AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Sixteen
GALEN
I woke up naked and covered in blood. Most of it was mine. It cracked and flaked off my skin, speckling the bottom of my cage like brick-red confetti. New skin knit over the gaping wound in my side while I slept. Taught and tender scar tissue was the only evidence I’d almost been disemboweled the night before. The internal injuries healed themselves.
I was almost as good as new. Almost.
The only thing that would have completed my healing process, made me whole as man and wolf, would have been to have Talia at my side. Or back in the crate across from me. It was selfish to wish for her captivity. I knew that. But her absence pushed me to the brink of my sanity.
The mating bond with Talia was still broken. So was our pack bond.
I couldn’t hear her in my head, or feel the connection with her in my soul. Bjorn or the demon wolf god had done something to weaken our bonds. They wanted to tear us apart and were doing a damned good job of it.
Without a way to talk to her, I had no idea if she was all right. Every possible scenario, each worse than the first, played out in my mind. I assured myself that with or without the bonds between us I would know if something had happened to her - if she’d departed this plane, I would sense it.
So, I clung to the hope that she was alive, unhurt and unwed. That hope was what kept me going. Right up until Bjorn visited me in the kennel and crushed it under the heel of his boot.
“I could kill you right now.” The Deofol alpha squatted in front of my crate, and rested his arms on his knees. “It would be so easy. No one outside of my pack heard the challenge. No one outside my pack would know what happened to you and no one in my pack would talk. It would be so easy that I should kill you. I’d be a fool not to.”
“You would be a fool if you did, Bjorn.” I picked at the crusted blood around my fingernail, refusing to meet his gaze or formally acknowledge his presence. “I may not have the support of a false god, but I do have the support of the alliance and my pack knows where I am.”
“They know you’re in Alaska.” Bjorn cracked his knuckles on his right hand and then his left. “This is wild country and a lot could happen to a big city wolf like yourself out here. There are things more dangerous than you or me in the Arctic Circle.”
I laughed at him, still refusing to look him in the eyes. Both were a sign of disrespect.
And both were intentional.
I couldn’t have cared less about Bjorn’s feelings. If I upset him, if I angered him, all the better. He wanted me out of the picture - permanently. I wanted to push him to try. The Deofol alpha didn’t strike me as the type of wolf who understood discretion. No, I knew his type. I’d met alphas like him at alliance functions.
Wolves that fed on the spectacle.
Bjorn would want to make an example of me, to remind his wolves what happened when you questioned his authority or stepped out of line. He needed them to witness my judgment and my execution - especially Talia.
“True, but my betas have my itinerary. They knew Talia and I were flying into Prudhoe Bay and they knew why. It won’t take long for them to find you and the rest of your pack. The GPS tracker in our gear will probably speed things up as well.”
“Tracking device, huh?” Bjorn snapped his fingers and ordered one of his guards to his side. “Find out who checked their gear when they were brought to camp. I want a full accounting of everything they had on them. If there is a tracking device, I want it found. Now.”
