by Cecilia Lane
Delano threw a punch that hit him square in the jaw. Cole spat blood. He could feel his busted lip and cheek slowly knitting together. Too slow, thanks to the fucking silver. He glared at Delano. “At least you look prettier with the scars I gave you.”
Delano’s expression didn’t change even the tiniest bit as he socked another punch into Cole’s stomach. “I changed since that day, you know. Prone to anger, but that can be all down to this shit duty and the little asswipes under my command. But the red meat, that’s new. Never liked it as much or as red as I do now.”
The man unleashed a series of punishing blows, using Cole as a punching bag. Cole winced at a sharp crack. There went a rib.
Delano took a step back and wiped his brow. “I can handle the red meat. Beats swallowing my service weapon after turning into a freak.”
Cole grinned wildly. Someone would be working to get him free. Callum, Rylee, probably even Olivia Gale. He just had to outlast Major Assface Delano. Easy to do, when he could take a beating. His bear welcomed the challenge. “Come a little closer and I’ll see what I can manage.”
Cole didn’t fight when the soldiers threw him to the bare ground in another tent, another cage. He wheezed and winced when they secured the chains at his feet and wrists to deep stakes in the ground, just outside the bars so he couldn’t pull them up.
He stared up at the canvas ceiling and focused on himself. He’d know if he pierced a lung, right? That might mean death, even for him. He had several bruised and broken ribs, but air still seemed to make it into his chest.
Fuck, but Delano could hit. The man probably had more bear in him than he realized. Rylee should find an excuse to draw his blood and see if he had the weird little ridges like Leah.
“You look like shit.”
Cole blinked at the voice. He felt like shit. Hell, he should have smelled the other man in the tent. He wore enough cologne for the entire population of Bearden.
He directed his one good eye at the bearded, bedraggled man. He inhaled once, twice. Fur and desperation were light under the powerful cologne. Shifter of some kind. “You the traitor mapping the enclave border?”
“Traitor.” The man’s mouth twisted into a sour shape, like he hated the taste of the word. “That implies I had any choice in my actions. You can call me Jacob.”
Cole hauled himself upright. Mistake. The tent spun worse than if he’d downed a keg of moonshine. Heal, bear.
The beast was utterly silent in his head. Huh. It only took being beaten within an inch of his life to get the bear to stop clawing at his mind.
Jacob was looking at him funny. Cole cut him off before he could say another word. “So, Jacob. What brings you to these parts? Cheap vacation?”
“You enclave shifters think you’re so safe. You’re worse off than those living on the outside. You’re sitting ducks.”
Cole eased back down to the ground. The tent wouldn’t stop spinning and the madman’s words were hurting his head. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t have any fucking idea what enclave life is like. We have each other’s backs. The Broken sacrificed themselves to make us safe.”
“And yet, you’re in hell with me. How soon until they find excuses to capture more?”
Cole grunted and tried to remember just how many vials of blood Rylee drew. That was a good indicator of how many murders could be framed. “We won’t stand for that.”
“How many of you are fighters? How many have families they want to protect? How many will choose family over enclave? You might think you’re a nice, small town, but you’re just a group of loosely affiliated packs. The first sign of shit hitting the fan will shatter everything you hold dear.
“You think this is the first enclave they’ve busted up? They have billionaires and soldiers in their ranks. Backwoods rednecks who sound like they’re speaking a different language with accents so thick. These are the people that whisper in dark corners about hunting the most dangerous game. We’re just intelligent animals to them. We’re not even people in their eyes. I wonder how many of their ilk are in the ranks outside. New noises, new scents. They’re beefing up for something big.”
Maybe Jacob wasn’t off his rocker. The camp had grown larger. Hunters had been a threat since the first dumbass with supernatural blood showed his ass. The enclaves were made to protect against those sorts of assholes.
But some had gone dark, even in recent years. Hunter attacks could be blamed in some cases, a need for relocation in others. If Jacob were to be believed, and Cole was unhappily conceding the point, they were sitting ducks and fish in a barrel and every other phrase that meant entirely fucked.
“Those animals want us dead,” Jacob continued with no emotion in his voice. “Don’t hope for a rescue. I did, for a while. That was before they killed my entire pack.”
Revulsion shivered down his spine. The loss was written on Jacob’s face. The horror of it was ingrained in him. Losing every single person in his clan would kill him. A bond existed between them all, deeper than simply family. They were clan. They had each other’s backs. They wouldn’t abandon one of their own. Hell, he even counted on it. That resolve kept him from falsely admitting to a murder he didn’t commit.
And that bond might be exploited to kill them all.
“What happened to you?” Cole asked, afraid he already knew the answer.
Jacob shrugged. “We made mistakes. Got careless. Brought attention to ourselves. Ring fights, that’s what we did. Wounds healed too fast in front of too many eyes and the wrong sort of people saw.”
His voice took on a dead tone, and he stared into nothing. “I got taken in the backwoods of Virginia after a fight. Drunk, high off the win, so I didn’t see them coming. Spent a few days looking like you do now while they insisted that if I just behaved myself, they’d treat me well.”
