Page 67 of Pack Obsession

“Shut the fuck up.” The dragging stops. A hand grabs my shoulder, flipping me onto my back. I stare up at cold eyes and a demented smile. “Your begging’s pathetic.”

“Bitch, don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” The second man leans down, his fist tangling in my hair, wrenching my head back as they haul me to my feet.

A cry tears from my throat at the burning pain in my scalp.

Axel.Where are you?The silence in the house screams of violence.

Logan and Nash need to be back now. They have to be. They just went to run errands, right? It’s what Axel said.Please, please let them come back...

They haul me outside into the blinding sunlight. A black van idles in the driveway, its side door already open.

“No, please…” Terror rips up my throat. “You don’t understand what he’s like.”

“Don’t really care.” The first man shoves me forward. “Julian pays well. That’s all we need to know.”

They throw me into the darkness of the van. I slam into something metal, pain exploding through my shoulder. The engine roars as two bodies jump in after me, the door slamming shut as we peel out of the driveway.

I curl into myself in the darkness, tears streaming down my face. He found me. After everything, he found me. And Axel... oh God, Axel. If he’s hurt, or dead, because of me, I’ll die.

As the van takes a sharp turn, sending me rolling across the floor, one terrible thought crystallizes.

This time, Julian won’t let me live long enough to run again.

Metal scrapes against metal as the van doors wrench open. The sudden flood of daylight sends daggers through my skull. I squint against tears, disorientedafter what feels like hours in darkness. Rough hands grab my upper arms, hauling me out onto sunbaked concrete. My legs betray me, half-asleep from being curled up during the drive, but I manage to stay upright through sheer stubbornness.

“What the actual fuck?” The words escape in a breathless whisper as I take in my surroundings. We’re in some kind of suburban nightmare—cookie-cutter houses with their matching driveways, but something’s deeply wrong. The neighboring homes look abandoned, windows dark and vacant like dead eyes. Lawns have gone feral, trash tumbles across cracked sidewalks, and somewhere in the distance, I can make out a chain-link fence around what might be a sports field, rust eating away at its edges. The whole place feels like someone took the American Dream and let it rot.

Except for this house. This one’s different—fresh paint, trimmed bushes, a carefully maintained facade. Like putting lipstick on a corpse. My stomach lurches as realization hits. A safe house. Julian’s safe house. The kind of place where people disappear.

“Where’s Axel?” I demand, struggling against the iron grip of the two giants flanking me. They’re both built like brick walls. The driver gets out and leads the way to the back door, and I notice with savage satisfaction that he’s limping. “What did you do to him? If you hurt Axel, I swear to God?—”

“Shut your mouth and walk,” the one on my right growls, shoving me forward hard enough to make me stumble.

Just as quickly, a meaty hand clamps over my mouth, covering half my face as they drag me through the back door into darkness. There’s a long hallway with several doors, all shut. I’m definitely not the first person they’ve brought here.

From somewhere around us, a faint sound carries that turns my insides to ice—muffled crying.Oh God.

“Help!” I scream the instant the hand leaves my mouth. “Someone help—” The words cut off in a grunt of pain as one of them strikes me across the back, and I wince, tears hitting my eyes.

They use the opportunity to shove me forward, down a hallway that seems to stretch forever in the gloom. My feet tangle, and I nearly faceplant, but they just shove me along until we pause at a closed door.

They throw it open and drive a palm into my back, pushing me inside so roughly, I stumble, barely catching myself. The room is dim, Venetian blinds casting prison-bar shadows across worn floorboards. The furniture is sparse except for an incongruously expensive leather couch that looks like it was stolen from a CEO’s office.

And there he sits. Fucking Julian.

My heart slams against my ribs so hard, I wonder if he can hear it. He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him, yet somehow worse—perfectly tailored charcoal suit, golden hair styled just so, that obscene Rolex glinting on his wrist that he plays with. But his eyes... those pale blue irises have always reminded me of a shark’s, but now there’s something else there. Something fractured.

“Kneel.” His voice is soft, almost gentle. That’s always been the most terrifying thing about Julian—how quiet he gets when he’s at his most dangerous. “It’s the least you can do for all you’ve put me through.”

I plant my feet wider, lifting my chin even as my pulse races.

“I put you through? That’s rich coming from the psycho who hired people to kidnap me. Who caused the Nexus bus crash and probably killed innocent people just to?—”

“I said. Kneel.” Each word drops like a stone into still water.

“Yeah, no. Not happening.” I force my voice steady, channeling every ounce of sass I can muster because it’s betterthan showing fear. “You want to talk? Fine. But we do it like actual humans.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t raise his voice. Just flicks those long, thin fingers.

---