” Rick replied, his words frosted in ice.
Brooke nodded and then stuck his head into the van. “I want you four to stay put. Especially you, Dorian. I can’t afford to have my focus fucked with if you try to come after us.” The man didn’t look happy, but Dorian nodded. Brooke reached up to one of the shelves and grabbed a handgun, handing it over to the man. He knew Dorian liked to be armed. Brooke, Deluca, and Rick had already talked about teaching the man to become an expert shot. But right now, Brooke had other things on his mind.
