Hell's Wolves MC: Complete Series Six Book Box Set Page 22

  Snip.

  It wasn’t painful. Whatever he’d cut, it wasn’t her skin. She wanted to look back, but she didn’t dare.

  Snip. Snip.

  Her dress fell loose around her hips, and realization dawned on her. A moment later, the garment slipped from her body and pooled around her ankles on the floor. She shivered at the cold air on her suddenly bare skin. I would have taken it off, she thought. He didn’t have to ruin it.

  It was the only thing she had to wear, and she knew she ought to be sad about losing it, but for some reason, the only thing she could think about was the look on Rita’s face as she’d stepped back to admire the effect of the dress on Hazel. The beautiful dress that her pack had saved to buy for her, given to her to celebrate her coming of age...it lay in ruins on the floor.

  She wanted to cry.

  She almost didn’t care that she was standing here almost naked in front of these strange men. She almost didn’t notice as Edgar took her by the arm and guided her down into the strange chair in the center of the room. Everything seemed to come crashing down around her at once. The beautiful life she’d had had been ripped away, just like her beautiful dress. Everything was destroyed.

  “Spike,” Edgar called. “The needle. Come on.”

  She looked up. Spike was passing a cruel looking device to Edgar. “What is that?” she asked, unable to help herself.

  “Shut up,” Edgar snapped. He lowered the tip of the device to her shoulder.

  Suddenly terrified, Hazel jerked against his hands, fighting, trying to get up. “Spike!” Edgar yelled. “Come and fucking hold her down, will you, before she takes my damn head off? Christ, I have to tell you everything!”

  Big hands were on Hazel now, restraining her, preventing her from moving. There was a stab of pain, one that seemed to travel across her skin rather than stay in one place, and Hazel cried out.

  “Shut up!” Edgar roared. “Make one more sound, omega, and we’ll knock you out. I mean it. You want to spend the next three days in that room recovering from a goddamn head injury? If not, then shut your mouth.”

  Hazel shut her mouth. She lay as still as she could, trying to control her trembling limbs, trying to focus on her breathing. Yoga had taught her to let breath center her, but it was hard in this moment. She wanted nothing more than to scream, to cry, to open her eyes and find that it was all a dream and she was safe in bed in her suite at her pack’s house. She wanted a hot bath, a warm meal, a hug from Paisley. She wanted Matthew to give her a well-intentioned order, and she wanted to lovingly obey. She wanted Rita’s hands in her hair, styling, smoothing. Even Gianna would have been a welcome sight right now.

  But no matter how many times she closed and opened her eyes, the reality around her refused to give way. It was no dream. She was really here, stripped to her underwear and held down in this chair by these men who were hurting her in this strange and confusing way.

  It seemed to go on forever. By the time they were finished, Hazel had stopped fighting. She lay limp and exhausted in the chair, waiting for it to be over, waiting to go back to her cell, where at least she could sit alone in the dark and nobody would touch her.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, the machine was retracted. “Cloth,” Edgar said. Spike handed him one, and he placed it over her arm. It stung, but Hazel didn’t flinch.

  There was blood on the cloth when he pulled it away. Only then did she look down and see what had been done to her arm.

  It was a tattoo. Three sharp slashes, as though she’d been clawed open by a wolf. She looked up at Spike’s face, at the scar there, and wondered whether it had been deliberate.

  Who were these people?

  And to her surprise, her question was answered. “This marking registers you as the official property of the Savage Rangers,” Edgar said. “Forget where you came from. Forget whatever you had before. You’re one of us now. Our omega. And anyone who sees this mark on you will know it.”

  “I thought you were going to ask for a reward—”

  Edgar slapped her hard in the face.

  Hazel didn’t cry out. She was too shocked by his brutal treatment. No one had ever struck her before in her life.

