Un.Wavering (Claimed Series Book 3) (4 page)

“Release her.”

It was difficult to pry her eyes open. Only when she heard the familiar sound of a rifle’s safety click, did she find the strength to rouse herself.

At first, she thought it was a group of Hunters, prepared to finish their job. There were four men in the lead and two women behind, all carrying rifles. Their scent, and the three wolves standing loyally at their sides, gave them away.

They were werewolves.

The leader of the group, a man with a bushy amber beard, assessed Hayden and Nicolas closely, his eyes landing on her open wound. He abruptly lowered his weapon, clearly putting the two and two together. The rest of his pack followed his lead.

“We have what she needs.”

Nicolas kept firm hold on the knife, not moving a muscle. She vaguely wondered if the group of werewolves identified him as Nicolas Slayter, the Alpha of the rogues. At least, he was the rogue Alpha to everyone
but
Hayden and Celeste’s closest allies.

Another wave of dizziness and fatigue washed over Hayden, causing her head to collapse back and her eyes to close. The familiar effects of silver poisoning weighed heavily on her limbs and her wolf retreated further from her reach.

“What makes you think we would follow you?” Nicolas inquired lowly.

“She’s dying. Either you can follow us for the tonic, or you can try to save her ineffectively by sawing off her arm. Your choice. We couldn’t care a less either way.” The man sniffed. “We were drawn out here by the commotion with the Hunters. We will be fortunate if you didn’t lead them to our abode.” 

“My sincerest apologies.” The Slayter Alpha sounded anything but sincere.

Hayden pressed her lips together, her brow furrowing. She needed that tonic. What game was Nicolas playing? He was not one to play coy with strangers. Nor was he a man that would outwardly show reluctance and hesitation.

“I never want to be responsible for a female’s death,” the man continued, sounding a bit more compliant. “We need as many of them alive as we can. I guarantee you that this is no trick. We’ll help with her wound and then you may leave. No strings attached.”

Nicolas remained motionless, a statue of cold distrust. Hayden didn’t understand. The man was playing some game, a game she wasn’t privy to.

“Please,” Hayden whispered, trying to pull away from Nicolas. “I need this.”

Her pleading seemed to be what Nicolas waited for. He spurred into action, grabbing Hayden around the middle and hoisting her off the ground. He cradled her close, protectively, either out of true desire to do so, or more believably, for the watchful spectators.

“The name’s Henry.” The scruffy werewolf introduced. “And you are?”

“Cayden,” Nicolas responded, hardly missing a beat. “This is Nicole, my mate.”

Hayden would have cringed at the introduction had she been in the state to do so. It was both ironically amusing and exasperating.

Nicolas had a dark sense of humor.

As she drifted off into unconsciousness, she knew Nicolas’ humor wasn’t his only dark trait. The man, despite his ‘noble’ intentions of rescuing Cole, had an overall dark nature. She hoped her alliance with him didn’t come back and bite her in the ass.

“Nice artillery.”

Hayden’s eyes twitched restlessly behind closed lids. The comment roused her from the darkness and the vague, painful echoes of silver poisoning. Her first sense, beside the muttered compliment, was the dull ache in her shoulder.

At least it was healing. Numbness surrounded the wound, and warmth emitted from it, but otherwise, it wasn’t nearly as excruciating as it had been. A thick, spongy bandage wrapped securely around her shoulder and under her arm.

The strange werewolf pack proved more than efficient in healing. Anything was better than Nicolas sawing off her arm to
prevent infection.

Her second sense upon wakening was the smell. Without opening her eyes, she knew they were in a damp, earthy hideout. Dirt was the primary scent, the unwashed bodies was the second.

Her own included.

“Can you actually use them? Or are they just for petty decoration?”

Hayden inhaled slowly, evenly, before opening her eyes. She was underground. The packed dirt ceiling, walls, and floor were evidence enough. It was warm and humid, almost unbearably so.

Next to her, a man sat holding a long sword. A sharpening tool poised motionlessly over the blade, as if he had stopped his task just before Hayden regained consciousness. His dark eyes were not focused on Hayden, but past her and onto the table next to her. 

Straining her eyes, Hayden spied her throwing knives next to an array of bloody rags and clear vials of tonic. All eight knives seemed to be accounted for, she realized with relief.

However, her relief was short-lived when she registered his mocking question.

“Petty decoration?” Her voice came out hoarse, as if she’d been screaming constantly for hours. “If I wanted to decorate myself, I would choose a long sword, not knives I keep hidden underneath my clothing.”

Here, she eyed his sword pointedly.

He hardly seemed daunted at her rebuttal, choosing to focus on his blade instead. “Yes, but you don’t have much clothing to hide them under, do you?”

