Page 5 of The Warrior's Captive

Letting out a harsh scream, Briar May threw back her head and charged. Her waist-length hair streamed out after her, a white battle flag, but there was nothing peaceful about the way she launched herself nimbly through the woods. She was a lone woman, slight and delicate. She was no warrior. But she was indeed a Nightfall and every single one of Silas and Lilac’s children had been taught to defend themselves. Above all, she was a wolf.

So were they.

When she finally took a breath in her mad headlong dash, she scented them.

She increased her war cry, hoping her screams could be heard back at the big cabin. There might be hope for her then. She kept charging and so did they. She rushed at them without fear and they never slowed. There was going to be a collision. She’d hit their leader, the one with the gleaming axes. She could see the runes imprinted on the steel now. Carved into the wood where a set of beastly strong hands wrapped around them.

She concentrated on the shift. The only chance she stood was taking him down as a wolf. She gave herself over and out of nowhere a steel chain sang through the air, tangling around her arms and torso. She screamed, falling to the ground. She reached for her wolf and for the first time in her life, found the animal there, but not there. It was like her mind had been reduced to cinders and the wolf was trapped in a cage, somewhere she couldn’t reach her.

The chain was wrapped with hecolite stones, the large chunks of rock wrapped with sliver wire like a grotesque necklace. She’d never held the stone, but she knew the lore of it. She knew that some believed it had the power of the moon, and the moon ultimately controlled everything on the earth. The tides, the cycles of life, the cycles and shifts of a person and a wolf. Whether it was true or not about the power of the moon, it did have the power to stop a shift. Which was why her pack hadn’t used hecolite in living memory—at least since her grandfather’s time, as they thought it a brutal punishment and keeping the stones on pack territory was strictly forbidden.

Her wolf struggled inside of her, calling for her, laboring pointlessly.

She thrashed on the ground, screaming and snarling.

The leader stopped when he reached her. He sheathed his axes behind his back in one single accurate movement, his powerful body flexing like an artform. In another lifetime, he’d be something of beauty, but in this one, he was the enemy.

He hefted her up like she weighed little more than a blanket. She screamed and thrashed, spitting and snapping when his face came into view. He thrust one big palm against her mouth, covering her nose as well. She couldn’t bite him, though she tried. His hold was so firm that she couldn’t draw in any air. Not through her mouth, not through her nose.

She stopped breathing, concentrated on holding her breath until it felt like her lungs were going to burst, until tiny white lights flashed behind her eyes.

Only when she went absolutely still did the beast shift his hand down to allow her air through her nose. She drank it in, expanding her lungs in great, greedy breaths that burned like fire. She didn’t dare make another sound for fear he’d deprive her of oxygen again.

Did that make her a coward?

No. She had to be alive to fight.

This was everything her brother and father and the rest of the men in the pack feared since Rome killed that group of Rangers who’d slaughtered his mate. They knew they had family somewhere. People who loved them. People who would ask questions when they went missing. People who might eventually find out that it was their pack and her brother who had killed them.

These men were here for retribution. They’d taken her because she was, what, easy pickings? Weak? Or had they wanted the children and settled for her as the next best thing?

The guards around their lands had been doubled since Rome’s attack on the Rangers. They had cameras, but there had been no sightings of any of the Ranger packs in the state. She’d been lulled into a false sense of security, even though she knew everyone was still on their guard. Were these men Rangers? Or where they something else?

The brute carrying her smelled like sweat, darkness, and impending death. But, if she was honest, he also smelled like dark spices. Licorice and herbs. Lemon. Mint. She knew without a doubt he was a killer. Death, violence, and blood were wrapped around him like a swirling pillar of black smoke.

A shiver went through her that wasn’t purely from the cold.

His massive body flexed with every long stride. He ran with ease even though he was carrying her, those heavy axes, the chains wrapped around her body. His chest expanded in and out, but it was as though he was just walking at a leisurely pace.

She could feel the heat of his skin through his black t-shirt. Being so close to him, scenting him, feeling the raw power of his body beneath hers like something immortal, caused her to break into goosebumps.

She hated herself, that her traitorous body was feeling things that her mind had not sanctioned. She was still terrified. She would still fight in any way she could. Her spirit was still raging, her wolf thrashing like a caged beast inside her feeble human skeleton, but there was something base and wrong inside her that she didn’t understand. A part of her that didn’t want to fight. That wanted to succumb. That wanted to be taken and owned.

Jesus, what the fuck? Was it the hecolite stones, or was it something else?

The strange sense of want and almost safety, of sudden heat and longing that she felt was all wrong. This brutal man and his evil companions were in the process of kidnapping her. They could do anything to her. They might not ransom her. They could torture her, kill her, rape her.

She had to swallow convulsively to keep the bile at the back of her throat.

Her mind cycled through the worst, dumping fear into her bloodstream, but fear gave her adrenaline. She had to be aware of every single movement, every single second, every possible opportunity to escape.

Her hopes died the minute she saw the Jeep hidden at the far end of the woods, along an old dirt road that skirted past their lands.

She made a noise of distress that never escaped the huge hand covering her mouth, when she saw Kain and Bastion slumped over, motionless on the ground. They were two of the pack’s best guards. They’d been tied up with the same stone-studded chain. Black fabric covered their mouths. They were just unconscious, she realized. No one would gag and tie a dead body.

These men could have killed them, cleaved them in half with one of those huge axes or shot them, stabbed them. But the fact that they hadn’t killed them had to mean something.

A sick surge of hope welled inside of her. It was premature and unwarranted, and she wished she hadn’t felt it at all. She couldn’t allow herself to be anything but ready for any opportunity she got to flee.

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