Page 60 of The Alpha's Gamble
I couldn’t open my eyes, either, or speak. My autonomous functions weren’t affected, though: I could still hyperventilate. Lucky me.
Kidnapped. I’d been fuckingkidnapped, and the first thing Declan would do would be call me. No doubt they’d gotten rid of my phone. Then he’d look for me. He wouldn’t find me. And then he’d probably request—and be allowed, professional courtesy and all that—to review the security footage of me leaving the party and the path I’d followed from there.
For a brief, shining instant, I almost felt relieved. Declan would look for me, he’d see the video and know—despair squeezed my chest into a tight ball.
He’d see me looking nervous and running out of the building as if I was late. And then he’d see me walking entirely under my own power straight to where the asshole I’d been forced to kiss was standing, smiling and waiting for me. Like he would’ve if we’d made a prior arrangement to meet there, in fact. Lastly, he’d see me making out with the guy, grinding against him and getting into the car totally willingly.
Declan would think I was cheating on him. And he’d meant to get rid of me anyway. He’d see this and wash his hands of me immediately, go right back to the party and drink until he forgot my name.
At least he wouldn’t be going home with Walter, since Walter was here, with me, kidnapping and probably murdering me. That thought brought me less comfort than I’d hoped.
And speaking of. “He’s awake.” Walter’s too-smooth voice, which paradoxically managed to grate on my every last nerve. “Sit him up. I want him functional for now.”
As I felt hands on me, presumably fucking khaki-guy’s, the magic binding me released a little bit too, enough for me to open my eyes and unkink my neck. Opening my eyes, my goal for the past several minutes, turned out to be highly overrated. I got a great view of khaki-asshole sneering at me, Walter turning around in his seat to glare at me with beady, focused hatred, and nondescript Nevada scenery going by out the window, partially illuminated by the moon. I couldn’t see the driver except for the outline of bulky shoulders.
No other cars passed us, the road completely empty. We might’ve left Vegas on a highway, but we weren’t on one anymore, that was for sure.
It looked like the kind of place you’d go to dump a body.
I shivered.
Walter chuckled. “Don’t worry too much,Blake,” and he gave my name a poisonous emphasis, as if he hated it as much as its owner. “You won’t be frightened for long. Some alpha you are,” he spat, and I flinched, in large part because he was right. Damn him to hell and back.
Of course, once I thought about the meaning of the other thing he’d said, I didn’t care so much about not being a shining example of an alpha werewolf.
I cared a lot more about the sinister implications of “you won’t be frightened for long.” Would Walter be dropping me off at a spa to soothe my nerves? Ha. I figured I’d probably be frightened until I died, which wouldn’t be long from now.
Oddly, confronting it directly inside my mind didn’t make me feel any worse. Had I gone into some kind of shock? I only felt a dull throb of horror, not the shrieking panic I might’ve expected. It seemed inevitable, somehow. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t care enough.
I stared blankly at Walter, now able to control my mouth and vocal cords but unwilling to reply to him.
Anyway, what did I have to say?No, please, don’t?
Walter’s horrible, creepy smile grew and grew as he watched me lie there, helpless and despairing. He was enjoying every second of it.
I blinked at him, his image wavering.
He might becausingevery second of it.
This complete lassitude that was trying to take me over, this numbness in the face of my own kidnapping and imminent murder…this couldn’t possibly be natural. Organic. This wasn’tme. I’d reacted more strongly than this to getting denied a line of gambling credit, for fuck’s sake!
What would Declan do if this were him? He’d be fighting. Plotting. Snarling.
Declan was a real alpha, though. The kind that my family held up as the true archetype, even though all of them—with the probable exception of Brook, who’d mated a low-class alpha with no breeding whatsoever who simply made him happy—would look down on him for his tattoos and his Irish heritage and his blunt way of speaking.
Not me, though—no real alphas here. I was pathetic.
But no. Fuck no. I hitched myself up in my seat as best I could, wiggling my hips to push myself more upright than khaki-fucker had left me. I needed to face this like a man and an alpha. Like anyone with something better than jelly for a spine, basically. Prove everyone wrong.
Prove myself wrong.
So what first? How to go on the offensive? Especially when, now that I’d identified and analyzed it, I could feel Walter’s magic dragging me down like concrete galoshes of the soul, to wildly flail for an appropriate metaphor.
Gods. My brain kept going in meandering circles rather than focusing.
Part of the shitty magic too, no doubt.
I had to shoot my shot at some point, and the stretching silence seemed like a decent enough opportunity. Now or never. “Declan’s going to come after you. Even if he doesn’t come after me in time to stop you, he’ll never forgive you.”
