Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
I’m sure that both of them will try to find me. I only hope they get here before it’s too late.
***
Where is he?
The torchlight flickers. The hours bleed together. I shiver on the cot with my knees pulled up to my chest. Everything in the cell is damp-the walls, the sheets, my dress. I ache with the cold.
I have felt like a prisoner for most of my life, but my gilded cage was very different to this one. I want to feel the sun, and the tickle of pine-scented wind on my face. The hike to Dawn’s Craig, where the earth muddied my hands and the air was so crisp I could taste it, feels like a lifetime ago. I’m not sure how much time passes by, only every drip seems to count down to the inevitable. I’m going to be sent to the Borderlands-a fate that may be worse than death. Or perhaps James merely means to execute me to antagonize Callum.
At one point, a man in a blue kilt, his fair hair tied into a knot atop his head, passes me a hard bread roll through the bars. I recognize him from Madadh-allaidh. Duncan, I think his name is. I ask him what’s happening, where James is, what James plans to do with me. He answers each question with a grim smile before turning his back and heading up the stairs.
I wait, my jaw clenched, for James to appear and seal my fate. I wait for Callum. I wait for Blake. Insecurities gnaw at my insides like the rats that scurry through the dungeons, their little feet tapping against the stone floor. Hunger hollows my stomach. My head thumps and I don’t know whether it’s dehydration or the onset of the short bursts of fever that keep washing over me.
Why hasn’t Callum come?
I see faces in the shadows-midnight hair and feral eyes and taunting smiles. Blake haunts me. The darkness shifts, and I think it’s him. Screams echo through the dungeons, even though I’m alone, and I hear the scrape of metal scalpels and Blake’s laughter. I wake, tangled in the sheets, whimpering. Darkness rages inside me, cold and endless, and it tastes like pine and poison.
I vow to myself, to the Goddesses of the Sun and the Moon, that I’ll survive this. Callum will end James and take his throne. I’ll break the bond with Blake, and never return home to the south. We will both be free.
Yet Callum is not here. I’m alone.
I don’t know whether it’s day or night when footsteps approach. For a moment, I let myself imagine it’s Callum and he has come for me.
There you are, Princess. You didn’t think I’d leave you alone, did you?
I imagine his thick Northlands voice, warm and comforting. I imagine his arms around me, and the solid safety of his body.
Duncan shatters the illusion. He is flanked by two men in green kilts, who enter my cell, grab me under my arms, and drag me into the corridor. My legs barely support me as they escort me up a narrow stairway. I’m cold and sweating as something wild inside me tries to surface.
“Where are you taking me?” I gasp.
“Quiet.”
Noise hits me as soon as we reach the ground floor. Shouts infiltrate it from outside. I’m pulled past a window, and catch a glimpse of men guarding the building, their swords glinting in the moonlight. My heart beats faster.
I’m dragged around a corner, through some double doors, into what could have been a ballroom once. My heart almost stops. The room is vast and moonlit, and the wall is half torn down on one side. Cold wind blows through it and rocks the dusty chandelier. Six men sit around a long table.
James sits at one end. He leans back in his chair with his legs slightly parted in a display of dominance. His shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows to display the floral tattoo on one of his arms.
Robert sits beside him-the alpha of the clan who wear green tartan. He’s a huge male with a shaved head who took on the role of the Wolf King when James was absent. He leans toward James and whispers something as I’m pulled closer to them. James grins.
The other men who are facing me-no, the other alphas
-are familiar, too, though I can’t put names to their faces. Dread roils in my stomach. These are the alphas from Madadh-allaidh who support James’s claim to the throne.
I fight every instinct I have to struggle, and keep myself limp. Pliant. Unassuming.
I’m thrown to the floor at James’s feet, and I let myself crumple onto the chipped tiles, my dress pooling around me.
“I thought you wouldn’t kneel before a false king, Princess.” James’s gruff voice echoes around the space. The alphas jeer. One of them growls. “How things have changed.”
Adrenaline crashes through me. This is the male who bit me, who attacked me, who tried to force me to marry him. He’s going to send me to a man who will hurt me. Loathing mixes with my fear. I don’t think I can get away from all of these men, but I want him to know what it is to be afraid.
