Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (24 page)

“She’s right,” Jo said.  “If he’s important, you need to fight for him.  But if you ask me, Craig’s the one screwing this up.  Not you.  The way I heard it, he hadn’t even told you that he wanted you as his mate until after the Aidan thing.”

“We were sort of seeing each other,” Erika said.  “It was casual, but it was still something.”

Kristen snorted.  “Casual.  All that means is that he’s too chicken to make a commitment.  When you get that boy back, you make sure he knows you aren’t playing around this time.”

“Did you bring me cookies this time?” Laura shouted, and we all jumped and shuffled, hiding our escape efforts as fast as we could.

It was a long, long afternoon.  Eventually the men stopped walking by.  I wasn’t really sure if that was a good thing or not, but without their constant observation, we made headway on our exit strategy.  Another ten minutes or so, and we’d be able to shove the doors open.  We didn’t talk much, just worked.  There didn’t seem to be a lot to talk about after the girls had determined that it was Craig that was being an idiot.  I wasn’t entirely sure if I completely agreed with that.  She’d hurt him.  Crushed him, actually.  But it made Erika a little less teary eyed to hear it, so it was good.

The sun was starting to fall when I heard the bell-like laughter.  It was sweet, almost like wind chimes, and it was followed by a full-bellied, rumbling laugh that I’d have known anywhere.

I froze mid-twist and whispered, “Shush. My dad’s here.”  I didn’t know what else to say, but the round of fast, suction-like breaths made me very aware that the girls knew that him being here probably wasn’t a good thing.

Because if he was here, then the chances were good that he’d found my pack, and Aidan wasn’t coming back for us.

Dad had his arm around a tiny young girl, with a head of blond, ringlet curls.  She couldn’t have been more than twelve.  He was smiling down at her as he strode toward us.  It was the smile he’d always given me.  The one that said I was the absolute center of his world.  The one that made me feel warm and loved and safe.  And seeing it directed at someone else stung — bad.  So bad that my chest ached and my eyes burned.

Behind him were a bunch of his cougars, eight, no, there were nine of them.  They looked happy and really excited.  And it made my inner-wolf, and me, hurt, a deep, sharp ache that filled every part of my body.

I tried (and failed) to bury the feeling as I lifted my chin, and gave Whitney a narrowed smile.  She quickly slid back, covering the corner of the cage they’d been working on, and at the same time, Laura took up the position in our cage.

Dad stopped and crouched down in front of the girl.  “Go see what your brothers are getting into, pumpkin,” he said.  “I’ll be in soon, okay?”

She smiled, a radiant, sunshine kind of smile, and giggled.  “Will you play that card game with me?”  Her voice was just like her laugh, sweet and bell-like.

“Sure,” he said.  “Now, go on.”  And with a quick kiss on his cheek, she turned and ran back around the corner, and a second later I heard the door to the cabin open and then slam shut.

“Did I miss a chapter?” Erika whispered.  “Because that looked like a man who loves that little girl.”

“Yeah, it did,” I said quietly, not wanting h
im to overhear.  I felt sick.  Cold and sick and hurt.  “That was exactly how he was with me until I met Aidan.”  And I couldn’t help but wonder if that girl was meant to be more than a girl who wound up in a cage, because I was sure there had to be something more to that kindness, just like there had been when he used it with me.  For me, he’d used it to steer me closer to Dominic and the pack, and I was sure he was using it on her to point her in whatever direction he needed her to go in.  His pushes for me had always been subtle and always hidden behind that
I love you
smile but when I thought about it, really thought about it, they’d been there.  Always.  For years now.

Dad was asking where Jason was, and I didn’t think he liked the answer, because his eyes hit mine then, and they were bright with anger.  He closed the distance to the cage with a long, determine
d stride and pointed at me.  “Stand up, move to the door, and don’t you give me any lip, Jade.  I’m not going to tolerate it.”

