Page 3 of Hidden Pain

“She’s delusional. Nuka Lincoln won’t risk his plans for her,” Hunter responded as he pulled a t-shirt from the box and covered his chest with the cotton fabric which declared him to be a Kansas university baseball fan. Nuka Lincoln was a polar bear shifter and the reason all the world was in chaos at the moment…well, the shifter world at least. He was the one who’d killed Kingsley’s father. Everyone knew he was responsible, but they just couldn’t confirm it. Nuka and Kas were twin brothers whose lives had taken very different paths after their grandfather had died. As the elder, Kas had taken over the rule of the Glacial Blood pack, leaving his younger brother, Nuka, jealous and vindictive.

“I’ll keep trying to convince her of that,” Kingsley confirmed as he watched Hunter head toward the entrance to the house.

The wolf stopped and turned back to look at Kingsley. “You’re not returning to Glacial Blood?”

“No,” Kingsley replied. “It’s not my home. There’s nothing in Montana for me anymore.”

Hunter nodded.

“Welcome to my pack then.” The wolf turned away once more and opened the door. “Just don’t smoke on my premises again.”

Chapter Two

The magical barriers confining Lily to her dungeon prison had been relaxed over the last few days. At first she’d been given little more than a square meter of room, which allowed her only enough space to sleep on the floor. Now she had access to most of the dark room she was living in, including a small bed for her to sleep on. It was a welcome comfort from sleeping on the cold, hard floor. The Glacial Blood pack protected their own, and she’d hurt Selene—that was something they wouldn’t forgive or forget in a hurry. Kas could barely look at her without growling, and she knew Brayden, Selene’s mated partner, was baying for her blood. Looks of disgust thrown her way were nothing out of the ordinary for her, though. It was something she’d grown used to, having been born in a circus.

With a loud yawn and a wide stretch, Lily got out of bed and made her way to the makeshift bathroom she now had access to. It wasn’t the cleanest place ever, but it was good enough to do her morning business in. She washed her hands afterward, but there was no shower or way of washing the rest of herself. In addition, a change of clothes hadn’t been provided, so it would be another day of smelling like she hadn’t washed for two weeks. Which she hadn’t!

Movement from upstairs caught her attention, and she wondered if it was someone bringing her food. Last night there’d been some sort of celebration that went on until the early hours, and this morning things had been unusually quiet. During the evening the smell of venison had wafted down into her dungeon from somewhere in the building, and her stomach had rumbled with hunger. They’d only given her basic provisions to eat.

Everything here was combining to remind her of her time in the circus. Emotions swirled within her, forming a tightly wound coil ready to explode if pushed too far. No food appeared to be forthcoming, so she settled back down onto her bed and pulled the cover over her. Within minutes, she could feel her eyelids drooping shut again.

“Takings were down again last night, boss,” a man dressed in a tatty t-shirt and faded jeans informed another man wearing a full three-piece suit. You’d never have guessed that the scruffy looking one was a highly paid accountant. He’d been brought in to oversee the running of the business and allow his boss time to concentrate on the show itself.

“It’s because of the bears,” the boss replied. He was a conceited man with no morals called Frederick Wolthausen, and he was an insult to the German ancestry running through his blood. Lily had often watched this man who, she’d been told, owned her. She was too young to perform every night, but he still made her go into the circus ring with her parents on occasions. He was callous and cruel to the animals. They were underfed, mistreated, often violently, and confined to small cages while they traveled. It could be assumed that Frederick believed them to be regular wild animals, but no, in reality he knew exactly what they were…shifters!

Frederick liked to portray himself as being descended from the great Abraham Van Helsing of Dracula fame. It was all lies, though—Van Helsing was a fictional character, and he was Dutch not German. Additionally, the fictional hero in the Dracula stories was avenging his son’s death at the hands of a vampire, and Frederick was doing nothing of the sort. He was exploiting the shifter’s fear of their magical gifts being revealed to humans, threatening to expose their secret if they didn’t perform for him as animals in his circus every night.

