Page 83 of Hayden's Haven
“Possibly, but it doesn’t change our situation. We don’t have enough shifters to go after Mila and Drake, Hayden. We have to choose. And I’m sorry, but it has to be Drake. Vance won’t kill Mila.”
“You don’t know that!”
“She’s strong. She’ll hold on as long as she has to.”
“That’s just it, Damien. She isn’t strong.” Hell, did he just say that? Did he actually say his Mila wasn’t strong? No wonder she was afraid to tell him. He may have not actively said anything against weak shifters, he was as conditioned as she was to think weak abilities meant weak mind, heart, and soul.
Tess was right. The damn terms, the whole damn system of referring to someone as a strong or weak shifter had to go. His Mila had weak abilities, but she wasn’t weak in any other sense of the word. She was as strong in heart and spirit as anyone Hayden had ever known, stronger considering what she had survived.
Hell. . . Hayden had pushed her away, disposed of her like she had no worth, like the past few weeks with her, the touches, the intimacy, the laughter, had meant nothing at all. Now she was in the hands of a maniac, a shifter who’d make her suffer and then probably kill her.
“We don’t split our forces,” Hayden said, the answer coming to him. “You need to send as many shifters as you can to Montana. From what Truman said, he’s reinforced his borders and it will be a hell of a fight getting in to find her.”
“That’s if she’s there at all. My guess is Drake,” Damien said. “You’re too close to consider your brother as an option, but hell, Hayden, with everything else that’s happened with the DSA taking Liam’s pack hostage and the mass murders committed with the HEV, my instincts tell me Drake has her. This is just one more twisted attempt to lure you to him. We have to take as many shifters as we can to Drake’s pack. We’ll find her there and get Drake at the same time.
“And if she’s up North? She won’t last long with a shifter we beat up and humiliated on account of her. He’ll kill her, Damien. I can’t take that risk, and I can’t get in there alone.
“What are you saying?”
“You take as many shifters as we can spare from the pack and go North. I’m going to challenge Drake. One way or another, I will stop my brother from hurting anyone else.”
Damien nodded.
“Bring my girl home for me, Damien. I’m counting on you.”
“Done. Just try to stay alive, Hayden. I really don’t want to have to break in a new second.”
Chapter Eighteen
MILA
Vance shoved Mila into a bank of snow. “Stay there,” he ordered.
Mila was cold, wet, and bruised. Once they’d cleared Damien’s territory, Vance had taken his anger out on her. ‘For the beating I received in your lover’s pack’, he had said. There was always an excuse. If Hayden were here. . . No, she couldn’t think like that. He wasn’t here, and he wasn’t coming for her. No one was. She needed to be smart about what she did, namely not cause any trouble while she looked for a way to escape.
A man Mila didn’t recognize emerged from the cover of the trees. He was tall, with blonde hair like Vance’s except it was thick and wavy. His muscles were nothing to laugh at either. The only oddity was the missing pinkie on his left hand.
“Like what you see, sweet thing?” the shifter asked when he caught her looking at him.
Mila quickly averted her eyes.
“How much for her, Vance?”
“Vance, no!” Mila shouted, but neither of them even bothered looking at her. She was nothing more than a prize, goods to be sold. That’s all she’d ever been, a commodity. Except to Hayden. He had cared about her, truly cared about her, and she hadn’t had the courage to trust him with the truth.
“She’s not for sale, Travis.”
Vance hadn’t even growled. This shifter, whoever he was, was familiar to him and not a threat.
“Not even for the position as second?” Travis asked, his eyes washing over Mila once again. “Think about it, we could be together again, like old times.”
“My situation has changed. I’m already second. Our second didn’t survive the virus. Never quite got the warning to stay away when the virus hit.”
Travis grinned. “Quite convenient.”
“You know, it really was. Sometimes things just fall into place. I mean, removing the posted quarantine signs before he returned was so simple. No blood on my hands. After that, I got to stay inside and fuck my girl until she snuck off when I was sleeping. Dumb bitch went to treat some of the sick and ended up getting sick with the virus herself. I had to take off for a week until the virus had run its course through the camp. Nothing to do but drink and find some human sluts in town. Boring as hell. The moment you put one of those females in her place, they go running to the police accusing you of battery or some such shit. Too much trouble.”
Vance ran his hand down Mila’s hair, wrapping it around his hand and pulling it hard. She yelped. “This one I have trained. She’s not much trouble, usually. Though I think she picked up some bad habits fucking a shifter at Black’s pack.”
