Chapter 6 - Raegan
I scream as the dark figure moves toward my bedroom door.
But instead of fleeing, he shoves the heavy dresser against it with surprising speed and strength. The wooden furniture scrapes across the hardwood floor, creating a makeshift barricade that blocks the only exit like a prison door slamming shut.
My heart races as I realize I’m trapped. Whatever this intruder wants, he’s made sure I can’t escape, and no one can easily get in to help me. The guest room suddenly feels like a cage, and I’m alone with someone who clearly planned this invasion down to the last detail.
My training kicks in immediately. Years of self-defense classes, both with Wyn and at Llewelyn, don’t abandon me now, even with adrenaline flooding my system. I roll out of bed and drive my elbow toward the intruder’s ribs while bringing my knee up toward what I hope is his groin.
The man grunts and staggers back, but he recovers faster than I expected. In the darkness, I can’t make out his features, only that he’s tall and broad-shouldered and built like someone who knows how to fight.
My bare feet find purchase on the cold hardwood floor as I prepare for another attack. The guest room suddenly feels too small, too confining. Every shadow could hide another threat, and the nightgown I’m wearing offers no protection, nor any dignity.
“Raegan, stop!” The voice freezes me mid-strike. “It’s me.”
Wyn. My heart pounds even harder as recognition floods through me. The familiar cedar scent, the way he moves, the sound of my name on his lips after three years of silence.
That only makes me angrier.
“Get out!” I launch myself at him as fury gives my small frame a vicious edge. “Get the hell out of my room!”
“You’re in danger,” he screams, blocking my wild swing with ease. “Bastian isn’t who you think he is. You need to come with me.”
I claw at his face, aiming for his eyes. Three years of hurt and rejection fuel every movement. “I don’t need to do a damn thing! You don’t get to show up in my bedroom after what you did to me and tell me what to do!”
The memories crash over me as we struggle. That night in the garden, when he looked at me like I was nothing. When he dismissed my feelings as a childish fantasy and walked away without looking back.
The way I threw myself at him, so sure he felt the same connection I did. The complete devastation when he rejected me, like discussing the weather rather than breaking my heart.
Now he’s here, in my private space, while I’m wearing nothing but a nightgown, acting like he has the right to make decisions for me.
“You rejected me,” I spit between attempts to break free from his hold. “You made it clear I meant nothing to you. So don’t pretend you care what happens to me now.”
My nails catch his cheek, drawing blood. The satisfaction of seeing red bloom across his skin gives me savage pleasure. He curses and grabs my wrists, and his strength easily overpowers mine despite the solid hits I’ve managed to land.
The size difference between us becomes obvious as he restrains me. I’m barely five-foot-five. He’s at least six feet tall and built like someone who spends his days training for combat. This isn’t a fair fight, and we both know it.
But I don’t care about fair.
I care about making him pay for three years of sleepless nights, three years of wondering what was so wrong with me that even my mate would reject me.
I reach for my wolf, trying to force the change that would give me claws and fangs.
The transformation starts, and my bones begin to lengthen, but Wyn does something to the pressure points on my wrists that sends shooting pain up my arms. The agony breaks my concentration, and my wolf retreats with a whimper of distress.
“Listen to me,” he says through gritted teeth. “Your fiancé is working for a hostile pack called Thornridge. They’ve been scouting our territory for weeks, planning some kind of attack. He’s been using you to get close to our pack leadership.”
“You’re insane!” I try to wrench free from his grip. “Bastian isn’t working for anyone. He’s a student!”
“Thornridge has been recruiting displaced pack members, turning them into operatives,” Wyn presses. “Six months at Llewelyn, just long enough to identify you as a target. The perfect cover story, the convenient interest in interpack relations. Does any of that seem like a coincidence to you?”
I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to consider that the man I agreed to marry might be exactly what Wyn is describing.
But pieces of today’s confrontation start clicking together in my mind.
The way everyone looked at Bastian when we walked in.
The level of scrutiny he faced. The undercurrent of suspicion had nothing to do with typical family protectiveness.
The smooth way he answered every question, like he’d rehearsed the responses. How perfectly his background story fits together, without any of the messy contradictions that make real lives complicated.
