“Everyone has their vices, pumpkin.” Dad had the courtesy to look away, but I really wondered if it was only because his left eye had started to twitch and he didn’t want me to see it.
I shook my head. “This isn’t a vice. In the real world it’s called kidnapping, rape, and murder.”
“We’re shifters, pumpkin.” His voice softened and he moved, rounding the cage to the doorway. He still wasn’t looking directly at me, only watching me from the corner of his eye. “The rules are different for us.”
He sounded as if he actually believed the garbage he was spewing at me. Like this was normal behavior, accepted even. How scary was that? The man who raised me, loved me, cared for me, actually thought that what he was doing, what he allowed his pack to do, was okay.
“Do you actually hear yourself?” I asked. I was aiming for disgust, except my voice came out as a whisper. “Shifter or not, this isn’t okay, Dad.”
“I’m done discussing this with you,” he snapped. His face grew red and furious as he reached into his pants pocket and fished out a key. “If you want to see Aidan again, you’ll stand up and come over to the door.”
Panic, blind, hot panic, set in as he leaned forward to unlock my door. We’d left the wires on, but loose, to keep the doors looking solid as the men walked by, but if he grabbed it, the top half would flutter and give.
“He’s not here,” I said, scrambling forward, and blocking the girls in my cage behind me, and out of his reach. “I’d scent him if he was.” I was glad I sounded confident in that, because I didn’t feel it. My heart was hammering so hard that it hurt to breathe.
“Well,” Dad said, taking hold of the lock, “you can believe that if you want to, pumpkin, but he’s here. My boys found him and they’re here for their reward. You can come with me and see him or you can stay here and watch.”
The door started to bend as he fiddled with the key, and his eyes, blazing with fury, snapped to mine. He opened his mouth, probably to yell at me, but didn’t get a chance. “No!” Whitney shouted. “No, don’t touch me!” And the wire door on the second cage clambered to the ground.
“Look at this,” one of the men said, the disbelief was obvious in his voice. “These girls were fixing to escape.”
And then everything seemed to blur together. There was laughter, cold, cruel laughter, and bones breaking, and growls sounding. The men crowded the cage; the girls shifted.
Dad tore off the door to my cage and he dropped to his knees. He glared at me long and hard, and then he pressed forward. His arm leapt out and he wrapped his hand around my ankle, pulling hard.
“Back up,” I growled, kicking out of his hold. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
But he didn’t back up. He only laughed. And it was then that I decided that he was dead to me. Completely and officially dead to me.
CHAPTER 26
~ AIDAN ~
It was a calm, easy trek back to the werecougars’ location, though I had to admit, I was waiting for something to go wrong. As we reached the edge of the forest where the cougars had hidden in the trees, I thought that we’d face another attack.
But nothing happened.
The only thing we found waiting for us were the dead we’d left behind. The cougars hadn’t even bothered to collect their pack members. I almost felt bad for the dead — almost.
Most of the space around the cages was taken up by the werecougars. Some were shaking the structures, taunting the girls trapped inside. They’d shifted to wolves, and were growling, a low, deadly threat, that didn’t seem to faze the werecougars. A few of the men stood by and watched, but all of them looked … hungry, greedy, eager.
Jeff himself was on his knees, half in and half out of the cage Jade was in. He had a hand on her ankle and he was pulling as if he thought he could physically drag her from the confines of the barbed wire enclosure.
He wasn’t getting far.
Jade looked stubborn, but there was something else there, too. Despair. I could smell it. She was putting up a good fight, but she was struggling to keep it together. She kicked wildly at her father as he pulled at her legs, but she wasn’t making any of the kicks count. And she was yelling, except I had no idea what she was saying. It was garbled and frantic, a string of sounds that didn’t quite sound like words. She had Erika, and I was pretty sure, Laura, trapped behind her. They were snapping out at Jeff, though, they couldn’t quite reach around Jade to hit their intended mark.
