by B M Griffin
Megan stopped trying to move closer and forced herself to put her trust in her friend. Shayla seemed unfazed by Megan’s closer proximity and in the next moment, Shayla’s hands were lit up with purple flames. She noticed the lines on Shayla’s forehead intensified like she was in deep concentration, and after a minute or two, the purple flames had digressed until they only encompassed Shayla’s fingertips. Shayla opened her eyes and moved her fingers toward Jared’s neck, then she pressed her hot-purple fingertips to Jared’s open wounds. Jared jerked beneath Shayla’s touch, and a heartbreaking cry of pain escaped his lips. Megan ripped her arms free of Allen and Joanna, and she was by his side in a heartbeat. She dropped to her knees next to him, opposite of Shayla, and took his hand between hers while Shayla continued to press her flaming, purple fingers to his neck.
Every sound that left his mouth, every moan in pain, and every time his body flinched, Megan felt another piece of her heart get shredded. She finally had the ability to protect someone she loved, and still, she had failed to keep Jared from getting hurt. She’d always thought that if she’d been stronger, braver, then she could have saved the people she loved who kept getting hurt around her, but she’d been wrong. So wrong. Now Jared was fighting for his life because she’d been too stubborn to listen to him when he told her it was too dangerous for her to travel down to Hell.
It felt like hours passed while Shayla worked on getting Jared’s wounds to stop bleeding. When she finally pulled her hands away and let the purple fade from her fingers, Megan inspected every inch of Jared’s neck with her eyes, afraid to touch him and cause more pain, to ensure there was no more blood leaking from his body.
“I got all of the bleeding to stop,” Shayla said, “but we need to get him into bed and I’m sure he is going to need a doctor. I know we heal fast, but he lost a lot of blood. He might need more than just a few days of rest to come out of this at full strength.”
“Chris is a doctor,” Joanna said. “I’ll get him if the three of you think you can handle getting Jared upstairs into bed.”
Allen nodded. “We can do that. Tell Chris to hurry.”
“I will,” Joanna agreed before she headed out the front door.
“I can carry him upstairs,” Allen said.
Megan held out her hand when Allen bent to pick him up and stopped the other man. “No,” she said curtly. “You’ll jostle him too much. Cause him more pain. I can do it.”
“I don’t think…” Allen started, but Megan wasn’t about to sit around and listen to whatever he was about to say. Jared was her only priority. She wrapped her arms around Jared’s waist and a moment later they were both upstairs, in his bed.
The bedroom door opened then Shayla and Allen walked in. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to you being able to vanish and travel like that,” Allen said.
“Too bad I can’t seem to figure out how to use it to protect our pack or the people I care about,” Megan said.
Shayla sat on the edge of the bed next to Megan and grabbed Megan’s hand in hers. “That’s not true, Megan. You saved me, and you went all the way to Hell and back twice to bring Adam home and then Jared.”
Megan shook her head. “If I’d been faster Adam never would have been taken, then we wouldn’t have been forced to go to Hell, and Jared wouldn’t be hanging onto life by a splitting thread.”
Allen stepped in front of her. “Jared is strong, one of the strongest men and wolves I know. He’s going to be just fine.”
“Allen’s right,” Shayla said with a squeeze of Megan’s hand. “Jared will be fine. This life comes with its dangers, and we are all susceptible to those. What matters is you got him out, and because of that he is going to live.”
Megan nodded because she didn’t have the energy to argue with them any longer. It was obvious they would never see her side of things.
“Do you want me to stay?” Shayla asked after a few minutes.
“No. You should go be with Adam, make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s fine, thanks to you, but I would like to go be with him. I don’t think it’s really settled in that we just rescued him from actual Hell yet. I need to see his face to remind myself he’s really back.”
Allen looked around awkwardly. “Ugh, I think I’ll go see if Joanna made it back with Chris yet.”
Megan didn’t respond. She just dropped her head to the pillow beside Jared and watched his harsh breathing. She heard the door shut a minute later and knew that they were alone. She carefully rested her head on the pillow next to Jared, wanting to be close to him. She gently ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the top of his head softly every few seconds. She needed him to feel her love and hoped that somehow, he could sense her even in his current state.
Megan wasn’t sure how long she laid there, just watching Jared breathe, but she eventually sat back up and prepared herself to leave. Jared’s breathing had evened out in the time she’d laid with him, his chest no longer heaving with every breath he took, and she was more confident that he was going to be okay when he woke up. For that reason, she knew she needed to leave before he had the chance to wake and try to stop her, and if he figured out what she wanted to do then he would definitely try to stop her. She was not willing to allow that, so she bent over and kissed his forehead one last time, then she focused on where she needed to go and let herself be pulled away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jared
“Have you found her yet?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell are you doing back here?”
“We don’t have any leads, Adam. Where do you want us to look?”
“Everywhere if you have to! She’s our Alpha’s mate, Zack. He’s going to lose his shit if he wakes up and she’s gone.”
“I don’t see how we are supposed to catch up to her if she doesn’t want to be found. I mean, she can travel from place to place in the blink of an eye. Even if we do find the right place, she can just pop out as soon as she senses were there, and we will never even know she’d been there in the first place.”
