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Quicksilver?
Mercury.
Luna damn it!
Mercury’s not as fatal to shifters as pure silver, but it has a profound effect on our kind. Ingest some of the stuff and it can act like a sedative, and maybe the single sip I took isn’t enough to knock me out, but how much do you want to bet it’s the reason I can’t shift?
“Ready on three,” says Grant. “One.”
“Two…”
“Three!”
That’s the last thing I hear before my former packmates surround me. In a last ditch effort to escape, I use my blunt human teeth and my short nails against them, but Grant was right.
With the mercury poisoning me, I might not go down, but they overpower me pretty easily.
Bastards.
* * *
I don’t fight them.Mainly because I know it’s pointless, but also because they made it even harder on me. As if the mercury wasn’t enough, they weren’t taking any chances. They yanked a dark hood over my head that leaves me blind, and I’m slung over one of the bigger shifters’ shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes.
The meaty shoulder digs into my gut with every step, bouncing me as he carries me through the woods. It doesn’t take long for the nausea to kick in and I have to clamp my jaw together to keep from hurling. It would serve him right if I puked down his back, but with the hood over my head, I’d probably choke on it.
So, gritting my teeth, I ride it out, waiting for the moment I can retaliate. I keep hoping my claws will shoot out. I might not be able to shift to wolf with the mercury working its way through me, but I can do a lot of damage with my claws.
Too bad it never happens.
It’s not just my nose that goes. All of my senses are dulled, like the hood over my head has wrapped around all of me, cutting me off from the rest of the world—except for that Luna damned shoulder digging into my gut. Everything is muffled, too. Either the shifters are being quiet or my ears are reacting as if they’ve plugged up with cotton because I can’t hear shit, either.
It’s so frustrating. I kick my foot at one point, but when a massive paw with a grip made of iron grabs my calf, holding me tight, even that outlet is taken from me.
When the whisper of the night’s wind dies down, and the air seems to shift, going still, warming up, I realize that they’ve brought me inside. Inside where? No clue. We haven’t been walking long enough to be out of pack territory, so that’s a plus, but being moved to a second location?
Yeah. Not ideal.
The big guy carrying me has been lugging me around like I’m a package and not a person this whole time. I’ll give him some credit, though. When he shifts me in his arm before setting me on my feet, he does so gently, easing me until I’m standing, holding tightly to my arm so that I don’t drop from being disoriented.
His voice is a deep rumble. “You good?”
At least I heard that.
I nod.
“She’s good, fellas.”
“Open the door,” orders Grant. “Be careful. We don’t want to piss off the Alpha.”
Piss off the Alpha? What about me?
I hear something. It kind of creaks, and I’m betting that’s the door they mentioned. Someone hooks their hands under my pits, lifting me up so unexpectedly that I can’t swallow my soft cry of surprise before they move me forward, then plop me down again.
A door slams behind me.
I rip the hood off of my head.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, but even quicker for my ears to pick up on the sound of grunts coming from below me.
