I wake to find someone has tied my hands behind my back. And going by the darkening sky to my left, I’ve been out cold for hours. Practically the entire day, it looks like.
It takes me a little longer to work out the two shifters who have me tied up in some kind of cave must be responsible for all the trouble on the building site. I spot tools, I’m guessing the missing ones that Jackson was telling me about, scattered around the open-faced cave in what looks like the side of a mountain.
Although I don’t make a sound, the mangy wolf lying stretched out in front of the only way out raises his head and snarls low in his throat.
In response, the hulking figure of the man sitting beside him turns around. I glimpse bright blue eyes set in a dark, heavily bearded face before he rises.
The gray strands streaking his hair give the impression of him being old enough to be past his prime, but nothing about the agile way he bounces to his feet suggests he’s old or weak.
Even before he’s taken the four steps to cross from the cave entrance to where I’m propped against a chilly rock wall, I know I’m looking at the alpha of this misfit pack.
“You’re awake much sooner than I thought. Most don’t get back up again when I put them down.” The naked shifter drops into a crouch far closer to me than I’m comfortable with.
Not only because he smells especially pungent, or that he’s naked, but because the dark glint in his eyes tells me he’s the type who’s willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants.
His words don’t exactly leave me feeling friendly toward him, either.
Merciless is the word I would use to describe him. He probably never hesitated for even a second before knocking me out. And since he doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about how hard he hit me, I doubt he would’ve lost any sleep if he’d killed me with that one blow.
“Well, considering it was morning the last time I had my eyes open, I’d have to disagree about the sooner part,” I say, nodding at the darkening sky, but not taking my eyes off him.
I don’t even attempt to test the cord securing my wrists. Something tells me I wouldn’t like what this shifter would do to me if he thought I was trying to escape.
To my surprise, he flashes me a quick grin and I age him down by a decade.
With the dirty skin and the gray hair, he gives the impression of being someone in his fifties maybe, but the quick grin convinces me he’s in his forties or perhaps even younger.
I don’t know what it must be like to live a life as a lone wolf, but I imagine that if this wolf has had to do it with all the stresses, the struggles to find food, shelter, to survive, it would make you feel fifty years older.
“You’re no submissive,” he says, tilting his head to examine me.
I shake my head. “No. No, I’m not.”
He falls silent, and I wait, not knowing if he’s expecting me to tell him what I am.
The silence extends as he continues his narrow-eyed examination. Finally, as I prepare to speak, he reaches out a finger and places it almost gently on my mouth. “Shhh. I nearly have it.”
I don’t like this wolf’s attention, and I don’t like his touching me. Everything from the way he stares at me to his closeness feels like a threat.
It takes everything to shove down my rising fear because the last thing I want this predator to think is that I’m prey.
He leans closer and whispers it, “Omega.”
I nod since his finger on my lips prevents me from speaking.
Seconds pass in another extended silence, before he takes his finger away, and then thankfully, he sits back on his heels. “I’ve met some of you before. You’re quieter.”
I frown at him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, quieter?”
I’m liking the way he’s studying me less and less, and it’s getting harder to hide my rising unease.
“Some use their gift like a weapon,” he says in a mild tone. “They try to control you with it.”
I’m ridiculously excited at the prospect of learning about other omegas, even though I’m less thrilled about who I’m learning it from.
My isolated life in Hardin has meant that I’ve never met another one before. All I’ve learned has been through what my parents have told me, as well as what Owen, and later, Dayne learned when they went to meet other alphas.
My dad once told me that packs in the states, if not the rest of the world, used to be closer, that it wouldn’t be unheard of to send an omega away to another to learn to use their gifts. But sometimes the alpha of the pack they went to for training refused to send them back.
There’s value in having a heart healer in your pack, he would say.
But not me.
An omega who knew what they were doing would’ve stopped someone like Owen, our previous alpha, from wiping out most of Dayne’s family.
Or, if there’d been an omega in the Merrick pack, they wouldn’t have allowed Glynn Merrick to destroy what was once a healthy and vibrant pack run by Talis’ parents.
“Well, I don’t know how to use my gift,” I say, because the greed that’s growing in his eyes is killing my excitement to learn anymore.
Slowly, he shakes his head. “You got the boy trusting you. You wouldn’t have been able to do that without it. He doesn’t trust easily. Trust me, I know.”
I laugh. “No, that’s no gift. That’s just me being me. It wasn’t me-” I suck in a sharp breath, just managing to stop myself from crying out when he strikes me hard across the face.
“There’s a word I don’t like. Can you guess what it might be?” he asks with a gentle smile on his face.
If I thought Jackson was an alpha dick, this guy has well and truly proven me wrong. Because this guy right here is a serious alpha dick with a capital A.
I swallow my pain down. “I don’t have to guess.”
“Good girl. Looks like you’re a fast learner. I like those. Not like Leon over there. He learns the hard way, each and every time.”
I glance over at the mangy wolf who’s gone back to lying on the ground, but who, at my attention, lifts his head and snarls at me.
Just what is this wolf’s problem with me?
“He hasn’t shifted,” I say, trying not to pose it like a question because I don’t know how this wolf is going to react to me asking questions. I’m well aware that I’m on my own here, and no one knows where I am, so the less I antagonize this alpha, the more chance I have to get him to lower his guard so I can make a break for it.
“As I said, he learns hard. I told him he needed to change back to human every few months, but he wasn’t paying attention.”
My eyes widen in horror because what I’m looking at is a shifter trapped in his wolf shape.
Forever, it sounds like.
