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“Jace! Duke!”
I sprint toward them, leaving Theo in my dust. Jace meets me, while Duke lumbers closer, his body a bundle of nerves.
I look at him first. “What’s going on?”
I look at him, but it’s Jace who answers me.
“They told us to wait here for you.” They… it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who they could be. Especially since no one has mentioned my packmates since Walker forced us to be separated yesterday afternoon. “Are you okay, Alpha?”
I never thought I would be happy to hear one of my guards use that title on me. Behind me, Theo winces. Yeah, yeah. I’m not the Alpha of the Western Pack, so it probably weirds him out to hear me called that, but tough shit.
“I’m fine. What about you guys? Are you good? They treating you all right?”
Jace nods, his long hair falling into his face. It’s not enough to hide how frustrated he is by the situation we’re in, and I understand why when he says, “They took my phone. Duke’s, too. They gave us a place to stay in, then said stay, like we’re a pair of fucking dogs or something, and told us to get comfortable.”
Oh. Get comfortable… probably because no one has told them that I agreed to stay here for twenty-five days yet. And if I’m staying…
“Yeah,” I drawl, not quite sure how to say it. This is another one of those band-aids sitches, isn’t it? Say it quick, get it over with. “About that. I had to extend our visit a little. It was the only way to get the Alpha to promise we could bring Trish back with us.”
I don’t know what it was that I said. Her name, maybe? Could be. All I know is that, suddenly, Duke is gripping me by the shoulders. It’s a gentle grip, not even a little bruising, but the look in his golden shifter’s eyes has me wondering how close he is to breaking.
“Alpha! Have you seen her yet?”
I’m so surprised, the answer comes out as a gasp. “No. Not yet. They haven’t told me where she is yet.”
“Come with me then. I know where they’re keeping her!”
What?
* * *
Theo triesto convince us that we should wait until the Alpha gives us permission to see Trish. Ha. Even if I wasn’t so determined to see her myself, to prove that she was okay, there’s no stopping Duke. Theo might be an alpha, Duke a delta, but my packmate is huge. He’s prepared to bulldoze past Theo to lead the way to Trish, and I’m okay with that.
I have no idea why he’s so determined. When we discovered Barrow took off with a bleeding Trish, Duke was as angered as the rest of our packmates at the Wicked Wolf’s dare. And, sure, he was the first to volunteer to come with me, but I thought that was more to do with him being pledged to me as my guard than anything else.
I’m beginning to think I was wrong about that…
There’s only one way a male shifter can find a female. The same way Ryker could find me in Muncie after I finally took off Aleks’s charmed fang and stopped drinking his tea.
Is it possible that Trish Danvers is Duke’s mate?
There’s no time to ask. I tell Theo we’re going to see Trish, and despite his trying to convince us to wait, he knows which way the wind is blowing. He joins the three of us as Duke unerringly crosses through dense forest, past other rows of grouped cabins, until we find a structure that’s built more like a shotgun house. It’s long and thin with a single door in the front—and a shifter prowling in front of that in his skin with an expression that just about screams “guard duty”.
“There,” Duke says, not even a touch out of breath after the sprint he led us on. “I saw her last night. The guard last night wouldn’t let me in to talk to her, but they’ve got her in a cage, Alpha. She’s in her fur in a Luna-damned cage.”
I whirl on Theo. The alpha has the good grace to look a little ashamed.
I jab him in the chest with my pointer finger. “You want to explain that?”
“It’s for her own safety,” he says, an apologetic tone to his voice. “She didn’t want to be a guest, but the Alpha couldn’t let her leave. She threatened to hurt herself. No one wanted to see that, so she’s in a locked room. The Alpha provides her with plenty of clothes. Food, too. She eats,” Theo assures me, “but she prefers to stay in her shifted form.”
Of course she does. If I was a delta she-wolf that was abducted by my own packmates, dragged across country after being attacked, and told I was nothing but a bargaining chip being used against a female who had issues with me and the male I wanted and could never have… yeah. I think I’d stay in my fur, too, where I could do a lot more damage.
Plus, there’s something that Theo doesn’t mention but that—as a female—I immediately thought of. Shifters only mate when they’re in their human form. It’s one of those lines we just don’t cross. We only hunt and eat raw prey while we’re in our fur, and sex is saved for our human bodies.
If Trish shifts back, it’ll be a lot harder to stop any male from trying to force her to mate. In her fur, the risks are much smaller, and she has her claws.
Credit where credit’s due. My old nemesis is as much of a survivor as Elizabeth.
