19. Morgan
MORGAN
“ Morgan. ”
A sharp elbow in my ribs has me hissing and flinching backwards, but there’s nowhere to go except into a fucking wall. I groan as my shoulder protests the contact.
“You with us?”
That voice again. It takes me way too long to remember who it belongs to.
Beth.
That’s Beth’s voice whispering in the dark.
And why are we in the fucking?—
Oh .
Bits and pieces start to come back to me, none of it good, and panic hits me full force.
My heart pounds, pulse almost deafening in the quiet of wherever the fuck we are, as the reality of what happened sinks in.
“Yeah. I’m with you,” I manage, voice scratchy.
“Really wishing I was still asleep, though.”
“ Unconscious ,” she snarls, making me flinch. “You weren’t asleep. They hit you so fucking hard they knocked you out.”
That would explain the headache. Jesus, I really don’t need another concussion.
It’s looking likely though because I remember yelled voices, the smell of burnt rubber and something throwing me from my fucking bike, but everything else is a blur.
I can’t remember how we came to end up in the back of a van.
Fuck, I don’t even know if we’re all here because I can’t see .
“Beth,” I croak, mouth suddenly drier than the desert. “Is everyone—” I can’t finish that sentence, and I jump a mile when a hand reaches out and grabs my wrist.
“It’s only me,” Beth says softly, the anger gone from her voice. “I’m sorry. I forgot that you can’t see.”
“Can you?” I ask, realising what a stupid question that is as soon as it leaves my mouth. Shifters , Morgan .
“Yes,” she says, with no trace of judgement or sarcasm, and I could kiss her. “And we’re all here. A little banged up, but we’ll heal once we get this fucking silver off us.”
“Silver?”
“They were nice enough to restrain us with silver-coated handcuffs laced with aconite.” Now I hear the sarcasm and the pain. “It smarts.” She delivers what has to be a severe understatement in the driest tone, and a laugh escapes me.
“Fuck, sorry,” I offer quickly, and she squeezes my wrist again in acknowledgement.
“How’s the head?” someone else asks, and I think it’s Flint.
“Hurts,” I say, reaching up to rub my temple, surprised when I find I’m not restrained in any way. My hand stills as that realisation sinks in. “Who was it?”
Beth snarls again, low and pissed off. It raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I don’t know her. I don’t really know any of them, and that sets my heart racing all over again.
Not now . I will my body to behave, trying to keep my breathing slow and steady, but it’s hard .
“For fuck’s sake, Beth.” Flint again. “You’re scaring him.”
The sound of someone moving has me flinching again, and then there’s the flick of a lighter, followed by a soft flame that has me scrunching my eyes shut against the sudden brightness.
“Hey,” Flint murmurs when I open my eyes again. “Better?”
So much better, I could almost cry.
I’ve spent more time with Flint than the others, and the warm smile on his familiar face settles me enough to finally breathe easier. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Sorry,” Beth whispers, giving my wrist another squeeze before letting go.
I’d forgotten she was still touching me, and it shocks me enough that I forget for a moment to be panicked when Flint lets his lighter go out.
“I’m still here,” he says. “I know you can’t see anything, but it’s okay. Beth’s beside you, I’m in front, and Mal is over in the corner behind me.”
“Hey, Morgan.” Mal sounds... wrong. It takes a moment for me to register why.
“You’re hurt?” I ask, hopefully in the right direction.
“Little bit,” he grunts. “Broken arm. In three places.”
Jesus.
“And you can’t heal, can you? Because you’re in silver too.”
“No.”
“Anyone else hurt?” Fuck, I hate not being able to see. “Flint, can you use your lighter again, I just... I need to see.”
“I’ll try. It’s almost out of fluid, though.”
It takes four attempts to get it to catch, but eventually soft light illuminates Flint’s face in front of me as he holds it up.
Blood slowly oozes from a cut at his temple, a lone drip sliding down his cheek before he swipes it away. How the fuck did I not notice any of that before?
He also has a bruise on his jaw, and as my gaze drops lower, there’s the telltale mark of claws across his neck. It doesn’t look deep, but it’s still bleeding, colouring the neck of his T-shirt a deep, dark red.
Because he can’t heal, I remind myself. None of them can.
“It’s not bad,” he assures me, or tries, because it does fuck all to convince me.
“The bleeding’s not stopping. How is that not bad ?”
“It won’t kill me,” he rephrases.
I guess that’s as good an answer as I’m going to get. “Thank fuck.”
Without me having to ask, he moves the lighter so I can see Beth next, and I gasp before I can stop it.
