However, he hadn’t accounted for what he found on the stone table.
It wasn’t the stains of blood, or the metal fittings, which were designed to restrict the victim’s movements that bothered him.
No.
It was the scent of Diana’s freshly spilled blood that had him roaring out.
Alan and Matt stiffened, and Fergus could hear the growls that vibrated in their chests.
He looked around the room and when his eyes fell on the small, steel doors that blended in seamlessly in the stone walls, he studied the number of doors there were. His blood ran cold as he counted to around thirteen.
“Everyone take one door.”
The wolf shifters understood the rest of the instructions without Fergus saying anything.
Free everyone.
Fergus focused on the one door, which carried Diana’s scent. His heart beating wildly against his chest, he tried to open the door, but it was reinforced steel. However, Fergus was an alpha and royalty. His strength was unrivalled.
Putting his strength into it, he pulled at the handle, and soon the sound of the straining of the steel filled the room.
His hands were starting to burn, but he did not register the pain, desperate to get to the woman on the other side of the door. He heard the clutter behind him as his packmates got hold of those torture instruments and used them to open the doors.
He heard the whimper again, this time carrying pain and confusion.
However, Fergus didn’t give up. His hands bled as he curved his fingers around the part of the door, which had dented with his strength and given him an opening. He kept tugging at it until the metal seams broke. The door nearly fell on him, but he stepped back and barely avoided being crushed.
His ears registered the snarls of the prisoners as his wolves got a few doors open, but his eyes were focused on the pair of eyes that gleamed at him from the small chamber.
The glossy red coat that he had once used to groom every night was dirty and matted with blood and infection. Those green eyes that had always held laughter and mischief in them were now dull and filled with fear.
Fergus trembled as he studied his mate. His legs gave way, and he fell to his knees.
“Diana!” he called out.
The wolf in front of him did not respond to that name. She pressed herself against the back of the chamber, trying to make herself as small as possible. There was no recognition in her eyes, and when Fergus tried to approach her, she just snarled and snapped her teeth. He froze.
She didn’t know him.
He wasn’t prepared for that.
For all his weeks of traveling and mentally preparing himself, he hadn’t once thought that she might not even remember him.
How could his own mate not know him?
What did they do to her?
When he took another step forward, her snarl lacked that luster and sounded weaker, but she gave it her all.
It broke his heart, and he couldn’t push back the burning in his eyes.
He studied her broken form, the way she cradled her right paw as if it was injured. She seemed so frightened of him – although she was trying not to show it – that it made him want to lose all that control he had spent ten years building up. He wanted to rage and make it rain blood.
His hands trembled with fury, and she must have caught onto his anger because it made her curl into herself, forcing him to stop.
Fergus took a deep breath and then tried to think. Maybe she would be more at ease if he was in wolf form. He saw Matt wearing his wolf form and herding a swan shifter toward the side. His subordinates might be on the right track.
Shifting in a shimmer of color, he watched Diana’s eyes widen and her form stiffen. He moved toward her, and this time did not hesitate. He nuzzled her neck until she relaxed and rubbed himself against her in a comforting manner.
Feeling the tremor that ran through her, he offered her the warmth of his body and, hesitating, she took it.
The female let this wolf lick her crushed paw and felt him offer comfort.
***
This was the same wolf she saw in her dreams. Had he been real this whole time, or was this just another dream? He was more beautiful in person, and she allowed him to usher her out of her cell. She did not know what was going on.
The man in front of her had been so angry that she had thought he would hurt her. The men had just left this morning after making her spend an entire night on the table. When this wolf, in his human form, had ripped open the door, she had found him to be more terrifying.
However, he offered her nothing but licks. He nuzzled her, rubbing against her, telling her he was here and that she was safe.
But, safety was an illusion.
When they hadn’t chosen her in weeks, she had thought she was safe.
Then they had come for her again.
Was this just a game? Another ploy to build up her hopes?
Her eyes widened as she saw the rest of her fellow prisoners being released from their cells with the help of two wolves. One of them shifted, and she stepped back in alarm, unable to help the fear that swept through her.
But, he sat on the ground and let the two rabbit shifter children study him. They were twins, and they had come long after she had. Most of the torture they had gone through had been psychological, and Diana watched as one of them crept forward and sniffed at the human-wolf. The other followed suit. It was a process of a few minutes, and most of the shifters who were held with her, studied the wolf, ready to attack.
Even the female bristled, her eyes watching carefully. These were the only two children here, and their screams of pain and cries had been torture to hear. One of the rabbits put its paws on the man’s knees and it shifted into a short girl who could barely be five. She flung her arms around the naked wolf shifter and started crying. Her brother followed suit, and they clung onto the man. Their thin shoulders shook with the violence of their sobs, and the shifter stood up, carrying them out.