I didn’t stand up.  Instead, I only blinked, stunned by the harshness in his voice.  Was he completely done pretending to care about me?  Had he ever actually cared?  There wasn’t a trace, not even a tiny speck of warmth in his eyes as he glared at me.  Nothing.  It was as if I meant nothing to him anymore and I found myself crouching, getting ready to shift if I had to.  The girls were silent, stiff, and ready, too.

“You should have listened to me, Dad,” I said.  “You should have run.”

He gave me a long, frowning look.  “Stand up, Jade.  It’s time we come to some kind of agreement here.”

“I’m not leaving my girls in here,” I shot back with a touch of a growl deepening my tone.  “You want to talk to me, talk, because I’m not going anywhere without them.”

His eyes narrowed.  “I’m not giving you a choice.  I’ve played your little game long enough.”

“My game!” I shouted.  There was something in his tone that made my spine snap straight and my entire body tensed up tight.  “I was never playing a damn game.”

“Watch that tone with me, Jade,” Dad growled.  “I’m still your father even if you choose to pretend I’m not.”

I crossed my arms, holding the blanket snuggly in place.  “It’s a little late for fatherly lectures, Dad.  You lost that right the moment you threw me out of the house and pushed me into becoming Aidan’s mate.”

Dad lowered his voice and his eyes were suddenly intense.  “I did that for you.”  He sounded like he actually meant that.  “None of this would be possible if you weren’t mated to him.  I’ve given you power.  I’ve given you the backbone you needed to run your pack and mine.”

“Why the hell would I want to run a pack of sick male cougars who think it’s okay to lock women in cages and use them like toys?”  I glanced past him to the men who’d gathered behind him and snarled.  “What’s wrong with you people?”

At one time I’d wondered if maybe they weren’t
all evil.  I’d hoped for it, actually.  But as I looked at them, they didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed.  A few of them even chuckled.  These weren’t good, but misguided, people.  They were monsters.  All of them.

“Everyone has their vices, pumpkin.” 
Dad had the courtesy to look away, but I really wondered if it was only because his left eye had started to twitch and he didn’t want me to see it.

I shook my head.  “This isn’t a vice.  In the real world it’s called kidnapping, rape, and murder.”

“We’re shifters, pumpkin.”  His voice softened and he moved, rounding the cage to the doorway.  He still wasn’t looking directly at me, only watching me from the corner of his eye.  “The rules are different for us.”

He sounded as if he actually believed the garbage he was spewing at me.  Like this was normal behavior, accepted even.  How scary was that?  The man who raised me, loved me, cared for me, actually thought that what he was doing, what he allowed his pack to do, was okay.

“Do you actually hear yourself?” I asked.  I was aiming for disgust, except my voice came out as a whisper.  “Shifter or not, this isn’t okay, Dad.”

“I’m done discussing this with you,” he snapped
.  His face grew red and furious as he reached into his pants pocket and fished out a key.  “If you want to see Aidan again, you’ll stand up and come over to the door.”

Panic, blind, hot panic, set in as he leaned forward to unlock my door.  We’d left the wires on, but loose, to keep the doors looking solid as the men walked by, but if he grabbed it, the top half would flutter and give.

“He’s not here,” I said, scrambling forward, and blocking the girls in my cage behind me, and out of his reach.  “I’d scent him if he was.”  I was glad I sounded confident in that, because I didn’t feel it.  My heart was hammering so hard that it hurt to breathe.

“Well,” Dad said, taking hold of the lock, “you can believe that if you want to, pumpkin, but he’s here.  My boys found him and they’re here for their reward.  You can come with me and see him or you can stay here and watch.”

The door started to bend as he fiddled with the key, and his eyes, blazing with fury, snapped to mine.  He opened his mouth, probably to yell at me, but didn’t get a chance.  “No!” Whitney shouted.  “No, don’t touch me!”  And the wire door on the second cage clambered to the ground.

“Look at this,” one of the men said, the disbelief was obvious in his voice.  “These girls were fixing to escape.”

