The Lone Wolf’s Rejected Mate (The Five Packs Book 3)

8

MARI

When I come to, I’m lying naked on cold steel in a metal box. It’s moving. I push to sit up, and my stomach lurches. Every bone in my body aches, especially my skull. My head throbs. My wolf is awake, but she’s confused and scared, too.

I go to push my curls out of my face, and my arm is caught short. There’s a leather strap around my right wrist and another around my waist, cinched so painfully tight that the skin of my belly folds over it. I lift my arm, rattling the chain hooked to the strap. It’s attached to the side wall.

Panic crushes my lungs. I’m trapped.

“We’re in a cargo container.” It’s Darragh. His voice is low. Careful. He’s close. There. At the other end of the box.

I try to focus, scrubbing my eyes with my free hand. It’s dim in here, but I can make him out. He’s on his knees. There are metal bands around both of his wrists and another around his neck. Chains lead to the wall behind him. He’s shirtless, wearing familiar faded blue jeans with threadbare patches on the thigh.

“Are those the same jeans?” I ask without thinking. It’s a crazy question, but my brain is only creaking into gear.

He glances at his lap. “The same as what?”

“As you wore before.”

He furrows his brow. “I’ve got, like, seven or eight pairs of them.”

“Why do you have so many?” It’s an inane thing to ask, but it’s a handhold to climb out of the panic.

“I don’t know. They fit. I buy as many as they’ve got in stock. When they fit.” He coughs awkwardly.

I nod. That makes sense. Nothing else does, but he’s here, and he’s talking to me. I’m not alone, and his voice isn’t scared—it’s deliberately calm—and the fear isn’t screaming so loud.

My wolf trots closer to the border between us. Closer to him. He’s older, stronger, fierce. He’ll protect us. She’s certain. Her blind faith tricks my pounding heart into calming.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“A cargo container,” he says again. “They’re taking us somewhere.”

I glance around the box. The walls and top are corrugated. Small holes in the roof let in gray light. It’s either evening or daybreak. Either way, I’ve been out a while. I squint. The holes are in an arching spray pattern. A shiver chases down my spine. “Those are bullet holes.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Where are they taking us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?” My eyes search for his, and unbidden, the past wells up, as ugly and raw as if it was yesterday. My voice cracking as he stood in the path in front of my cabin, and I asked him why. Darragh staring at me, cold and silent, without a glimmer of compassion. For a second, I think I’m not strong enough. I’m going to fall apart. But I don’t.

I try to shove the memory down, but for the first time in a long time, I can’t. It lingers, out of place.

He must see the distress on my face because he lifts his gaze to the wall above my head like it embarrasses him.

He clears his throat. “I don’t know, but they’re going to try to hurt us.”

My wolf’s whimper escapes the back of my throat. Darragh’s wolf rumbles his chest in reply. My wolf’s ears prick, and after listening to the rumble for a few long moments, she settles back down, gingerly lowering herself onto her back haunches.

Darragh seems to force his eyes to lower to mine again. He holds my gaze like it’s hard to do. “When I say run, you run. Okay? When I say fight, fight. Shift and fight, okay?”

Fight? How? I’ve never fought in my life, not even playing around as a pup. I jerk with all my strength at the chain with my wrist. It’s welded to a plate screwed into the wall. I jerk it again, harder. The leather bites into my wrist. I throw my body into it. There’s no give.

“Hey, hey, stop that now.” There’s an edge of command in his voice, and it sparks my temper at the same time it soothes the momentary panic that had regained a foothold in my woolly brain.

He goes on, “They’ll have to move us. When they unchain us to do it, as soon as you’re loose, shift and run. If you can’t run, fight. Claws and fangs. Go for their faces. Then their necks.”

I half listen as I try to dig my fingers into the skin under the cuff. It’s tight, but if I shifted, I could slip it off. Wolf paws are thinner than human hands. I don’t know about the band around my waist, though. I don’t think it’d go over my wolf’s haunches or her shoulders. It’s cinched so tight that it’s displacing my guts, making the roiling in my stomach worse.

“I think I’m going to puke,” I mutter.

“Okay,” he says, his face grim. “Do what you have to do.”