Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
Well…shit.
For a second, it had looked like there’d been the tiniest sliver of hope. Like a fool, I’d reached out to grab it with both hands, only to find myself cut to pieces by the jagged shards of another shattered dream.
Wasn’t that just the story of my life? One monumental failure after another.
After a lifetime of crashing and burning, this kind of spectacular end shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have seen all this coming miles away.
Of course, Hannah Carter was dead. Of course, she’d been killed by the same alpha who now held me captive. Of course, he was a perverted madman, obsessed with discovering who I screwed in my dreams.
I could imagine all my friends back in LA huddled together at my funeral, darkly laughing at the absurdity of it all.
No…not all of my friends.
Not Sophia.
She was out there somewhere, lost in the Wilds, looking for me.
Which meant I couldn’t give up. I had to hold on long enough to make sure she escaped this horrible place.
How exactly I was going to do that, though, I didn’t have a clue.
A cold shiver ran up my spine as a wolf howled in the distance. As if I needed a reminder that the Wilds was home to all kinds of horrible dangers beyond the ferus. I needed to figure something out qui?—
Bang!
I jumped as the sharp crack of gunfire carried through the trees. Eyes wide, I snapped my head toward the alpha. But he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was fixed deep within the expanse of the darkened forest where the sound had originated.
Heavy, expectant silence hung in the air. For a few long seconds, I was too afraid to breathe. But eventually, the alpha shook his head and glanced my way.
“It sounds like your friend has met one of our local wolf packs,” he said dismissively.
Oh God.
Adrenaline rushing through my system, I thrashed my bound wrists against the tree, desperately trying to pull them free. But it was no use. The bind was too tight.
“You have to let me go,” I begged.
“Why?” he asked, heavy brows pulling down hard over his pitch-black eyes. “If you’re that eager to die, all you have to do is ask. There’s no need to throw yourself in front of a hungry wolf.”
I ignored his taunts. This wasn’t about my fears. This was about saving Sophia’s life.
“I need to help her,” I insisted.
“Help her how? With what?” The alpha gave a cruel chuckle. “Do you have another one of those ridiculous weapons?”
I wished. Right now, I’d give anything for a gun. It didn’t matter that I’d never fired one in my life. I was sure I could figure it out.
After all, it sounded like Sophia had.
Though I had to wonder where she’d found one. Chuck, probably. A part-time smuggler seemed like the type to keep a gun hidden in his glove compartment.
But wishing wouldn’t get me anywhere. All I could do was keep fighting to free myself, and pray that Sophia had managed to scare off a wild wolf pack.
After a couple of minutes of watching me struggle, the alpha lost interest and slunk down on the ground. Tilting his head back against the log behind him, he closed his eyes. With every twist and pull of my hands, the thick leather of his belt bit deeper into my wrists.
Damn, if I ever got my hands on Sophia’s gun, I’d shoot the vicious son of a bitch right between the eyes. I held tight to the bloody fantasy, letting it fill me with the fire I needed to persevere through the pain.
I was just starting to make some headway, creating a tiny sliver of space around my right wrist, when the alpha’s head popped back up again. Instantly, I froze, certain I’d been caught.
But the alpha wasn’t looking at me.
His eyes were focused on some deep, dark part of the Wilds, down the hill on the valley floor. In a flash, he was up on his haunches—every muscle coiled tight, every feature on his face as hard as granite.
Clearly, he’d sensed something I couldn’t.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Wolves,” he whispered. “And something else.”
As if on cue, another chilling howl rang out—this one frighteningly close.
Panic rushed through my veins. There was a pack of ravenous wolves nearby, and here I was, tied up like bait.
“Let me go,” I demanded.
But the alpha just pressed a finger against his lips to hush me.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “We’re downwind from them. As long as we stay silent, no one will know we’re here.”
No one?
Who the hell was he talking about?
The answer became clear a second later, when the dark outline of a person stepped out of the trees at the bottom of the hill and into a partial clearing. Short and hesitant, the silhouette was very familiar.
I drew in a breath to call out Sophia’s name, but before I could get out a single sound, the alpha was up on his feet and clasping his hand over my mouth.
This time, though, he’d learned his lesson. My shirt was wrapped around his palm, so if I tried to bite him again, all I’d end up with was a mouth full of dirty cotton.
“I said quiet,” he hissed against my ear. “Unless you want your friend to end up with a broken neck.”
