Cold hands touched her, and white-blonde hair caught the light, the taste of blood bitter in her mouth. She cried out in terrified protest, pushing Lucian away.
“Shh,” Raiden caught her wrists, his skin hot against hers. “It is me, my mate. It is me. Look at me Lia,” he said with alpha command, and she forced her eyes open, panting. “There,” he murmured, releasing his grip. “There. It is okay, Lia. You are here with me.”
“Hurts,” she whimpered it, tears falling.
Her body ached and her ribs were too tight for her to breathe. She bit down on her teeth and arched up as her muscles spasmed, feeling the touch of Lucian across her skin although she knew it was not possible as she was looking at Raiden, but, for a moment, she doubted her sanity. Perhaps, she thought, this was some new torturous trick of Lucian’s, to make her think herself safe and with her mate, when she was still a blood slave.
“William,” Raiden said urgently his eyes holding hers, as the alpha command battled against the blood bond. “I cannot hold her for long, the blood bond is strong, and I,” he grimaced. “Am not.”
“Okay, okay. I need her still,” William was harried as he knelt beside the bed. Tara leaned over, holding aloft a bag of murky looking liquid. “Wade, I might need a hand.”
Wade joined them. “Lia,” he said, the alpha tone commanding. “Look at Raiden, and stay still for us.”
“Argh,” Lia thrashed, but her eyes remained locked to Raiden’s.
“Lia, look at me,” Raiden’s voice repeated and reinforced alpha command, the power a golden leash on her limbs, holding her eyes to his. She didn’t fight against the command, as it overrode the Other that pulled at her but melted into it, let it take some of the weight from her. “That’s better,” he said with relief. “It is okay, Lia. You have started withdrawing from Lucian’s blood.”
“He is calling,” she said it through clenched teeth.
“Just look at me,” Raiden said, his voice soothing, the alpha command strong and resonant. “Keep looking at me.”
“Good work, Rai,” Wade murmured. He held her wrist against the mattress.
She felt a spike of pain and her eyes jerked away.
“No,” Raiden commanded, pulling her eyes back to his with his command. “Look at me, Lia. Will is just putting an IV line in. You must not pull it out.”
“Raiden,” she felt as if Lucian’s hands crawled over her skin, and she wanted to tear them from her flesh. “My skin is crawling.” She could not bring herself to tell him that it was as if Lucian touched her still, it was too raw, and too real, and too exposing with Wade, Williams and Tara looking at her.
Raiden stroked his hand over her cheek, holding her eyes. “I would say that is due to the withdrawals. I might need something to bind her with,” he said, and although his eyes remained on hers, she realised that he wasn’t speaking to her. “To stop her harming herself when I am asleep.”
“Are you alright?” Wade asked Will.
“Yeah. She has stopped fighting.”
Wade stood. “I will get some rope,” he said to Raiden.
She felt a release that seemed to run through her from her scalp to the soles of her feet and sagged as a tension she had not realised bunched her muscles let go. Her breath sighed out as the tightness of her ribcage relaxed.
“He has let go,” she told them. A tear tracked a lonely path down her face.
She saw a muscle in Raiden’s jaw work as he turned to see what William was doing. She followed his gaze and saw that the other werewolf had taped a needle into the back of her hand that was attached by a tube to the plastic sack of murky liquid that Tara held.
Tara smiled as their eyes met. She looked tired. “Hey, Lia.”
“Hi Tara.”
They were underground, in a basement, but it had been finished off, the walls and ceiling insulated and clad, painted a neutral cream, and they lay on a futon in a cell, a cage really, she thought, set against a wall. There were two cages, each with its own partially enclosed shower and toilet cubicle, but the other cage was vacant.
A small window set high in the roof showed the sun rising in a sky streaked with pink and orange.
“Where are we?” She wondered. She vaguely thought she had asked before, but she could not recall the answer. If she had been given one, it had been lost in the feverish pain between.
“One of our country properties,” Raiden answered but his attention was on Wade, who was retrieving rope from a cupboard set against a wall outside of the cages. There were wine racks, and couches, and another futon bed set in the generous space beyond the bars. “Where the pack runs.”
“Why are there cages?”
“There are a lot of reasons,” Tara said reassuringly. “When werewolves are made it can take a while for them to learn control, and sometimes injury or illness will necessitate restraint, as if Raiden’s case. Every pack has several properties with cages.”
Lia swallowed. “I am thirsty.”
