Hold Steady (Becoming the Wolf Book 2)

by T. S. Joyce

  Faint voices were muddled and far away, and she strained her ears at what they were saying. Two men were talking, voices low, but not too low for a werewolf to hear

  “We’ve already called them ten times.” The voice was scratchy and dry. “That fuckin’ demon wolf killed them all. They would have made contact by now, right?”

  “Yes, but he was one wolf against four of ours,” a man with a deep, southern accent said impatiently. “Just one wolf!”

  “Lucan, you didn’t see him. Trey and I watched him get out of his truck, and he was huge. I mean, bigger than you’d think possible, eyes blazing like he had come straight from the fires of hell. I watched him tear Trey up with his bare hands, and he had changed back to human by the time I was shoving that bitch in the trunk. I don’t doubt her mate is dead. I saw what Trey did to him. But that mutant took everyone with him.”

  Grey. They must think he’s her mate. Did they mean he was dead? A burst of adrenaline hit her and her finger twitched against the dirt beneath her. She was breathing hard and sweating. She squeezed her eyes closed and focused on taking two deep breaths, just to settle down. They couldn’t hear she was awake. Not until she had time to think.

  Those men couldn’t mean Grey was dead. She would somehow know if he was no longer of the world. Surely she would have felt a break in the invisible string that held their souls tethered together. But then again, she couldn’t feel the heart-wrenching tension that constantly thrummed when she made herself stay away from him. Her breathing picked up again. Had he died while she was drugged? Had she missed it? Oh God, oh God, not Grey. She couldn’t afford to go to pieces, but her skin tingled all over in an uncomfortable sensation. She tried fiercely to scratch her skin but was still unable to do more than slide her arm slowly across the filthy ground she lay on.

  “Well, I ain’t givin’ up on them. Keep calling them,” the man with the accent barked out, command coming from his words with an electric crack. An alpha.

  One of them walked off with echoing footsteps up a flight of creaky stairs, and a door slammed somewhere above. A sigh came from the man on the other side of a windowless door. He sat on something that groaned and gave under his weight. With a small, victorious turn of her head, she raked her adjusting gaze over her prison.

  On the wall by the door there were four old and rotting empty crates in different stages of disrepair. The wall to her right was covered in boxes of what smelled like moldy books or magazines. That was the direction the smell of mildewed paper was coming from as she took account of several boxes on the bottom with dark stains to their midsections with whatever fluids they had absorbed from the floor. Was it blood? She sniffed but couldn’t make anything out over the smell of urine. Quietly, and as sensation would allow, she sat up and stretched her stiff neck. Her vision still took on the haze of three tequila shots too many, but at least she could move again.

  Her head throbbed and she lifted careful fingers to a clotted wound and dry blood where her forehead met her hairline. How long had she been out? She ran her hand down the stream of crackling blood and followed it until it hit the hollow in her throat where it had pooled and dried. Her hand shook when she pulled it away and the sickly-sweet scent of her fear filled her senses. She was dressed in a T-shirt that swallowed her. She sniffed the shirt’s collar but it held an unfamiliar scent.

  She had lost her bladder while she was unconscious and was sitting in the puddle. The floor was filthy and damp, covered in a layer of grime and soaked with so many smells it was repulsive.

  She stood, desperate to escape the disgusting floor. Wobbling dangerously, she lost her balance and threw her hand back to catch herself, wrenching her wrist painfully. She froze, listening for the man outside to get up from his noisy seat. Silence. She squatted, pulling her hand off the floor and crossing her arms over her knees. The only illumination in the room was two light bulbs on strings hanging about ten feet from each other and attached to the ceiling. If only she could turn them on without attracting attention so she could find a weapon. A dirty twin-sized mattress lay on the ground behind her. Even the darkness didn’t hide the unidentifiable stains on it. The other wall was bare, with cracks snaking from concrete floor to concrete wall to dilapidated ceiling. They must be holding her in a basement of some kind.

  She was exposed in only the shirt and stood again, this time swaying, but remaining upright. If she tried to walk, she wouldn’t be able to do much more than shuffle her feet, making noise in the process. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to walk to anyway, so she stood there, frightened and alone and worried about her mate and Lana.

  Her mate?

  Regret was her only company in this damp prison. She was so sorry and she would never be able to tell him in person. She wished she could apologize for how long it took her to cope with her new life.

  She had messed up. How could she have been so naïve? She’d thought she could do this on her own, that she could keep Lana safe without the pack’s help, but she’d been wrong. She had become fast friends with the pack, but there was still a small part of her that blamed them for what had happened to her. She hadn’t been there an entire night before one of their own had tried to kill her, and failing at that, they’d managed to ruin her life instead. She hadn’t wanted any more help from them. She would be forever tied to their pack for hunts, socialization, and support for herself and for Lana. She had wanted one area of her life to stay the same so she could have something to call her own. Something that reminded her of her old self. She wanted a small semblance of the independence she had found before she’d met Grey. Something to be proud of. And her house in the city was it for her.

