Chapter 1
T welve years later.
“Think you ran far enough?” asked Wolf.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t remember a single word.
I was ten years old again, staring into my older brother’s furious face, but he wasn’t a gangly teenage boy anymore.
New scars marked his skin, his wavy brown hair hung long enough to cover his ears, and he wore a green and brown uniform that was worn and dirty.
There was a rifle strapped to his back and a pistol on his hip, along with several sheathed knives.
A pair of goggles sat on top of his head.
The hardness of his green eyes made me feel sick.
“What? You got nothin’ to say to me?” He smiled with no humor in it. “After all this time?”
I stared at him, my heart lodged in my throat.
He stared back, studying my face as though looking for something.
Was he trying to find the ten-year-old girl he last saw?
A low whistle came from the main floor of the clinic below us, and it snapped Wolf out of our bizarre staring contest. Wolf whistled back, then scanned the loft with narrowed eyes.
I followed his gaze, trying to see what he was looking at.
There wasn’t much. My mattress lay on the floor, covered in Trey’s quilt, and my dresser stood in the corner.
Wolf glanced back at me, his expression unreadable, then spun me around and marched me toward the loft ladder.
“We’re leaving,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Go down the ladder.”
I obeyed. Another man with black hair pulled back into a messy top knot and dressed the same as Wolf stood in the clinic holding a large rifle.
He looked familiar, but the panic roaring through my head made it impossible to place him.
His face stayed expressionless as he shifted to put his body between me and the door.
Wolf came down the ladder right behind me, grabbing my arms and twisting them behind my back.
I heard the familiar sound of a zip tie cinch shut and felt the plastic dig into my wrists.
“Not a word, you hear?” Wolf growled in my ear as he propelled me toward the door. “I don’t want to shoot my way out of here, but I will if I have to.”
My eyes found the pistol in his hand. It had a silencer on it, and my heart seized with terror that Mac would return and?—
I gulped in short, frantic gasps of air. I couldn’t watch another person I cared about get shot. Wolf and his friend hesitated, staring at me with furrowed brows.
“ Quiet,” Wolf hissed as he shook me hard.
Almost as though a switch flipped, it felt like I was outside my body, watching. My gasping eased, an empty nothingness replacing the panic. They both stared at me for a second longer before pulling their goggles down and dragging me outside.
They slid through the shadows easily, and I stumbled along with them in a dreamlike state. After I tripped for the tenth time, they started practically carrying me, the toes of my boots barely brushing the ground.
As we approached the gate, I didn’t notice the bodies until we were stepping over them. They lay in the shadows of the wall, and I couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive.
Fuck. Oh gods, please don’t be ? —
“Sable?” Wolf called in a low voice.
Another shadowy figure bled out of the darkness of the gate, startling me.
The dark-haired man holding my left arm released me and traded places with this third person—Sable, apparently.
As Sable took my arm, I could just barely see their features in the moonlight, making out long blond hair and lips that were frowning at me.
The dark-haired man moved to operate the pulley to open the gate doors.
We slipped through when the door opened enough to fit a person, and Wolf and Sable darted toward the woods with me in tow.
The gate shut behind us and I craned my neck to look back.
I had to bite back a gasp as the dark-haired man rappelled down the wall with ease.
There were no cries of alarm. No guards shouting. Nothing.
Please don’t be dead.
The dark-haired man caught up and swapped places with Sable.
They dragged me through the woods while Sable took up the rear, drawing the large rifle he carried on his back.
I tried to keep up and cooperate, but I didn’t have night vision goggles and stumbled over every damn tree branch and rock.
Soon, they seemed to grow frustrated and started carrying me again—my boots dangling.
They moved so fucking fast, and now that we were out of the hold, I felt less concerned about Wolf shooting other people and more concerned with my own looming death.
My brother was about to kill me.
I knew he would catch up to me eventually but turns out I hadn’t been as mentally prepared as I thought. They looked like fucking mercenaries. Was Wolf a merc now?