“That doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try everything to find her. I want everyone we can spare out there looking for her. Jared’s been through enough. I am not letting him lose his mate. It will ruin him.”
****
Jared was dreaming. He had to be dreaming, or having a nightmare to be more accurate. The voices he heard were familiar, but he couldn’t fathom why Adam would be yelling at Zack about hunting down Megan. She had been successful in pulling both Adam and him back home from Hell, so he had to be imagining their conversation. It didn’t make any sense for her to be gone again, not with everyone home safe. He needed to wake up.
His eyelids felt like lead anchors when he tried to open them the first time, but he was determined. He needed to wake up, to see Megan’s face and know that he was just having a nightmare. He would not accept that she was gone, alone, not again.
Kevin would be up in arms after she managed to snatch Adam and Jared away from him. Everyone needed to stay on lockdown at the packhouse. Jared slowly forced the anchors covering his eyes open. The room was blurry for a few seconds and he blinked trying to clear his sight. The first person he was able to make out when his vision finally began to clear was Adam and his gut twisted. He looked from side to side, then all around the room, and the only people he saw were Adam and Zack. He tried not to panic, after all, Shayla wasn’t anywhere he could see, so Megan was probably just somewhere with her. Jared’s small moment of hope was extinguished a moment later when Shayla came walking into the room … alone.
“I’m going out with them this time,” Shayla told Adam. “She risked herself to bring you back home for me. I’m not letting her get caught up by Kevin after everything just because she’s being a stubborn ass.”
Jared planted his hands on either side of himself and pushed up on the mattress until he raised himself up to a sitting position on the bed. “Where’s Megan?” he croaked out. He h
ated the way his voice cracked, sounding ragged and too weak for anyone to hear him, so he cleared his throat and spoke louder. “Where is Megan?”
Adam, Shayla, and Zack all turned to face him immediately before glancing back at each other, and he could see the questions in their eyes. The questions they were asking each other: What are we going to tell him?
“Just tell me the truth,” he said when none of them volunteered any information.
“We aren’t sure where Megan is at right now,” Adam finally answered him.
All the pain and exhaustion Jared had been fighting was forgotten in an instant. He was out of the bed with his face practically pressed against Adam’s nose in the next second. “What the fuck do you mean, you aren’t sure where she’s at, Adam?” he growled through clenched teeth.
He felt Shayla move in close to his side, but he didn’t take his eyes off Adam.
“If you want to be pissed at someone, then you should be mad at me,” Shayla said.
Slowly, Jared put a little more space between him and Adam and moved his eyes over to meet Shayla’s. “Explain,” he demanded. He could feel Adam’s ire at the way he spoke to Shayla, knew that Adam wasn’t happy about the glare Jared was holding on her, but he didn’t give a damn.
Shayla shut her eyes tightly for a moment before she met his gaze and finally answered him. He could tell that she was holding back tears and that only worried him more. “A little while after we got you up here in the bed Megan came to see me. She was really upset, which was understandable considering how bad you’d been hurt when she brought you back here, and kept going on about how she still wasn’t strong enough to help the people she loved.
“I got her to calm down, telling her that she was strong, stronger than anyone I knew because she had the courage to volunteer to go to Hell to save Adam, and again for you. She agreed with me then, and thanked me. Then she said she was going to show Kevin just how strong she was. That she would make sure he didn’t hurt anyone she loved again. I tried to talk sense into her but she was going on about being the only one who had the element of surprise, insisting it would give her the upper hand to take him down, then she was just gone.”
“I’m sorry, Jared,” Zack chimed in. “We’ve been trying to find her or find Kevin and hoped she would be somewhere nearby since Shayla told us what happened, but we haven’t so much as found any sign of Megan, Kevin, or his pack of delinquents.”
Jared turned abruptly and headed toward the door without another word.
“Wait,” Adam called to him. He stopped but did not turn to face his friend, his beta, because he could not look at him in that moment. He was too pissed and he wanted someone to blame. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t Adam’s fault. Nobody could stop Megan when she set her mind to something, but he still wanted to throttle the guy if only to make himself feel slightly better. “Where are you going?” Adam asked him.
“To find my mate,” Jared deadpanned.
“We need to come up with a plan, Jared. You don’t even know where to start looking, none of us do.”
Jared turned around and was in Adam’s face in a hot second. “If I have to burn every obstacle in my way to the ground, I am going to find her. Don’t tell me I need a plan. I have one. Find my mate and bring her home. Then kill that mother fucker, Kevin Hall!”
He shoved Adam, forcing him backward a few steps, then he turned to leave once more. Jared knew that he had to get out of there before he lost his temper completely and did a lot more than just shove someone. Somebody grabbed his arm and he jerked it, trying to free it from their grip, but they held on tight.
“Wait!” Shayla practically yelled at him. “I’m coming with you.”
Jared shook his head. “No, you stay with your mate.”
Her eyes lit up, her purple flames glowing brightly from within, and he knew she wasn’t going to back down. “I’m not asking. She’s my best friend, and I’m going. If I run into Kevin I can help hold him off.”