It’s something we all fear, being trapped in one form or the other, or even worse, trapped in-between. But I’ve never met a wolf who couldn’t shift back. Not until I’d met Talis, and we learned she was keeping her wolf tucked inside.
That was dangerous, and she was lucky-very lucky-she could still shift. Maybe the strength of her alpha wolf helped her to keep that side of her alive, but this mangy wolf is no alpha.
I forget about my intention to not ask any questions. “How long has he been a wolf?”
“About five years.”
I struggle to take my eyes off the wolf because I can’t stop thinking about what it must be like to be human and be trapped as a wolf. I just can’t. When I’m a wolf, I never forget that there’s a human side to me, just as when I’m human, I always feel the wolf half of me. I couldn’t be without both sides. It would feel like someone had cut me in half, or like half of me was missing. I wonder if the shifter will ever get to the point he’ll forget he was ever human.
“This mate of yours,” the alpha starts.
I jerk my gaze from the mangy wolf, preparing to tell him Jackson isn’t my mate. Only, I take in the sharp intensity of his blue eyes, and I decide to keep my mouth shut. “Uh, what about him?” I ask instead.
“He alone?”
I nod.
“There was a brother, and there were others. What happened to them?”
I’m guessing he means my pack.
“His brother left with his mate. They went to Paris.” I pause when the alpha nods, as if I’m confirming something he already knows. “The others were my pack, and they were only here for the weekend. They went back home.”
He leans closer. “For how long?”
I try not to lean back. Not that it would help with the rock wall behind me. “I don’t see them coming back anytime soon.”
He narrows his eyes in thought, and I wait in tense silence to see if he’ll believe me. Finally, he nods. “Makes sense with the alpha’s mate carrying a pup.”
It takes me a second to process what he just said, and then horror fills me at the thought they were watching us because clearly, they must have. How else would they know Talis was pregnant?
Although I think I’ve done a good enough job of hiding my thoughts, it proves not to be good enough when he flashes another quick grin. “You don’t like the thought of us being around?”
I don’t say a word. I got a slap for saying no. I don’t want to know what I’ll get if I answer that question.
“No need to fear.” He reaches a hand toward my face, and I flinch back. “In time you’ll get to know me-get to know us-and you’ll find we aren’t so bad.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. Being around long enough to get to know them.
The shifter rises suddenly, making me flinch again as he moves his hand back without touching me.
Probably just wanting to scare me.
I don’t take my eyes off him as he makes himself comfortable on the opposite side of this mostly open cave. He stretches his legs out in front of him and crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m Derek.”
His probing stare tells me I’m expected to tell him my name.
“Regan.”
He nods. “You see, Regan, that mate of yours wasn’t the first to have his eyes on the prize. We heard about this opportunity first from one of the former pack who took off just before everything went to shit.”
A Merrick is what he means. This Derek met a former Merrick, and they told him there was no longer a pack in Dawley. That, or there soon wouldn’t be.
“I see you know who I mean,” he says approvingly.
I nod. “Merrick.”
He grins at me. “Good. You hear that, Leon, that’s what it looks like to make use of your brain.”
The mangy wolf, Leon, doesn’t respond to Derek’s words, but the second I glance over at him, he snarls low in his throat.
What the fuck did I do to piss this wolf off?
“You see,” Derek continues, drawing my gaze back to him, “we heard about this place first. It was-and still is-meant to be our fresh start. And it will be soon enough. There’s no reason why Dawley should belong to the Stone guy, not when he doesn’t even have a pack. He doesn’t need it. He can settle elsewhere. I, as you can see, have a pack.”
There are so many comments I could make about his idea of having a pack, and each and every one of them would land me with much more than a slap.
When I don’t respond, Derek nods approvingly and keeps talking, making me wonder if he’s had his fill of living with Leon. I can’t imagine it’s much fun talking with a shifter who can never talk back.
“We’ve been on the road a long time. Some of us longer than others. Your friend Riley joined us a few years ago. We saved his life would be a better description, and then he goes running to you.”
Derek’s eyes narrow. I widen mine in an attempt to look innocent.
His snort reveals Jackson may have been right about my needing to work on my innocent expression because it’s not fooling anyone.
“But now we know how you could befriend little Riley.”
I know I shouldn’t ask questions, but he’s so relaxed that I have to ask this one. “But what if he comes here-Jackson, I mean-surely, he’s going to come looking for me?”
Derek grins. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping.”
For a guy who’s been watching us these last few days, Derek doesn’t look the least bit worried about a confrontation. Considering Jackson is no lightweight, I wonder at his confidence that he can so easily take the new alpha of Dawley in a fight.
I guess he must read the disbelief on my face because he raises his eyebrow. “You think this is it? That this is us? Sweetheart, six shifters who have fought to survive every damn day of their lives stand between him and us. So, while I left him a nice easy trail for him to track you here, it’s going to be no easy matter him getting here in one piece. If you catch my drift.”
Oh, God. Jackson.
He’s on his own, he’s literally on his own. And one against six aren’t good odds, and that’s before I’ve factored in him fighting the mangy Leon and Derek if he survives to reach this far.
He smirks. “No need to look so sad. He won’t suffer. Not unless he gets to me. If he does, there are no guarantees. But that’s the nature of a fight, I’m sure you understand.”
I stare at him, aware my eyes are filling with tears but unable to stop them because all I’m thinking of is Jackson lying dead. And it’s all my fault because I didn’t listen to him and stay out of the forest.
He’s going to come after me, and he’s going to die because of it.