by Tera Shanley
“John has a key. The one who is coming back.”
“John Gates. He’s the one responsible for this, isn’t he?” At her nod, he promised, “I’ll get it. I’ll get you out of this. Wade will be here any minute and he can help clean you up. I don’t even know where to start,” he said, hands fluttering over her face but never touching it, as if he was afraid of hurting her more.
“They told me they’d killed you. This whole time, I thought you were dead.” Her voice hitched and she swallowed against the urge to sob her relief that he still existed.
The corners of his mouth turned up, but the smile never quite reached his eyes. “Not yet.”
A door slammed upstairs and John called Marshall’s name. With uncanny speed, Grey looked up and his nostrils flared as he put a finger to his lips. Slowly and silently, he backed into the corner Marshall’s body lay in. The light had gone out on that side of the room, and through the darkness, two glowing golden eyes watched her, their reflection eerily appearing and disappearing in cadence with the swaying of the light bulb.
“Marshall, where are you?” John yelled. “Someone kicked in the door to my fucking house!” John came down the stairs, keys jangling in his hands. Morgan’s heart raced as the door handle turned and the door opened.
“Marshall?” John’s gaze fell on her mutilated face and anger lit his features.
Morgan kept her gaze only at him, careful not to look to the back corner and give Grey away. “Have you heard the rumor about Demon Wolf?” she asked coolly, keeping his attention on her.
John sniffed the air and looked uneasy. He stayed frozen in place, no doubt feeling hot breath on the back of his neck and hearing the quiet rumble from another wolf’s chest. He shot an arm out, taser ready, but Grey was faster. He blocked it and sent it clattering to the ground, as he used the momentum to hit John in the face with a lightning-quick strike. Grey took the keys from John’s limp hands and strode over to her, trying the tiniest key first. The click of the lock was the most beautiful sound on earth, and the clatter of metal as the collar fell away would echo through the rest of her life. She sat up and sucked gulps of air, inflating her lungs painfully but completely for the first time since she had been chained to the floor.
Grey picked the taser up off the floor as John groaned and opened his eyes.
He wriggled the taser tauntingly between two of his fingers. “Classy. I’m curious, how does it feel to be an alpha with no pack?” He gestured over to the corner where the lump of Marshall’s body could be made out.
Realization dawned on John’s face that no help was coming for him and his eyes widened as he stared into churning golden eyes.
“Morgan, could you come here?”
Clutching his shirt like a shield, she got up gingerly and walked over to stand beside the man who’d risked everything to save her.
“He is the one I smell.”
She cringed and nodded once. “He had plans to claim me. I woke up with his shirt on. I don’t know where my clothes are and the shirt reeks of him.”
“I wouldn’t have to claim her against her will. She was practically begging for it,” John said, leering at her.
Morgan snatched the taser from Grey’s hand and hit the button as she connected with John’s groin. His body went rigid and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“Hurts like a mother trucker, doesn’t it?” She threw the tiny torture device angrily into the wall, and it exploded into dozens of pieces. The satisfaction of destroying it overrode her pain.
“Morgan, if you want me to kill him, I will, but if you need to do it for closure, I understand. Tell me what you want.”
She glared at the man on the ground, debating. Even after everything she’d been through, after everything he’d done, she still couldn’t imagine taking a life. “No, I still don’t think I can do it. I’ve never killed a man before.”
John had recovered enough to chuckle, and she looked from Grey to him.
“Can I make a request? I might not be able to do it, but it doesn’t mean I think this man deserves an honorable death,” she said.
“Wait,” John said.
Grey’s fingers brushed hers as if he understood what she asked of him. “Do you need to watch?”
“No, I trust you to get the job done. I’ve seen enough for today.” She stumbled to the mattress and plucked the keys from the stained fabric. “Good-bye, John. The pleasure was all yours,” she murmured as she walked out the door, shutting it firmly behind her.
She sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited until the screaming stopped. Within minutes, the door opened and Grey tossed a bloodied rag he’d been wiping his hands on into the corner.
“It’s done,” Grey said, sounding exhausted.
As they climbed the stairs, she glanced back at her prison that had come so close to breaking her. Her mate had killed an entire pack to get to her. Her mate.
He watched her with feral eyes, blood soaking his bandages and looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She slipped her hand into his and smiled painfully at him.
The time to leave her hell had come.
Chapter 8
The sunlight hurt her eyes, making them water with its intensity. Shadows stretched across the shallow porch of the run-down house and an old wooden rocking chair swayed in the winter wind. “How long have I been down there?”
“They took you two and a half days ago. I was unconscious the first day, but Wade and Marissa put me back together and I left for Montana within half an hour of waking up.”
His presence beside her filled her with a warmth she’d missed so much in the past weeks, and she shot him a sideways glance just to get one more greedy drink of him.
“How did you find me?” She shielded her eyes, still unable to look up at him as they walked to his truck.
“The pack has been tracking you. When I got to Yellowstone County, you weren’t at John’s property, so Jason tracked a cell number that had been calling one of their dead wolves. He and Dean figured out where you were by tracking the pack and pack family properties. This place was under one of the dead wolf’s names, and it was the closest property we could find to the cell phone signal.”