Hayden looked down, just noticing she was nude from the waist up. Across the room, her bra, shirt, and jacket were discarded in a pile. They still looked useable. The bloodied clothing was all she had until she could find something more suitable.

She gazed back at the man dubiously, studying him silently. He continued sharpening his blade in slow, even strokes. Not once had he thrown her exposed body any lewd sneers or crude stares. He was unlike any male she’d encountered.

With the exception of Adolf, of course.

“Don’t mind Jax.” A female suddenly appeared in the room. “To him, there is only one female that can wield a blade efficiently.”

“She clearly
can’t
defend herself. Even if they were Hunters, she still let herself get shot by humans, didn’t she?” The man, Jax, glanced at Hayden’s wounded shoulder, as if to say her inadequacy with a blade was to blame for the Hunters’ gunshot wound.

She shifted uncomfortably.

Since becoming a werewolf, her modesty lessened. She wasn’t uncomfortable being nude around strangers, especially fellow werewolves, but she
was
uncomfortable with the sudden realization that someone was missing.

“Where is…”
Nicolas
. “Cayden?”

Fortunately, she remembered Nicolas’ cover story just in time, and yet, all eyes turned in her direction, as if they
knew
she was being deceitful. Either that, or something had transpired during her unconsciousness.

“Here.” The female entered the room and discarded a pile of fresh clothes next to Hayden. “Get dressed. We’re just starting dinner. We will get you up to speed.”

Hayden’s initial reaction was to push away the clothes and demand to know Nicolas’ whereabouts. However, upon smelling the faint aroma of cooking meat, her inquisitive nature instantly vanished. She was famished.

Nicolas could take care of himself.

The woman left, leaving Hayden alone with the sword-sharpening male. She flashed another dubious glance at his solitary form, watching as he worked on his blade. He held it and treated it as if it were a precious and rare relic.

“I suppose I have
you
to thank for my healing…”

“Why would you assume that?” he asked quietly, preoccupied with his task.

Hayden narrowed her eyes. “You’re sitting at my bedside, acting the healer.”

A wary grin threatened to stretch his lips. “I was assigned to keep watch over you just in case you tried something. Although your mate spun an interesting tale, not all of us trusted a knife-yielding female at our back.” He glanced up at her. “Don’t worry; I wasn’t the one who was threatened.”

Hayden grimaced before reaching for the clothes. She realized she was laying upon a crude table, the kind of table a run-down school would use at their facility. No other furniture was in the room besides the metal folding chair Jax occupied.

Shouldering on the clothes, she eyed her coat from across the room. She would need to grab the extra layer before leaving. Not only did it provide more heat, but it also covered her knives, giving her the element of surprise.

“So, do you really know how to wield that sword? Or is it just for petty decoration?” Hayden inquired innocently, jumping off the table and searching for her boots.

“It’s not mine.”

Pausing, Hayden looked up at him. She assumed, because he held it so protectively, and took such good care of it, that it was his. “Then who—”

“It belongs to my wife.”

Wife.

It was a word she’d become unfamiliar with during her stay with Cole. A quick sniff confirmed the man was a werewolf, yet he used untraditional terms and he wore a gold ring on his left hand. Werewolves usually didn’t use jewelry to state their claim, they used their teeth and their scent.

Subconsciously, Hayden touched Nicolas’ claim on her neck and assessed the man thoughtfully. “You mean your mate?”

Jax lifted an eyebrow, offering her a distracted glance. “I prefer the term
wife.
It sounds less barbaric and more eloquent, don’t you think?”

She scoffed. “I haven’t met a werewolf who was worried about eloquence. Just his claim.” Hayden dropped her hand from her neck, bending forward to finish fastening her boots. “What happened to her? Is she still alive?”

Briefly, she wondered if she was being too inquisitive, too nosey, but she shrugged her uncertainty away. She really didn’t care how she came across to these people. They saved her life, yes, but she didn’t owe them submission.

She wanted answers. 

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” Jax stood abruptly, causing his metal chair to groan noisily. “Come on, your questions will be answered shortly. I’m sure you’re hungry.”  

Hungry
? She was
ravenous
.

Faithfully following his lead, Hayden exited the alcove and entered a main living area. It was small, more like a burrow and hardly large enough to fit all the werewolf occupants. It was also a lot warmer and a lot more putrid. Hayden had half the sense to go back to her small alcove and feign a headache.

But the food filtered in from outside and all thoughts of escaping vanished.

There were six males bumping shoulders inside the den and three females, including Hayden, squeezing between them. Moreover, as the food came in from outside, evidently right off the fire, she suspected there wouldn’t be enough meat to go around.

