Page 4 of Soul Bound

I can’t help but relish the feeling of the cool night air when I rush out the open doors. I breathe in the fresh air for the first time in months. I can’t wait until morning when I’m able to feel the heat from the sun. Most facilities would encourage rec time outside, but not Cresthill. With a wicked grin, I smile up at the concrete building. I bring up my right hand where my middle finger is already pointed.

“Fuck you,” I tell the building because I couldn’t tell the staff or my parents. I look over at my ghost and I drop my hand when I realize something important I forgot to ask her, “What’s your name?”

“Thalia,” she croaks.

“Well, Thalia. Let’s go to Montana.”

2

Ranger

Three Months Ago

The coyote shifter immediately shifts into her animal form when I open the glass jail cell door. I don’t know how long she’d been locked in here or the horrors she’d been through, but she doesn’t hesitate to run as soon as the opportunity presents itself. I don’t blame her. Based on what I’ve seen of the medical facility, I’d be running for the hills the second I could too.

This building is a place of nightmares.

Room after room, there are various species locked behind electronic glass doors. Some of them aren’t even conscious and their frail bodies are being kept alive by machines. My stomach rolls when I walk by yet another pregnant woman on a ventilator. I can’t help thinking that unplugging the machines would be mercy at this point, but I have to think of the child they carry. I know another team will be showing up any moment to help the women we can’t, but the guilt I feel leaving them behind eats at me.

I know Pruitt, my brother’s mate, was only here a couple of days, but I can’t imagine the horrors she went through at the hands of Nicolai Volkov, the evil mastermind behind this horror show. Good ol’ Nico is dead now, thanks to Pruitt ripping out his throat, but the trauma he inflicted on these women will last a lifetime for them. And it’s all because he wanted to create powerful hybrid babies to aid in his mission for world domination—cliché as hell, right?

I keep moving through this wing of the building, opening as many doors as I can as fast as I can. The human authorities will be here soon, and we can’t be caught here, they’ll ask too many questions that we can’t answer. The existence of shifters, demons, and witches alike are kept secret for a reason, humans wouldn’t be able to handle the knowledge.

I can’t believe what a shit show the last two months of my life has been—well, more my brother, Ryker’s,life. The rest of us were just along for the ride. We discovered his long-lost mate was alive after fourteen years, but the reunion wasn’t a blissful, happy event. There was a reason that Pruitt Bailey, previously known as Grey Thorne, was kept hidden from us for so many years. Nicolai had set his sights on her when he wasn’t able to have her mother. His obsession with Grey was so strong he threatened to kill everyone in our pack to get to her, thus Grey’s death was faked, and Pruitt Bailey was born.

It didn’t take long for Nicolai to show up at our doorstep again, demanding that Pru be handed over to him, and when we refused, Nico started killing members of our pack. Pruitt, being the self-sacrificing type, turned herself over in exchange for the safety of her newfound pack. Thus, how she ended up in this hellhole of a medical facility. As I pass yet another cell with an unconscious woman, her stomach swollen with a hybrid fetus, I can’t help but imagine it was Pru lying in that bed. The thought sends a chill down my spine, but I shake it off. We found Pruitt in time, and she’s safe in the arms of my brother somewhere in the building.

We’re all safe. My four siblings and my dad had flown up to Vancouver to find Pru. We had to fight our way into the building, but we all made it out alive. It was a close call when Ryker was shot in the back by Nicolai, but luckily Nico’s aim is shit and Ryker has super wolf shifter healing. Even the demon, Jax, who had helped us fight our way in, was shot in the stomach but turns out demon healing is even better than wolf healing.

I round another corner of the long hallway and the smell assaults my senses, making my blood run cold. My wolf bristles at the smell, on edge.

Blood. A lot of blood.

I take off running, my boot-clad feet pounding onto the sterile white tile, the noise bounces off the empty white walls. It doesn’t take me long to find the source of the blood. Someone behind the set of double doors in front of me is bleeding out. I brace myself for a fight when I push the door open, half expecting to find more lingering employees of Nicolai’s behind the doors, but I don’t find any mad scientist or evil doctors.

Instead, I find a woman. She lies on the surgical table in the middle of the room, still wearing a long white hospital gown, but it’s barely white anymore. It’s a bright shade of crimson. It had been shoved up around her chest, leaving her lower half completely exposed. The gaping wound on her abdomen gushes blood and I can’t tell from where I stand if she’s even breathing anymore.

I take a hesitant step forward, my eyes scanning her. Her skin is so pale from the blood loss and her lips are blue. One of her frail arms hangs lifeless off the side of the table, a trickle of blood runs from her fingertips, dripping onto the tile floor. I haven’t seen her chest rise or fall from taking a breath yet, but I listen hard and find the faintest heartbeat coming from her.

She’s alive. Barely.

“Shit,” I hiss under my breath when I’m closer to her body and I can see the damage. Someone hacked her up, the large slice in her lower belly looks like it was done with a dull steak knife. Whoever did this, didn’t even bother to pack the wound or stitch her up. They left her here to bleed out.

I don’t know if it was my presence or she heard me speak, but her glassy eyes fly open, the dark brown orbs shoot to me. Under other circumstances, she would be pretty, with her brown, almost black hair, and dark chocolate-colored eyes, but her eyes are sunken in with blueish dark circles under them. Her cheeks are hollow, making her facial structure look sharp. Her hair I’m sure was once shiny, but it hangs around her head in dull tangled clumps.

“Help.” Her hoarse voice escapes between her blue lips.

Her voice brings me back to reality and I jump into action. I know I need to stop the bleeding, so I grab the discarded bedsheet that hangs haphazardly across the end of the table. I ball it up with my hands and press it down hard to the wound on her stomach. “You’re going to be okay.” I know I’m lying even when I say the words, but I don’t know what else to say to her.

Her lips lift slightly in a shaky smile. “No. I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Help is coming, they should be here any minute.” That’s not a lie, but I know she’s too far gone for them to do anything for her. But I apply harder pressure, blood soaking the white sheet, I don’t know how she has any blood left in her body. There issomuch blood on the floor.

“It’s okay,” she assures me like I’m the one who needs the reassurance.

“I just have to stop the bleeding.” I don’t say it to her, I’m talking to myself now. A wave of determination washing over me, I want to save this woman. I want her to be able to walk away from this nightmare like the others I’ve helped escape. She deserves to live after the shit she’s been through here.

“They took her,” she whispers, her voice barely audible.

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