Page 46 of Pregnant Kidnapped Mate

“You realize how stupid that is, right?” I asked, my voice raising in pitch. “They’re twice as strong as humans. They can shift into wolves. There’s no way you can win.”

Dad just smirked in a way that made me want to throw up.

“We’ve been acquiring weapons for a while now,” he said. “We’ve just been waiting for a good excuse to move in on them. And what better excuse than the fact that one of theirs kidnapped the leader of the village’s only daughter?”

Shit. I’d known Alek’s move to take me away from here had been impulsive and reckless. But I hadn’t expected it to mean war.

“And your abilities will give us the edge we need to wipe them out,” Dad continued.

“You want me to give you visions to tell you what the pack is up to?” I asked. When Dad nodded, I added, “What if I say no, or what if I lie? There’s no way you’ll be able to tell.”

He grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth. “Your mother asked me the same questions,” he said. “I can promise you don’t want to go through the same lessons she did. But she learned eventually.” He took a step back. “We’ll give you some time to think over how you want this to go. I can promise you that one way will be a lot more pleasant than the other.”

With a sneer and a laugh, he spun on his heels and stalked back up the steps, Jason right on his heels, the wooden stairs creaking under their weight. The door above closed, leaving me in near-total darkness.

I took a shaky breath, my entire body shivering from the cold and from dread. Alek was in trouble. The pack was in trouble. I thought about how nice everyone had been, how welcome I had felt. There had been a few outliers, but for the most part, everyone had been sweet to me. I thought about Jenn and her baby, the other girls. I thought about how Malcolm had treated me when he found out I was psychic. He hadn’t acted like I was a freak or something to be used to his advantage. He’d treated me like a person.

He’d accepted me. Nearly all of them had.

And now I was stuck back here with a family who hated me. Who only wanted me here so they could use my power.

Grasping the full truth, just how accepted I’d been in Brixton, flooded me with a mix of anxiety and love for the community there. I’d been an idiot to be afraid of them when the signs of their kindness had been all around me. And Alek…just the thought of him possibly being in danger was enough to chill me to my core and shake every bone in my body.

I couldn’t let them hurt him. I couldn’t.

Because I loved him.

Finally admitting to myself how I truly felt about Alek was a relief. But that relief was marred by the overwhelming horror of knowing that Dan was out tracking him, hunting him. Would Alek even see Dan coming? I knew they had been friends once. I could only hope he would figure out what his so-called friend was doing before it was too late.

I took a deep breath as I slid down the wall. The chain clanked, thundering through the basement as I stuck out my legs.

I went into my mind and tried to reach out to Alek, focusing on the way he made me feel, the warmth of his body, the way his hair looked like fire in the morning light, and the way his boyish smile filled me with happiness every time I saw him. I held him in my mind and reached out through space, trying to find him and see what was in his future.

The smell of the woods. Dirt between paws. Heavy panting as wind raced through fur. Trees blurring as they raced by—

I gasped, my eyes flying open, my heart thundering. I’d never had a vision like that before. Malcolm had told me I could learn to sense people in the moment. Was that what had just happened?

I didn’t know. What I did know was what I sensed deep down in my bones. I gave a soft, breathless laugh as a relieved smile came over my face and my hands trembled.

Alek was alive. He was still alive.

And he was coming.

Chapter 20 - Alek

Iris’s trail and scent grew stronger, and I was certain we were on the right track.

As we raced through the woods, I began to recognize some landmarks: where Dan and I had killed the deer, where I had seen Iris and her family the day I found her again, the clearing where we used to meet. I pushed forward, certain we were close, knowing that whenever we found the village, we would likely have a fight waiting for us.

Soon, we started moving into groups of houses. They were sparse at first but then grew more clustered. The houses were deserted, though. No one came to fight us or sound the alarm.

It wasn’t until we got into the center of town that I realized why. Everyone was there, waiting for us. They’d had some sort of early alarm.

The grizzled man in front held a gun pointed at me as we charged forward. I recognized him from his scent as much as by his looks. Iris’s dad. I snarled, then shifted back to human. The rest of the Silver Wolves stayed in wolf form, waiting to see what happened next.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“Are you the one who kidnapped my little girl?” Iris’s dad asked. His weathered face was twisted into a smirk, his nasty-looking rifle resting over his shoulder. The barrel was wide, apparently designed for large bullets, with a jagged bayonet-like protrusion at the end. “I’m David. You can walk right back around and leave us the fuck alone, or you can deal with bullets and wolfsbane.”

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