Chapter Eight
Sorcha had never been abducted before.
She did not care for it.
The man was so much stronger than she was, dragging her like she weighed no more than one of Aesop’s kittens.
She even scratched at him like a cat, and tried to bite him once, but he shook her so hard that the insides of her skull rattled.
In the time it took her to regain her bearings, he had knotted a length of rope around her wrists. Tightly.
Very tightly.
The rope bit at her skin and made her fingertips tingle.
She could still run with her hands bound.
Only he still had hold of her dress at the back, and it bound her as tightly as the ropes, digging into her chest, shallowing her breaths.
Did he know she was the Red Cloak? She could not think of another reason to storm her house and haul her away.
Fear and confusion whirled inside her, heavily laced with outrage.
“What is this about?” she demanded.
Very well, asked. Very nearly yelped.
“Is it a ransom you want?” she tried again, hoping she sounded a little less like she was wheezing through the panic.
“No use pretending,” he barked.
The Red Cloak.
Bollocks.
“Did the Colle—”
“No more talking. I can smell the stench of magic on you. I know what you did. And you’ll bring her back.”
She blinked.
He wasn’t after the Red Cloak, then?
Now she was more confused than ever.
“Bring who back?”
“My daughter!” he roared. “You’ll tell me where she is or I’ll set the wolves on you.”
“Who is your daughter?” Sorcha asked. “You have the wrong—”
There was no time to ask any more questions, as he had thundered down the steps and around the side, where a horse waited. He was as big as one would imagine a horse needed to be to hold a man with a neck the size of a tree trunk. One hoof was the size of her entire face.
Not a comforting comparison.
Sorcha struggled again. The man only patted his horse, who did not seem any happier about Sorcha’s presence than she was. He shied away, snorting fitfully. “Not for long,” the man told him, with surprisingly gentleness. “I know she stinks.”
Well, that was a bit rude. She had washed the odor of the fighting pits off her already.
And what an odd comment.
“You’ve got the wrong person—”
“Shut it,” he snapped, and tossed her over the horse. She landed on her stomach, with an audible “oof” as the breath knocked out of her. The edge of the saddle dug into her side. Her hair fell out of its pins, tangling with the horse’s thick mane.
Her captor yanked off her shoes and threw them into the yellow gorse.
Running barefoot across the hills was not impossible, but it would be uncomfortable. It would slow her down. He might be a brute, but he wasn’t stupid. More’s the pity.
He hauled himself up behind her and urged the horse forward.
A crow flew down, cawing angrily, but the horse was already galloping and Sorcha could only lie draped over the saddle, praying she would not bounce off.
Which was worse? Being taken wherever he was taking her?
Or landing on her head on a rock? She couldn’t even summon enough magic to call more crows, or send her Elderberry to harass her abductor.
Every ounce of concentration was focused on not sliding off and being trampled to death.
She could only see the horse’s side, the dirt he kicked up with every pounding step, the change from grass to forest. But she knew they were no longer alone the moment they crossed into the cool green shadows, undergrowth dappled with sunlight.
She had no idea if it was a good thing or a worse thing.
The horse slowed with a nicker. She could hear wind chimes, the murmur of voices. Something that sounded very much like a growl.
The hairs on the back of her neck stirred.
A worse thing.
Definitely a worse thing.
She hadn’t been kidnapped by a giant, after all, despite evidence to the contrary.
She’d been kidnapped by a werewolf.
Was this Winterwell’s doing? Was he miffed that she had mildly scolded him about his son in his own house? This seemed excessive, even for that git of a man.
None of this made any sense.
Her abductor pulled her to the ground in one rough yank.
She teetered awkwardly, nearly smashing her nose into the horse’s side before finding her footing.
Her abductor grabbed her as if she had threatened the horse.
As if she could do anything but will the feeling back into her legs and her stomach to stop roiling.
She breathed through her nose when he shook her again.
Her voice was very calm when she spoke. “I will throw up on you.”
He took a step back, glowering, but did not let go.
The blood found its way back into her legs; her ribs shifted back into place as if they had been jostled loose. She was bruised and winded and queasy.
And a prisoner of the wolf camps.
She knew the stories, that the shifters gathered on Festival days, when most magical folk gathered.
Usually for feasting, for boasting and horse trading and handfastings that lasted a year and a day, a tradition in Lyonesse.
Sorcha had baked hundreds of loaves of bread for gatherings just like this one.
She had never been invited to one. Or forced into one.
But she knew where she was now.
The Wolf Wood.
She had thought it just a name before now. A place wolves might have gathered once.
She’d had no idea they were gathering now in such numbers.