Wolf let out a low whistle, and an answering whistle sounded from somewhere ahead of us. A minute later, a shadowy figure appeared leading a horse.
“Any trouble?” a distinctly male voice asked.
“No,” Wolf said. “Any updates?”
“All clear at home base,” Horse Guy responded.
“Are your bones full of air?” the dark-haired man holding my arm muttered, and it took me far too long to realize he was talking to me.
I glanced up to find him studying my face. He tilted his head, a slow smirk curling one corner of his mouth. “You’re a lot prettier than Wolf.”
“Shut up, Lee,” my brother growled.
Lee released my arm as Wolf began to drag me toward the horse. He stopped at the horse’s side, releasing my arm, and glared at me as I tried to breathe.
“If you think passin’ out is gonna help you, you’re dead wrong,” Wolf said in a low, harsh voice.
He reached toward me, and I instinctively jumped backward, only to crash into a body that grabbed me tightly by the shoulders. I froze in fear, and Wolf’s angry face swam in my vision.
“I wouldn’t try to run if I were you,” the person behind me said.
A quick glance revealed it to be Horse Guy.
“Listen to Tuck. Or you’re gonna make this ten times worse for yourself,” Wolf said, pulling me toward him by my arm.
He moved around behind me and grabbed my waist, lifting me and slinging me onto the saddle.
As he bent to make sure my feet were in the stirrups, Tuck moved around him to join Lee and Sable.
The three of them spoke in low tones while watching me.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying due to the panic roaring in my ears and Juck’s voice echoing in my head.
Quit cryin’, Angel, or I’ll give you somethin’ to cry about.
As soon as Wolf finished adjusting the stirrups, we started moving again in a single file line.
Sable led the way, and Wolf walked behind him, holding the horse’s reins.
I only knew Tuck and Lee were behind my horse because I glanced back and saw them.
Somehow, the only sound was the horse’s hooves crunching through the snow.
The zip ties stung where they rubbed against my skin.
I wondered if the horse would start running if I gave it a good kick, but I knew I’d probably fall off with my hands tied behind my back.
What would Mac think when he came back and found me gone? Would he assume I’d been called out to heal someone? Would he even look for me before morning? It wasn’t unusual for me to be out healing during the night. At this speed, we’d be far away by then.
That was for the best, though. Wolf was going to kill me. Like he’d said, my time was up.
Was this how Trey felt when he knew he was going to die?
I’ll find you again in another lifetime.
I struggled to wrestle my emotions down.
It was harder than I expected; I’d gotten too used to letting them out.
I had to fall back on my old method of reciting medical text in my head until I felt myself sinking into numb emptiness again, the woods passing by in a dreamlike blur.
By the time the sun began to rise, I was numb inside and out.
I was only wearing a thin jacket and no gloves—fine for running around the hold while healing people, but not warm enough for an overnight trek through the woods in late winter.
I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, and the adrenaline barely kept me awake.
How far were they going to take me before they just got it over with and killed me?
The sun had fully risen when they finally stopped. On one side of us was a rocky cliff with large boulders scattered about its base. Despite my effort to stay calm, my heart started thudding out of control. This had to be it. This was where my brother would kill me.
The others shrugged their packs off, and Wolf came to the horse’s side.
I tried to be calm but wasn’t managing it very well.
I was shaking like a leaf when he pulled me down.
I saw his gaze narrow on me before I dropped my eyes.
When he set me on my feet, my knees fucking buckled, and he had to grab my arm to catch me before I ended up in a heap on the snowy ground.
I could barely feel my ice-cold feet, and my legs were stiff and sore.
Wolf dragged me toward the rocky cliff and shoved me down to sit on a flat rock someone had cleared of snow.
“Don’t move,” he ordered.
I pulled my legs in and leaned forward, trying to curl into a ball and stop fucking trembling.
We’d fought constantly, but Wolf had never laid a hand on me.
The idea of him hurting me was worse than the idea of him killing me.
His boots stayed before me for a few breaths, but then he turned and went back to the horse.