  Marianna was dead because of a werewolf. Now Morgan’s life was upside down because of a werewolf, and the person she was supposed to be with was out of reach because of werewolves. And now she was sitting in this filthy stinking dungeon at the hands of a deranged, masochistic werewolf. How could she not want to live in her little house that she worked hard to pay her monthly rent on? To have a tiny corner of her life that was still normal for her and Lana? She knew the time had long passed where she was supposed to gracefully accept this new life and all of its consequences. Instead, she’d refused help, refused to listen to the pack and Grey when they’d told her this could happen.

  Her stubbornness had killed her.

  Lana. Grey. She fought the tears. She would never see them again. She would be gone. Grey was gone. Who would protect her baby now? Had he even found Lana? Who was taking care of her? Who was feeding her and bathing her and tucking her in at night? A quiet sob threatened to escape and she bit her lip against it until she tasted iron.

  Stop it. If Grey were here, he would tell her to fight. Change and fight. She’d trained for so long for something. She’d shoved herself through years of fight training and weapons training, and what for? It had to be for this moment. She just needed to remember what she’d learned when she was younger and end this quickly.

  She had to stop falling apart.

  She had to keep her mind from collapsing into a whimpering weak thing, threatening to give up. She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t even attempted escape yet. She padded carefully to the farthest corner away from the door, removed her shirt, and lay down. The tingling started in her back.

  She needed a plan. She was still able to Change, so she would simply have to kill them. Kill them. She hung onto those two words, testing them out in her mind. She had never killed anyone before. Could she do it when it came down to looking in a man’s eyes and ending his life? Her wolf was more submissive than the wolf that filled Grey’s head. Murder and mayhem weren’t the first thoughts to come to her mind in any situation. She did have motivation on her side, however. Lana needed her.

  They’d kidnapped her and taken her baby. One of them had drugged her and left her in a puddle of piss, and they would do it again. Heat crept up the back of her neck and she welcomed the anger.

  Rage was a much more empowering emotion than fear. Her Ch
ange began and pain ripped through her in waves. No matter what, she wouldn’t whimper or make any pained noise that would draw the attention of the man behind the door. She would need the element of surprise if she was to be successful in her hunt. The Change took much too long but the door remained closed. Her fear of her capturers seeing her like this, half-Changed and defenseless, kept her silent.

  When it was finally over, she lay there panting and unable to move. She got up when she was able, quiet as a wolf, and trotted over, waiting behind the hinges of the door. Her nails didn’t make a clicking noise on the concrete. Instead, the layer of grime padded the noise to silence. She sat and waited.

  The anticipation was torture. Every second seemed like a minute, and every minute like an hour. When finally the lock turned, she was wound so tightly, she was frozen in place for an important split-second. The door opened and the man hesitated, swiveling his head in search of her. He stalked farther into the room and pulled the string on the ancient light bulb, illuminating the room with a dingy light. She could better reach him there. He turned his head in her direction when it was the only place left to check.

  She lunged, missed his neck but landed her teeth into his shoulder, biting down and using her legs against his body to tear into him. Something touched her rib cage and her body went rigid as pain seared through her. With a grunt, Morgan landed like a sack of flour onto the concrete floor below the man. He yelled out an expletive and held his shoulder with one hand like it would help staunch the stream of blood that poured from him. In his other hand, he held a small black stick with a blue electric current visible at one end. Before she recovered, he kicked her in the ribs and tasered her again.

  “Bitch!” he screamed. “You ripped half of my shoulder off. I’m going to kill you for that.” He leaned down toward her but another voice interrupted.

  “You’ll do no such thing. She’s mine.” a blond man growled from the doorway. Okay, so he was in charge. This was the alpha.

  The dark-haired man backed off and handed the alpha in the doorway the taser. Morgan could only watch as all of her nerve endings were fried and her ribs screamed for relief. The blond man, Lucan the other had called him earlier, looked at her curiously.

  “If I had any doubts about you being Silver Wolf before, they sure been put to rest now.” His feral smile sent a chill down her spine and into her gut, turning it cold. “You’re magnificent,” he said in his thick country accent. “Generally, I don’t go for blond wolves, but for you I think I should make an exception. Don’t you agree, Marshall?” Lucan turned to the other man, waiting until he nodded his head, eyes downcast. “She got you good, didn’t she? Go clean that up. I need alone time with my girl.”

  Marshall hesitated, but Lucan waved a taser at him. Lucan turned cold green eyes back toward Morgan as the door closed behind the other man.

  “I like my women feisty, but that was a bit extreme. Change back.”

  She bared her teeth and emitted a rumbling growl from her depths of her chest. Not a chance in hell, asshole.

  Lucan made a clicking sound behind his teeth. “Now I’m going to have to give you a lesson in manners. You see, the faster you learn to do what I say, the easier this will be for you.” He paused and sighed. “You’re right. We should probably have a discussion about why you are here and what I want. That way you won’t get confused when I expect something from you. As you know, you are the only Silver Wolf, and therefore can give full-blooded werewolf puppies to the lucky man who claims you.” He sniffed the air. “I don’t think you been claimed anyone. Or if you were, it’s been a while. That’s surprising really. You aren’t half-bad looking.” He put the back of his hand to the side of his mouth as if he were letting her in on a secret. “It’s probably your temper.”

