Page 38 of My Fugitive Wolf
"I got them," Leo replied.
While they continued to take apart the desk, Kellen worked his way around, trying to keep steady on the flooring that tilted on its side, pulling Samara with him.
"If you were a safe, where would you hide?" he whispered, even though there was no one around to hear.
Suppressing a cough that tickled her throat the farther into the wreckage they climbed, she could only think about what she'd seen in the movies. "Aren't they usually covered by a painting or behind a bookshelf or something?"
"I can't see Josiah having any kind of appreciation for artwork or literature." Kellen started to pull at a plank that fell loose from a bearing wall that managed to survive the flames.
"Yeah, neither can I," she agreed.
"Where did he keep you when you were here?"
"I honestly don't remember. I was drugged and unconscious through a lot of it. I don't remember when they unchained me and removed me from the cage. I just woke up in a room with um, your mother. She just pointed to a pile of clothing and told me to get dressed and said I was to carry out a set of responsibilities every day or there would be consequences."
"Do you know why you were drugged?"
"That's the confusing part. Whatever he was doing with me, he was doing while I was unconscious. When I was in the cage, I would wake up hours later, sometimes with welts on my body, other times with shallow cuts. There was even one time I could see the bruising from what looked like needle marks in my arm. He made sure I had edible food, a couple of buckets of water—one to drink and one to wash, but after I shifted that first time, he looked—I don't know, almost disappointed. As if my wolf shadow hadn't been what he was expecting. It didn’t satisfy him. I expected him to go into a rage and beat the living hell out of me. I'd hear him doing it to others through the walls, so I can't imagine why he didn't hit me. Instead, I was drugged, pulled out of the cage, given some clothing, and put to work in the house."
"Doing what?"
"Cleaning, cooking, fetching things for the rest of the pack. I expected to be raped by all of them, but that didn't happen. Taunt me, yes. Shove me around, of course. Stuff you would expect in the hallways of a high school, but nothing worse than that."
"He wasn't done with you but keeping you in the cage might have been inconvenient for whatever it was he was doing." Kellen motioned her back down the plank. Once back on the firmer first floor, he sat down on the ground, and she followed him. She tried to rub off some of the soot from her hands onto her jeans, but that only made things worse.
"I'm lost," Kellen confessed. "If we can't find anything here that can give us a clue, then I don't know what to do about any of this."
Even though she wanted to forget her imprisonment, Samara forced herself to review every second she could remember. "You've told me from the beginning that the only way two wolf shadows will accept each other is if they are both of the same status: omega and omega, beta and beta."
Kellen looked down at his lap. "Yes. That's correct."
She could already feel his regret over giving into their mutual desire last night. It hurt like a needle slammed into her gut, but she had to push past that for the moment. He had to hear what she had to say. "Then the only reason I can think of for the Riverstone Pack to not try to molest me beyond pushing and insults is because my wolf shadow was an alpha."
The lump in her throat tightened as she watched Kellen wince at her words. He rocked back and forth for a moment. "I think you're right. If Josiah knew you were an alpha, but never told you, then there wouldn't be any way for you to know unless one of the other wolves told you. None of them would dare say anything without Josiah's permission."
"And there's no way you can have two alphas in one pack, I assume."
He tilted his head to the side. "You can't have two alphas in one pack who aren't spouses. That's asking for a perpetual civil war within a pack with the alphas constantly challenging each other to dominance fights. Even if those fights are regulated and not to the death, I just can't see a pack surviving in that kind of atmosphere."
Another thought pinged. "So, it doesn't have to be a male and a female alpha? It can be two males or two female alphas so long as they're married?”
"Leo's more in touch with what happens in other packs than I am. He has a whole network of contacts across the west, stretching from Calgary to Santa Ana. He's mentioned a couple of packs that have same-sex alphas. I don't know the details, but you could ask him after we're done here."
Now he was back to brooding and deliberately not looking at her. Frankly, she wasn't feeling much better. It would have been better not to tell him of her suspicions. After all, she had no proof. Kellen, however, wasn't stupid. He would have come to the same conclusion on his own.
"Hey, Kel?" Stephen called from below. "I think we found something."
By the time she and Kellen made their way back to where the displaced desk was, Leo was on Stephen's shoulders as he poked at what was left of the flooring of the second floor that hadn't fallen through.
"What the hell are you two doing?" Kellen pulled her back when she tried to get closer to see what was up, literally. "You don't know what's above your head. What if it's something?—"
Even as he said it, the rest of the roof fell. Only their quick reflexes saved them from getting crushed under a heavy chunk of metal that almost landed on their heads.
"Damn it! You two are going to be the death of me." She'd never seen Kellen look so angry. Not just angry but scared as hell. She suspected if she wasn't there, he'd have said a lot more.
"Well, at least we found the safe." It was the only thing she could say that might get the murderous look off Kellen's face. "Now we just have to figure out how to open it."
"I have some equipment in the van that could help with that." Stephen coughed again.
