"Not without my quadmates. We will all face the Council together. Were you able to remand the rest of my Quad or detain Avarice?" I held out hope, small as it was, that my Quad was away from the Regent's reach.
The leader blanked his expression and motioned one of the others to cuff my hands. I evaded him and demanded again, to know where Vaughn and the others were.
"I called for help and you're arresting me. I'll deal with the charges with the Council, just get the others out if that gaol." They didn't understand, they had to get my quadmates out of there.
"I'm sorry to have to bear the news, Lorca." He dropped the formality and let his empathy show. "The Regent has claimed that the other members of your Quad attacked the guards when they arrived at the gaol and sustained extreme injury when they were subdued." He swallowed hard before he finished. "You're the last alive."
The devastation was bad enough that I nearly buckled to the ground, but the Enforcer's held me up. "Did– did you recover their bodies? I'd like to request a proper burial for them." It wouldn't do any good to proclaim their innocence; they were gone and beyond that now. I could only hope our bondmate was alive and I could get to her.
"Rumor is that they all Invoked." A tinge of awe infused the leader’s words. I could understand it as I was shocked myself. Why did they Invoke? What the hell happened in there?
At least I had an exit plan when it was time. I wouldn't leave my Quad brothers. "And Avarice?" I tacked on the last in hopes that he'd have enough sympathy to tell me. "She's our– my, bondmate."
That got his attention. His eyes narrowed on mine, and I could feel the fury emanating from him. "There's some bad shit going down here. She was picked up in a wreck a few hours ago with the gold she stole out of an armored truck bound for the Regent's treasury. She's fine," he answered before I could interrupt. "Seems her alter went crazy while she was driving. If she's your Quad's bondmate– I'd imagine she felt it." The man was pitying now, but so was I.
"We weren't bonded yet. We'd only just found out while she was helping a woman and her daughter leave the area. She was our target." It was a Hail Mary, but maybe I could sway the man. "Is there any way you get her to the Council for trial as well? If she goes to the Regent's gaol, Anassa in-waiting or not, I doubt she'll make it out. Her only chance is for us to bond, otherwise…"
"As a favor for a fellow Enforcer and his bondmate, I'd try. For the circumstances and shady shit going on– we'll make it happen. Right?" He glanced from one Enforcer to the next, gaining agreement from each.
"Thanks, man. Really."
Maybe my bondmate and I could survive. Only time would tell.
The End
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Avarice: House of Mustelid (Wicked Reform School Series) is available now on pre-order!
About the Author
Emma Cole is an indie author that writes across the genre board. Nothing is off limits, so that means mature audiences only. From light and fluffy to down and dirty—if it strikes her fancy and has a story to tell she’s on it.
Want to stalk the author? You can catch her on most platforms here: Stalk Emma
Other Works by Emma Cole
Remington Carter Series
Echoes and Entanglements
Requiem
Clarity
(coming soon)
The Dark Duet
Lark
Nightingale
(coming soon)
Death Dealers- Serial
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
(coming soon)
Wicked Reform School Series
Avarice
Bound to Change: Limited Edition Shifter Spring Collection
(Darkfyre by Emma Cole)
Purr-fect Portrait: A Pet Play Short Story
Hearts of Darkness: A Valentines Bully Romance Anthology (Contains Hit and Run: Part One)
Hit and Run: Part Two
The Freed
A Shifter Prison Prequel Story
May Dawson
About The Freed
No girl can defy the Alpha.
When Saoirse Hunt refuses to marry the man her pack’s Alpha has chosen for her, she becomes one of the “thrown away girls”, sent to prison for the great crime of wanting to choose her own mate.
But first, the two bounty guards who come to collect her have to get her there…
As she goes into her first Heat, there will be nothing simple about transporting this prisoner for the two guards she knows only as Blue and Gray.
She’s determined to escape.
And yet, once the two of them have bonded on the road…
Will she be able to leave them behind?
Chapter One
My brother Alan tapped on my bedroom door. “Saoirse?”
I debated whether to answer him or not. He knew I was in here.
I didn’t have anywhere to go.
I leaned my forehead against the glass of my window. Outside, our yard was shadowed by the trees; the moonlight was thin, the moon itself a sliver barely visible through the wispy clouds that floated across a black sky.
I could’ve used a full moon tonight. Wolves feel strongest under a full moon.
Goddess help me.
I lived in a world where the gods were the only ones who mattered, though.
“Sosh?” he asked again, using his pet name for me, the one from when we were little kids and he couldn’t say Saoirse.
Which, to be fair, was true for ninety-eight percent of America, as well.
That name, in his soft, broken tone, dug into my heart, and I heaved a sigh as I turned and headed across the carpet. I leaned against the door, knowing my twin was right on the other side. “What is it, Alan?”
“You’re alright,” he said, an edge of relief in his voice.
“For now,” I said, but something unsettling wormed through my stomach at the realization he thought I might hurt myself in here. “Does our father really think you’re going to talk sense into me?”
