She stares at me for a beat, then smirks. “You don’t listen too well, do you? Don’t waste your energy. You won’t be getting out of there.” She laughs to herself. “Even if you could, that collar on your neck won’t let you get far. The ones we use on wolves have a little more… oomph than the regular ones.”
I’m not sure what she means by that, but I don’t like the sound of it.
She walks away, ambling to the edge of my sight line. “It’s a shame the female is a beta. The humans don’t have much use for those, but I’ll find a spot for her.”
Macy.She’s talking about Macy.
A part of me sags in relief. That’s one person I know is safe. Relatively speaking.
Wanda mutters something about a consolation prize, then a phone rings from somewhere, and she disappears through a door on the other end of the room. She returns maybe thirty minutes later with two male humans trailing her.
“That’s the one,” she says, pointing in my direction.
The two men move toward the cage. They lean down to grab hold of the sides, and I snarl.
Wanda laughs when they both take a stumble step backward. She pulls a small black remote from her pocket and pushes the button. A surge of electricity runs through my body, leaving me twitching and panting at the bottom of the cage.
“That should keep him down long enough for you to safely load him up,” she says.
The two men don’t waste any time. Hoisting the cage onto a dolly of some sort and wheeling it—and me—toward the garage door at the other end of the building.
A large truck with a soft-sided cover over the bed idles off to the side and, as the two men load me into the back, I catch a glimpse of Wanda talking to someone through the passenger window. After strapping the cage down to the bed, the two men hop off and disappear.
Nothing happens for a while. The vibrations from the engine rattle the cage, seeming to magnify the aftereffects of the shock from the collar. My muscles twitch with tiny spasms as I grit my teeth trying to regain control over my body. I’m just managing to push to my feet when another human walks into view around the back of the truck.
And holy shit. I recognize her. She’s the human woman who showed up on Doc’s porch.
She pulls herself into the back of the truck and makes her way toward my cage. The hair along my back rises and my lips pull back from my teeth, a growl rumbling from my chest as she grows closer. She only smiles, the expression a mirror of theone she gave me on Doc’s porch when she first realized I was a shifter.
“I told you that you didn’t understand what you were dealing with,puppy,” she says. “And now look where you are.” She reaches for something at her waist and pulls out a small hypodermic needle. “Now, we can’t have you making a fuss back here the whole way, so it’s time for you to take a little nap.”
I shove myself toward the back of the cage, but the space is too small to escape her reach. Well, the reach of the needle anyway. She jabs the needle into my leg and depresses the plunger, sending what feels like a line of fire directly into my veins causing me to instinctively jerk away. She loses her grip on the syringe and curses as it goes skittering off somewhere.
But the damage is already done.
The drug works quickly, my eyelids drooping as my muscles begin to go slack and I collapse into a boneless lump at the bottom of the cage. The woman watches for a second, a snide twist to her lips, then bangs her hand on the cab of the truck.
“Finish loading up, we’re leaving in twenty.”
Twenty-Eight
Ollie
My head is spinningwith worry, fear, and not an insignificant amount of mind-numbing panic. None of which are helpful to my ability to problem solve.
I’ve been sitting here for almost ten minutes, and I’m no closer to figuring out a plan to find Luke than I was before I jumped out of the window. At this rate, I’m never going to find Luke, and my growing frustration with myself is like a band around my chest, slowly strangling my lungs the longer I sit here.
I feel so stupidly helpless and I hate it. Even more, I hate howuselessI feel—just what Earl said I am. And the thought of that asshole being right…
Anger surges in my chest, and I drive my fist into the nearest tree trunk. Definitely not my best idea, but the pain managesto clear my head a little, finally cutting through the mess of emotions keeping me locked in place. This maelstrom of anxiety isn’t doing me any good, so my first step should probably be getting my damn head on straight.
I force myself to take a deep breath in through my nose, hold it for a few seconds, then release it slowly through my mouth. The action isn’t quite as effective as I’d like, so I repeat the process three more times before my mind begins to clear enough for my thoughts to be more than an endless, panicked refrain offind Luke, find Luke, find Luke.
The claiming bite on the back of my neck twinges at the thought of my mate, and I rub my hand over it, squeezing gently and using the sensation to ground myself. A memory rises from the back of my mind and realization washes over me.
Fated mates are special, their connection stronger than regular mates, and there’s something about that connection that means I can use the mating bond to find Luke. The question ishow.
What I wouldn’t give to have step-by-step instructions for some of this stuff…
