Page 29 of Take Me
Tracey was waiting for me at her Granny’s. My chipper friend was exceptionally somber today. Whatever they had found out wasn’t good. I turned to go into Granny’s cottage and Tracey’s hand on my arm stopped me. “You don’t want to go in there.”
I shrugged her touch off. I could smell the blood in the air, I knew what I was going to find on the other side of the door. My fingers wrapped around the brass doorknob and the door swung open. On the back wall of the home was Carden. His hands were chained up and away from his body. His legs were spread and chained to the floor. The Carden I was looking at wasn’t the Carden I had gone out with the night before. His face was a bruised and bloody mess. He was shirtless and a sheet covered the lower half of his body. I took a tentative step forward and the smells in the room assaulted me.
Blood, piss, vomit, and something else. Something that smelled much worse than the others. I covered my nose and my mouth with my hand as Granny came out of a room on the left side of the cottage. Her thick hair was pulled away from her face and she wore a plain dress. She looked like she had stepped out of the 1700s. She didn’t look at me as she spread out items on the floor in front of the wolf.
“Why is he naked?” My voice came out in a squeak. The last thing I needed to be was concerned. My fingers itched to touch the sensitive skin on my neck. It had healed enough for the bandage to come off, but it was still fresh in my mind. I shivered.
Tracey leaned against the doorway. “He wouldn’t shift back last night, even after Rafe beat him. Even after Rafe wrapped his teeth around his neck.”
Carden’s eyes were closed and his head lolled forward but a low groan came from his lips. When his eyes blinked open they were completely black. I took a step back and considered running. Considered leaving this place and all the nightmares that came with it.
Tracey’s hand on my shoulder stopped me. “Granny is going through his memories. It could take a little while. He admitted last night that he was drugged. A witch is involved and we have to find out who.”
“Why though?” My fingers finally found the spot. The spot that he had tried to bite.
“If you’re claimed, you can’t be claimed again.” The dark words came from Carden’s mouth but they were anything but Carden’s voice.
I gasped as Granny fell to the ground and started to seize. Tracey was by her side in seconds, all while Carden’s black, soulless eyes watched me. I couldn’t move or think as the beast watched me. Whoever was on the other side of those eyes used Carden’s mouth to grin. “What do you want? Why would he try to claim me?”
The grin stretched wider and terror filled me. I grasped my hands together to keep them from shaking as I faced down a monster. “To keep you from being claimed by your true mate, silly. We want a lot of things but aren’t at liberty to share them right now.”
Granny went still on the floor and the blackness leaked from Carden’s eyes. I hadn’t allowed myself to look at him, really look at him, until that moment. The piercing that had been in his brow was gone, no scar to even suggest that there had been one there. The tattoos that had snaked all over his body were nowhere to be seen either. The man hanging before me was someone else entirely. When he blinked his eyes open all I saw was green, I knew that the man I had been intrigued with was a fake.
The chains around his hands and ankles jingled as he fought consciousness. “Where am I?” Even his voice sounded different. Lighter.
Granny pulled herself from the rugged floor and wiped her hand across her brow. She clenched and unclenched her jaw while she tried to find the words.
“Carden?” My voice was soft, hesitant.
His eyes snapped to mine and fear filled them. “What happened? Where am I? Who are you?”
He didn’t remember me. His questions were those of truth. I could taste it in the air. He truly didn’t know who I was. Granny straightened her back and stepped between us.
“Carden, I need you to tell me the last thing you remember.” Her voice was hard and unyielding. She didn’t act like a woman that had just been seizing moments before. Her voice was strong, even as Tracey lingered near her, prepared to catch her if things went wrong. Tracey’s shoulders were tight, while her feet were spread in a fighting stance.
Carden blinked before he tested the chains again. “A woman told me to hold still while,” he paled and a red flush filled his cheeks. “She, um, well.” He stopped again. “We were hooking up and she told me to be still then another woman came in. I thought it was my lucky day and then there was blinding pain through my body. The other woman that had come in was standing over me, whispering words in another language and I remember thinking that I had stumbled into the wrong kink house. Is that how I got here?”
Tracey looked over her shoulder at me and took a deep breath. “We need to get Gamble on the phone. Go get Rafe."
I could see the regret in her eyes. She didn’t want to send me out to my enemy for help but I knew I didn’t have a choice. We needed more answers than what this man could give us and Tracey wasn’t going to leave her grandmother’s side. I nodded once and ran as fast as I could to the Crimson Manor.
Chapter 35
Jade Rivers
Rafe watched all of us carefully as he replayed what had happened on the phone and everything Gamble had told him. “Carden was a forced change.” He wouldn’t look at me. “A forcedclaiming.” At that admission, there was a collective gasp around the room. “A dark witch was involved with the night he was it was forced on him and took over his mind. The man has been with the Bruiser Pack for almost a year.”
Nausea swirled within my gut. The man didn’t even know. He had no idea he was a wolf and all this time had gone and he had no idea what had happened. He couldn’t remember anything. He had been forced to change and claimed in a mating bond and had zero say in the matter. He would never know his true mate now, if he even wanted that. Granny had forced herself into the tiny dark corners of his mind, but it did nothing. She couldn’t find the face of the wolf that had done all of this to him. The magic that had bound him seemed to be gone from his system but Granny wanted to make sure. She put a binding spell on his mind, whatever that meant, and released him from the chains. Someone had brought him clothes but he still hadn’t left the witch’s cottage. I didn’t blame him, he was about to have his world rocked.
I shoved my fingers through my hair while Rafe continued on with the semantics. All while he paced at the head of the dining table. The room was packed full and barely contained all of the wolves that lived within the pack.
“Because of this,” Rafe shoved his hands into his pockets. “We will no longer be letting any strangers onto pack lands. For those of you that work on pack lands with the public, you will be relocated to another job temporarily. Or we will change the borders on the land. I don’t know what to do to make this easier for all of you but I know that I must protect you. Mate Meets will no longer happen until we can get this all investigated. All pack members that are out of town or visiting other territories will be called back and undergo a quarantine period. If they want to be trusted and allowed within the pack, Granny will be looking through their thoughts and looking for magical tethers.”
I bit my lip from asking what all this meant. If she had done all of this before, would they had known Carden was possessed? I leaned back in my chair and Tracey’s hand found mine under the table. I still hadn’t pledged to be a part of this pack but I was being treated as if I had. I squeezed her hand in mine and looked to where our hands were joined. All while Rafe talked he didn’t once mention what I had told them. That they were trying to prevent me from being claimed by my true mate. He hadn’t said anything as the words had spilled from my lips. His face had gone pale and he stormed away. Tracey had been there to hug me fiercely and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed her and her strength or I was never going to survive.
The walk to my car seemed to take forever. The forest was alive again and I couldn’t stop myself from listening to every detail I had missed before. The loud sound of my boots crunching against the gravel or the birds chittering to each other in the trees. And even though I had been able to pick up on those sounds before I was turned. It was different now. It was louder and had more feeling, more depth. Even though Rafe was light on his feet, I could hear him approach behind me. I paused at my car door.
“I know I have no right to ask this of you, but I would like it if you could stay on pack lands until we can figure all of this out. It’s directly related to you and something isn’t sitting right with me. I can’t protect you out there.” He sighed and closed his eyes and for a moment- a brief one- I wanted to reach out and touch him. Comfort him. But I didn’t. I kept my hands to myself and leaned against the side of my car.