“Bet that went over well,” Cole muttered. Bile rose in his throat. The words were eerily similar to what Delano told him. Admit the truth, and he’d go easy on him. The beatings would stop if he would just admit what he’d done.
“Just made me want to fight even more.” A smile ghosted Jacob’s lips, then died. “But not in the way they wanted. They wanted brutal fights between animals. Dog fighting on steroids. Fox hunts. Knew a fox, once. They didn’t want her fighting me. Wouldn’t have been entertaining.”
Something nudged at the back of Cole’s mind. Foxes were rare. The only family he knew were the Holdens, and of those only Becca and Faith were still alive. Becca lived outside the enclave for a long while and she was cagey about her sudden return.
She’d say something, wouldn’t she? Hell, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut half the time. Jacob’s fox couldn’t be Becca.
“Two weeks, tops.” Jacob sounded lost in a memory he’d rather forget. “That’s how long it took them to force me to turn and fight in the ring. My wolf was going crazy by then. You know how it is. Can’t stay to one shape too long or you start feeling that itch to shift. Can’t stay cooped up in a cage without going a little insane. But there’s only so much you can do when you’re tossed in a cage and facing down the slavering jaws of a grizzly. So I fought.
“Then a new breed came in. They said they needed to know my abilities to assess the threat. Needed to know if I was born or if something happened to make me the way I was. They told me they wanted me to be their next super soldier. A smarter tracker. A glorified bloodhound to find more like me. And I refused.”
“Good man,” Cole muttered.
“I refused until the day they dragged me out of my cage, threw me to the ground, and forced me to watch them put a bullet in the head of my entire pack. For research and continued cooperation, I was later told.”
Cole slammed the heel of his hand into the earth below him. “Fuck!”
“If you want my advice,” Jacob continued coolly, “just give them what they want. They’ll kill everyone anyway, but it’ll save you some pain. And if they make us fight, rip out my throat when I give it to you.”
&nb
sp; Cole snarled. The faces of his clan wavered in his mind. Delano had plans that were unfolding while he sat useless in a cell with a broken wolf. He couldn’t roll over and play dead. He wouldn’t.
He settled into watching and waiting for an opportunity to escape. Food came and went, with guards posted inside the tent to make sure nothing of use was left behind. He wasn’t even allowed a plastic spoon to shovel the slop into his mouth.
Sunlight overhead shifted from one side of the tent to the other, marking the time gone by. Hours passed without word to or from his people. Hours of plans made and discarded for one reason or another.
The guards posted at each corner of the tent outside did their jobs well. They hardly moved and didn’t speak a word to anyone. He could almost forget they were there, which was the point. If he forgot they existed, he could be surprised by them if he somehow ditched the shackles on his wrists and ankles and chewed through the thick bars of the cage.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. And anyway bear was still silent.
Late afternoon arrived with no contact to the outside world when noises he didn’t recognize as significant jerked Jacob to his feet. His cellmate’s eyes went wide with fear and the scent of it overrode the cologne he was made to wear to hide his otherness. “Up. Up!”
Cole shook his head. If they wanted him on his feet, they could drag him upright.
“At ease, men,” Delano stated on the other side of the tent opening.
Cole’s pulse thudded in his head as Rylee walked through the tent flaps. Delano ducked inside on her heels, but it was the small woman that held Cole’s attention.
Everything about her was tense. Her shoulders, her eyes, her jaw. She even walked like she was connected to taut lines above her.
But her smell. Holy hell, she smelled nervous enough to make him strain at his cuffs and want to fight. Even his bear rumbled in his head, making the first sound since Delano beat the beast into silence.
“Don’t get too close,” Delano ordered.
Rylee ignored him and stepped up to the bars of the cage. Her eyes flicked down to the ground in front of her, summoning him.
Cole pushed to his feet and took cautious steps forward. Delano stiffened behind her.
His head swam. Fuck, he’d taken too many blows in too short a time. He needed more rest than a single afternoon. He needed to shift.
He wasn’t too proud to grab hold of the bars to keep himself upright. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
Rylee covered his hands with hers. Something rough poked between his fingers. He jerked, placing his hand over hers, and a tiny package crushed against his palm.
“I’m ready.” She switched her attention to Delano. “This is him.”
Delano cleared his throat and spat on the ground. She didn’t even flinch. “You sure?”
Rylee nodded. “I heard him get up in the middle of the night. Curious, I followed him out of the Strathorn clearing and past guards on both sides of the barrier. I watched him wait for a human to come to the edge of the camp. He hunted like an animal and he slaughtered like one, too.”
Cole felt every single kick and punch Delano gave him all over again. Only this time, they came from a woman he thought he could love.
Lies. So many lies. She stank of them. How no one else could tell, he didn’t know.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe they didn’t care. Her career was over. That rang loudly in his head, right after repeating her lies. Maybe no one cared because they were happy to believe her false words and use him as a scapegoat. Maybe she was happy to lie if it restored her reputation.
“What are you doing?” he growled. His bear sent him images of slapping the ground and roaring for her submission. She owed him answers for her lies.