  “I told you not to speak,” he said. “Maybe we’ll ask for a reward for you. Maybe we won’t. It’ll be for our alpha to decide. And maybe we’ll take the reward, give you back to that pack of yours, and they’ll boot you right out the door for us to pick up again when they see our mark on your arm.”

  That wasn’t true, was it? They wouldn’t turn her out just because of a tattoo. They wouldn’t.

  Would they?

  Would they pay for her return and then decide they didn’t want her anymore, that she was ruined, that she no longer had value, now that she’d been marked like this?

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to sob. It felt like everything inside her body was shivering.

  “Take her back to her cell, Spike,” Edgar said.

  Spike nodded, hauled Hazel to her feet, and dragged her back into the dimly lit hallway and down to the door of her cell. He opened it, pushed her inside, and slammed it behind her.

  She was alone.

  She was completely alone, without even the dress she’d worn here for comfort. The ground was so much colder than she’d realized before, and so much harder. She curled up into a tight ball, shivering, trying her best to cushion her head with her hands. It hurt to move her right arm too much.

  Was it still bleeding? She thought it probably was.

  Would it become infected?

  This room was far from sanitary. She would have to try not to let it touch anything. That was all she could do.

  Matthew, she thought desperately, Rita, Paisley...anyone...God, please come and find me. Please come and take me away from here. I’ll never leave home by myself again. I’ll never disobey. Please, please, just let me get away.

  But nobody came, and the hours passed. Eventually, Hazel’s tears dried up and the world seemed to go still around her, and when her eyes drifted closed, she fell easily into a heavy, exhausted, grief-stricken sleep.

  Chapter Four

  EMMETT

  Emmett, Xander, Judah, Pax, and Dart stood around in a circle, passing around the items Matthew Lang had given them, acquainting themselves with the scent and the look of the woman they were hunting.

  “Remember,” Emmett said, “she’s to be returned undamaged and intact. We don’t want her getting hurt.” And he pointed at Dart.

  Dart scowled. He was the second youngest of the Hell’s Wolves, at nineteen, and he wore his nickname with pride. He’d won it because of his speed, both on a bike and on foot, and his ability to draw first blood in a fight. If you were going into a brawl, Dart might not be the guy you’d want at your side—he didn’t have the muscle mass that made pack members like Judah and Pax so powerful. But if you were an assassin, if you were going to sneak up on someone and cut them from behind, Dart was definitely your man.

  The problem was that he wasn’t judicious about when he used his claws.

  “I’m not going to hurt her,” he said now.

  “Okay, good,” Emmett said. “Make sure you don’t. Because if she’s damaged at all, we don’t get paid.”

  “You know they’ve probably had their way with her ten times over by now,” Judah said.

  “I don’t know that at all, and neither do you,” Emmett replied. “We don’t know who kidnapped her. We don’t know anything about them. For all we know, it could just be humans.”

  “You don’t seriously think that,” Pax said.

  “Okay, I don’t,” Emmett agreed. “But it could be black market vendors. Maybe they want to sell her. And if that’s the case, maybe they’ve kept her unharmed. Or they could be planning to ransom her back to the Coywolves.”

  “Do you really think the Coywolves would refuse to take her back if she was damaged?” Xander asked.

  “You heard them,” Emmett said. “What do you think?”

 
Xander frowned. “I think he sounded like he meant what he said,” he answered finally. “I think she would lose value in his eyes if she wasn’t pure.”

  “That’s fucked up,” Dart said.

  “That’s omega life,” Emmett said firmly. “That’s what’s normal for omegas and their families.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s sick, if you ask me,” Dart said.

  Emmett thought about telling Dart that he hadn’t asked him, but he decided to keep his mouth shut. In truth, he agreed with his younger packmate. Established packs, traditionalist packs, could be real sons of bitches when it came to their omegas.

  Not that it mattered. The job was the job, and they’d get it done. They would find the kidnapped omega and return her to the Coywolves. However the Coywolves treated her, it had to be better than being in the hands of kidnappers, right?

  He collected the t-shirt and photograph from the others. “Any last questions?”

