Chapter 19 #2
I floated for a while. Time lost meaning.
Fragments of sensation drifted past. The motion of being carried, arms that were too careful to be kind.
A car door opening. Engine rumbling to life.
The vibration of tires on a rough road. Cold air, then warmth from a heater.
Michael’s voice, muttering something that I could not quite make out, words slipping through my consciousness like water through fingers.
He was taking me somewhere else. Somewhere the tracker would never lead them.
The bond was a whisper now, so faint I could barely feel it. Raphael’s presence reduced to the barest flicker of awareness, a candle flame guttering in a storm.
He was still there. Still alive. Still coming for me.
I held onto that thought as the drug dragged me deeper into nothing.
Time passed. Minutes or hours, I could not tell. The void was absolute, without shape or sound or sensation. Only that faint tether remained, Raphael’s presence like a distant star, impossibly far but still burning.
Still hunting.
When consciousness returned, it came with a headache that felt like an ice pick driven behind my eyes.
I groaned, and the sound was barely human. My mouth tasted like copper and chemicals, metallic and wrong. My wrists burned, rope cutting into already raw skin when I tried to move them.
Bound. Again.
I forced my eyes open.
The cabin’s interior swam into focus slowly, shapes resolving out of the blur.
Rough wooden walls, dark with age. A wood stove crackling in the corner, throwing heat and shadows in equal measure.
The smell of smoke and dust and something floral underneath, old potpourri maybe, the ghost of a woman’s touch in a space that felt abandoned.
Not the cabin where he held me before. Somewhere else. Somewhere he had driven me while I was unconscious, far from where Raphael would be searching.
Another nightmare. A different cage.
I tested my bonds, careful to keep the movement small.
The rope was tight, professionally knotted, cutting into skin that was already raw and tender.
My ankles were bound too, tied to the legs of the chair I was sitting in.
Whoever had done this knew what they were doing.
Michael, probably. He had clearly spent a long time preparing for this moment.
The thought made my stomach turn. How many nights had he spent imagining this? How many hours had he devoted to planning every detail of my captivity, while I lived my life completely unaware that he existed?
I pushed the horror aside. There would be time for that later. Right now, I needed to focus. I needed to find a way out of this, or at least buy enough time for Raphael to find me.
“Lena?”
Clara’s voice, small and scared, from somewhere to my left.
I turned my head, the movement sending spikes of pain through my skull, and there she was.
Tied to a wooden chair, her face pale and streaked with tears, her mascara smeared in dark tracks down her cheeks.
But alive. Whole. Unharmed except for the terror in her eyes.
“Clara.” My voice came out as a croak. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” She shook her head, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. “He hasn’t hurt me. He just kept asking about you. Where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. I didn’t tell him anything, I swear. I didn’t know anything to tell.”
“I know you didn’t. This isn’t your fault.”
“Of course it’s not her fault.” Michael’s voice came from behind me, and I twisted against my bonds to see him.
He sat in a chair near the door, watching us with satisfaction and curiosity mingled in equal measure, like a scientist observing an experiment.
“She’s just leverage. Insurance to make sure you behaved.
You came alone like I asked. Well.” A thin smile crossed his face. “Mostly alone.”
“Where’s my husband?”
The question came out sharp, defiant. I would not let him see how scared I was. I would not give him that satisfaction.
“Running through the woods with his goons, probably.” Michael checked his watch, unhurried. “Looking in all the wrong places.”
The tracker. He had tossed it into the trees before drugging me, and then driven me here while I was unconscious. Raphael would follow the signal to the meeting point and find nothing but an empty clearing. By the time he realized the truth, Michael could have taken me anywhere.
“They’ll find me.” The words came out more confident than the truth warranted. The bond was still there, a weak pulse in my chest, but so muffled I could barely sense it. Whatever drug he had used, it was interfering with the connection. “Raphael will find me.”
“Maybe.” Michael stood, crossing to a small table where a bottle of water sat. He poured a glass, brought it to me, held it to my lips. “Drink. You need to stay hydrated.”
I wanted to refuse, but my throat was sandpaper and my head was pounding and I needed to stay conscious if I had any hope of getting out of this alive. I drank.
The water was cool and clean, and I hated how good it tasted.
Hated that Michael was the one providing it, that he was playing the role of caretaker even as he held me prisoner.
It was manipulation, I knew that. A way of making me feel indebted to him, of establishing himself as something other than a monster.
It was not going to work.
“There.” He set the glass aside, his fingers brushing my cheek in a gesture that made me want to recoil. “I don’t want to hurt you, Lena. I never wanted to hurt you. Everything I’ve done, I did because we’re family, and I love you.”
