Why?
He knew the answer. It was because Ryan was a cop and he’d just discovered that Nanook sold guns and drugs to the Detroit gangs. Ryan had demanded he stop, had threatened to expose the whole organization. He’d gambled that Nanook’s bond to his fellow shifters was stronger than his greed.
He’d lost that bet. Nanook had sent the hybrids to attack.
Save me!
Ryan couldn’t fight anymore. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand, and the smell. God, the smell! It didn’t matter. No dead man breathed anyway. With his last strength, he submitted to his alpha. Even as he did it, he was ashamed of himself. What Nanook was doing was not only illegal in the normal sense, but anathema among shifters. No alpha betrayed one of his own, and yet, it was happening. And Ryan chose to submit.
His head dropped and tilted to the side, exposing his neck. It left him open to the hybrids, but Nanook controlled them. If he chose, he would stop them. And Ryan was too valuable to kill, right?
Right?
Nanook looked straight at him and did nothing.
Pain burst through his chest, explosion of impact. Bombs of agony. And then fire sliced through his thigh, ripping open muscles and vessels. Next came the cut to his arm, nearly tearing it off at the shoulder joint.
Betrayed.
Ryan collapsed, but the pain kept coming. The hybrids descended, eating him like the beasts they were. Nanook looked away. Ryan didn’t even have the breath to scream.
He tried anyway.
He woke with a garbled cry. It came out as a gagged choke, but it jolted him awake. His gaze roamed wildly looking for a touchstone. Everything was dark, and he heard the grunting sounds of a fight. Not full dark. Light seeped around the seams of a doorway.
He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. It shamed him that he didn’t want to go out into the light. Better to hide in the dark and heal. His ribs were on fire, his chest pulsing with a dull ache, and he couldn’t move his neck. His head hung like a sack of potatoes, and he whimpered in shame.
Betrayed.
The word echoed in his head while he sat in agony in the dark. He needed to get his head on straight. He needed to figure out where he was and come up with a plan. But first, he needed to get the memory out of his head. He couldn’t do jack shit while fighting ghosts.
He forced himself to relive the slash that had gutted his thigh, the impact on his arm that nearly ripped open his shoulder, and the way he had looked to his alpha Nanook, submitting to the bastard even though it would expose him to one of his attackers. And he remembered how Nanook had looked away.
His own alpha had betrayed him. Ryan had been a naïve idiot to think the shifter bond would overcome the bastard’s greed. Nanook chose to kill his own clan mate rather than stop selling shit to the gangs. And now Ryan was stuck with nightmares and the absolute certainty that no one would ever have his back. Because no one ever had.
Thankfully Simon, his mate Alyssa, and the sane hybrid Vic had intervened and now Simon was the new head of the Griz. All done, trauma over, stand up and take a bow. Except Ryan didn’t trust any of them. And now he was beaten all to shit and he didn’t even know where the hell he was.
“The greatest mastery is a mind that lets go.”
He whispered the mantra as he tried to release the echo of his nightmare. The same nightmare that haunted him every fucking time he closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept more than an hour since Simon had taken over the Griz.
The chest pain was new. He pressed his hand to his torso and felt the impact of the two bullets from when he’d been down in the sewer. Hell. Now he had fresh trauma to add to his nightmare. And even though his human body was whole—he felt all around his chest to be sure—the mental ache was still there. And mental pain could feel damn real sometimes.
But at least he could breathe now. Which meant it was time to get off his ass and make an escape plan.
As prisons went, this was a piss-poor one. Now that his eyes had adjusted, he realized he was in a closet and sitting in a wheelchair. The last thing he remembered was the werewolf woman asking him if he could walk. How had he’d gotten from the sewer to here?
He pushed up from the wheelchair, his entire body aching and cold. A blanket fell off his naked body, but at least his badge still hung around his neck. It was the only piece of attire that had survived him going grizzly in the sewer. Lord, he felt like he carried a thousand extra pounds. He half stumbled, half walked to the front of the closet. It was a slanting one built in the space beneath a staircase, and the door hadn’t been shut properly.
He listened closely before pushing it open. More grunts and then a thud.
“You need to use your strength,” a woman said. “You’re holding back.”
“I’m being stealthy,” someone else snapped in reply. He knew that voice. It was the woman from the sewer. And he knew her, not just from the sewer, but from before. Who was she?
“You’re being a coward.”
Ryan winced. Those were fighting words among werewolves. They were the smallest of the predator shifters, but they more than made up for it in viciousness. Being called a coward was one of the worst things one could say to a werewolf, but the woman just snorted her response.