The meat was fresh, deer it smelt like, but that was all. A few wild mushrooms offset the main course and a few green leaves piled together to replicate a salad. The poor attempt at stretching the food reminded Hayden of something Fergus would do in hopes of lending a hand.

Fergus…

She grimaced as she thought of her pack. She missed them.

“Nicole. Come sit.”

Her supposed alias startled her, yet Hayden recovered quickly. She smiled gratefully at the leader of the pack, the man with the bushy amber beard, and sat next to the woman she’d interacted with earlier.

There was no table, only a flat, hard surface on the ground. Nonetheless, the rest of the werewolf pack appeared grateful. The large serving of venison passed amongst the group, murmurs of appreciation chorusing around the circle.

Nicolas wasn’t amongst the others. If the pack weren’t so helpful and
ordinary,
Hayden would be suspicious. However, even from the start, she’d known that Nicolas always possessed his own agenda. She just hoped he would make a reappearance in time to extract Cole from Celeste’s hideout.

The pack members said nothing of significance as they dished out their portions. There were no forks, no plates, nothing but hands and dirty ground. Hayden accepted the venison without a single complaint, her empty stomach willing to eat anything edible.

Back at the cabin, standing amongst the slaughtered Hunters, Nicolas told Hayden that Celeste had already won this war. According to him, it was impossible to reverse the damage, and things would never be as they were. Examining the condition of this pack, Hayden wondered if this was the future.

Would there be no normalcy? No more of Addie’s home-cooked meals? Would werewolves gradually leave behind their human etiquette and embrace the habits of their wolf? Of the wilderness?

“I’m sure you’re wondering where your mate is, Nicole.”

Truthfully, Hayden was more concerned over having a second helping of venison, though she doubted the pack would appreciate her lack of concern for Nicolas. “I am,” she agreed placidly. “I’d also like to thank you and your pack for healing me.”

A collective pause swept through the group, instantly putting Hayden on edge.

Had she said something wrong?

“This is not my pack,” Amber Beard informed. “We call this an… impromptu pack, if you will. Many of us happened across each other out of mere coincidence. We all have one thing in common and one common goal. It was easier to band together rather than fail individually.”

Hayden examined each member of the ‘impromptu pack’, noticing there was no general hierocracy. Amber Beard seemed to take the lead; otherwise, everyone else, even the males, seemed rather subdued.

There was no struggle to gain dominance, no struggle for authority. Each member only shared a collective ominousness.

She was afraid to ask, but she was never one to back down from a challenge. “And? What is it that you all have in common?”

“Nicolas Slayter.”

Hayden froze at the admission. “Nicolas Slayter,” she repeated, her tongue turning heavy with shock. “What… what do you mean?”

Had she underestimated this pack? Was she wrong to assume Nicolas was safe and unharmed? She’d thought his absence was because he didn’t like socializing and mingling with others. But what if the pack had found out his true identity and killed him?

Amber Beard and the others gazed at her with various levels of perplexity.

“He’s the rogue Alpha, of course.”

Hayden straightened her shoulders, losing her appetite. She had to play along. It was difficult to remember that most others didn’t know about Celeste. “I know that. But how is he tied to all of you?”

“And you,” the female next to Hayden mumbled.

“The rogues took someone whom we love very much.” Amber Beard jerked his chin towards the group in general. “We were able to trace them to a compound, which is guarded by a pack of rogues. We all have a mate, a child, a pack mate, or in your case, a brother that is being held prisoner there.”

She tried not to outwardly react to the admission that Cole was now
her
brother. Nicolas certainly knew how to twist things.

“I’ve been here the longest amongst this group,” the man continued, “I’ve seen many individuals try to take on the security at the rogue complex by themselves. It never ends in their favor. Never. I’ve seen more beheadings these past few weeks than I have in my entire lifetime.”

Hayden grimaced, scanning the others in the group and instantly noticing their grave, but determined expressions. She realized she
did
share a comradeship with these people. Like Cole, many of their loved ones were taken captive by the rogues.

She assumed Celeste wanted to turn Cole into her fourth Carrier. What Celeste wanted with these other werewolves, Hayden didn’t know and could only speculate.

“You’re planning on attacking the rogue hideout together,” she presumed.

“We are.” Amber Beard motioned toward two burly men. “With these two having just arrived, and you and your mate, I believe we have enough people.” There was a sudden shift in the leader’s expression. “We can’t thank your mate enough.” 

Several members nodded sincerely, their expressions clearly indicating they thought highly of Nicolas. Hayden could only stare in muted horror, her stomach tightening with dark humor.

“Cayden was able to recover weapons for us and more ammunition. While you were healing, he accompanied Jax to a Hunter’s supply shed and brought back much needed artillery.”