He frowns and glances down at his hands. “Sorry. For scaring her.”
“It’s… well, notokay, but we understand,” I say, my voice softening. “Like I said earlier, I know you must have been through a lot, so I’m not going to hold your trauma reactions against you.”
“The human…” He rubs at his throat again as if his words are stuck and he has to massage them out. “I didn’t mean to. Kill him.”
I snort. “Danny is no loss to the world, so I’m not going to hold that against you either. In fact, I kind of wish I’d had the nerve to do it myself.”
“Thank you,” he says softly.
“For what?”
He looks up at me from under his brows, jaw tight, and mouth set in a firm line. “Getting me out of there.”
“Well, I don’t think we would have gotten out of there without you, so consider us even on that front,” I say.
“I—” The door swings open, and Blake’s mouth slams shut as his face swings in that direction, his whole body going tense as if preparing to pounce.
Raquel hesitates in the doorway, eyeing Blake and biting at her lower lip. “Um, hi.”
He closes his eyes and takes a slow breath, appearing to force him muscles to relax. “Hello.”
If my friend is surprised by the fact that’s he’s speaking, she hides it well, moving into the room and shutting the door behind her, then sitting down on the edge of other bed. She holds out a folded paper rectangle.
“They had some paper maps in the lobby,” she explains. “I thought it might be useful to figure out where we’re going.” One side of her mouth lifts upward, her gaze going to Blake. “Of course, that was when I thought we’d be limited to yes or no questions and having you point at things with your nose. Now that you’ve found your voice, maybe you can just tell us where we’re going besides east?”
“Rockcastle,” he says, eyes hard and a slight chill entering the deep rumble of his voice. “That’s my pack. Or used to be.”
“Why don’t you sound very happy about that destination?” she asks.
Blake’s entire face darkens, brows lowering. “They collared me. Sold me to Doyle.”
“Sold you…?” Raquel blinks, staring at him incredulously.
My mate nods silently, but I can see him swallowing like something is stuck in his throat. His words still aren’t coming like they should I guess. “And my brother. The same day as me, but… escaped. Need to find him.”
I reach down and take his hand. “And you think your brother is with your old pack?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Raquel and I exchange a look. “Why would he go back there?” I ask, hesitantly. “It doesn’t sound like it’d be safe for him.”Or us.
He clears his throat. “Part of their… network has been taken down by the triumvirate. The human middlemen are dead. No more sales.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“I overheard,” he says. “They were talking outside my cage, complaining about getting new fighters.” He lets out a frustrated noise and rubs at his neck. “There’s a back way onto pack territory,where the… holding area is. There will be records. Of transactions. If my brother hasn’t returned to Rockcastle, those records could tell me where he was sent.” Those hazel eyes meet mine. “Please. Help me find him.” He swallows. “Afterward, if you don’t want… I won’t try to stop you.”
“If I don’t want what? You?”
His gaze moves to where our fingers are twined together. “Yes.”
Clearly, he heard every damn word of mine and Raquel’s earlier conversation. I sputter, fumbling for words. “When I said…that’s not…I…what?”
Raquel laughs. “What my not-so-eloquent friend is trying to say is that hedoeswant as long as having a human hanging around isn’t going to be an issue. Right, Neil?”
I nod. “The only way I’d walk away from this, fromyou, is if there was some kind of danger to Raquel.” He winces, and I reach out to cup his cheek. “Not from your wolf, from other shifters, like a pack you wanted to return to that wouldn’t accept her.”
“Really?” The word is soft, hesitant.