“Are they refusing to change again?” The accountant continued the conversation, his attention not focused on Frederick but on the laptop open in front of him. Lily wished she could see the figures on the screen and know how much was being earned from the shifters performing. They didn’t see a penny of this money while Frederick was driving around in a top-of-the-line sports car.

“They never want to change, especially the mother. She’s grown weak and rebellious since she had the child. I’ve a good mind to leave the child here when we move on. She’s ten now. I’m sure she can fend for herself. Why I thought a pregnant bear would be a good catch, I don’t know? My dream of a performing family is being ruined by ungrateful freaks who think they deserve more.”

Lily’s blood froze. She knew they were talking about her. Her mother’s growl sounded out from the cage behind hers, and the bars of her father's, which was a little farther away, rattled loudly. They were all in human form and naked without any clothes for modesty.

“Quieten down!” Frederick shouted as he approached the cages with a walking cane in his hand. He wasn’t holding it because of an injury—it was what they used to beat the shifters with. He walked toward her mother’s cage and rattled the cane against the bars. Lily watched her mother shift her paw to that of a bear and swipe out, narrowly missing her tormentor.

“You, bitch.” Frederick jumped backward away from the bars. “Enough!” He whacked the cane against her mother’s cage again, and this time, her father shifted into a bear and started to rage inside his cage.

In a matter of seconds, several guards appeared beside Frederick with guns. Lily knew the weapons wouldn’t be loaded with ordinary bullets which could kill. These guns held tranquilizers to render her parents immobile but still conscious. Tears formed in her eyes while she sat quietly in her cage. What had she done to deserve a life as horrendous as this? She had nothing…knew nothing…apart from the four sides of her cage. It was only on odd occasions she could cuddle her parents. Was being a bear shifter really that wrong?

They fired the guns, and she watched her parents drop to the ground. Both of them reaching out for her as they fell. This was how it always went when anger overruled common sense, and her parents reacted in the way they had. It would be a few hours of alone time now. Her mother had told her stories of the outside world, and when her parents couldn’t move, she’d comfort both herself and them by retelling them. Something was different this time, though, because when her parents were immobile, Frederick bore down on her cage with an evil grin on his face.

“If Momma and Papa bear think they can continue to defy me, then I’ll show them just who’s boss around here,” he sneered and opened the door to her cage. He pulled Lily out by her long brown hair and threw her onto the ground right in front of her parents’ cages.

“You will not try to attack,” Frederick ordered, and Lily looked behind her just in time to see him bring the cane down viciously onto the tender flesh of her back. She screamed loudly and tried to curl up into a ball, but it did her no good.

“You’ll do as I order and bring in money when I require it,” he said through gritted teeth as he hit her again in exactly the same place. Her little body was skinny—she hadn’t filled out because of the lack of food. Every time the cane came down, it was hitting bone just under the surface of her skin.

“Mummy,” Lily cried, pleading for help which her incapacitated parent couldn’t give. The terror in her mother’s eyes reflected her inability to protect Lily.

“You will shift when I tell you to, or I’ll whip your daughter every time you defy me,” Frederick threatened as he rained down a hail of blows on Lily’s skin in a furious rage. One strike followed another until she could barely think straight for the pain shooting through her entire body.

Lily looked up one final time at the parent she knew and loved. She saw tears falling down her mother’s cheeks—she was shutting down before her daughter’s eyes. It was at that moment her mother became the performer Frederick demanded, and for Lily it was the moment all love died.

“Hey, wake up.” Lily was jolted from her sleep by the sound of a man’s voice in the room. Opening one eye and peering out from under the cover, she could see that it wasn’t just one man but two men standing in front of her: Hunter and Kingsley, laughing and joking together. These two had been the only ones to come down here and feed her since her capture. Hunter placed a plateful of food inside the barrier. When she saw it was venison, her stomach instantly rumbled its delight.

“I told you she’d like it.” Kingsley, a human, raised a patronizing eyebrow at the wolf shifter before taking a seat at a nearby table on one of the chairs they’d brought down a few days earlier.

“What’s not to like about venison?” Hunter replied with a tease back to his friend. He was the alpha male of the wolf pack holding Lily until Kas Lincoln decided what to do with her, They made an unlikely duo, but Lily could already sense the closeness between them.

---