I growled. I could almost feel her fear and I wanted, no, I needed her to calm down and focus. I channeled my alpha scent, letting it pour out of me. There was a good breeze flowing through the forest, and I figured it would only take a few seconds for her to pick up my scent, and I seriously hoped smelling me close by would be enough to make her chill out.
It worked.
Suddenly, Jade just stopped. She stopped yelling. She stopped struggling. She looked toward me, her eyes squinting as she scanned the trees, and she laughed a little hysterically.
The other females were snarling, snapping, growling, within the other cage, but as Jade laughed, they stopped, too, sitting back on their hind legs, panting.
They knew we were here.
As evidence to that, Jade laughed again, looked straight at her father, and said loudly, “You better let go of me now.” She sounded a little sad, but also really furious. “Aidan’s not really a fan of people trying to hurt what’s his, and neither is my pack. When they find out what you were planning to do, they’ll kill you all.”
For a beat, there was nothing but silence. The men paused in their taunting. They turned, following the females’ gazes, but they didn’t move.
And then I noticed that it wasn’t just Jade’s cage that was open. The doors, both of them were completely off and lying on the ground. Maybe that was the reason they hadn’t moved; nothing would be blocking the exit for my females if they did.
“Ignore her,” Jeff growled. “Man up and get those wolves under control.” He started pulling at Jade again, but this time when she kicked, she hit him square in the face. He sat back and his hand shot up to his nose, and he shouted, “You little brat!”
I felt a dark, bloodthirsty thrill spread through my belly and I let the rush of adrenaline wash over me. I started to shift. It was probably crazy taking my human form now, but I wanted Jeff to know it was me. I didn’t want there to be any doubt in his mind that the wolf who ended his sick, miserable life was me. And my inner-wolf, well, it seemed he wanted that, too. He didn’t put up a fight; instead, he pushed the shift along, giving up all his control.
A soft tingle spread along my skin as the coarse black fur that covered my body began to recede. The snapping of my bones sounded extra loud, bouncing through the silent forest, but all I felt was the rush of the shift.
When my human body solidified, I got up to my feet and rolled my shoulders. I let out a slow breath, surveying the group. There were only nine of them, plus Jeff, by the cages, but I figured the others would come running the moment we attacked. Actually, I was counting on it.
Dominic growled and made a chomping sound with his teeth. He was looking up at me, and gave me a lopsided dog smile. He was ready to go. I just smiled back, although it probably looked a little feral. “Find the kids,” I said. “Keep them away from the cages.” And then keeping my human form, I strode forward.
The werecougars seemed confused. Maybe they thought I was crazy, walking out into their midst; I wasn’t sure. But then they looked past me and alarm replaced the confusion. One of them made a startled sound, and they started to move, drawing back and flinching as my pack followed me, moving in from every direction. We moved in calmly. None of my wolves threatened. No one attacked. They were just there, a quiet, deadly presence at my back.
“You won’t be keeping them, Jeff,” I said with a lazy smirk, stopping a few feet from his back. “Step away from them before something ... unfortunate happens.”
He didn’t seem to care one way or another that I was
standing there, which was odd, I thought, and definitely stupid. He barely even looked at me, keeping most of his focus on Jade.
But Jade was looking at me. Her eyes raked down my body and a flush shaded her cheeks. “Hey, baby,” she said, and laughed a little. She sounded pretty close to insane, breakable, and stressed. Really, really stressed. She gave me a look that was half warm and half cold and crossed her arms, ignoring her father completely. “Took you long enough.”
I grinned and shook my head. “Sorry, sweetheart. Won’t happen again.”
“You’re darn right it won’t.” Her nose scrunched up, and she waved a hand widely around her. “Can you believe these guys actually think keeping me in a cage will convince me to force our wolves to join them?” She huffed. “And guess what else? Our females are supposed to be their reward for hunting you guys down. Dad here even said you were here and he was going to let me see you if I let his beasts have our girls.”