“I’ve got it,” Will took the bag from Tara and hung it to a metal pole on wheels.
Tara went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water. Lia sat up with a groan in order to drink it. She still wore the awful black mini-dress and the feel of the fabric against her made her want to recoil.
“I need to get out of this,” she decided. “I don’t want this on me.”
“We will have a shower,” Raiden sat up, the blanket falling away, and Lia sucked in a breath seeing the bruises in daylight. “It’s fine,” he told her. “The bones are mended, and the bruising is healing. A few more days, and they will be gone. Werewolves heal fast.”
“I just got the line connected,” William complained. “I will have to disconnect her if she showers.” Raiden muttered something under his breath and William nodded. “That is fair enough,” he said, his sharper hearing picking up the words that Lia had not heard.
“What did you say?” Lia wondered.
“It doesn’t matter,” Raiden replied watching as William disconnected the tube from the line in her hand. He stood, revealing that he wore a pair of loose tracksuit pants, and stretched with a grimace and one hand to his injured side before reaching out to her.
“Carefully,” Wade said, dropping the restraints onto the bed. “You are still a fair way of whole, Rai.”
Lia recoiled, seeing the restraints. There were cuffs, like those that Lucian had used on her. “No.”
“Not the cuffs, dad,” Raiden said softly, his eyes on the red, raw weeping mark around her wrist left from her fight for freedom from the same type of bindings.
“No,” Wade looked at her expression and then followed Raiden’s eyes to her wrist and picked them up quickly. “No, not the cuffs,” he said, his tone grim. He took them from the cage and returned them to the cupboard.
“Alright, Lia,” Raiden stroked his hands down her arms soothingly. “Let’s shower.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said to him under her breath when he made as if to lift her. “I can walk.”
“Carefully,” he cautioned and his concession, she thought, was evidence of how bad his injury was.
They made their way slowly to the en suite. He started the shower and held her elbows, supporting her, as Tara, Wade and William went up the stairs. Once the door closed behind them, he lifted the mini-dress off her and threw it out the cage door.
For a moment he stood looking down at her, assessing her injuries, the bruises and nail marks like a roadmap of Lucian’s cruelty across her skin, and she crossed her arms over her chest and turned from him defensively.
“Don’t look,” she whispered, shamed.
“Lia,” he turned her around to face him. “Don’t hide from me.” There was no alpha command in his voice, it was the request of a mate, her lover, the man who loved her, not the alpha werewolf. She closed her eyes and lowered her arms.
He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “You are beautiful,” he murmured. “And Lucian is a dead man.” The tone of his voice opened her eyes, for she had never heard him speak so coldly before. He met her eyes, the Other golden and fierce in his. “I will tear his head from his shoulders,” he told her before shoving his tracksuit pants off his hips. “Let’s shower.”
He was hard. Their eyes met, and he cursed under his breath. “Just ignore it, Lia,” he said gently and pulled her into the spray. “It is… Instinct, nothing more.”
He made sure that she was under most the spray and once her hair was wet through, began to soap her down. He was thorough, soaping and rinsing her three times before she realised that he was trying to wash Lucian’s scent from her, and she began to cry.
He caught her up against him and rocked her under the shower spray. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I know you are sore and tired. I just can’t stand his scent on you. It is driving me insane.”
She nodded, trying to control her sobs. “It’s alright.”
He released her in order to give himself a perfunctory wash before turning off the water and wrapping them both in towels. There was a bag of clothing hanging off a hook and he retrieved a clean pair of track suit pants before retrieving a sleeveless singlet and pulling it over her. It was barely decent, but better than what she had been wearing.
“Do you have a brush?” She asked him. She was starting to tire but she didn’t want to lie down with her hair wet or it would be a mess of knots by the time she woke. He dug into the bag and came out with a comb.
“Will this do?”
She smiled and nodded. “A toothbrush would be great.”
“I am sure there is a spare, I will ask Tara to look,” he began to ease her out of the en suite area toward the futon. She sat heavily onto the mattress, and he combed through her hair for her. She was shaking, quite unable to stop the tremors of her body.
“You are cold again,” he said, drawing her into the bed and wrapping the blanket over them, and himself around her. He pressed his nose against her neck. “You smell better.”
“Thank you.”
“Purely selfish of me,” his voice was drowsy, as wearied by showering as she was. “They will bring food soon.”
“You need to tie my hands,” she said. Her skin was starting to crawl, and she felt her chest constricting. “It is starting again.”