What the fuck did that mean?
Before I could demand an answer, she turned and walked back through the hidden door, disappearing into the house without another word. The door clicked shut behind her, leaving Hunt and me alone again.
“Well, that was creepy as fuck,” Hunt muttered.
I didn’t respond. My mind was racing, trying to figure out what Mira had meant. What were they planning to do to Lina? She was back at the pack, surrounded by guards, protected by-
The necklace against my chest suddenly grew warm.
Not just warm. Hot. Pulsing with heat that spread through my skin and into my bones. And at the same time, I felt a tug on the bond. A pull that felt like Lina reaching out to me across the miles.
She was coming.
My mate was coming for me.
I pressed my chest against the warmth, willing my own feelings back through the connection. Love. Strength. A promise that I was alive, that I was waiting, that we would be together again soon.
The necklace pulsed once more, then settled into a steady warmth against my skin. An answer. She’d felt me.
“What’s that look about?” Hunt asked, watching me closely.
“They’re coming,” I said, unable to keep the grin off my face. “The pack. Lina. They’re on their way.”
Hunt’s eyes widened. “How do you know?”
“The necklace.” I gestured toward my chest as best I could with my hand cuffed above my head. “It has a tracker in it. And just now, I felt Lina through the bond. She’s close. They’re close.”
For the first time since we’d been thrown in this garage, hope sparked in Hunt’s eyes. “Then we need to be ready.”
“We need to get out of these fucking cuffs.” I yanked at the metal on my wrist, feeling it dig into my skin. The cuff held tight, and the hook in the wall didn’t budge. “There’s got to be tools around here somewhere. Something we can use.”
We both looked around the garage. Tools hung on the walls, sure. Hammers and wrenches and screwdrivers that could easily break these chains. But they were all out of reach, positioned just far enough away that our restrained arms couldn’t get to them.
Mary had planned this well. Bitch.
“Can you shift your hand?” Hunt asked. “Maybe your paw would be small enough to slip through.”
I tried. Focused on just my hand, willing the change to happen only in that limited area. Bones cracked and reformed, fursprouted across my skin, and my human hand became a wolf’s paw.
It didn’t help.
The cuff was tight enough that it just dug into my paw instead of my wrist. Still stuck. Still trapped.
“Fuck,” I muttered, shifting my hand back to human form.
“Same problem here,” Hunt said, having tried the same thing. “They sized these things perfectly.”
I stared at my cuffed hand, thinking. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out. I just had to find it.
The cuff was metal, solid and unyielding. The hook in the wall was bolted deep, not something I could tear free. The only weak point in this whole setup was...
My hand.
The cuff was too small for my hand to slip through. But if my hand was smaller...
If some of the bones weren’t there anymore...
“Fuck,” I said again, but this time with resignation. I knew what I had to do.
