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Panic drives me to my feet.
I sway.
Kade and Harley, who are sitting on either side of me, reach out to grab me. I grip the edge of the table and force myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. It does nothing to steady me. Not one fucking thing.
I asked them how they got me away from Rylan, and none of them would say. Now I know why. And I know why it felt like Rylan wanted to punish all of us. They wiped out his pack. He’s going to wring every last bit of pain from all of us before he puts us out of our misery.
“Saige. What is it?” There’s a frown in Aden’s voice, but it isn’t him I focus on. It’s Dariel. He needs to understand how bad this is and how bad things can—and will—get.
“I killed Nathan. I slashed his throat open with broken glass.” My voice is barely a whisper. Why is it so fucking hard to breathe when I’m sucking all this air in? Where is it going? Dariel stares back at me without expression. “And do you know what he did to me for killing his hunter?”
Dariel shakes his head.
“He took that piece of glass, stabbed it through my arm, and then had one of his packmates pin me to the bed while he sewed the wound closed with a needle and a thread. Any time I passed out, he slapped me until I was conscious again. Over and over again.”
No one says a word.
I lean toward Dariel. “Hetorturedme. That is how he punished me for killingoneof his packmates. One. You’ve wiped out almost all of them, and now he has Sam.”
And then I sit down before I fall because there’s not enough air in my lungs. “He has Sam,” I whisper.
Silence.
“He wants you too badly to hurt her, Saige,” Aden reassures me.
Maybe his words would reassure me if I didn’t know exactly what Rylan was capable of. “No, he’ll just make her wish she were dead.”
My knees are shaking. My heart is… I don’t know what the hell my heart is doing, but it isn’t beating anything close to normal.
I remind myself I’m sitting so I can’t fall, which is… not okay.
God, what the hell is he doing to her now? Is she even still alive?
My fingers tighten around the table.What if he bites her?
We can save her… maybe. But there’s no saving her from that.
Kade shoves himself up from his seat. We all watch him as he stalks across the kitchen, swings open a cupboard, pulls a half-empty bottle of amber whiskey from it, and moves to the cupboard beside it.
Seconds later, he returns to the table, thumping the whiskey and one glass in front of him. After filling it almost all the way, he takes a large gulp and offers me the glass. Even after the stuff damn near choked me last time, I don’t hesitate to take the glass and knock back a shot of the burning liquor. I cough and splutter, but it goes down.
Harley peels the glass from my hand, his fingers lingering a little longer than they need to before he takes a mouthful and passes it on. If I weren’t struggling with what Rylan could be doing to Sam, his touch might’ve had more of an effect on me than it does.
“I want to talk to him,” I say once I’ve finished coughing.
Dariel pauses with the glass at his lips. He eyes me for a beat and then says, “No,” and drains the contents.
“I need to make sure he won’t hurt her,” I say.
“And you can do that, can you?” He lifts a dark brow.
I reach for the phone in front of him. He moves it away.
“Would you like me to tell you the sort of man we’re dealing with?” I ask him.
“Calling him isn’t an option. He wants—”
“He sent Nathan to torture my dad to death. If you saw the picture, you would know it took hours for him to die. And it was painful. He chained me to his bedroom wall for years. He gave me to his packmates to do whatever the fuck they wanted to me, as if I were some kind of prize, also for years. One of his packmates liked to whip me, another was a sadist, and another preferred to be a wolf when he—”