His proposal itself, I realize with growing horror.
“Even if that were true,” I snap, “what gives you the right to break into my room? To decide what’s best for me without my consent?”
“Because I—” He stops himself, then adds, “Because someone has to protect you from making the worst mistake of your life.”
“Like you protected me three years ago?” The words tear out of my throat, raw and bitter. “When you told me my feelings were a fantasy? When you made it clear I meant nothing to you?”
“That was different.”
“Was it? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you only want me when someone else has me.”
He flinches like I’ve struck him. Good. I want him to hurt the way he hurt me.
Instead of releasing me, he spins me around and pins my arms behind my back. “Raegan, please. I know how this looks, but—”
“It looks like you’re kidnapping me!” I throw my head back, trying to catch him in the nose, but he anticipates the move and keeps his face out of range.
The position forces me against his chest, and I can feel his heart racing beneath my shoulder blade. He’s not as calm as he’s pretending to be.
His body heat seeps through the thin fabric of my nightgown, and I hate that some treacherous part of me finds comfort in his solid presence. Even now, even while he’s restraining me against my will, my wolf recognizes him as pack, as protector.
As a mate.
The thought makes me struggle harder.
Pounding erupts from the door to my room. “Raegan? Are you okay in there?” Bastian’s voice, concerned and urgent.
“Help me!” I scream toward the door. “Wyn’s in here! He’s—”
A cloth covers my nose and mouth before I can finish. The chemical smell makes my eyes water, and I hold my breath instinctively. Chloroform. The bastard actually came prepared to drug me unconscious.
“I’m sorry,” Wyn whispers against my ear. “I’m so damn sorry.”
The apology doesn’t make this better. Nothing could make this better. I bite down hard on the cloth, tasting chemicals and cotton. My teeth find the soft flesh of his hand beneath the fabric, and I clamp down with everything I have.
He swears but doesn’t let go. Blood fills my mouth—his blood—and I hope it hurts. Hope it leaves scars he’ll remember every time he looks at his hands.
The pounding on the door gets louder, more frantic.
“Raegan! Answer me!” Bastian’s voice carries real panic now.
I try to call out again, but the chloroform is starting to affect me despite my attempts to hold my breath. My vision wavers, and my struggles become less coordinated.
The room spins around me, and the furniture distorts into indistinct shapes. My legs feel like they’re made of water.
“Fight it all you want,” Wyn says, his voice rough with something that might be regret. “But you’re coming with me either way.”
The bedroom door rattles as someone throws their full weight against it. Wood splinters around the lock, and I can hear Bastian cursing in what sounds like a foreign language.
Something about the words nags at me. The accent, maybe, or the cadence. Not the gentle academic tone I’m used to hearing from him.
My legs start to give out as the drug works its way through my system. Wyn catches me as I collapse, and he lifts me against his chest with surprising gentleness for someone who just drugged me.
Even through my fury and growing disorientation, I can’t help but notice how carefully he handles me. His arms create a protective cage around my body, shielding me from impact as he moves toward the window.
The contrast between his actions and his tenderness confuses me. Kidnappers aren’t supposed to be gentle. They’re not supposed to whisper apologies or handle their victims like precious things.
“You bastard,” I slur. “I hate you.”
“I know.” He carries me toward the window. “But you’ll be alive to hate me.”
The door explodes inward just as Wyn reaches the open window. Bastian fills the doorway, taking in the scene.
Gone is the gentle academic I thought I knew. This man moves like a predator, with every line of his body coiled with barely contained violence. Maybe Wyn wasn’t lying about everything, after all.
“Put her down.” His voice carries authority I’ve never heard before. “Now.”
Where did my soft-spoken fiancé learn to sound like that?
Wyn adjusts his grip on me, preparing to climb through the window. “Can’t do that. She’s coming with me.”
Bastian moves into the room, no longer the polite man who proposed to me three days ago. The transformation is startling, like watching someone remove a mask they’ve worn so long I forgot it wasn’t their real face.
His posture is different. The way he carries himself, the look in his eyes, even the set of his shoulders. Everything about him screams training and experience with violence.