I chuckled. “Is that so?” She was good at this, I thought. Good at acting, as if everything was normal and that she had the situation under control, when really, she was coming close to full-out panic. I could smell it. I could hear it in her laugh and see it in her eyes.
“Yep,” she said, and grinned. “But you don’t look like you’ve been hunted down and caught, so I’m thinking he’s full of crap.”
A couple of my wolves pressed in closer to the cage beside Jade’s, forcing the werecougars back with a few low growls, and as they moved further away from the cage, the females sprang free and quickly melted in with the rest of the pack.
“Sweetheart,” I said gently. “You can go on and shift now. I’ve got this.”
“Aidan,” Jeff said, and finally leaned fully out of the cage and looked at me. He sounded annoyed as if the last threads of his patience were thin and about to snap. “Don’t encourage her. She’s not leaving this camp. None of you are.”
“Step away from my mate, Jeff,” I said, and took another step toward him. I gave him a second, only a second, to obey, and then I lunged forward, grabbed his ankles, and yanked him away from Jade.
He shouted, just a small, quick burst of sound. He kicked out at me, but it was too late. I already had him flipped onto his back, and pinned to the ground.
Realization that I wasn’t just here for my females must have dawned on him as my bones began to break and change. He looked up at me wide-eyed and pretty obviously scared. His fear smelled bittersweet. He tried to slide out from underneath me, but his panic made him slow, sloppy, and completely uncoordinated.
“What are you idiots waiting for?” he shouted. “Get this beast off me!”
CHAPTER 27
~ JADE ~
I couldn’t shift.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, because I did. I really did. And my inner-wolf, well, she wanted out and she wasn’t being quiet about it either. My skin was crawling and raw adrenaline was pumping through my body, but I just couldn’t do it.
There was chaos all around me. Wolves and cougars. Snarling and hissing. My pack was taking them down faster than my brain could process. None of the cougars were running to help my dad. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. They were trying to get to him, but my wolves were taking them down before they reached their target.
Beck, a large dusty-gray wolf, stood at the cage door. He was whimpering, and nudging at the bottom side of my foot, urging me to come out.
But I couldn’t make myself move.
Those monsters were going to take my girls and I hadn’t been able to do anything to stop them.
Suddenly Aidan let out a war cry and threw a hard elbow right into my dad’s jaw, and then he shifted. It all happened so quickly, I almost missed the change. His body hazed, bones broke, bent, changed, midnight black fur replaced tanned skin. He was snarling, growling, and pinning my dad down.
I watched it all and I felt nothing.
This was it. My mate was going to kill my father and I felt nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I expected to feel something. Sadness or relief or anger. Something. Anything. But all I felt was numb.
Was it wrong that most of me wanted him to die? He was a monster. He’d kidnapped, raped, and killed, or he at least organized those horrible things, and his victims were innocent people — humans, that had no chance of defending themselves against his pack. He deserved death. They all did.
Erika and Laura were nudging at me, trying to push me out of their way without hurting me. They wanted out. They wanted to help our pack, but I was frozen, caught up within my numbness, and blocking their exit.
Aidan’s jaw was opened wide, and he was lowering, ready to rip-out my dad’s throat, but suddenly he made a painful sound, somewhere in the middle of a snarl and a whimper, and stumbled backward, rolling off my father.
Dad scrambled to his feet. He was holding a sharp looking pocketknife in his hand that was stained and dripping scarlet liquid from its blade. He was bloody, too, and he looked weakened, but he was moving and the sight sent my inner-wolf into a rage-endured frenzy within my chest. That man — my father — had been about to offer my wolves to his pack of beasts as a reward. He didn’t deserve to be moving.
And that’s when I felt something. Something dark and a little crazed and it compounded into something that was totally insane.
I scrambled from the cage, the barbs tearing at my knees and catching at the blanket that was tucked snuggly around me, almost ripping from my body.