She barely acknowledged him, eyes dipping to where their hands met before pulling away from him. She turned to Delano and lifted her chin. “Is that all you need from me?”
Delano bowed slightly and gestured to the tent flap. “That’s everything. Let’s get you set up for the night before you head back home.” He waited until Rylee left before shooting Cole a triumphant grin. “You’re a dead man. You, and the rest of your freak town,” he hissed before stalking back outside.
Cole tightened his fist around whatever Rylee passed him. He shuffled to a bucket in the corner. At least Delano’s men provided that much. He used the fumbling of his button and zipper to hide opening the tiny parcel.
The note had two words. We’re coming.
Tucked inside was a tiny set of lock picks, straight out of Leah’s collection.
Jacob’s words roared to life with his bear. The beast raked his brain with sharp claws and visions of death. Jacob’s pack was destroyed to gain his cooperation. Delano stood poised to pull the trigger against the entirety of Bearden, and he had Rylee in his camp for the first shot.
His bear didn’t care why she lied or made the stupid decision to enter the camp. He only wanted to save her from death.
He had to get out of the cage before everyone he cared about was killed.
Chapter 22
Rylee’s stomach twisted and turned. Cole looked awful. More than awful. More than terrible. She didn’t even know how to describe the violence written across his skin.
He should have healed. Why hadn’t he healed? How long ago were his injuries taken and why was he nearly purple with all those bruises?
And who, exactly, was the other man in the second cell?
She bit her tongue to keep herself from screaming at the top of her lungs how fucked up everything around her truly appeared. She couldn’t help anyone if she broke down. Survival was the game now. She’d passed on Leah’s message and lock picking tools. She needed to wait for her chance to escape, hopefully after she was able to destroy the samples stolen from her lab.
Rylee lifted her chin regally and faced Delano. “Is that everything you need from me?” she asked again.
Delano spoke around his cigar. “Like I said, we’ll get you set up for the night. We have training exercises planned and I can’t spare anyone to take you to the airport.”
Training exercises. Rylee wanted to spit at his feet and call him a liar. The surrounding preparation wasn’t for training. Everyone was too keyed up. They were going into battle with more soldiers than she’d seen when she first arrived in Montana.
She doubted Delano even waited for clearance on his falsified provocation, of which she now played a role with her witness statement intended to get her back inside the camp, but he’d certainly received additional troops from somewhere. He was prepared to go in without orders and slaughter innocent lives. No doubt he a plan to justify that, too.
He was even more dangerous than she imagined.
With a sarcastic bow and wave of his hand, Delano escorted her through the camp.
She memorized the layout and even marked off what appeared to be a bus in the center of the camp. Power was diverted to several large areas, likely for the open-walled mess tent and a closed command station. But the hard walls and huge wheels of the vehicle meant it likely served as a mobile lab and held the refrigerated samples she needed to destroy.
Three rows down and one over, Delano ushered her inside a small tent and left a trio of guards outside with strict orders to keep her from leaving. Rylee entered without a word. She expected to be detained. It was part of the plan, even. She played her part and now she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She paced the few feet allotted to her, turned, and paced in the other direction. She drummed her fingers on her thighs and tried to urge herself to patience. One minute slipped into ten, then into an hour.
How long would it take for a dragon to find and convince a reporter that an entire town was about to be murdered? What noise needed to be made before some government or military official made a phone call to stop the madness? And what happened to Bearden in the time it took for someone’s attention to be snagged?
The late afternoon dragged o
n. The bag she brought to sell her story of leaving Bearden was brought to her, no doubt thoroughly searched. Her laptop was missing, along with her phone, not that either would do her good if Delano had communication blocked. The guards outside her tent even passed her a small lantern for the evening before leaving her alone once again.
Rylee stopped her pacing and laid down on the cot. She didn’t know how long she stared at the canvas ceiling and willed something to happen when a monstrous, prehistoric roar filled her ears.
Shouts followed, then the slapping of feet on the packed ground.
When she peeked out of the tent, the guards posted there pointed and raised their weapons to the giant beast in the sky. She followed their gaze and got her first glimpse of a dragon hovering above the camp. Deep scarlet scales glittered in the dying light. Bullets ricocheted off the dragon’s underbelly and only served to make him angry. Swift swoops of his wings twisted him this way and that, and another roar was accompanied by a jet of fire above the camp.
That had to be her signal. There was no other reason a dragon would appear when she desperately needed one.
Rylee shot out of the tent and straight toward the bus in the center of the camp. Her guards barely gave her a second glance, focused instead on the sky. Two more dragons appeared out of thin air, then a fourth. They danced above the camp, roaring and spitting fire above the heads of the soldiers left behind.
Too many were gone, she noted as she ran. Only the barest of guards remained. A lump grew in her throat. Delano was already making his move on Bearden. Maybe the dragons would be distraction enough to turn him back toward the camp and away from the innocent lives in the enclave.
Rylee paused across from the mobile lab. Another roar directly above her forced her to clap her hands over her ears. She glanced skyward and found a dragon hovering overhead. Nerves bubbled to life, but the flame she expected to burn her alive never came. No flames touched the ground, in fact. The dragons weren’t out for blood. Yet.