“Shayla, I don’t want you trying to face him alone,” Adam said from behind Jared.
“I won’t be alone. Jared will be there, and I already told you, this isn’t up for debate.”
“You saw how easily he stopped both of us last time,” Adam scolded.
“I’ll make sure I don’t let that happen again.” She turned to look back at Jared and he knew there was no point in trying to argue with her anymore.
Without waiting for her or anyone else to say anymore, Jared nodded at her and said, “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Megan
It took a lot longer for Megan to find Kevin than she’d thought. Honestly, she’d thought she would just pop down to Hell and he’d still be there, lying in wait. What a dumb plan. Of course, he wouldn’t just stand around in the middle of Hell and hope that his abductees would suddenly decide to come back to have a chat. In all reality she hadn’t been the one to find his pack; no, they had found her, or at least they’d come damn close. Like the fool she was, she had decided to go back to her house after she realized her whole, sneak up on a demon in hell plan had not panned out. She’d used her gift to pop straight into her bedroom, avoiding the gruesome scene that remained in the stains marring the carpet in her living room. She just wanted to lay in her bed and think. She needed the comfort of her familiar surroundings, her plush pillow-top mattress, warm blankets, and the familiar scent coming from the warmer she kept on her nightstand.
Megan was almost asleep when she heard something outside her window. It sounded like a twig snapping and at first, she ignored it and closed her eyes, hoping she could fall asleep, but when she heard it again it was more distinct and she was sure it was more than just the wind in the trees. She walked over to the window and made sure to keep herself hidden behind the curtains while she peeked outside to see what was out there. Just behind the trees in the far corner of her backyard, she spotted a set of yellow eyes. Focusing on the eyes, she was able to make out the wolf they were attached to, and she just knew that it wasn’t anyone from her pack. That only left one option.
Kevin was having her house watched. She shouldn’t be surprised. He made it clear he would love to get his hands, or claws if she were being accurate, into her at all costs.
Without giving it too much thought, because if she did, she probably would have decided she was being way too impulsive, Megan decided to reverse the roles on her stalker. One moment she was standing at her window, the next she was hidden in the brush about ten feet behind her stalker. Her first thought while she stood there watching, trying to be as silent as possible, was that she should have shifted before she traveled outside. She was afraid that if she tried to shift so close to the other wolf, they would hear her and her plan to follow them would be spoiled before she ever really got started. She considered traveling back inside to shift and come back, but decided against it. She was lucky she hadn’t been heard the first time she landed on the fallen leaves at her feet, and she wasn’t likely to be that lucky a second time.
Her wolf stalker was clearly dedicated. Megan waited for him to move, or swap shifts with someone else so she could follow him back to the pack for hours. She gave up on standing after the hour mark, and was so exhausted that she was fighting her heavy eyelids as they tried their hardest to force themselves shut. Megan had almost lost the battle against sleep when she heard the leaves rustling close by. With the backs of her hands, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and quietly got back up to her feet.
There was a second wolf approaching the one she’d been watching all night. They stared at each other for a couple of minutes, then the original wolf nodded and headed back in the direction the new wolf had just come. Instead of following him on foot and possibly alerting him to her presence, Megan let him get a lead on her, but not so far she wouldn’t be able to keep up, and she traveled in his direction ten feet at a time making sure to carefully land as quietly as she could. She was finally getting somewhere after watching this idiot try to get a p
eek inside her bedroom for the past few hours and she wasn’t going to let all that time fighting her need for sleep go to waste.
Megan became nervous when the wolf-headed into the parking lot of High Tower Middle School, but the closer she got the more obvious it became that the school was no longer open. Vines covered the busted bricks of the exterior buildings, and the windows were all boarded up. A broken chain hung from the handles of the entryway doors, like someone had snatched the two doors open hard and fast enough to rip the thick chain apart. Judging by the thickness of the links on the chain it had to have taken some serious strength to breakthrough. When the wolf reached the door, he shifted back into human form, pulled the door open, and walked inside like he owned the place. Megan didn’t want to risk going inside so she walked around the building until she found a window that wasn’t completely blacked out by boards.
There were hundreds of people mulling around in what appeared to be the gym, with a bent basketball hoop hanging from the far end of the room. Megan was about to head back home when she spotted the devil himself, or Kevin Hall, but the guy was a demon so she figured that was close enough to being the devil. Her palms itched, and she could feel her wolf trying to rip her way out to seek vengeance for the pain Kevin had put Jared through.
She shifted, allowing her wolf to take over, but she never got around to bursting into the school like her wolf planned. It was a good thing, she was certain, but it didn’t make her wolf any happier knowing that truth. Just before she moved to enter the school, she felt Jared, felt his anger, but that wasn’t the thing that had her changing directions to get back home. His pain, the hurt he was enduring because of the betrayal he felt after waking up with her missing caused another rip inside her heart. If they survived the war, she was sure Kevin’s pack was planning to bring to their doorstep she would live the rest of her life without ever being able to heal all of her hidden scars.