And the presence of so many wolves—in whatever shape—woke some instinct in her. An instinct to run, but also to freeze and hope not to be noticed.
Too late for that, obviously.
She was somewhat gratified to learn that ladies being abducted garnered attention, even in such a place. Less gratified to be the center of that sharp, hungry attention.
She had never felt soft before, all thin skin and slender bones and legs that could never hope to outrun a wolf. The sheer power of them prowling around her, the snuffling from the shadows, the rake of claws through dirt, made her hold her breath. It was partly awe. But mostly trepidation.
If this wasn’t about the Red Cloak, then why was she here? It had to be some sort of misunderstanding. She had no quarrels with the wolves. With any of the shifters.
The spaces between the trees were filled with Lycan in both their wolf shapes and in their human forms. Tawny fur, brown, gray, black.
Sorcha did not know where to look, where not to look.
Tents had been erected in the clearings, scattered about, painted with family crests.
A door sat to one side, painted red, opening to nothing.
They were common enough on the island, used to travel between houses and villages.
Moon charms hung from the branches, between dozens and dozens of wind chimes.
The song they sang was gentle and pretty, at odds with the thundering of her pulse in her ears.
She pulled at her bindings again, but the knots had not loosened as she rattled about on the back of the horse.
“What have you got there, Brutus?” someone drawled.
“Not your business,” her captor, apparently named Brutus, replied without inflection. “Sod off, Lorcan.”
Lorcan was tall, with black hair and the kind of smirk that spoke of too many people telling him too often that he was handsome. “I don’t know. I could make it my business.”
“You could try. But I smell my daughter on her. I smell my Orla.”
Sorcha recognized the name from the stables at the Cauldron and the wolves she had freed.
The white wolf? There was no time to say anything about it, as the temperature changed instantly.
It lowered, cold as a haunted forest. Dozens of eyes pinned her in place, seething.
Sorcha would have been more confident if faced with regular wolves.
She knew monsters and beasts. She knew claws and teeth and fear.
But she did not know Lycan etiquette when it came to being abducted. Or if it would even have mattered.
There was simply nowhere to go.
She tried to catch the eye of an old man, a woman with a baby in her arms—anyone who might have sympathy for her, who might help.
But the wolves were turning away, leaving Brutus and Lorcan and a few other shifters who did not look inclined to help her, one of them a blonde woman who watched them with a small frown.
As well as four wolves, prowling a circle around them, sniffing the air and snarling.
Sniffing her and snarling.
Sorcha froze. Her crow fluttered in her chest, like a second frantic heartbeat. Her witch knot flared.
“You’re about to learn what happens to people who hurt a wolf,” Brutus promised. “Who hurt my daughter.”
It wasn’t that she wasn’t terrified, because she was. But she was also insulted. Deeply. To her very core. “I would never harm a wolf!” she said hotly. Hadn’t she just faced down Winterwell because he’d bullied his son?
“No use,” Lorcan said. “I can smell her on you too.”
“Is Simon here?” she asked. What about the wolves she had freed from the stables? Only she didn’t know their names. Abduction was a very frustrating business.
“Never mind the Winterwell pup. I found you—you’re mine to deal with.”
“Don’t be daft,” the woman with long blonde hair in plaits said. “If she’s crossed the wolves, she belongs to the Alphas. To the Luna.”
“Jolan’s still not been found either,” someone else said. “They’ll tear her insides out.”
He didn’t have to sound so eager.
“Serves the bitch right. She talks or she dies.” Brutus reached for Sorcha.
But he never touched her.
A huge gray wolf soared out of the shadows and landed between them with a deep, menacing growl. His jaws clamped down on Brutus’s arm with a savage bite. Sorcha stumbled back, her backside hitting the ground.
Brutus yelled, his blood running between his fingers.
Another growl, deeper, more menacing. Furious.
Brutus went for his dagger.
The gray wolf twisted so that he was protecting Sorcha. Fur rippled on powerful haunches as he swiped with a huge paw, claws slicing through Brutus’s shirt.
“I tracked her,” Brutus grunted. “She belongs to me.”
The wolf crouched over Sorcha protectively, lips lifted off brutal teeth.
Between one blink and the next, the wolf became a man. He stayed crouched over Sorcha, weight on his knee, arms on either side of her. Pain and magic rippled under his flesh, turning claws to fingers, fur to warm skin and tousled hair.
He was naked.
Very naked.
And not just any naked man.
The very proper and extremely naked Aidan Carnahan, the eleventh Earl of Coventry.
His head hung as he caught his breath. His eyes pinned her, still caught between witch and wolf, curator and creature. He shoved to his feet, stepping in front of her. His voice was hoarse though no less powerful. A growl ripped through the declaration.
“Mine.”