Page 47 of Broken Pregnant Mate
“Ash,” I say, voice shaking. “That’s not—that was not Oren.”
“What?”
She barely gets the word out before an arm reaches through the shattered window of the car, wrapping around me and pulling me through. A jagged piece of broken glass gouges my arm, and I scream again as Vern pulls me flush to his body, breathing hard.
All at once, I feel the panic leave my body, replaced with full-throated dread. Once again, Vern has me. My body goes limp in his arms, and I feel him laugh.
Ash crawls out of the other side just as Oren—not Oren—comes walking down the side of the hill, laughing. Before our eyes, he changes, features melting back into one of the ugly, greasy men in Vern’s group.
“Emaline,” Ash says, swinging back around to me, her eyes wild and open, bursting with life. “You need tofight!”
The look on her face, the knowledge that she cares about me—that now, I have a family, a wholepackthat cares about me—spurs me to action.
I shift in Vern’s arms.
My wolf is small, and I’ve never trained to fight, but shifting is enough to surprise him, to make him let go of me. Ash lunges at him just as I break free, and I watch, in awe, as she actually manages to land blows on him, taking him down.
He’s nothing compared to her, even though she’s weaker.
I’m trying to figure out what I can do to help her when two other men appear, reaching for me. I try to duck under them, figuring I can evade—or maybe run?—but one of them produces a syringe and starts walking toward Vern and Ash.
“Ash!” I scream, trying to warn her. Despite how small I am, and despite the fact that I have no training whatsoever, I launch myself at the guy, wrapping my body around him and trying to do anything—clawing at his eyes, ripping his hair—to stop him.
And for a second, it works.
But there are too many of them, and after a second, I feel the sickening prick of a needle puncturing my thigh, sliding in, the warm, oozing sensation of something slipping right into my veins.
“No,” I whisper, watching as, just a few feet away, they pin Ash down and stick her with it, too.
“My brother is going to rip you all limb from fucking limb!” she spits, her face dusty with dirt, her hair wild.
“You bastard,” I hiss at Vern as he stands, Ash going still behind him. There’s blood running down his face from his fight with Ash. My words start to slur, and I feel my body loosening, muscles relaxing me into a pile of bones. “L-let her go…”
“Sorry, Emmy,” he says, not sounding sorry at all as he wipes his hand over his face, smearing the blood. “Orders are orders. Psychics are worth a lot these days.”
I open my mouth, try to tell him that Ash isn’t even a psychic. But that stuff is working through my veins, melting me.
“Aidan will kill you for this,” I manage to say as the world begins to blur around the edges.
Vern laughs, the sound distorting as the drug takes hold. “Your boyfriend will be too busy getting himself killed trying to challenge Jerrod. By then, you’ll be Mhairi’s pet fortune-teller.”
My head swims. Mary? Who the hell is Mary?
The last thing I see before darkness claims me is Ash being loaded into the back of the truck, and my phone—my last connection to Aidan, Dorian, or anyone else—being crushed under Vern’s boot.
Chapter 21 - Aidan
When the four of us stand at the edge of Badlands, preparing for the run into Grayhide territory, I’m the first to shift.
I can’t get my mind off of Emaline, off of how I left her behind. I need to run, work my body, get away from the urge to turn right around, march through town, and take her in my arms again.
Beside me, Dorian’s dark brown wolf is massive, shoulders broad and powerful. Emin’s russet-gold coat gleams like fire against the red earth, while Oren’s black fur seems to absorb the light around him, emanating that deep red undertone I saw when we went to collect the red leaves together.
Stay together, Dorian sends to us, though it’s not necessary.
Before leaving, each of us refreshed our Amanzite, having the stones reset to make sure we wouldn’t run out of charge. Oren, always keeping to himself, didn’t tell us where his Amanzite was, and didn’t ask to have it replaced.
As we run, the mesas rise like sentinels around us, their layered sides striped with rust-red and amber. Our paws kick up dust as we weave between towering rock formations, natural arches spanning overhead like gateways to the sky.