Silence followed, as if he didn’t know what to say next, and she got it. She didn’t know where they stood either. As much as she wanted to get lost in his embrace, she had spent months torturing them both, and it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Grey, listen--”
“Don’t,” he drawled. “I didn’t save you so you’d feel obligated to come back to me, and I sure as hell don’t need you letting me down easy. I’d come for you every time, Morgan. Every time, but that doesn’t mean I’m confused about what we are. Me hanging on? That’s my choice. I respect the decisions you made. Please, just don’t explain what it’ll be like when we go back home and back to our separate lives. I know.”
It was then she realized just how much she’d hurt him. God, she could see it there, shimmering beneath his careful gaze. It wasn’t just him either. She’d burned them both with her decision to pull away. She’d been wrong about his duty to what she was overshadowing his feelings for her. It wasn’t out of some sense of obligation that he’d risked his life to come for her today. It was out of devotion.
He spun, but she touched his bare hip with her fingertip and he froze. His profile was stiff, every muscle in his body flexed as if he were ready for flight. Every word she said mattered now if she was ever going to make things right between them.
She traced the V of muscle that wrapped around his waist and disappeared into the top of his jeans. His stomach flexed as his breath sped up and his eyes burned with their intensity.
“Grey, I--”
A noise in the distance pulled her from what she was about to say. The relief on his face at the interruption stung like a salt against open skin. Wade’s truck sped down the road toward them, trailing a clou
d of dust. When the Chevy skidded to a stop in front of Grey’s truck, Brent hopped out and ran straight for her, wrapping her up in a big bear hug, while Wade hauled an oversized medical kit from the back.
Golden eyes watched her carefully, but he didn’t react to another male touching her. Another sting. He let down his tailgate and sat heavily on it.
Wade looked from him to Morgan and back again, as if deciding who needed medical attention more. She must have looked like hell because he chose her.
He checked the gashes on her face but the bleeding had stopped. “Head wounds are always gory,” he explained. “Is there anything else? Are you hurt where I can’t see?
She knew what he was asking and shook her head uncomfortably.
He stared at her for a long moment before he nodded. “I’m going to go redo our boy’s stitches over there. He isn’t looking too good, and your injuries will hold until I can get him fixed up, okay?”
Brent brought over a bag of clothes they had borrowed from Rachel. She thanked him and debated on going back inside to change in a bathroom. She didn’t want anyone else to see her without clothes on, but the thought of going back in the house with the dead bodies in the basement had her skirting around the corner to change. She pulled the shirt off and dropped it in the dirt beside her. She kicked it against the old siding for good measure. Tilting her face to the sky, she took a deep pull of fresh air.
“Wade will need to look at your ribs.”
She jumped at the sound. She hadn’t even heard Grey approach. She pulled the clean shirt up to cover herself. He stood leaning against the corner of the house, staring unashamedly at her. Nudity wasn’t a concern for werewolves who Changed together so much, but Grey had never seen her Change and had never seen her body completely uncovered. Definitely not what she had in mind for his first full body view.
“Let me help,” he said as he strode toward her.
She was so tired and so sick of fighting everything. She dropped her hands to her side, defeated, as he took the shirt from her. Tenderly, he pulled it over her head. All of her adrenaline had worn off, and by the time he was finished dressing her, she shook and swayed. Without saying a word, he picked her up and carried her to the truck bed. He set her gently on the edge of the tailgate.
“I overheard you have a rib problem,” Wade said, motioning for her to lift up her shirt.
“I thought you were going to stitch Grey up first.”
Wade shrugged. “He won’t let me touch him until you are taken care of.”
She pulled up her shirt enough to reveal dark red and purple bruising covering a large part of her rib cage on her right side from where Marshall had kicked her. Wade brushed gentle fingers along the discoloration, and when she gasped, Grey ran a rough hand over his face and turned his back like her pain hurt him worse than her.
“I think at least a couple of them are cracked but not all the way broken. Are you having difficulty breathing?”
“It hurts, but I can pull a deep breath.”
“Good. All I can do for those are wrap them and give you pain meds. I’m assuming you took care of the people who did this to her?” The last question had been directed at Grey.
“They’re all dead,” he confirmed.
Wade nodded once and pulled bandages and a small pair of scissors from the plastic bin.
When Morgan’s torso was wrapped, she smiled at Grey. “Now we match.”
His gaze fell away from her face like he found it difficult to look at her. Like every injustice done to her body was his failure. “Do you guys have anything to eat in the truck?” he asked the other wolves.
She should have been embarrassed by how loudly her stomach was protesting, but hey, if it got her food, she couldn’t seem to conjure a blush if she tried.
“The last thing I ate was dinner with Lana, so my stomach has been mad at me for not throwing it a bone.”
Wade was cleaning her face and neck with sterile rags soaked with bottled water, when Brent brought over a box of cherry-fried pies and beef jerky.
