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“What about this?” He laid another photo down. I tensed at the sight of the branded skin.
He didn’t appear surprised by my reaction, but Hunter was.
“How would she know about that?” He shot an accusing look at Wolf. “Only hyenas carry that brand.”
What was a hyena? And why would they carry the brand of the chosen?
“She has one of her own,” he sneered, tossing him my photo attached to the same paperwork the girls had. Hunter paled as he looked at the photo. It was the one they had taken the night of the Choosing. I’d gotten the brand the moment Damien had chosen me for the ritual. The brand was spiked with silver so that our shifter ability wouldn’t completely heal it.
Hunter reached out with a shaky hand, shifting aside the robe I was wearing to reveal the scar just below the collarbone on the left side of my chest.
“Who gave this to you?” His voice was calm, tinged with a deadly undercurrent that had me shivering, and not just in fear. “Who. Gave. This. To. You?” He punctuated the words, his tone growing bolder and more deadly.
“I…” No, I wouldn’t tell them. I couldn’t. The shame was too much. The pain too great. If I told them…if I said those words aloud…No. Swallowing back the lump in my throat, I shook my head defiantly and cast my eyes down to where my hands gripped the photos in my lap.
“Did you attack Granny?” Wolf questioned. “Why were you there? Who were those men?”
The questions were coming rapid-fire now, one after the other, in an endless barrage. Still, I refused to speak. Because all of those questions would lead back to the one I refused to answer. No one would know what they did to those girls and what they did to me.
I would take that secret to the grave, even if it meant I’d be seeing it sooner than I thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She wasn’t lying. She was simply refusing to tell them. I wasn’t sure which was worse. The ice on which I stood was thin. All three of us had a connection we couldn’t deny. Did she feel what we felt? The invisible rope pulling us together? The sudden need to protect her and keep her safe?
I prayed to the Moon Goddess it wasn’t true. The circumstances surrounding us now were practically unheard of. Even more so being that both Hunter and I were feeling the gravitational pull toward this little wolf.
I stared down at her, my hard gaze unrelenting. There would be no torture or pain, at least none she wouldn’t grow to enjoy, but I needed her to be scared. It went against everything in my soul, but I needed answers only she held.
It had been nearly three weeks since we’d found her on the bank of the river. She’d been half dead and caked in mud and blood. Her skin had been ashen, her eyes lackluster and dull. Now, her fair skin held a healthy rosy tint to it, and her red hair shone under the fluorescent light of the medical bay. Her gray eyes sparkled with curiosity and apprehension. Full pink lipsand a little pert nose made her look like one of those characters straight out of an anime.
Her chest heaved, accenting breasts that were just a little more than a handful. Fuck, carrying her to the compound with her lush breasts pressed against my chest had had me harder than steel. Still did. She was soft and curvy in all the right places. And that ass…fucking porn worthy. She put every fox in our den to shame.
Fated mates.
The words rattled around in my brain like a pinball. Doc had suspected it the moment we brought her in. Neither of us could take our eyes off her, and Hunter had nearly taken the good doctor’s head off when he touched any part of her. It was hard to believe that all three of us were fated to be together. Mates were rare…rarer than rare. I hadn’t heard of a fated mating bond in the last hundred years because they were reserved for a special kind of wolf.
An omega.
What the hell had fallen into my lap? Omegas were thought to be extinct. No one knew what made specific wolves born omegas, but many people theorized that it had to do with the integration of human DNA with shifter DNA. Mates in the modern world were chosen. Without omegas, alphas had taken to knotting betas, although the process and success varied from couple to couple. Sometimes the knot would not grow. Those alphas who took to mating with humans had no knot at all since it could kill the human mate.
“Just tell us, Red,” Hunter urged the girl pleadingly. She shook her head, vehemently refusing. Why was she so afraid to tell us about her brand? Was she working with the Collective? Had she been sent to spy?
“Tell us,” I ordered, throwing my alpha power into the command. For a moment, she grimaced, her mouth opening asif to follow my order. Then it snapped shut. She glared up at me, clutching her robe to her chest and covering the mark.
That wasn’t the only one she had. Hunter had seen the others when Doc had taken to cleaning her wounds after we’d brought her back from Granny’s. He’d failed to see the twin brand on her chest because I’d covered it before he could. I didn’t need him spiraling at the time. When his adrenaline was high and he got worked up, it became harder for him to control his destructive urges.
She had one other brand on the small of her back, just above the cleft of her perfect ass. A harshly carvedD. It had to have been done with silver because it hadn’t healed all the way. The same for the smaller scars that littered her back. Once we were through this, I would look at setting her up with Bruiser. He owned a tattoo shop in town.
“You don’t want to know the consequences of disobeying my orders, Little Red,” I taunted her, relishing in the scent of her fear.
Her scent.
We’d been so busy with everything else that we’d both missed it. She smelled of honeysuckle and fresh rain. When we’d taken her from the clearing, she’d had no scent to her.
“Who was the man at the café? Will you at least tell me that?” Hunter asked gently.
Freya shrugged a shoulder, her eyes still downcast.
