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Caye,
Nothing to be done for it. She could compromise the Toronto house or might do so in the future. We can’t take the chance. Let the others know. I’m meeting with Colby in Seattle. I’ll see if he can’t get the house sold and send us the proceeds. I think we need to leave Ontario.
Brie
She shook her head. Fear of the unknown was a powerful deterrent. Many of those they tried to help gave into the thinking that the devil they knew was better than the one they didn’t. There was no helping those who didn’t want to help themselves.
Christmas Eve
Brie was still not convinced this was a good idea, but she had to believe Colby had information vital to safeguarding the Shadow Sisters, as well as potentially dealing a lethal blow to the Shadow League. It amused her that it was hotly debated (amongst those who cared about such things) whether the Sisters came into being to oppose the League or vice versa.
Brie was inclined to believe it was the latter. It made sense to her that the League had begun its rise in terror and power in response to the formation of the sisterhood and their ability to save the females of their kind—at least that’s where it started. Gaia had begun to advocate for extending the help and support needed not just to female shifters, but to humans and other females of all kinds: vampires, fae, witches and the like.
In her lynx form, Brie stood at the edge of the Olympic National Park where the forest met the sea. At the moment, she doubted anyone could see her or make out that she lingered among the trees, watching. The spotted pattern of her coat ensured she was well-camouflaged in this environment. Meeting with Colby might not be the best idea; some might call it foolish—Caye chief amongst them—but Brie was certain it needed to be done. There were those who had placed a bounty on her head, but Colby wasn’t among them.
He had never outright lied to her. Oh, he’d shaded the truth now and then, but for the most part, she trusted him. Meeting in person with the enigmatic alpha of Windsong was necessary in order to have his continued support—at least, that’s what she told herself. Long ago she had decided that meetings with Colby were problematic to say the least and often left her emotionally gutted.
Fighting and resistance to his considerable charm often felt futile at best. Her only solace had come from his beta, Winter MacKinnon, who had assured her the meetings left Colby in the same sorry state as Brie.
“Why don’t you just take pity on him and put a bullet in his brain? It would be much kinder,” Winter had once said to her.
Colby had sent the shifter community running like a chicken with its head cut off when he’d named the female snow leopard as the beta of his lynx-shifter clowder. He hadn’t much cared what anyone had thought, and Winter had proven her worth time and time again. But as was the case with most females called to a fated mate, she had been forced to abdicate her place at Windsong. Then Sean Campbell shocked everyone when he resumed his place as alpha at Castle Curaidh and named Winter as his mate and beta to his clan.
Brie turned away from the stunning view and began to make her way through the forest to the place where she’d hidden her clothes so she could shift into her human form, board the ferry to Seattle, and meet with Colby. Her heart already ached. Regardless of whether or not she gave in to her need for him, she would leave him tomorrow, and the clawing agony her leaving always produced would return.
Somehow, Colby had managed to secure an entire boutique hotel for their clandestine meeting. The hotel would be closed, and they would be alone, except for members of his clowder he trusted absolutely. With any other man, Brie would never have agreed to the meeting, but she knew Colby would hold to his word. He’d never given her cause to believe anything else. Anyone trying to secretly observe them or overhear their conversation would face an insurmountable degree of difficulty. Colby would see to that.
Reaching her hidden stash of clothes, Brie bade her lynx to retreat as the whirling mist of color, lightning, and thunder swirled all around her. When the mist finally dissipated, she was left standing naked, shivering in the cold Pacific Northwest winter as she pulled on her clothing and boots in order to take the ferry to Seattle.
Sunset and the following darkness came early in the Pacific Northwest. By the time Brie reached the small, elegant hotel in the heart of Seattle, night would have claimed the city. How Colby had arranged for them to meet there was beyond her knowing, but she didn’t doubt his ability to do anything he set his mind to. The tentacles of his power seemed to have an endless and infinite reach.
Brie knew many people, if not most, preferred daylight to darkness. She was not among them. She had always found the night to be the most comforting of shrouds, and she moved within the shadows like a wraith. The time between dusk and dawn had always offered her and her sisters a kind of safety that nothing else could, so they had made it their ally. She boarded the ferry and listened as the boat’s foghorn sounded through the starry night as they headed toward Seattle.
CHAPTER 3
COLBY
Undisclosed Location
The Middle East
Ten Years Ago
Colby Reynolds reached for her, watching her with swollen and blackened eyes, twisting one of her long, red curls around his finger.
“Brie,” he whispered to the woman in his mind’s eye.
He tried to focus his mind as he assessed the damage they’d done to him. Unfortunately, most of his body parts still worked, or at least the nerves and pain receptors did. He tried lifting his head—that was a no-go. He couldn’t lay it back down, either. No, he didn’t seem to be lying on the meager cot that didn’t fit his tall frame.
Colby tried jerking his head up. That worked but hurt like hell. His shoulders ached. He couldn’t raise his head back far enough to see overhead, but he could feel that his wrists were tightly bound, almost to the point of cutting off the circulation—close, but not quite. He wriggled his fingers, trying to ascertain what he was hanging from. He could see the ceiling of the room, or torture chamber if he wanted to be more precise. It was some kind of basement and he surmised he had to be hanging from some kind of hook bolted into one of the beams.
That didn’t give him much comfort. The buildings in this area were old and had been repeatedly bombed. Colby had to question their structural integrity. The thought made him smile. There had been a time he and Brie had talked about going away to college to study structural engineering and architecture with a thought to restoring old houses and buildings. But Brie’s father had put an end to that. Some blamed her mother Gaia for challenging her mate, but Colby had known the challenge was inevitable. At some point Thane was bound to turn his rage on Brie, and when he did, Gaia would move to protect her daughter. When she had called for a champion, Colby had stepped up and given Gaia the chance to escape with her daughter.
That might have been the end of it, but Colby had always known Brie was his fated mate. They were, in his mind, inevitable. He’d assumed the mantle of leadership at Windsong, mainly to protect his sister Kyra. She had been promised to a lynx on the mainland—a lynx she had sworn to kill if he ever tried to lay his hands on her. And so as alpha, Colby had refused the agreement which would have condemned his sister to the same fate as Gaia had suffered.
Colby moved his hands back and forth and heard the rattling of chains. He wasn’t suspended by a hook, but from chains. It would give him a little more leeway to get free. He tried to assess the damage that had been done. His head and face hurt; his eyes were almost swollen shut and there wasn’t a major muscle group that didn’t hurt. Every place he’d been struck now throbbed either dully or acutely and echoed every blow that had laid him out or cut him until finally unconsciousness had overtaken him. And now, unfortunately, oblivion had deserted him too.
They’d left his feet dangling, which gave him options that being tied down would have taken away.. Only if he stretched was he able to stand on the very tips of his toes. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here—a day, maybe more, but not much more than that. His captors had been gleeful in their torture. They’d taken turns, each seeing who could inflict the most pain with the least amount of permanent damage. After all, how much fun would it be to beat the parts that had been irrevocably broken?