There was a pause for a second. Then he said, “You know I’d get you out of here if I could, Sosh.”
“I know.” But I hated him a little bit because he couldn’t help me.
I hated myself even more, because I couldn’t help me.
“You could just marry him,” he said. “He could meet an untimely end...”
As if it would be that easy to murder an alpha.
“He’s going to meet an untimely end compared to mine,” I said. The man my father had picked to marry me to was so much older than I was.
“Just come out and say you’ll do it,” Alan said. “It buys us time. You know that…”
He trailed off. Our father and the pack alpha had agreed that if I didn’t agree to marry Robert Bell, I could starve in my room until the Shifter Guard came to take me away.
In the world of the wolf packs, defying the alpha was a crime.
Even if the alpha was a worthless asshole determined to marry you to another worthless asshole.
They’d thought I’d bend long before this. But hunger had faded into nothing but emptiness over the past few days. I felt faint, but somehow that just made me more stubborn. They’d rather let me die than let me control my own life. They’d rather send me away to prison than let me choose my own mate.
My father said fated mates were nothing but a fairy tale, that I’d find love where he told me. But I couldn’t give up on the idea that there was someone out there meant for me, someone gentle and kind.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
There was a long pause on the other side of the door. I could feel him sigh. “Sosh…”
My lips tightened as I nodded. She didn’t want to see me, because she wouldn’t defy my father. She’d told me the whole time she was growing up about her love story, about how her parents chose her spouse for her, and it ended up so happily.
Except I’d seen enoug
h to doubt that happily-ever-after.
“Sosh, please,” he said from the other side of the door. Desperation made his voice break. “Just say you’ll do it. We’ll figure something out later.”
“What are they going to do, lock me up forever?” I asked. It didn’t make sense to me anyway that the prison would go along with this, that they would lock teenage girls away for daring to want their freedom.
“Our father says that after you’ve been in prison for a while, no one will want you anyway…”
“You’re not helping, Alan,” I snapped.
The sound of tires rolling over gravel drew me to the window. I pushed aside the filmy curtains and watched as a long, sleek muscle car came to a stop.
After a second, the doors opened, and my heart stuttered in my chest, waiting. These would be the men who were taking me away.
Who were taking me to prison.
The two men who rose from the car were beautiful. That was the thought that struck me first, even though the rise of fear. The one who closed the driver’s side door was tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair tousled, and his features were roughly handsome.
He looked across the top of the car at his companion, who was slender—especially for a shifter—with sharp features. When he moved, it was with catlike grace.
Then, as if they both sensed me, they looked up. Their gaze went to my window.
I froze there, with my fingertips tangled in the filmy curtains. They were too far away for me to see the color of their eyes, but I could almost feel their gaze, as if it soaked through my skin. My skin flushed hot, as if I were embarrassed.
I jerked back from the window, then moved rapidly away, so they wouldn’t be able to see me anymore. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror at my dresser. Sure enough, my pale skin was suddenly flushed as if I’d blushed, my delicate cheekbones touched with pink in a face surrounded by masses of dark blond hair. I touched my cheek tentatively, studying my face in the mirror. My amber eyes were dilated, the pupils small in a sea of dark gold. Was that...embarrassment at being caught watching them? Or something else altogether?
“Sosh,” Alan said again. “Last chance. Please… I don’t know what will happen if they take you away.”
My twin cared for me, but suddenly I wasn’t sure if those were his words or our father’s.
“The trouble is, I know what will happen if I stay,” I said softly.
In the distance, I heard my father call him.
There was a faint thump as Alan’s forehead bumped the door. I could picture him standing there, his dark eyes closed in frustration, his jaw set.
“Sosh…” he said, and there was raw emotion in his voice that I hadn’t heard for a long time, since before our pack beat it out of him.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised him. “I’ll see you again one day.”
“I’ll find a way to get you out.”
“I know you will.”
I didn’t. But he had to keep moving, and maybe if he believed that, it would help for now.
There was no reason for both our lives to end tonight.
“Bye.” His voice came out brittle. He was trying to collect himself, and he had to, because our father called him.
“Goodbye.” I couldn’t hear anything on the other side of the door, but I was sure he’d moved away. I felt alone.
My overnight bag was open on my bed, exposing a few other clothes, a book, photos, my toiletries. I’d packed a bag, although I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to take it, and I ran my hand across its contents absently, trying to think if there was anything else I should even try to bring. I didn’t think I’d be allowed to have much.
Dread churned in my stomach. I didn’t know anything about what was coming, but I knew it wasn’t good.
It was supposed to be enough to keep girls like me in line, after all.
My gaze fell to the knife on my nightstand. My hunting knife—every shifter knows how to make the most of their kill when they wake with it in the morning—must be what Alan feared I’d hurt myself with. He must be able to imagine me slitting my own wrists rather than facing the two choices that life offered me.
There was the faintest sound behind me. I whirled, grabbing the knife off my nightstand.