“Yeah,” she smirks, licking at the cut on her lip. “They underestimated me. Of fucking course.” She raises her hand and wiggles her three fingers. “I might be missing a couple, but I can still knock them on their arses.”
Her injuries are way worse than Flint’s. The ones that I can see, anyway. I hate to think what the darkness might be hiding.
“Surprisingly no broken bones,” she adds, reading my mind. Then she grins. “Not mine, anyway.”
I ignore the blood coating her teeth and grin back. “Good.”
When Flint shuffles back enough that I can make out Mal, I wish he hadn’t.
He’s pale, even in the glow of Flint’s lighter. His skin shines with sweat, and even though I know he’s trying, he can’t hide the pain in his eyes. My gaze drops to the arm he has cradled against his chest.
“ Jesus Christ! ” I suck in a breath, desperately hanging on to whatever’s in my stomach. “Is that... is it...”
“Bone?” Mal supplies with a grimace. “’Fraid so.”
It’s just there , sticking up out of his forearm.
People die of injuries like that, don’t they? I mean I’ve only seen it on the TV, but fuck me , I can see his bone. I lean close enough to realise that his jeans and T-shirt are soaked in blood.
He follows my gaze. “It nicked an artery.”
“ Shit !”
“It’s okay,” he adds quickly before a new round of panic can take hold. “They let me heal enough so I won’t bleed out.” He nods down at his hands. “But they wouldn’t let me set the bone before they slapped these fuckers on.”
I follow his gaze down to see the silver-coated handcuffs around his wrists. One arm at an awkward angle to accommodate the one he can’t move.
But they clearly want to keep him alive, so that’s good, right?
I can’t put it off any longer. I ask the question I’m not sure I want the answer to. “Who was it?”
“Feral Beasts,” Beth spits. I don’t need to see her face to feel the venom in it. “Motherfuckers.”
A cold dread creeps up the back of my neck.
“Is this my fault?” I can barely get the words out, horrified that Beth and Mal have been beaten so badly they’re still bleeding, that Mal has a bone sticking out of his arm... All because the Feral Beasts wanted me.
“No.” Flint’s quick to answer, and his tone invites no room for argument. “So stop that shit right now. Even if they ambushed us because they wanted to get you, that’s still on them.”
It takes a moment for me to absorb his words and shove my guilt aside. “You don’t think they did this to get me?”
He sighs, and I wonder if he didn’t tell the whole truth about how much pain he’s in. “If they just wanted you, they could’ve taken you and either left us like this by the side of the road or killed us.”
I flinch as he says that so matter-of-factly.
“But they didn’t do either of those things. They brought us along for the ride.” He nods at Mal. “And made sure no one was in danger of dying yet.”
“What do you think they want?” I’m not sure I want the answer to that either.
Flint brings the lighter back, so it illuminates his face again. “You’re drenched in Lynx’s scent. He might as well have pissed on you, because any shifter in a mile radius knows who you belong to.”
I’m not proud of how much I like that.
“The fact that they’ve taken us too...” He shrugs and my blood runs cold.
“We’re bait?”
“I’d say so.”
His lighter chooses that moment to sputter and die, and I’m not all that sad about it. I don’t want to look at the resignation on Flint’s face, don’t want to acknowledge how shitty our situation is.
Or the trap that Lynx is walking into.
Because I know he’ll come. Maybe not for me, but his club, his pack are everything .
And the Feral Beasts know it.
Silence fills the van, and as it stretches out, it dawns on me how unnatural it is. I knew we weren’t moving as soon as my head cleared, but I can’t hear anything at all from outside.
“Where are we?”
Flint sighs again. “I don’t know.” He taps the side of the van, or at least I think he does because I felt movement, but I can’t fucking see. “It’s heavily soundproofed. I know we travelled for about an hour but couldn’t tell you in which direction.”
“Have we been parked here long?”
“Long enough.” Beth’s tone softens when she adds, “The Trenton pack were expecting us. They’ll notify Lynx that we haven’t arrived soon, if they haven’t already.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “And he’ll come for us?”
“Yes,” she says with conviction. “If he knows where we are.”
“How will he?—”
The back doors to the van are thrown open, light flooding into the space, making everyone squint. “Out,” someone grunts, then Mal roars in agony as he’s grabbed by the shoulders and pulled from the van.
Both Flint and Beth surge forward but freeze as Birch appears brandishing a wicked-looking knife.
“Want another go round, Flint?” He holds the knife up and I see the blade coated in something. “I bet they could hear your screams for miles.”
Neither Flint nor Beth respond, their silence pissing him off. He takes a step closer before one of the others interrupts him.
“Where are we taking them?” He nods at Mal, slumped on the ground, cradling his broken arm as best he can.