  He crossed his arms again and paced in front of her. “The way I see it, when everyone figures out what you are, every wolf in fighting form will be looking for you, ready to lay down his life to claim such a treasure. So, I got to you first. If you are still confused about why you are here, my dear, I’m claiming you. All I need to do is fill you with my scent and you will be mine by right. Aw, I know you don’t like me much right now, and that’s okay. I don’t like you either, but I will have you. As it stands, whoever has the Silver Wolf has the power. And currently, that’s me,” he finished with a smile. “Now Change back,” he ordered, voice elevating, “or I will taser you until you learn to mind me.”

  As a show of good faith, he touched her with the hot shot again on the shoulder. He was lightning fast and her weakened muscles were tensed but unwilling to react. Recovery from two hits back-to-back left her muscles twitching. Body wracked with spasms, she slunk back into the corner and started Changing back. It took a long time, and Lucan’s impatience was visible with his sighs, pacing, and foot tapping. As soon as she was in human skin again, he left her no recovery time. He grabbed her by the back of the hair and painfully wrenched her up on her feet and moved her toward the dirty mattress.

  In the dark, she hadn’t seen the chain. The clinking metal rings sprung from the floor directly beside the vile mattress, and at the end was a metal collar that would fit snuggly around her neck when locked.

  “Can I at least have the shirt back?” she asked, voice as flat and as emotionless as she could make it.

  He shoved her roughly against the wall and pointed the taser at her as he walked back, eyebrows lifted and daring her to move. He threw the wadded-up T-shirt at her face and she caught it. It had soaked the grime up off the floor and was now wet and smelled of a combination of offensive odors. She fought the temptation to give in to her anger and throw it back in his face. But she was vulnerable and open to his sneering stare, and as repulsive as his shirt smelled, she was desperate to cover her body. When the shirt was over her head, he clanked the metal collar around her neck and fastened it with a lock. He grabbed the back of her hair again and tilted her face up to look into his.

  “You might want to pay attention to this. If you Change again, your neck will grow too large for the collar and it will suffocate you. Now that would be unfortunate for me, but make no mistake, I would rather you die than have the threat of a wolf attack every time I want to chat.” And with that, he turned and left the room, locking the heavy door behind him.

  She let out a shaking sigh. The short length of the chain only gave her enough room to crouch uncomfortably on her hands and knees on the floor or lie on the edge of the mattress. After pulling on it with as much force as she could muster for half an hour, she sat back down. Her awkward position annihilated any efforts to use her new werewolf strength to pull the chain free.

  Nothing to do but wait as she let black, unrelenting fear creep through her, inch by inch until it would surely consume her. She hovered on the bed, letting as little exposed flesh as possible touch it. The collar was tight on her neck, making it hard to breathe deeply, and it was already itching. She scratched at it as the light flickered above her, giving the room an even more unsettling affect.

  How long would it take for her to go completely insane locked away in this prison?

  Not very.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Grey checked the text Marissa had sent one last time to make sure he had the address right. He had been peeling down I-40 heading toward Montana when he got it, and a few minutes later, she’d called to make sure he had received it. He’d plugged the address into the navigation on his phone and it showed he still had fifteen hours to drive. If only he could make this trip by plane. Every minute he was on the road, Morgan was at the mercy of that lunatic.

  Flying wasn’t doable for him anymore. Not since he had Changed. With all of the beefed-up security at airports, a giant man with color-shifting eyes and a tendency to growl at people would be sure to set off a few red flags. The thought of keeping Wolf cooped up in a plane surrounded by fragile humans was also out of the question. No help for it, his options were drive or drive. He hit the gas, making a personal goal to shave two hours off
the GPS’s estimated time of arrival. Relentless on the accelerator, hours ticked by and miles blasted beneath his tires.

  The phone trilled from where it sat in the cupholder, and he checked the caller ID before picking up. “Hey, Marissa. Anything new?”

  “Wade and Brent are on their way. They are about three hours behind you to give you backup if you need it. Lana is fine. She’s painting pictures on an easel Rachel bought her.”

  “All right, thanks.”

  “Also, when Jason was taking care of the bodies in the garage, one of them had a cell phone in his pocket, and it’s been ringing off the hook. All of the calls are from the same number. Jason thinks it might be their alpha trying to get ahold of them. He is going to call it. If they pick up, he can track which station it is pinging off of to make sure it is around the address we have. It might take a while. Dean and Jason are up at the station trying to take care of that, and Dean said he is going to call you as soon as they figure it out. I think that’s about it. Oh, hang on, Lana wants to talk to you.”

  “Grey?” Lana asked in a small voice.

  “Hey, baby girl, I’m here. How are you doing?”

  “Good. Rachel took us on a walk and we made cookies, and later we are going to get a princess Belle dress for me. Where is Morgan?”

  “I’m going to get her right now. We’ll be back in a couple of days, okay?”

  “Okay, I love you. I want to paint it red.” Her voice sounded muffled and far away.