“You have three seconds to release her, or I will end you.”
“Funny,” Wyn sneers, pausing at the window. “That’s exactly what I was going to say to you at the meeting earlier today.”
The two men glare at each other across my darkening bedroom, and I can practically feel the violence building between them. Whatever game they’re playing, I’m the prize in the middle.
My vision blurs further as the chloroform wins its battle against my system. The only reason I’m not a total puddle right now is that wolves metabolize drugs so much differently than humans.
Still, the room tilts and spins, making me nauseous. But through the chemical haze, I catch something that makes my blood run cold.
The look on Bastian’s face as he watches me isn’t that of a worried fiancé. It’s the expression of someone who views me as an asset rather than a person.
Maybe Wyn isn’t the only monster in this room.
“Sleep, sweetheart,” Wyn mumbles as he steps onto the window ledge. The endearment should anger me, but my brain is too foggy to maintain the rage.
“Don’t count on her forgiving you,” Bastian calls after us.
“I’m not counting on anything,” Wyn replies. “Except keeping her alive.”
Then we’re falling through darkness, and the last totally coherent thought I have is wondering which man is telling the truth.
Wyn lands hard, absorbing the impact with bent knees while keeping me cradled against his chest. Even semiconscious, I can feel how carefully he protects me from the jarring contact with the ground.
He starts running, and he carries me through the desert scrub with sure-footed confidence. Behind us, I can hear Bastian shouting orders to someone as his voice carries across the night.
Orders in that same foreign language.
The chloroform pulls me deeper into unconsciousness, but some stubborn part of my mind keeps fighting it. I need to stay awake, need to understand what’s happening, need to figure out which version of reality is true.
Through the chemical fog, I try to piece together the events of the past few days. Bastian’s smooth answers to every question today. The way he seemed to have a prepared response for everything. How perfectly he fit the role of diplomatic student, like he’d practiced it.
The way he knew exactly what to say to make me feel special, valued, and desired. Like he’d studied my weaknesses and crafted his approach accordingly.
Details I dismissed at the time now seem ominous in retrospect.
How he always steered conversations away from specific details about his past. The way he deflected when I asked about visiting his home territory.
His reluctance to introduce me to anyone from his supposed pack, always having reasonable excuses for why that wasn’t possible, yet.
Even our first meeting feels suspicious now.
The carefully orchestrated “accident” in the library when he spilled coffee on my notes.
How quickly he offered to help me rewrite them, creating an excuse to spend hours together.
The perfect gentleman act that made me feel like I’d found someone genuinely different from the aggressive alphas I’d grown up around.
Was any of it real? Or was I just an easy mark, so desperate to prove I could build a life independent of my family’s influence that I ignored every red flag? The thought makes me sick, even through the chemical haze clouding my thoughts.
But I also remember the way he looked at me when he proposed. The genuine emotion in his voice when he talked about his family. The tears in his eyes when he mentioned his dead sister.
Either he’s an incredible actor, or Wyn is lying.
Or maybe they’re both lying, and I’m trapped between two men who see me as something to be possessed rather than someone to be respected.
My body betrays me and goes totally limp in Wyn’s arms as he carries me further from the guest house. From safety or danger, I can’t tell which anymore.
The night desert surrounds us with its alien beauty. Stars wheel overhead, brilliant in the clear sky, while the scent of sage and creosote fills the cooling wind. Under different circumstances, this might be romantic.
Instead, it feels like the end of everything I thought I knew about my life.
“I’ve got you,” he promises, his voice barely audible over the sound of our movement through the brush. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The promise should comfort me. Instead, it terrifies me.
Because three years ago, Wyn made it clear that I meant nothing to him. That protecting me was just a job, a duty to his alpha rather than any personal feeling.
So why is he risking everything to take me now? Surely, he knows my brother is going to have his head for this. He abducted his sister in the dead of night.
There will be consequences.
The questions follow me down into darkness as the drug finally wins its battle against my consciousness. My last sensation is the steady rhythm of Wyn’s heartbeat against my cheek and the careful way his arms cradle me against the night.
When I wake up, nothing will ever be the same again.