The words should have sounded tender. Instead, they sounded like a confession. Like evidence being presented at trial.
“You killed Stephanie.”
His face went blank for just a moment, then smoothed into something resembling regret. “That was an accident. She found the photos, the ones I took of you. She was going to tell. I panicked.” He shrugged. One shoulder, casual, like he was describing a minor inconvenience. “These things happen.”
“You sabotaged the hotel and threatened me for months.”
“I did what I had to do to keep you safe. To show you that your husband couldn’t protect you.” Michael crouched in front of me, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that made me want to recoil. “Don’t you understand? All of it was for you. For us.”
“There is no us.” The words came out steadier than I expected, considering my head was pounding and my wrists were screaming and every instinct was telling me to scream for help. But screaming would only give him what he wanted. My fear. My helplessness. I would not give him either.
“There could have been.” His voice cracked, revealing the wound beneath the obsession.
The lonely child who had grown into a lonely man, watching his half-sister from the shadows, wanting so desperately to belong to something.
To someone. “I’m your brother, Lena. Your blood.
I should have been there your whole life.
But he kept me away. Our father. He gave you everything and gave me nothing but scraps and silence. ”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“No.” Michael’s hand found mine, his fingers closing around my bound wrists. “No, it wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. But you could fix it now. You could choose me. Choose your family. Let me be your brother, and I’ll let you go. I’ll let Clara go. We can start over.”
I looked at him, this man who had terrorized me, who had killed and stalked and destroyed in the name of love. And something unexpected stirred in me.
Pity.
“Michael.” I made my voice gentle. “I’m sorry our father failed you. I’m sorry he kept you hidden, made you feel worthless. That was wrong. You deserved better than that.”
Hope flared in his eyes. Raw, desperate hope, like a dying man seeing water in the desert.
“But I can’t give you what you want.” I held his gaze, steady.
“Not because I don’t want to have a brother.
Because you’ve made that impossible. You killed someone.
You tried to destroy my life. You kidnapped me and my cousin.
Whatever chance we had for a real relationship, you burned it down yourself. ”
The hope in his eyes died. Slowly, like a flame starved of air.
“I see.” His voice was flat now. Empty. All the emotion drained away, leaving only the hollow shell of a man who had nothing left to lose. “So you’re choosing him. The monster. Over your own blood.”
“I’m choosing my husband. My partner. The man I love.”
Michael stood. His hands were shaking.
“Then I’ll make him watch.” The words were quiet.
Conversational. Almost gentle. “When I’m done, I’ll make sure he sees exactly what happened to you.
Every detail. Every moment. I’ll destroy him the way he destroyed any chance we had.
And then I’ll disappear, and he’ll spend the rest of his life knowing he couldn’t save you. ”
Clara whimpered across the room. I kept my eyes on Michael, on the madness blooming behind his calm facade, a dam finally cracking.
“He’s coming for me,” I said. “And when he gets here, he will kill you.”
Michael smiled. It did not reach his eyes.
“I’m counting on it.”
He turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. A lock clicked, and then silence.
Clara was crying softly across the room, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.
I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but I could not make promises I was not sure I could keep.
Michael had planned this for years. He had anticipated every move we might make.
And now he was out there somewhere, waiting, plotting whatever horrible thing he intended to do next.
But he had made one mistake. One crucial, fatal mistake.
He had underestimated Raphael.
I reached for the bond, fighting through the fog the drug had left in my mind. The connection was still muffled, still weak, but it was there. And through it, dim but present, Raphael blazed. Racing through the night. Hunting.
Coming for me.
He was not going to stop. He was never going to stop.
Raphael would tear through every obstacle between us, would burn down the entire forest if that was what it took to reach me.
Michael thought he understood what he was dealing with, but he did not.
He had never seen Raphael when someone threatened his mate.
He had never witnessed the full fury of an alpha wolf protecting what was his.
He was about to learn.
I held onto that knowledge with everything I had, let it anchor me to hope, to defiance, to the certainty that this was not how my story ended.
Michael could tie me up, could drug me, could threaten me with whatever horrors his broken mind could imagine.
But he could not break me. He could not take away the bond that connected me to the man I loved.
As long as that connection held, I was not alone.
I began working at the ropes around my wrists, ignoring the pain as the rough fibers bit into my skin. It would take time. It might be impossible. But I was not going to sit here passively waiting to be rescued.
I was done being prey.
If Michael wanted a victim, he was going to be disappointed. Because when Raphael came for me, and he would come, I intended to meet him on my feet.