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Chapter Seventeen
“Oh, yes. It’s time to deal with you.” She moved to the wall on her left to press a red button.
The weird feeling in my chest kept getting worse. I tried to ignore it, but I kept thinking I was having a heart attack. Even though I knew shifters couldn’t have such ailments. As if it had a mind of its own, my hand kept rubbing at the spot.
Stella noticed again. “Why do you keep doing that?” she asked.
I pulled my hand away and let it fall to my side. She was so close to me the smell of Roland’s blood was overly strong. My wolf pawed at me, eager to get out and have a go at her.
Stella placed her hand in between my breasts. “You keep rubbing here. Why?” She laughed when I knocked her hand away. “Scared I might hurt you?”
I barked out a laugh at that. “You? No. Not even in the slightest.”
This time I didn’t stop her from pressing her hand against my chest. “You’ve found your mate, haven’t you?”
“What makes you ask that?”
She pulled her hand away but didn’t back up. “My parents used to rub the same spot. Only when they weren’t together though. It always fascinated me. I couldn’t wait to feel that same thing.” Her eyes had glazed over, and her voice went all dreamy as she spoke.
She’d just revealed something that might help me get the hell out of here. I remembered hearing about a bond between mates. Fated mates, once they found each other, had a hard time living without the other one. So, if one was out of town, or say, I don’t know, a lunatic ex-friend kidnapped one, they could kind of communicate with each other.
I concentrated on the spot where I’d felt the odd sensation. It intensified, but I had no idea what to do with it. It was all one-sided from Liam. He kept doing something to make me feel him. I just wasn’t sure what to make of it just yet or how to do it in return.
Snapping out of her daydream she grimaced at me. “A fuck up on my part,” she said. She looked down at Roland’s body. “And no one to punish me.” She shrugged and kicked him. “Oh well, I’ll save it for after the moron heals. In the meantime—”
“How’d you fuck up?” I asked, unable to help myself.
She frowned. “I only brought Liam into your life because I thought it would annoy you. I was sick of watching Isaac moon over you. I wanted you to feel a little of what I feel every day. Frustration. Disappointment.” She clearly didn’t know me as well as she thought. I felt those every second of my life. “So, I brought in the person you hated most. I expected you guys to snap at each other. Or better yet, fight. And it worked for a little while. But it seems all I did was introduce you to your mate. Ember always wins.” She kicked Roland again. Harder this time.
I stared at Roland. His breathing was shallow, but he was still hanging on. Every once in a while, a gurgling sound came from his direction. The last kick had him spewing blood from his mouth. Lovely.
She followed my gaze. “Don’t worry about him. He’s healed from worse than this. He’ll be fine and he’ll have learned a lesson. It’s one my dad taught me when I was young. But I’m smarter than Roland here. It only took once for me to learn not to talk back to my mother.”
She looked up at my gasp. “What? I told you, my parents had nothing on your dad.”
“I wish you would have told me.”
“Why? So you could have saved me,” she said, giving me a watery smile. “You wouldn’t have. There was nothing anyone could do. You know better than anyone, there was no proof. No one would have believed the Amazing Johnsons were horrible people. Everyone loved them. Besides, it’s the past. And now he’s suffering through that horrible disease.”
A genuine happy-as-a-pig-in-shit smile played on her lips when she thought of her dad’s suffering. Can’t say I blamed her after that last story. He’d torn her throat open because she’d acted like a normal child and talked back to her mother. Who does that to a kid?
“And my mother has lost her mind since he got sick. She’ll never be the same. They’ve been going through their own torture. It’s kind of beautifully karmic, isn’t it?” She paused and shook her head a little. “Enough daydreaming. Back to business.” She pulled a weird looking gun from the tray of toys. “I’m sorry about this, Ember,” she said as she squeezed the trigger, and the world went black.
I came to in a cage in the middle of an unfamiliar room. On each side of the cage stood a man in an olive-green jumpsuit. They each held an odd-looking stick.
The one to my right lifted a walkie talkie to his mouth. “She’s awake.”
“Good. I’ll be right there,” Stella’s voice replied. She entered a minute later, stopping at a podium in the middle of the room. “Ember, I’m sorry I had to do that to you, but I figured you wouldn’t come here without a fight.”
“What am I doing in here? What’s going on?” I eyed the men with sticks. “And who the fuck are these guys?”
“Well, it seems I still care about you, and I just can’t let you die. I’d miss you too much. So, you’ll hold the place of honor. You’ll be the main attraction. We just have some conditioning to do first.” She pressed a button on the podium which sounded a buzzer. “Boys,” she said.
Confused, I looked around at the men. They moved forward, sticks held out, and each of them pressed the tip to me. I convulsed and fell to the ground as four cattle prods pumped electricity into me.
“Ember?” Stella called. I was still convulsing with my jaw locked so I couldn’t respond. “Ember, stop flopping around like a fish. You’re stronger than this. Look at me. There you go.”
I snarled at her. “Fuck you.”