Just like Hannah Carter had.
And like I would too, no doubt.
I bit into my shaking lip. There was no way in hell I’d let that happen to Sophia.
Tears of despair welled up in my eyes as I was forced to stand there, just a few hundred feet away, and watch as the wolves started to circle her.
From this distance, I could just barely make out the shadow of the gun in her outstretched hands. Why wasn’t she shooting at them?
The question barely had a chance to form in my mind before a thunderous rumbling began to sound. The hair along the back of my neck stood up as the vibrations shook the air. What could cause something so loud? A stampede? Maybe a landslide?
Whatever it was, the wolves knew to fear it. Their ears perked up as they lifted their snouts high. After sniffing the air for a few seconds, they tucked their tails and ran.
Dear God. What could be frightening enough to scare off a whole pack of wolves?
I found out a few seconds later when something giant burst through the trees in front of Sophia. Moving at incredible speed, it was headed straight for her. If she didn’t dive out of the way, she’d be crushed.
No longer caring about my neck, I opened my mouth to scream for her to watch out. But before I could, a blast of deafening gunfire erupted.
Behind me, the alpha reacted by tightening his grip on my mouth and pinning my body to the tree trunk with his chest.
“One sound and you both die,” he reminded me in a barely audible whisper. “Understand?”
Though quiet, his voice was as hard and sharp as steel. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person to make idle threats. I nodded. Pressing my lips together tight under his hand, I refocused my eyes on the faint shadow of Sophia below.
She hadn’t been crushed after all. But just like me, it looked like she’d been pinned to a tree by an angry alpha.
What the hell? How many of these guys were running around the woods at night just waiting for an unsuspecting woman to accost?
“You.” The faraway alpha’s voice was strong enough to carry up the hill to my ears. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Wait…it almost sounded as if the alpha recognized Sophia. As if he’d seen her before and knew who she was. But that was impossible.
Holding my breath, I strained to listen closer, desperate to hear what Sophia was saying to this raging monster.
“My friend,” Sophia tried to explain. “She was taken.”
“Taken by who?” the alpha demanded gruffly.
“I don’t know,” she sputtered. “Another alpha. Like you.”
“Describe him.”
“Big. Tall. Strong. Mean,” Sophia rattled off the list of attributes—ones that could be used to paint a picture of either one of these creatures.
Apparently, this new alpha agreed because he growled in frustration. “That’s all of us.”
Sophia babbled for another couple of seconds before finally looking up at the alpha in front of her in amazement.
“How are you real?” She asked. “I’ve seen you in my dreams so many?—“
The alpha cut her off with a growl before she could finish, but she’d already said enough.
Dreams. Sophia had dreamed about this alpha…and she’d never told me.
Behind me, I felt my captor stiffen. Pure anger and frustration radiated out of him as he took in the truth.
My mind spun, trying to figure out how long this had been going on, and why in the world my oldest friend hadn’t trusted me enough to let me in on her secret.
Suddenly, everything strange that had happened over the last couple of weeks was cast in a different light. Sophia being fired from her job. Her less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the gala tickets. Her sudden illness at the exhibition. Her reluctance to work on the podcast and travel to the Wall.
All of it.
By the time I’d recovered from the shock and focused on the conversation again, Sophia was handing my phone to her alpha. The audio from my abduction traveled through the trees, loud and clear. For the first time, I heard everything that had been said after I’d passed out.
I wasn’t surprised by Sophia’s bravery—we’d always had each other’s backs, no matter what—but I was damned impressed. It took serious guts to talk to an alpha the way she had…especially the one behind me now.
Sophia’s alpha watched the video for another few seconds before snarling, “Lash. I should have known.”
Lash?
That had to be the name of the alpha with his hand around my mouth. It suited him and his cartoonishly evil personality perfectly.
“When did this happen?” Sophia’s alpha asked after finishing the video. Instead of turning off my phone, he simply let it fall out of his hand to the ground.
“Half an hour ago.”
“That’s too long,” the alpha said. “That bastard could be anywhere by now.”
But Sophia shook her head. “I have to find her.”
“Who?”
“Felicity,” Sophia answered. “The woman in the video. She’s my best friend. She’s the reason I’m here.”
But her alpha didn’t seem the least bit concerned about me as he shook his head dismissively. “She’s already dead.”
“What?” I didn’t have to strain to hear Sophia’s screech.