“Sorry, Morg, its only convenience food. We were kind of in a rush to get here.” She was already unwrapping a fried pie before he finished apologizing, mumbling her thanks between painful bites. Food was food.
“A couple of these cuts, like the one on your head and the one by your lip, are going to open back up as soon as I clean the dried blood out of them. They need stitches. The ones by your nose I can put tape on. How did he do this?”
She swallowed a mouthful of pie. “He punched me, and he had rings on. So tacky. He felt justified though, because I was being a smart ass.” She smiled and then cringed at the effect the pain had on her face. Good gravy, she could use an Advil or ten.
A growl ripped from Grey as he jumped down from his perch on the truck. “I’m going for a walk.”
“This is hard for him,” Wade said when he was out of earshot. “Seeing you like this, he’ll always blame himself. You are going to have to try and be nice to him. He almost died for you, but he’ll always analyze this last couple of days. Try to figure out a way he could have done it differently. A way he could have done it better. You are his world, Morgan. I know you can’t understand it, but these past months have torn him up.”
She sighed heavily, closing her eyes. She was far too exhausted for this discussion and definitely did not need to be reminded of the pain she’d brought him. She only had to look as far as his eyes to see how badly she’d messed up, and right now her ego was bruised even worse than the rest of her. Lecture all he wanted, but Wade could never be harder on her than she was being on herself.
Brent kept up a running jargon about what had been going on back at Dean’s place, and she was grateful for the distraction from the pain. Wade gave her pain killers and they took effect as he finished up the last of the stitches by her mouth. He reset her broken nose as well, ensuring she would have two impressive black eyes by the morning. Lovely.
Grey returned and took a seat up on the tailgate. His was a more tedious fix than Morgan’s. Mostly because he had ripped the stitches all the way down his stomach, but also because she hadn’t snarled at Wade constantly. A treacherous job, being the pack doctor.
When Grey’s growling became constant and sweat beaded on his forehead, she scooted closer to him and rested her hand right next to his. The fire in his eyes diminished as she brushed her pinky against his. Grey stood after Wade was done, testing the new stitches, and Morgan took the bottle of water and gauze from Wade.
“I’ll finish him up if you guys want to work your magic on the bodies downstairs.” There were times in her life she couldn’t believe the things she had reason to say. Any talk of body stashing topped the list. Life as a werewolf was more complicated than she could’ve ever imagined, and she swallowed bile that threatened to claw its way up the back of her throat at the thought of the basement tomb.
Wade squeezed her arm and he and Brent disappeared inside.
Fatigue pulled at her as she cleaned around his new stitches. As she worked, he gripped the tailgate tighter and tighter. She reached for the gauze to bind the wound when Grey leaned toward her and hooked a finger under her chin. He pulled her gaze up to meet his.
“Are you all right, little wolf?” he asked softly, blue eyes fighting gold.
The nickname warmed her until heat radiated up to the tips of her ears, and she pressed her cheek against the uninjured half of his chest. “No. But I will be.”
He hesitated only a moment before he gathered her into his arms. It had been so long since she’d been held and she melted into his embrace. Burying her face deeper into his chest to hide her tears, she wrapped her arms tenderly around his waist and prayed this wouldn’t be the last time she felt this safe.
Wade and Brent barreled out of the house. “We need to move the trucks! This house is about to go boom,” Brent said through an absurd grin.
Morgan hesitated. Which truck should she ride in? She didn’t
know if Grey would want her in his truck smelling like another man.
“You’re with me,” he said as he ran to open her door and help her up.
A tiny weight lifted. Despite everything, he still wanted her with him. When he was in the driver’s seat, he peeled out behind Wade, the truck fishtailing this way and that across the dirt. The explosion came a few seconds later, and Grey stopped the truck and looked back to make sure it was all burning. Apparently satisfied, he followed Wade’s truck out onto a main road.
She’d never been to Montana before, and though her memories would always be tainted by what those men had done to her, it was a beautiful landscape. Country gave way to a tiny town with an auto salvage yard, bustling general store, and some restaurant called Frosty’s that boasted the best homemade root beer this side of the Mississippi River. A water main had busted on one of the main streets, and kids of all ages played in their swim suites right in the street as traffic picked its way by them. Mothers relaxed in bag chairs and waved as they passed by. Morgan probably looked like a murder victim, but she waved anyway, holding on to the idea that there were good people in the world to balance the bad.
An hour outside of John’s property, Wade pulled into a hotel parking lot and Grey parked beside him. She’d expected some seedy seventeen-dollars-a-night digs, but apparently the boys had other plans. The hotel was nice, with a welcoming fountain complete with dancing cherub statue. Grey checked in with Wade while Brent talked on his phone in the other truck.
“The hotel is pretty busy inside,” Grey explained. “I don’t want anyone seeing you like this. We’re still too close to that explosion, and if they suspect foul play, police will be combing the area. No need for extra attention.”
His sunglasses were big on her face and rubbed painfully on her newly set nose, but they did the trick of covering most of the damage. Grey mussed her hair and pulled it forward for good measure and she followed the boys into the hotel lobby, careful to keep her eyes on the beige travertine tile that adorned the floor.
