Page 53 of Brutal Mate

“No, no! This can't be happening!” he growled, pacing up and down the clearing.

Every inch of his body was urging him to follow the boot prints, to go on a wild rampage until he had killed the wolf who had taken his mate and anyone else who stood in his way.

But he was no lone wolf. He hadn’t been for a very long time. And though Miley was a member of his pack now, he needed the others if he had any hope of actually making her safe.

Closing his eyes, he forced himself to remember his army training, his black ops training, all the things that had gone wrong when someone had gone off half-cocked.

No, he wasn't going to allow his impulsiveness to go and get Miley killed.

He had to go back. No matter how much he wished to continue going forward.

Chapter 20 - Miley

By the time she managed to regain consciousness, Miley barely recognized her surroundings.

It was dark. So dark, in fact, that she could barely see her hand in front of her face. And yet, her eyes seemed to go in and out of focus, the light growing and fading as if her eyes were attempting to gain some clarity.

The heavy smell of laundry and the closeness of the room alone told her she was in some kind of closet. But when she tried to stand, hitting her shoulder off one of the shelves, she was even more certain of it.

The most disorienting thing of all was her hearing. In and out it went, hearing too much, then too little, as if someone was covering and uncovering her ears. One second, she felt deaf, and the next she heard small snippets of conversation.

“Got the final one…”

“....be here soon…”

“...want…see…”

“Don't let…escape…”

The more she tried to piece sentences together, the more confusing they were. She couldn't even tell how many voices there were on the other side of the closet door.

All she knew was that when she managed to get to her feet long enough to stand on wobbling legs, the door was locked.

Feeling around in the near-darkness, she found a pull cord and tugged, the bare drop light that hung above her head illuminating the room and confirming her suspicions. She was standing in a laundry closet. And there was no other way out.

Bile rose in the back of her throat when she saw the claw marks that decorated the back of the door. Wherever she was, she wasn't the first one to have been here. But she was alone now.

She gulped hard past the lump in her throat. What happened to the others?

Her eyesight grew overpowering then, her head spinning as her hearing hitched up too.

The sound of a car hit her eardrums so hard she was almost too overwhelmed to catch the next words, “He's coming.”

Unable to bear the overstimulated feeling, Miley yanked on the pull cord again to kill the light and dropped back down onto the floor, covering her ears with her hands.

When her captors finally opened the door, they found her in the fetal position.

“Don't look like she's handling it well, boss,” one man said as another stormed into the closet, hooking a hand under her arm and yanking her up to her feet.

“Out!” he growled at her.

Miley sucked in a deep breath and forced her hands from her ears, trying her hardest to remain calm and focused as she was dragged from the closet and shoved onto her knees in the next room.

It turned out to be a bedroom, not quite as frilly and pink as the one in her grandma’s house, but a farmhouse-esque bedroom nonetheless.

And sitting on the end of the bed with its patchwork quilt was a man she had never seen before. She was sure of it. And yet, somehow, she felt that she recognized him.

Those amber-brown eyes that he stared at her with were somehow all too familiar. They made her shiver.

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