However, he had barely gotten to the door when the familiar sounds had the imprisoned shifters snarling. She had seen all of them come one by one, but she was the oldest one here. She watched a tiger shifter bare his teeth and saw the human shifter back up as he set the two children down, moving them behind him.
The weakened female left the silver wolf’s side, ignoring his protest, and moved toward the children, as did the other shifters.
No matter the type of shifter, the young were very sacred and were always the first to be protected in a fight. A female elk flanked the wolf’s side as he shifted, his teeth bared in a snarl.
The wolf licked the boy’s cheek comfortingly to stop his trembling, and although she knew she would be no good in a fight, she refused to back down.
Shouts of surprise and the thudding of loud footsteps sounded overhead. Three human men came into view. When they saw their prisoners free from their cells, they paled. But not for long.
The number of drugs introduced in their systems had rendered most of these shifters weak and they might be able to fight on adrenaline, but their bodies would be quick to give way. Their confidence regained, they took out small rods from their pockets, which expanded into long sticks that made some of the shifters quiver.
Fergus glanced at Diana.
She was struggling to stand, but her injured foot and her malnourished frame weren’t making it easy for her. The red rage that swept through Fergus at the sight of his mate had him snarling, and he stepped forward.
It must have occurred to the humans that there were more shifters than usual, and at the sight of three grown wolves, one of them tightened his jaw.
“Go for the wolves first,” he instructed his partners who nodded.
The tiger shifter roared and jumped at one of his captives. The long rod swung in his direction, and the stream of electricity had the tiger falling and his body twitching on the ground as the jolts of power pulsed through him.
‘Stay away from the rod,’ Fergus
told himself, detaching his emotions. If he had to protect Diana right now, he couldn’t be feeling angry or confused.
He darted forward, and as the rod arced toward him, he slid sideways on the ground, his paw smashing into his attacker’s leg, making him stumble.
Using the distraction of the humans, Matt jumped into the fight and tore at the throat of one of the humans. Ignoring the electricity, which jolted him, he felt the gush of warm blood and finished off the gargling human with one blow.
Seeing one of their men down, the other one looked toward where Fergus was making quick work of his companion. He backed away and heard a snarl behind him. A grey wolf bared his teeth at him, and when the man blindly swung the rod in panic, the wolf actually grabbed the stick in his teeth.
In his fear, the human’s grip loosened enough for Alan to wrench the rod away.
Both companions gone, the last man’s terror permeated the room, along with the smell of urine as the three wolves advanced on him. The shifters who had been held captive watched from the side, their bodies heavy with so many drugs running through their system.
With the threat removed, the female wolf’s legs gave way as she realized that they were being rescued. The silver wolf trotted up and stood next to her protectively, as the other two wolves helped get the rest of the shifters out.
Fergus studied the place, the anger inside him a pulsing beat. When his eyes drifted upwards, he stiffened as he witnessed a horrifying sight, one which he would never forget. Nailed to the top tier of the walls were animal hides. No, not animal hides. These were the skin of shifters in their transformed state.
Trophies.
They had a fucking trophy wall.
He looked toward Diana, and his blood ran cold as the truth hit home.
He had buried her skinned coat. So, caught up in the fact that his mate was still alive, he had not connected the two facts until now.
She had survived a skinning.
She had been tortured in this hell hole.
For ten years.
While he had done nothing.
The guilt inside him was almost crippling.
***
Whining, the wolf nudged her with his nose, and she batted at him with her paw, startled. The misery that radiated from him was confusing. She liked his scent, but her body was throbbing in various places, and her right eye was hurting her.
She heard his growl and looked up at the various hides that were nailed to the wall. She had known most of them, or at least seen glimpses of them. Some of them had been here before and some had come after her.
She turned her head away.
These humans killed with a methodology. When they started skinning, she would hear the screams, and she knew that this was that shifter’s last time on that table.
They had skinned her once, and she had survived. She had fought for her life, and when her coat had grown back at an alarming rate the next day, the humans had never attempted it again. But every time a shifter went through this process, she would cover her ears to muffle the shrieks. They would remind her of the pain that she had gone through.
Fergus nudged her to get her moving.
He watched Diana get to her feet and she struggled, falling down.
After watching her fail again and again, he shifted.
Ignoring her wariness, he lifted her wolf form. She was skin and bones, and that ate at him. He carried her out and gently deposited her on the ground.
The two children were sitting on the ground, their eyes fixed on Matt as the now shifted wolf conversed with the other shifters. Some of them had shifted, while the others were still in their true forms. Alan’s forehead beaded with sweat as he healed one shifter after the other.
As he leaned back to take a breath, Fergus signaled to him, and his lieutenant immediately came over.
The injuries that covered Diana were extensive, and he sat on the ground, her head in his lap as Alan ran his healing magic over her. At first, she resisted his touch, and Fergus restrained her until she realized that the pain was leaving her body slowly.
Her green eyes watched as the healed shifters limped away one by one, wanting to leave this site where they had horrors inflicted upon them. The tiger had shifted into a heavily muscled man whose anger was evident on his face.
