Chapter Eleven – Angela #2
“I didn’t ask to be bitten in, you know,” he went on.
I was going to point out the huge discrepancy between his situation and mine, but held it back, because sarcasm wasn’t going to gain me any sympathy.
“Some guys get formal invitations—I got initiated at a brawl. Wrong fight, wrong time, and then I’m here. ”
“You seem to be doing well for yourself.”
“If I was, I’d be out with the rest of the old guard, springing Gray.”
I sat back against the bars with a thump. “What’s it like, taking orders from someone you’ve never met?” He frowned, but had the wisdom not to answer. I couldn’t help but push him. “Or rather, what’s it like, taking orders from someone you’ve never met—knowing that he killed Wade?”
Meat—Jonah—went still then, but his nostrils flared, and I knew from a hundred different signals that I had his full attention, and that he was trying to read me.
“You didn’t know, did you? You must not be in that loop,” I said.
His eyes narrowed and he looked down his nose at me. “How would you know what happened?”
“Because Wade Davis’s severed cock wound up on my doormat as a peace offering.” I rocked my head back into the bars behind me. “Gray’s not the flower-sending type.”
I wanted to gloat with all my might—to cheer myself for the blow that I’d landed, even behind steel bars. But instead, watching him, I felt bad. The pain of my packmember…hurt me. We were connected, he and I, no matter how much I didn’t want to be.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered—but I meant it.
He stood and left the garage without a word.
I closed my eyes and cursed inability to keep my damn mouth shut. When Jonah returned in five minutes, with two other men plus Holt again, I went into the exact middle of the cage, where no one could reach me, and I made myself small.
“Tell them what you told me,” Jonah commanded.
I looked up from the ball I’d tucked myself into. “Why?”
“Because they need to hear it from you, not me.”
“Why?”
One of the men made a dismissive sound, as Holt said, “I told you she’s a bit—”
“Gray sent me Wade Davis’s severed cock,” I interrupted him. “In a box. With a love note. Asking me to come back to him.”
Holt’s mouth snapped shut, and Jonah nodded. “Thanks.”
The four other men looked to one another. The expressions on their faces were jumbled but similar—upset that I’d confirmed some long held fear, or relieved that they didn’t fear without reason.
“That’s heavy,” said the stocky and bald man standing closest to the door.
The odd thing was, they all seemed to be taking my words at face value. I stood and took a careful step forward. “You’re not worried, not even a little, that I’m lying to you?”
“That’d be a pretty crazy thing to make up, and you don’t seem crazy,” Jonah said. “Plus—it’s hard to lie, wolf-to-wolf.”
“Then how come no one told you?”
The men looked at one another. “It was Mags who brought him in,” Holt said.
“And he wouldn’t think to question whatever Daz told him to tell us,” Jonah said.
“I take it Mags isn’t a wolf?” I asked.
“Not yet, he ain’t,” answered Holt, apparently forgetting that I was not to be talked to.
“Not ever, now,” threatened the fourth man, who’d previously been silent. He was very tall and unnervingly attractive in a stern way, with heavy brows and a chiseled profile.
I looked between their number and realized two things simultaneously—that they would believe whatever I said next, and that what I was going to say next was true.
“If you let me go, I promise I’ll come back, come full moon.”
I had all four of their attention, mixed with scoffing and astonishment.
“You hate him and you don’t even know him—I do, and I hate him all the way. Let me fight him.” I wanted it all—I wanted Rabbit, safety, Mark, and there was only one way that I could get it.
“He’ll kill you,” Jonah said.
“Better that than this, here.” I shook myself against the bars. “And you know it,” I said, and hoped they really fucking knew that that was true.
“But he’s our leader,” Holt said.
Jonah looked to the other three men. “For now.”
“If I kill him for you, then you don’t have to,” I said, letting my wolf’s whine crawl into my voice.
“She’s not even pack, Jo—I can’t believe you’re considering this,” the bald man said.
“She is too pack,” he protested. “I saw her change.”
“More pack than Gray is, off in his own goddamned cage,” said the tall one.
The other two remained unconvinced—but the fact that I’d convinced two so readily gave me hope. “I am Pack. And I can show you,” I said, ripping my clothing off.
“You’re not going to be able to do it again so quickly,” Jonah warned—but I was already shutting myself down, running for my silent space. Please, wolfie. Rabbit had had a nickname for his wolf since he was three—where was mine? Wolfie—show them—come on.
I felt her rise inside me again, trying to flip me inside out, trying to show them the fur hidden in my form—but it wasn’t working.
Please. I have to get out of here. And I have to come back and end this—however it will go.
I cried out for her in my mind, and she tried to rise again and—she held steady.
Just underneath my skin, inhabiting my body without twisting it into her form.
Her eyes were the ones that looked out now—for me they were only windows.
My wolf tried to open my mouth to explain, like she knew I could, but she couldn’t—my wolf had no words.
But they did.
“She did it,” said the handsome one. I twisted toward him and saw the glimmers of his wolf inside. My wolf had been alone for so long—but she didn’t have to be alone anymore. She leaned against the metal of the cage, and the smooth cool brushed my sad furless skin, making my nipples hard.
“What if this is some kind of game, or prank?” said the bald one, still by the door.
“Wolves don’t know how to lie,” Jonah said. His hands were on the edges of his vest, waiting, weighing.
She pushed a hand out, and I could feel her thinking that hands were the only good thing about this form, the way they could reach and grab.
She reached out for him—and then she shoved at the lock of the cage.
She was Pack. She wanted to be outside. To meet so many wolves and then be forced to be so separate—it was cruel.
And they knew it. The bald one set the lock of the garage door he guarded behind him, just as Jonah came up with the keys for my cage.
My wolf could scent the wolf in him, and she leaned forward to breathe deep, eyes closed, feeling the cage’s metal vibrate as the lock shifted open behind her.
The cage door slid back, and my wolf was free.