  “What’s her name?” Dart asked.

  “Her name?”

  “If I find her, I’m going to have to tell her I’m there to rescue her,” Dart said. “Why would she believe me if I don’t even know her name?”

  Emmett had no response. Dart was exactly right. He should have thought of that.

  Pax groaned. “You idiot. You didn’t get her name?”

  “Watch your mouth,” Emmett snapped. “All right, I made a mistake. Doesn’t give you the right to forget who’s alpha around here.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Fan out,” Emmett said. “Quadrants.” He sketched a grid in the air with his hand. “Pax, you take one. Judah, two. I’ll take three. Dart and Xander, take four. Meet back here in two hours, with or without the omega.”

  “What if we find her and she’s too well guarded?” Judah asked.

  “Then you scout the area, come back, and report. We’ll go in together if we need to.” He looked at Dart. “Nothing rash, understood? You don’t go in unless you’ve got a clear path.”

  “Understood.”

  “All right, let’s move.”

  The pack scattered. Emmett trotted off into the forest a few yards, stopped, and undressed.

  He tied the laces of his shoes together and hung them over the branch of a tree, socks stuffed in the toes. He hung his t-shirt over the same branch. Then he carefully folded up his jeans, keeping them neat and even, and placed them on the ground.

  He closed his eyes.

  Everyone shifted differently. He had watched his packmates do it enough times to understand that. Pax liked to get a running start, diving into his animal body as if he were jumping into a pool. Judah’s preferred method was to sit back on his haunches, forcing his body into an awkward and uncomfortable position for a human. A position that would be much easier on a wolf body.

  Emmett, though, shifted nose-first.

  He inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of the woods around him. The pine and sap of the trees, the wet earth, the living, growing things all around him. He belonged to these things. He was part of this world. This was home just as much as the road, just as much as his bike underneath him when he and his pack were on a run together.

  He stretched out, reaching for his own ability to smell more. To perceive more. And his body complied.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was lower to the ground. He flexed his paws and felt the way they dug into the dirt, felt the strength in his limbs. He pushed back on his forelegs, stretching his shoulders, then flexed to stretch his hips. It felt good to be back in wolf form, to feel the power of his lupine body. He was capable of more in this form than he was as a human. He was stronger. Surer. More confident.

  He inhaled again, filling his lungs with fresh forest air.

  Then he lowered his head, picked up his folded jeans carefully, and set off at a brisk trot. If he kept up a good pace, he thought he could get about ten miles out before he had to turn around and head back to meet up with the others. Hopefully, that would be far enough to pick up the omega’s scent and give them a new lead to start from.

  But as it turned out, he caught her scent after only three miles. And it was strong.

  Fear, he thought. Adrenaline, at the very least. She had been near here, and she had been worked up about it. Well, that made sense if she’d been kidnapped. How long had it been? Should he go back, meet up with the others, and tell them what he’d found? They could follow the scent from this point together.

  No. His two hours weren’t up yet. He could keep going. Maybe he would be able to find her. If he could get her and bring her back with him, he could keep the others out of danger. As alpha, that was his primary concern.

  He slowed his pace, tracking the scent carefully, not wanting to lose it, but luckily, he had nothing to worry about. The kidnappers, whoever they were, hadn’t done a good job of covering their tracks. After just a few miles, he found himself outside a large concrete bunker of a building. A white van stood outside, and the place was ripe with the scent of unfamiliar wolves. Christ, Emmett thought, even the Coywolves could have found this.

  Which meant that finding it wasn’t the primary concern.

  It meant that whoever was inside wasn’t afraid of a fight.

  “What do you say?” came a voice from behind him. “Should we go in?”

  Emmett spun around. Pax was standing there, clad only in his jeans. Emmett spat his own jeans on the ground and shifted back to his human form, keeping his back to his packmate so he could tug his pants on. “Jesus, Pax,” he said. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you searching your quadrant?”