The slender guy from the car slammed me into the wall. He grabbed my throat in one hand, my wrist with the knife in the other, pinning me against the wall. His fingers squeezed almost painfully tight on my throat, but his focus was on the knife in my hand.
“Drop it,” he murmured into my ear, his voice low and intimately close. “You don’t want to hurt me, lass.”
He had an accent, a Scottish accent that I hadn’t expected in such a warm, roughly masculine voice.
I hesitated, then released my fingers. The sheathed blade fell to the floor.
“How’d you get in here?” I looked from the knife to his face as his grip on my throat eased.
I’d wondered what color their eyes were. This close, I could see they were gray, a shade flecked with silver. Combined with his sharp but handsome features—cheekbones so high that it hurt to look at, a short, sharp nose, a nicely-shaped mouth above a firm jaw—it gave his face a mischievous cast.
“I picked your lock,” he said. “Should I have asked you to let me in?”
“You might be less likely to be knifed that way.” My voice came out steady, despite the fear beating in my chest, and I wondered why I’d just said that. I didn’t need to make him mad.
“I’m fast,” he promised me. “I was never in much danger.”
Those gray eyes seemed to bore through mine, and I felt the same wayward flush of heat, as if the intensity of his gaze overwhelmed me.
“If I’m not dangerous, there’s no reason to take me to prison,” I said. My voice came out hot. “And yet, here you are.”
“No one said you were dangerous,” he said mildly. “Just...disobedient.”
He released me, taking a step back and reached down to pick up my knife in one quick, practiced movement, his gaze never leaving mine.
“And for that, I deserve to be locked away with criminals?”
“It’s not up to me to decide what you deserve,” he said, but his gaze was kind. “Come on, lass. Time to go.”
The other man, the one with the big shoulders and the dark hair, loomed in the doorway. He was even bigger than I’d thought when I watched him from the car.
“Do you need help with the girl?” His accent was American, as boring as mine.
“Do I ever need your help?”
“Yup.” The dark-haired man’s gaze locked with mine. He had piercing blue eyes. “Often.”
“I’m just trying to convince our new friend here to come along quietly,” he said.
Blue Eyes studied me. “Her family is waiting downstairs. There’s a lot of them.”
Her family? He could talk to me. I met his gaze, my chin tilting up under the pressure of his gaze.
Maybe he saw that, because the next thing he asked was, “What do they expect from you?”
It took me a second to find my voice. “Surrender.”
It’s what I’d expected from myself, honestly. I’d thought that I’d have to cave eventually. I knew I was making things worse and yet I couldn’t stop hoping that somehow, I’d come up with a way out of this situation. And yet time had kept spinning on, and I’d settled into a trap I’d made myself.
“You think you could go down there now and tell them that you changed your mind and we’d just drive off,” Blue Eyes said.
I stared at him, my lips parting. It felt like my stomach had just dropped.
The first man glanced from me to him and back again. “You could,” he said. “Don’t mind him. He likes playing with people’s heads.”
Blue Eyes finally ripped his gaze away from mine. I hadn’t realized that I’d all but stopped breathing until I drew a shuddering breath.
“Tick tock,” he said, patting the watch around his wrist. “If you’re going to be a good
girl and accept the life they chose for you, you’d best walk out this door and go beg them for it.”
He stepped to one side, sweeping his arm toward the door.
I looked to the man with gray eyes, and he stepped back, raising his hands—one of which still held my knife casually—as if I could just walk out of here and we could pretend none of this ever happened.
We could pretend I hadn’t run from dinner with my parents and the alpha and his wife, that my father hadn’t caught me—in the driveway I’d just looked down on—that I hadn’t fought my way to hide in my bedroom, knowing that he could break down the door if he wanted to.
But he didn’t want to.
I’d embarrass the pack if I didn’t go willingly to my own wedding.
“Well?” Gray asked. “Are you coming with us?”
“I’m not sure why you make it sound like I have a choice.”
“You know you do,” he said. “Even if it isn’t much of one. And I don’t like to drag a girl screaming out of her house.”
Blue grunted. “Gives me tinnitus.”
Gray rolled his eyes, just faintly, before he schooled his face. “That’s what they expect too, I imagine, if you don’t give in. They expect you to be dragged out of here screaming the whole way and begging. They expect you to leave all your dignity behind as well as your childhood bedroom.”
He spoke like he’d seen it happen a dozen times before, and an icy chill swept down my spine.
My childhood bedroom. It made me look around, seeing it with new eyes, the way these men must. I’d never see this room again: the canopy bed where I’d spent so many hours reading, the bookcases with books stacked on top of others because I’d run out of space, the ribbons and certificates hanging on the wall from all the little competitions in school that hadn’t mattered to my parents.
“I’ll go willingly,” I said, and I swear, for just a second I saw relief flash across Blue’s face, no matter how cold he was. I looked at my bag. “Should I…”
Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories Page 19
