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Silence fell between us again. This time, a little more poignant. The reality had sunk in that every key on this ring represented an abducted shifter who was currently being tortured in one way or another.
I’d always thought Lanyon Clover was harmless. Irritating and hateful, but harmful in the way that any bigoted person could be. To think that they’d been keeping shifters imprisoned…I had to wonder how many they were keeping with them as they traveled from town to town. And how long the shifters had been imprisoned.
Curt started moving again, unlocking the locks around my ankles. “I’m going to slaughter every fucking piece of shit human in this place,” he ground out.
“No, you’re not,” I said as he unlocked the final binding.
“You may be an alpha, but you’re not my fucking alpha. Keep your commands to yourself.”
I stood slowly, my leg and hip muscles fighting me the entire way. I wondered if it was just from sitting in the same place for a week, or if it was because of the serum shot into my veins. I did what I could to bring back blood flow and mobility, but it was proving difficult.
“Listen,” I finally said, “I know you’re pissed off, but I’m weak and my pack mates probably are, too. If you need to get a vendetta out of your system, do it on your own time. I need to prioritize saving my pack.”
“If your pack members are saved, we’ll have even more power in numbers to take out all of these psychotic pricks,” he sneered.
“Which would be murder,” I pointed out. “If you’re going to commit a crime that gets you put on death row, do it on your own time.”
“All time is my time,” he said. “The only one on borrowed time here is you.”
I heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose. I held out my hand for the keys. “Fine,” I said. “Thank you for saving my ass. Give me the keys, and we can part ways right now. You can go on your merry little murderous way, and I’ll go on mine.”
Curt studied me, then glanced at Ms. Paulson. He scowled and unclipped one of the key rings, handing it over to me. “We’re locking her in here. In fact, we’re locking her the way they had you locked up.”
I watched as Curt hefted her up and set her on the chair, binding her tightly with the bike locks. He took the key he’d used to free me and threw it across the room, where it slid into some dark, forgotten corner.
He looked satisfied with himself. “I’ll keep things clean for now, but when we’re done here, I get her.”
“Curt—”
“If you want to be a weakling, that’s your prerogative. But I don’t take kindly to human trash binding up and torturing our kind,” he said. “You’d think as an alpha, you’d feel the same way. An example needs to be made here.”
It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to make an example of the woman; more that I wanted it to be done in a way that other humans could digest. I didn’t want to fight cruelty with cruelty.
But looking over at Ms. Paulson, who had a bruise beginning to bloom on her temple, I had to wonder if there was some truth to what Cole was saying. Was I being too forgiving? Too lenient? If I didn’t think death was a fair punishment for putting the lives of my entire pack at risk, then where did I draw the line?
“Fine,” I finally said. “Let’s just get going. I want to get the hell out of here and back to my mate.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since I got here,” he said.
From there, it was brutally efficient work. Some rooms had a handful of guys wearing discount tactical gear. I was too exhausted to shift, but Curt doing it prompted many of them to run away. The ones who didn’t? Well, I tried to get to them before Curt to reduce the amount of bloodshed.
Curt…for everything I hated about him, I had to admit that he had changed. He was stronger, more assured. Or maybe it was just that he had been playing a game of incompetence when I first met him. It had fit better into Wyatt’s narrative, after all.
Finally, after releasing about twenty captive shifters, we found Rosie. She looked terrible, crumpled into a little ball in the corner of a dark metal room. When we turned the lights on, she shielded her eyes and shrank further into herself.
“No, no, no, no,” she whimpered. “Please, no more.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, kneeling next to her. “You’re all right. You’re done now, okay? We’re going to get you out of here, Rosie.”
She was wearing a huge T-shirt covered in grime and sweat. I wondered what had happened to the clothes she’d worn when she was abducted. Maybe she’d torn through them with a partial shift in a last-ditch effort to protect herself when at her weakest. Unlike the other shifters, she was only bound by a single shackle around her ankle.
She wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t want to frighten her, but I could tell she wasn’t really here after everything she’d experienced. I tentatively brushed my fingers through her soft, curly hair. It was sticky with oil and sweat and tangled, but still so soft.
“Rosie,” I said a little more softly. “Can you look at me, please?”
She stilled and sniffed. She pulled one hand away from her face and looked at me.
“C-C-C-Cole?” she whimpered. “Is…are you…did we die?”