  “She’s not in my quadrant,” Pax said.

  “But you were told to search—”

  “I picked up the scent,” Pax said. “Haven’t I always told you my nose is better than yours?” He jerked his head toward the bunker. “She’s in there, isn’t she?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “So? Are we going to get her out?”

  He knew Emmett too well. If it was any of the others out here, Emmett would have told them to return to the pack. But because he’d found the bunker himself, Pax knew he’d try to rescue the omega himself. To keep the others out of harm’s way. What else could an alpha do?

  “If you go in, I’m going in with you,” Pax said. “So, don’t even think about ordering me to stay out here.”

  For a moment, Emmett considered giving that very order. It wasn’t as if there was anything Pax could do about it if he did. He would have to obey. And he would feel much better knowing that his packmate was safe.

  But if he went in alone, the odds would be stacked so monumentally against him that he’d be unlikely to survive. And the pack didn’t just need their alpha today. They would need him tomorrow, and the next day, and next week, and next year. “All right,” Emmett said. “You cover my flank, then. Let’s go. And be quiet.”

  The two men crept closer to the building. The outer door wasn’t guarded, and that was worrying to Emmett. If this had been his bunker, he would have posted a guard there. The fact that they hadn’t meant that there was probably a guard inside.

  He pointed this out to Pax. “When we get inside,” he said softly, “we’re going to have to move quickly to take out anyone who’s in there before they raise an alarm.”

  Pax nodded. “You open the door,” he said. “I’ll get the drop on the guard.”

  “What if there’s more than one?”

  “Then you’d better get inside before they get the drop on me, right?”

  Emmett worried his lip between his teeth and nodded.

  “Hey,” Pax said, flashing a grin at him. “This is small potatoes. It’s just an omega pull. We’ve done it a dozen times, and we’ve never lost anybody.”

  “I know,” Emmett agreed.

  “So, what do you look so nervous about?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a weird feeling about this one, that’s all. Like something’s going to go sideways.”

  “What’s that you always tell us?” Pax said. “Don
’t over plan, because you won’t be able to go with the flow when things go off the rails?”

  Emmett took a deep breath. “You’re right. Okay. Just another omega pull.” He just wished his racing heart would settle down and that he could relax and build up his confidence. If only he could go in in wolf form—

  But he knew that was a bad idea. He needed his wits about him. They both did.

  He gave Pax a wave forward, and the two men sprinted across the clearing and to the bunker door.

  “Ready?” Emmett whispered.

  Pax nodded.

  Emmett grabbed the doorknob and tugged it open. Pax darted inside, and almost immediately Emmett heard a thud.

  He eased himself around the door frame. Pax was squatting over the prone form of another man, his wrist an inch from the man’s face. “Alive,” he whispered.” He snapped his fingers a couple of times, then lifted the man’s eyelid and nodded. “Out cold, though.”

  “Do you still have the scent?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Emmett inhaled and found, to his surprise, that he did. Usually, scents were much harder to follow in human form, but this one was as rich as it had ever been. He pressed his back to the wall and crept down the corridor, aware of Pax’s presence behind him.

  The scent was almost too easy to follow. They came to a T junction, and Emmett pointed down the hall, glancing back at Pax to confirm what he thought. Pax nodded. She was definitely down there.

  Emmett made his way down the hall. Pax followed, back to back with him, keeping an eye out for anyone who might come this way and see them. But, to Emmett’s surprise, they reached the door at the end of the hall without incident.

  This is too easy, he thought warily.

  He opened the door.

  The girl in the room was hardly recognizable as the omega in the photo Matthew Lang had shown Emmett. She had lost weight, even though her kidnapping was barely a week old. Her hair was tangled and matted, instead of shiny and styled. Her skin was dirty, instead of lustrous. Her eyes were closed.

  Emmett crossed to her side and rested a hand on her shoulder. Immediately, he pulled back. “Shit,” he hissed. “Pax, she’s burning up.”