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“I’m afraid I can’t let that happen,” Adrian said, and he raised a gun firing a shot at the witch. In her surprise she couldn’t block it and I watched as a dart sank in her neck.
Claudette turned to look at me and dropped like a sack of potatoes on the ground, Jamie stopped screaming and went limp at her side. I whimpered, edging closer to the corner of my cell, checking to be sure he was still breathing. I stretched my paw out, brushing my claws over his shoe, and Adrian smacked his hand against the bars.
“Get back,” he snapped, stepping over the witch’s prone form. He crouched beside Jamie, checking his pulse, and then looped his arms under his shoulders, hoisting my mate up just enough to drag him into one of the cells across the basement form me. He dropped Jamie on the floor and then locked him in the cage.
Panic made the hair along my spine stand up. Jamie was hurt, he needed to be checked out by a medic. I needed to know he was okay. The betrayal didn’t matter, but if I changed back Adrian would expect me to say something, he’d see me naked, and slimy as he was, that was not something I wanted to do.
The Alpha turned and glared at me, he walked to the far wall by the stairs in the distance and picked up a bundle from one of the shelves, he approached me and tossed it inside.
“Change back and get dressed,” he said, putting his back to me.
I didn’t move.
“Change, cooperate or I will stage this all to look like the witch killed him to get to you,” he said, over his shoulder. His tone was cold enough, I glanced down at Jamie and my body began to stretch and release the shape of the wolf on command. I returned to my human form and picked the bundle of training clothes up off the floor. I slipped on the sweats, and the tee-shirt and cleared my throat.
“What now?” I asked. “You gonna kill her and blame me? I’m sure that will make the witches feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy.”
He glared at me and raised his tranquilizer gun. “Not quite.”
The dart hit my neck, and immediately everything around me went dark. My body throbbed as I slipped toward unconsciousness. I tried to hold on, but all I managed to find when I reached for something to grab were the echoes of my conversation with Jamie. I’d yelled at him. I’d told him to leave, and now….Now I didn’t know what to think anymore. He’d been so vehement that he never told Adrian about the books, he’d looked so hurt. Could he really have been telling the truth?
Floating close to consciousness again, I felt someone lifting me from the ground. My body felt as light as air, but cold as a block of ice. Then not long after I was laid on something warm, we moved. I could feel it in the gentle rocking of my shoulders. I tried to will my legs to stretch, and adjust, but my muscles were sluggish, and my bare feet were pressed up against something cold. Even in my weakened state I managed to put two and two together. I was in the back of a car. Adrian’s no doubt. He was taking me somewhere, but where?
I began to turn my head, to move, but the exhaustion was too much. I found myself getting pulled back into the abyss. I let my mind wander, and for a moment I could feel Jamie. His presence wrapped around me like he was lying in the trunk too, cradling me against his chest.
Where are you, Snow? You feel so far away. His voice whispered to me.
I’m right here.I said, feeling my lips lift into a smile.
His warmth around my shoulders vanished, and he whispered from a distance.No, you’re not. I can’t find you, baby. It’s so dark. Where are you?
I’m right—
Pain burned through my wrists, and I opened my eyes, arching my back in surprise. It took a few second for my mind to clear and process my surroundings. I wasn’t inside a car anymore. I was lying in a whole in the ground. In a box. The moon glittered high in the sky above me, and a dark shadow loomed by my feet.
“Wha—” I stumbled over my words, struggling to make my tongue move the way I wanted it to. “What’s going on?”
Adrian chuckled. “What’s going on? What’s going on is I’m finally going to be rid of you. Do you know how much a headache your existence is for me? You were gone for ten years, and the pain subsided. It wasn’t bad or intrusive, it was tolerable, but then…then Annie had to stick her nose into my shit, and ruin it all. Of course, you’d come back for her death. Why wouldn’t you? That old woman constantly stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, and now even after she’s dead she’s got you doing her dirty work for her.”
“What are you talking about?” I gasped, trying to sit up. While I’d been unconscious Adrian had fastened shining silver chains around my wrist. They were etched with black sigils and their chains coiled around my feet, weighing me down. “What is going on?”
“The Alpha bond,” Adrian snapped, launching himself across the open space to crouch over me, his snarling face inches from my nose. “When your father died, I was supposed to inherit the power. I was blessed by the pack, I was consecrated, but it didn’t work. Not completely. Every day my head throbbed like someone had set off a bunch of fireworks inside my skull. It took me a while to realize what it was, to realize what made it worse. Can you guess?”
The madness in his eyes had me paralyzed. I’d seen rogue wolves before, ones driven mad by the insatiable need to hunt, but this was different. This was insanity on every level.
“Let me go, Adrian,” I said, trying desperately to keep my voice level.
“Not a chance in hell,” he chuckled. “Because the source of all that pain. My literal constant headache was you. It was always you. Every time you spoke to me, every time we touched, every time we fought. Always there, pounding away inside my skull.”
Anger boiled inside me as my wolf began to rise in my defense. “You killed my father, you killed Annie. You deserve every bit of that suffering, and more.”
His hand shot out and he shoved me back hard slamming my head into the pine box. He pulled something from his belt with a gloved hand and thrust it down through my shoulder, pinning me to the wood.
I howled as the blade went through my skin. The silver burned, and I felt it’s poison instantly pulsing through my body, racing its way towards my heart.
“Now, this is gonna be the fun part,” Adrian chuckled, pushing himself up to stand over me in the hole he’d dug.
“Don’t do this,” I gasped, unable to hide my panic. I was trapped. With the blade in my shoulder and the chains holding me down, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight back.
