Glacial eyes bore into my face. “Absolutely. We aren’t better than any of them, just better at surviving.”
Heart in my stomach, I can’t argue that point. "I'm getting pretty sick of that word, you know; maybe. Maybe this, maybe that. If you'd give me any actual facts to work with,maybeI wouldn't always have to work with hypotheticals.” Swallowing, I plead, “Why didn't you ever tell me anything?”
Clutching her bloody rag to her face, she reaches past me to the panel of buttons. “We don’t have time to get into this here.”
I grab her arm before she can make contact, but she anticipated on me doing so. Leaning into my tug so that she falls with me into the wall, she drops the rag to smack the button, getting us moving again. With a lurch, the elevator returns to its descent, but this time with a loud vibration against the metal.
Closing my eyes and wishing the floor would open up so the darkness beneath could swallow me whole, my face heats. Awkwardly releasing her, I reach behind me to press the button on the butt plug still in place to turn it off again.
‘The vibrating one is more popular.’ Thanks for that helpful advice, Carina.
When I finally force myself to pry open one eyelid, it’s to find Mom’s unamused face. “Seriously?”
“You abducted me from a hotel room I was sharing with seven guys, and didn’t expect it to be weird? What did you think we were doing in there?”
She takes a step back, scrubbing a hand over her mouth as she grabs a relatively cleaner sheet to wipe off her face now that the bleeding has nearly stopped. “That place didn’t smell like sex before I set the gas up under the door. I had no interest in having to extract you from the middle of a gangbang.”
For some reason, that makes me blush harder. “Keep your nose out of my sex life.” She actually chuckles, and it gives me an opening to smack the emergency stop button again. “Iwantto be here. Your mates may have sucked, but mine don’t. If I disappear, they’re coming with me. So if there’s a real reason why I shouldn’t go, no need to steal me away. I’ll happily go upstairs to tell them that I changed my mind, we’ll grab our shit, and hop on a boat out of the country. But you need to give mesomethingto work with, here.”
All amusement disappears from her face. “When are you going to accept that people only want you for the sake of using you? Your mates to set their beasts free, the Slaughters to find me, and to use you to foster a treaty to their advantage with another pack. You’re not a person to any of them, you’re a means to an end.” Shaking her head she sighs. “You need to trust me on this one. We have to go.Now.”
This time when I grab her wrist, it’s with all of the fury of my other half pressing down on the forefront of my brain. “Are you kidding me? What have you ever done to earn the privilege of blind trust? ‘The only thing you can count on other people for is to let you down,’ isn’t that what you always say?”
The elevator lurches with a hard thump from above us, quickly followed by another. Her heart sprints into overdrive as she attempts to yank her arm free, but to no avail. Tightening my grip, my counterpart rises, following the physical connection straight to her’s. I don’t siphon or soothe in any way, simply make her aware of my presence, let the unspoken threat loom over her head.
In a matter of seconds, the color fades from her face as she tenses. “What did they do to you?”
The emergency panel on top of the elevator is wrenched open, and Kaige drops through. Straightening to his full, imposing height, the small sliver of orange that remains visible in his eyes flickers and burns as if made of living flames. “I think a better question is, what are we going to do to you?”
By the time he finishes speaking, Slade has slipped through the opening and is at my side. Both are still in their pajama pants, with only Slade in a shirt, yet it does nothing to detract from the deadly air surrounding them. Jaw clenched, he quickly surveys the scene before carefully prying my fingers off of my mother’s arm.
“Slade, what ar-” He cuts me off with a swift, hard kiss, the gentle way he cups my jaw at odds with the coiled tension radiating off of him in waves.
“Are you hurt?” When I shake my head slightly, he tightens his fingers on my jaw. “Where’d the blood come from?”
It takes a second for it to click that I likely caught a spray of blood after headbutting her. “When I broke her nose.”
He slowly swipes his thumb over my cheek, but the relief I expected never comes. “Kaige?” At his grunt of acknowledgment, Slade orders, “Take Sabrina back upstairs.”
Scrunching up my forehead in confusion, I crane my head to the side to see he’s backed Mom into the corner. Without taking his eyes off of her, he replies, “I can handle it.”
“Handle what?”
Slade’s eyes are solid black at this point, and though he’s standing right in front of me, he’s never been farther away. “If she’d go so far as to break into a room with several male wolves when she fears them, in a hotel full of shifters only a few hours away from the people she’s spent over twenty years hiding from, she’s desperate to keep you away from the mountain. Anyone else, I could accept that it was because they were worried about you, but Annika Slaughter?”
He turns and spits on the ground, as if her name is a vile insult that he can’t stand the taste of. “Whatever you’ll discover by going there, she’s willing to come out of hiding and risk being dragged back to keep you from finding out. Desperate people are dangerous, and I won’t have another threat looming over our heads. She’s hurt you enough; it stops now.”
My stomach flips. “You can’t really mean you’re going to kill her? Aren't female wolves a protected, endangered species to you guys?”
When no one says a word, I look to mom, and this time, a little of her murderous rage has been replaced by unease. "She's right, and you know it. If anyone finds out you tried to kill me, they’ll make you wish you were never born.”
Kaige cracks his neck. “Already beat them to the punch on that one, and I have no intention of ‘trying’ anything. Besides, who’s going to find out?” Withdrawing a slender pocket knife, he casually rolls it between his fingers. “Nobody’s seen you for decades. You’re a ghost, Annika, like you always wanted to be. Now you can go back to haunting people, just from beyond the grave.”
Do I want her dead?
Sure, I’ve thought about it enough over the years when I was pissed off, but do I honestly want it? I haven’t seen her in eight years, and the only way she hurts me now is from memories. Killing her won’t make those go away. Plus, how can I show up on the Slaughter’s doorstep in a couple of days and lie to their faces? To let them keep thinking she’s out there somewhere, that there’s hope? They may be monsters, but that’s cruel by anyone’s standards.
And Slade’s willing to spare Kaige the guilt that would eat him alive after his wolf receded. He’s spent his entire life trying to be better than his ancestors, to cherish women as gifts to their kind and protect them from other males that would abuse them. No matter if it was to protect me, or how much of a bitch she is, killing her would destroy something integral within him.
