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He'd been waiting for some kind of rescue, but it seemed that no one was coming. If they would just leave him alone for a few hours, his superior metabolism would allow him to regenerate enough so that he could shift. He wasn’t sure if he could explain a lynx in this part of the world, but that was something he would deal with once he was free. He could escape into the hills and allow himself to heal until he could make his way back to civilization. His hope was that they would leave him until nightfall.
Colby was resting as comfortably as he could hanging from the ceiling in a basement in the middle of this god-forsaken country. The sun was going down and the heat was beginning to abate. Soon it would be cold—being a lynx would help with that as well.
The sudden, blazing pain from the cattle prod they’d used had made his body arch and twist in ways it had never been designed to. He’d been so far gone trying to assess the damage done to him and his possible avenues for escape, he hadn’t heard the bastard enter. He sniffed the air. God, he smelled like shit; he wondered if he’d ever be clean again. As far as he could tell, only one of them had come back.
“You sure you don’t want to change your mind about talking?”
“Got nothing to say,” mumbled Colby, slurring his words more than was probably necessary.
He kept his head down; his enhanced senses gave him an advantage over a human: he could heal more quickly, he could hear better, he could smell better, and if he could actually get his eyes to open all the way, he’d be able to see the bastard better. But Colby could feel the man as he moved around him.
“Your people have deserted you. There is no need for you to try and endure this. My friends are determined to break you.”
“Won’t break,” said Colby, enhancing the slur even more.
All he needed was for his torturer to get in front of him. More than anything else, Colby needed to be between the man and the door. One quick swipe of his claws once he was lynx, and the man’s ability to scream would be forfeit along with his life. The man was sure he was in no danger—that the American posed no threat. The man was wrong, but by the time he knew that, it would be too late.
Colby could see his lynx in his mind’s eye, prowling back and forth, snarling, gathering itself. He would be good to go when Colby called him forward. The man was directly in front of him, but just out of reach if Colby remained human. Unfortunately for his torturer, that wasn’t the plan.
As the swirling mist enveloped him, the surprised man jumped backward. Had he tried to get around Colby to the door, he might have made it, but the man moved towards the far wall. A cacophony of light and power enveloped Colby as his humanity receded and his lynx sprang forward, dropping to the ground and springing towards the man in the blink of an eye. One swipe with his deadly sharp claws and his enemy fell soundlessly to the ground.
Spinning on his hind legs, Colby propelled himself out the door, ignoring the residual pain from his torture. The pain was still there, but his lynx was far better equipped to ignore it in his bid for freedom and his life. A few of the guards spotted the large, furred creature sprinting across the open courtyard, but none even brought their rifles to bear on him. As he crashed into the undergrowth, he lowered himself and belly crawled into the mountains to heal. He would live to fight another battle, another day.
Mystic River, Alaska
One Week Ago
He read her email with a smile. It was quintessential Brie—short, sweet and to the point. His fated mate had never been one for flowery or unnecessary words. While he had to think out each missive he sent to her, her responses always seemed dashed off as if she didn’t want to respond at all, which he supposed was true. Colby was well aware that his connection with Brie was tenuous at best. She might be his fated mate, but she didn’t want to be.
She needed him, and she didn’t like that one bit. She might admit she needed both his money and connections, but she would never admit the way their souls connected when they made love. He chuckled to himself. He could just hear her groan at the idea that they made love. Brie might admit that she desired and needed him physically, but she would vehemently oppose the idea that there was anything more to it than that. But he knew that they both knew she was his fated mate.
The war against the Shadow League was heating up. It was becoming more and more dangerous for all of the females who made up the Shadow Sisters. He admired Brie’s talent for bringing together a rag tag group of shifters and turning them into a force to be reckoned with. The Shadow Sisters might have been around as long as the League—some said longer—but they would never have been as well organized and powerful without her. There were those that said if it wasn’t for Colby’s money and intelligence network backing them, they wouldn’t be much of a threat, but they were wrong.