And then everything seemed to blur together.  There was laughter, cold, cruel laughter, and bones breaking, and growls sounding.  The men crowded the cage; the girls shifted.

Dad tore off the door to my cage and he dropped to his knees.  He glared at me long and hard, and then he pressed forward.  His arm leapt out and he wrapped his hand around my ankle, pulling hard.

“Back up,” I growled, kicking out of his hold. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

But he didn’t back up.
He only laughed.  And it was then that I decided that he was dead to me.  Completely and officially dead to me.

~ AIDAN ~

It was a calm, easy trek back to the werecougars’ location, though I had to admit, I was waiting for something to go wrong.  As we reached the edge of the forest where the cougars had hidden in the trees, I thought that we’d face another attack.

But nothing happened.

The only thing we found waiting for us were the dead we’d left behind.  The cougars hadn’t even bothered to collect their pack members.  I almost felt bad for the dead — almost.

Most of the space around the cages was taken up by the werecougars.  Some were shaking the structures, taunting the girls trapped inside.  They’d shifted to wolves, and were growling, a low
, deadly threat, that didn’t seem to faze the werecougars.  A few of the men stood by and watched, but all of them looked … hungry, greedy, eager.

Jeff himself was on his knees, half in and half out of the cage Jade was in.  He had a hand on her ankle and he was pulling as if he thought he could physically drag her from the confines of the barbed wire enclosure.

He wasn’t getting far.

Jade looked stubborn, but there was something else there, too.  Despair.  I could smell it.  She was putting up a good fight, but she was struggling to keep it together.  She kicked wildly at her father as he pulled at her legs, but she wasn’t making any of the kicks count.  And she was yelling, except I had no idea what she was saying.  It was garbled and frantic, a string of sounds that didn’t quite sound like words.  She had Erika, and I was pretty sure, Laura, trapped behind her.  They were snapping out at Jeff, though, they couldn’t quite reach around Jade to hit their intended mark.

I growled.  I could almost feel her fear and I wanted, no, I needed her to calm down and focus.  I channeled my alpha scent, letting it pour out of me.  There was a good breeze flowing through the forest, and I figured it would only take a few seconds for her to pick up my scent, and I seriously hoped smelling me close by would be enough to make her chill out.

It worked.

Suddenly, Jade just stopped.  She stopped yelling.  She stopped struggling.  She looked toward me, her eyes squinting as she scanned the trees, and she laughed a little hysterically.

The other females were snarling, snapping, growling, within the other cage, but as Jade laughed, they stopped, too, sitting back on their hind legs, panting.

They knew we were here.

As evidence to that, Jade laughed again, looked straight at her father, and said loudly, “You better let go of me now.”  She sounded a little sad, but also really furious.  “Aidan’s not really a fan of people trying to hurt what’s his, and neither is my pack.  When they find out what you were planning to do, they’ll kill you all.”

For a beat, there was nothing but silence.  The men paused in their taunting.  They turned, following the females’ gazes, but they didn’t move.

And then I noticed that it wasn’t just Jade’s cage that was open.  The doors, both of them were completely off and lying on the ground.  Maybe that was the reason they hadn’t moved; nothing would be blocking the exit for my females if they did.

“Ignore her,” Jeff growled.  “Man up and get those wolves under control.”  He started pulling at Jade again, but this time when she kicked, she hit him square in the face.  He sat back and his hand shot up to his nose, and he shouted, “You little brat!”

I felt a dark, bloodthirsty thrill spread through my belly and I let the rush of adrenaline wash over me.  I started to shift.  It was probably crazy taking my human form now, but I wanted Jeff to know it was me.  I didn’t want there to be any doubt in his mind that the wolf who ended his sick, miserable life was me.  And my inner-wolf, well, it seemed he wanted that, too.  He didn’t put up a fight; instead, he pushed the shift along, giving up all his control.

A soft tingle spread along my skin as the coarse black fur that covered my body began to recede.  The snapping of my bones sounded extra loud, bouncing through the silent forest, but all I felt was the rush of the shift.