I take a couple of deep breaths to steel myself.
I launch myself at him like a rabid animal. I expect to knock him off his chair, but his feet are planted firmly on the ground. The chair merely rocks before he grabs my waist. A surprised sound escapes his lips.
“I didn’t know you felt that way about me, Princess,” says James, and Robert laughs. “But-“
I grab his face. The amusement drains from his eyes. A hissing sound fills the ballroom as his skin burns beneath my fingers, which I’d dowsed with my vial of wolfsbane. He grabs my wrists, and hurls me across the room. His roar reverberates off the high ceiling. I land, hard, on the cold tiles, the wind knocked out of me. My elbow bangs hard against the floor, and I suppress my whimper.
There’s a loud bang, like the door slamming open, then uproar. Men shout. Chairs are scraped back as the alphas jump to their feet. “Tie her up,” snarls James. Through the chair legs, I see one man get thrown to the ground. Boots thud. A growl fills the space. I don’t know what’s happening, instincts take over. I need to escape.
I scramble to my knees.
James’s eyes shift as they lock onto mine. “Get back down.
“
He puts the force of his wolf behind his words. It’s like being knocked back by an avalanche. He is using the Àithne-the alpha’s command-on me. I grit my teeth and withstand it, before shoving it off. I get up and run.
Duncan grabs me under my arms and drags me to a column that supports the ceiling. He wrenches my arms around it and binds my wrists with rope. A male roar fills the air, but that wildness inside me wants release and I can’t focus on it. A scream builds inside me, hollow and endless.
A smooth laugh cuts through the chaos like a blade. I breathe in sharply.
Blake strolls toward the end of the table. His black shirt is stiff and buttoned up to the collar, though his dark hair is as unruly as usual. He drops into one of the seats, and throws his arm over the back. He winks at me.
My heart squeezes. Callum is behind him, and I realize what caused the uproar. They must have just arrived. He is carved out of rage and thunder. He has a foot on the neck of one of the alphas, who must have risen to greet him, while a blond man in a light-green tartan kilt holds a dagger to his throat. Callum barely seems to notice.
It strikes me how unpoised he looks in comparison to Blake. His cheeks are flushed, and his dark-blond hair windswept, like he rode fast to get here. There’s a tear on his shirt, and a streak of blood that I hope is not his. The wolf flares in his eyes as he stares at his brother.
“Touch her again, I dare you,” he growls.
I can practically sense his wolf pushing against his skin-wanting to claim, to protect, to kill.
“Callum,” I whisper.
“It’s going to be okay, Rory.” His voice is rough. “No one is going to hurt you.”
“We’ll see about that,” growls James.
A dimple punctures Blake’s face. “We’re here to negotiate the terms of your release, little rabbit.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We’re here to neg o tiate the terms of your release, little rabbit.
Blake’s voice echoes around the derelict ballroom. I’m breathing hard, and the bindings pinch my wrists. I don’t want to negotiate. I want Callum to challenge James, and make him pay.
The alphas on their feet around the table look at me like I’m prey. Wolf eyes glint in the darkness. The man on his back, beneath Callum’s foot, gasps for breath and Callum pushes his boot down harder.
Only Blake seems calm, though I know him well enough to guess it’s an act. He sits back in his chair and straightens his collar. Beside him, Callum’s chest rises and falls deeply, and veins throb in his neck.
“Let her go,”
he growls.
“No,” says James. There are three blistered lines down both of his cheeks where I attacked him. They look like claw marks. “Not until I’m finished with her.”
“If you touch her-“
“You’ll what? Defy me? Betray me? Attempt to lead an uprising against the throne?” James’s voice increases in volume. “It seems you’re already doing those things, brother. We are at war.
Our people are dying. And you see fit to set wolf against wolf, when our real enemies lie south of the border.” The alphas murmur in agreement. The man holding the dagger to Callum’s throat tightens his grip on the hilt, and his knuckles whiten. Callum doesn’t seem to notice. “When our real enemy is here. You align yourself with the daughter of the conqueror who invades our lands, the prize of the lord who holds Claire in his kennels, the lass who was betrothed to the man who flayed our mother!”
The color drains from Callum’s face. He clenches his fists, as if he can hide his shock and pain. Regret swims through me.