My eyes were locked on the knife clasped in my dad’s hand. “Who the hell brings a knife to a shifter fight?”
Dad didn’t answer, but then I guess I didn’t expect him to. He wasn’t paying any attention to me, and he didn’t seem to notice Erika and Laura, either. The girls were pressed to my side, snarling at him, as I advanced.
“Stand up to them!” he cried. He looked around, frantically waving the knife. “Make them submit.”
The cougars were shifting, and more were coming. Running across the small yard, tearing off their clothes. The sound of bones snapping, so many at once, was a sickening sound, echoing back from the cabin and the forest walls.
“You’re destroying everything, Aidan,” Dad shouted, turning as Aidan got back to his feet and stalked toward him. He held his hands out, still clasping the small knife in one, as though his hands could stop my mate from coming closer. “Your emotions are clouding your judgment and stopping you from doing your job. You’re supposed to be leading them, not fighting for a girl. Alpha pairs aren’t about love. Strength and dominance is all that matters.” His voice was rising, tinted with fear. “You said that yourself not so long ago in my living room. Be the dominant male you’re meant to be and control your mate! Stop fighting me for a girl!”
Aidan’s lips curled and he let out a vicious snarl. I couldn’t see his wound through his thick black fur, but I knew it was there. I could smell it, his pain and his blood, but he didn’t let it show. He stalked toward my dad and that was when my dad stumbled back, crashing into the cage that had held me captive. He dropped his knife, and it clattered through the wire, just as the cage bent, and then collapsed under his weight. He let out an agonized cry as the barbed wire tore through his clothing and ripped into his skin.
“No, Dad,” I said. “You’re wrong.” I quickly rushed to Aidan’s side, pressing my leg against his fur. He glanced at me, just a quick look, before letting out another growl at my father. “His emotions aren’t clouding his judgment. They’re making him see what’s important. Leading a pack isn’t all about power and control.”
Dad tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. Each time he moved, Erika and Laura snarled and snapped, pushing him back down. Dots of blood began to well up from where the barbs had dug into his skin. The more he struggled, the worse it got.
“You asked me about the women,” he said. “This is why they aren’t changed. This is why they don’t live with us. He’s going to lose everything because of you. Because he thinks he loves you.”
/> I almost corrected him. Almost. But I didn’t. It wasn’t worth the breath to tell him that Aidan didn’t think he loved me, he knew he did, just like I knew with him. I almost asked him about Mom, too, but again, I thought I probably didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know if he actually cared about her or why he’d married her. I was sure the answer would only make me sick.
Instead, I looked over my shoulder and said softly, “Look around, Dad. We aren’t exactly losing anything.”
And we weren’t. In minutes, my pack had taken down over half of Dad’s forces and they were still attacking with vehemence fervor.
That was when a cougar broke through my wolves and charged at us. He hit Laura first with a hard knock into her side that threw her to the ground. Erika spun away from my dad, baring her teeth, but she hesitated.
We all hesitated.
Because it wasn’t a werecougar. It was a shifter. It was Jason. In mid-leap, he shifted into a bird, a big ugly looking bird. He flew upward and disappeared into the forest.
His little stunt gave Dad an opening. Dad launched from the cage and rushed at Aidan. He started to shift, and it cost him his life. Aidan might think twice about killing someone in human form, all of us would, but once the shift started, it was over.
I thought Dad knew that, too. He glanced at me, just a quick look that was cold and emotionless, and it told me he didn’t regret anything he’d done, and then he was taken down.
Beck and Erika, who’d been circling around us, lunged forward to attack, and they latched onto his calves, causing him to fall. And then more wolves descended, biting into him and tearing at his flesh.
He started to scream, but it sounded all wrong. His voice wasn’t human. It was rough and pitched and screechy. His face wasn’t his anymore; it was something else, something not quite human and not fully animal, as though it had frozen in mid-shift, and I wasn’t entirely sure what he’d intended to turn into.