From the time her mother was killed, Brie had been a force of nature that had propelled the Sisters to their dangerous place at the top of the food chain. Gaia had begun to bring the Sisters together into a powerful coalition, extending their reach around the globe, but it was Brie who had turned them into a fighting force. With Brie as their leader, they hadn’t operated just in the shadows, but had begun to take on powerful alphas in order to ensure the safety of all female shifters and humans. He didn’t think they’d taken on the plight of female vampires, fae and others yet, but it wouldn’t surprise him if they had.
She was the one thing that had kept him alive in that awful place and had kept him going until he finally reached home. He’d meant to take her to mate upon his return, but Gaia’s challenge had prevented that. Gaia had known his feelings for her daughter and had known if she called for a champion to take on Thane, Colby would pick up that gauntlet. He couldn’t say he was overly fond of Brie’s mother. The fight had barely begun when she took Brie and escaped, never waiting to see who the victor might be.
Once he’d defeated Thane, there had been too much to do to shore up those who remained at Windsong and to undo all the damage Thane had done. When Colby had taken over as alpha, he had begun to transform his clowder from one that stood on the precipice of financial disaster to one that was rich… filthy rich, with the emphasis on filthy.
After Colby defeated Thane, he had begun to involve his people in smuggling, illegal gambling, and other forms of corrupt practice that were lucrative, if not completely ethical. When Jax and Asher had tried to intervene, he had surprised them with his ruthless nature. Gone was the lynx who survived only by his wits and charm and defeated his opponents with his intelligence. The man who had returned was not only strong enough to defeat Thane but was wise enough to command his clowder’s loyalty. It was said that those at Windsong would follow their alpha through the gates of hell and never ask him why he wanted to go.
Surprisingly, Kyra had been his most vocal opponent. Surprising because she had always been the little sister who adored him and because his first act as alpha was to rescind the agreement with an alpha on the mainland who’d wanted to take Kyra to mate. He’d remembered at the time thinking he’d done the alpha a favor—his baby sister was no meek, mild she-cat. He supposed it shouldn’t have come as a shock that when Jax Miller, the sheriff of Mystic River, had needed a deputy that Kyra had applied for the position.
And so, in one of his greatest moments of victory, he had lost the two females who meant the most to him—Brie and Kyra. Slowly, he was beginning to repair his relationship with Kyra. She didn’t trust him. She’d never seen the illegal activities as not only a means to an end—making their clowder among the wealthiest in the world—but that they provided cover for what Colby was really up to: defeating the Shadow League. He’d seen the League’s rise in power long before anyone else and had begun the work necessary to defeat them.
His way back to Brie hadn’t been as quick or direct a path as he might have liked, but the stakes were too high for him to be patient much longer. The war with the League was heating up, and they had placed a bounty on her beautiful red head. The League wanted her dead, preferably in as painful and public a manner as possible. If for no other reason than this, it was time she came home. But there was another reason: she was his fated mate. He knew it, and so did she, but she refused to yield.
He'd done everything he could to prove not only his love for her, but that he was different from the other alphas. For fuck’s sake, his beta for years had been a female snow leopard. Winter had earned her place at his side, and he had stood against her former alpha to keep her safe. Hell, he’d stood against many, many alphas to keep the women the Sisters helped safe. Colby didn’t really think of those at Windsong as a clowder anymore. Clowder was a term reserved for groups of cats. These days there were almost as many non-felines as not. When Winter had called them a ‘clan,’ Colby had agreed and adopted the moniker.
Seattle, Washington
Christmas Eve
He’d been preparing for Brie’s arrival for days. He knew she’d deliberately given him short notice to try and circumvent his ability to bring her to heel and take her to mate. It was a clever tactic, but he’d begun his preparations long before he’d sent her the email insisting they meet.
As he set the alarms on the doors and windows of the hotel he’d purchased, he had a momentary twinge of guilt—wasn’t this just the sort of thing Brie felt she needed to safeguard against? And what, pray tell, did he think he would accomplish? Was he really willing to try and keep her against her will—the very thing that had set her mother on the dangerous path that now he and Brie couldn’t seem to escape?
Even if he found the idea of trapping a woman reprehensible and had outlawed it in his clan or any group needing his protection, was he really morally gray enough to move against her like that? He could almost convince himself that he knew better and that he would be doing it for her own good, but he knew Brie would never see it that way and would hate him for trying. He told himself the alarms were meant to keep her safe.