“These bastards destroyed my entire pack.” His snarl did not hide his grief, and Fergus felt his pain.
“How did they find your den? What about your barriers?”
The tiger, Lorne, looked grim, “They knew! Where the cubs slept, where the elders would be, and where our sentinels were posted. They knew how to bypass our barriers. We had a witch set up these barriers a few years ago. They were fucking impenetrable. These bastards just waltzed in and started picking us off one by one. We didn’t even get a chance to fight back.”
Diana’s eyes were drooping as Fergus ran his hands through her fur. He could see that the rhythm was lulling her to sleep, and he was glad.
He looked at Lorne. “Inside job?”
The tiger shook his head, “I don’t know. I was the alpha of Clear Water. We moved to defend the cubs, but…” He blinked his eyes forcefully as if to dispel the grief and tears. “There was nothing left to protect.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lorne looked away at the cabin. “There are more of them than just three. And it wasn’t just my pack. All the shifters here have had their packs decimated.”
His voice was quiet as he looked at the wolf alpha. “We might just be at war with the human race.”
Chapter 3
The two children had attached themselves to Matt and refused to let go of him. If Lorne was right, then the kittens had no place to call home, making them effectively orphans. The rest of the shifters had departed, and only these three remained.
The tiger alpha had not said anything. It was like he was waiting to see what Fergus would do. After hearing his story, Fergus felt relieved in segregating his pack’s pups. If only a handful of pack members knew where the nursery was, then it was improbable that these humans would have known.
Matt and Alan entered the cabin to do a thorough search, and Lorne sat on a rock, looking into the forest, lost in his thoughts. Fergus looked at Diana’s form and wondered why she hadn’t recognized him. He searched for the mating bond that had always been inside of him. Diana was alive, which meant it should still be there. After he had thought she was dead, he had been so lost and empty. The bond had been snuffed out after Diana’s last communication with him. Maybe it was just smothered.
He felt the connection that had become second nature to him, just a few days before being ripped out of his life so abruptly. He closed his eyes to seek out that unique thread that tied him to his mate.
It was there. However, it no longer pulsed with life and virility. Instead, it lay dormant, almost empty.
“She your mate?”
Lorne’s voice made him raise his head, and his voice was gruff when he answered, “Yeah.”
The tiger’s hair was long, reaching his shoulder, black with dark orange streaks. His amber eyes, although shadowed in grief, were fixed on Diana, and then to him.
“She was special. It was worse for her, you know.”
When Fergus’ jaw clenched, Lorne shook his head. “Not trying to rile you, man. Just preparing you. I don’t know whether she will recover. They asked her all sorts of questions, and then they would torture her for hours on end.” He looked away, sounding angry. “There wasn’t anything they didn’t do to her.”
The anger and helplessness flowed through the wolf alpha enough that it woke up Diana. Seeing his human form so close frightened her, and she pulled away, stumbling over herself in the process. Fergus remained still, waiting for her to come to terms with her surroundings.
It took her a few seconds of disorientation, but she recognized the man in front of her as the one who had helped the imprisoned shifters.
“Diana.”
Her ears cocked in his direction.
> Was that her name?
“Diana, you need to shift.”
That got her attention.
No. Bad things happened to her when she was in her other form. They hurt her more.
“Sweetheart, you need to shift.”
She growled at the silver-haired man. A part of her felt that he could be trusted, but the human part of her warned her to be careful.
When he kneeled on the ground and stretched out his hand, she snapped at it, but he didn’t move.
“Diana, please.”
He needed to access her injuries in human form, but she was refusing to come out from behind her wolf. He couldn’t convince her through their bond since it lay there dormant.
Diana snapped at his hand again, as if testing to see if he would move it away. However, the man was adamant.
She raised a paw and pushed at him as he frowned. “It’s for your own good,” he said.
She pushed at him again. Her wolf had been restrained for so long that it perked up in interest at this game. She hit him with her paw, and he didn’t budge.
She shoved him again.
“She’s playing with you,” Lorne marveled.
“She’s being stubborn,” Fergus said dryly. “She doesn’t want to shift, so she’s trying to distract me.”
Her wolf agreed.
She didn’t want her human form.
How long had it been since she had been out in the open?
This freedom relaxed her mind.
She circled around the man who had now withdrawn his hand and was staring at her. She sniffed at him then put a paw on his face experimentally.
He wouldn’t hurt her. That nagging feeling in the back of her mind had now settled.
He was safe.
The man pushed down her paw, and she immediately pounced on him, settling on his stomach.
Hearing him growl at her, Diana cocked her head and stared at him.
A sound from behind them made her stiffen, and she immediately jumped off and started backing away defensively.
It was the other two shifters.
“Fergus.”
Fergus? They had referred to him by that name before, but it hadn’t registered then.
Loved by Alpha Wolf Page 2
