Page 48 of Unbelievable Faith
Chapter 21
Luna woke up slowly,her head aching and her stomach churning. She had to slam her eyes back shut and take a couple of deep breaths to steady herself before she tried again. This time when she opened her eyes, she squinted and looked around, trying to figure out where she was and why it felt like her skull was about to crackopen.
She shut her eyes again and despite the ache, tried to think. The last thing she remembered she’d been running through the woods. She’d intended to go and visit Zoey. She’d promised Michael she would be safe and that she would stay on the path but she hadn’t. Her wolf had seen a rabbit and she’d gone chasing after it. Luna hadn’t stopped her, not until it was too late and the danger had seeped in past her excitement to chill her to thebone.
It came rushing back to herthen.
The rustling in the nearby brush. The hiss of the arrow as it left the crossbow. The searing pain as it tore through her thigh and dropped her to the ground. Then she remembered the tall, lithe woman with the jet black hair and burning gold eyes that had stepped from the bushes to snarl at her and then, when Luna had tried to crawl away, had slammed the butt of the crossbow into her forehead, knocking herout.
Sasha. Luna felt a rush of bile climb her throat and had to close her eyes and force it back down. Sasha had somehow survived the Moirae attack and she’d come after her. She’d shot her and if the anger and hatred in her eyes before she’d knocked Luna out had been any indication, she intended to killher.
Only she was still alive, for now, which meant she had to figure a way out of here andfast.
With what felt like a rush of relief, Luna managed to glance around enough to take in her surroundings. She wasn’t back in that awful basement. Not this time. From her position on the ground with her hands tied behind her back what she could see wasn’tmuch.
She was in a small cabin that stank of disuse. The floor was dusty and a sheen of leaves, dirt and twigs littered the corners. There was a large plaid couch that looked older than she was directly in front of her. On the small, scarred coffee table was the scent of the blood that she couldn’t get out of hernose.
Piles of bandages and ointments, wraps and oils were tossed about haphazardly. It was both a good sign and a confusing one. If Sasha was injured, it might give Luna the edge she needed. But if Sasha was hurt, why wasn’t she healing? It had been almost a month since the Moirae attack. If she’d sustained injuries escaping she should be fully healed by now. So had she been injured since? By one of the scout teams that had come back hurt after combing thewoods?
Luna’s head hurt too badly to make sense of it all. She closed her eyes again and focused on trying to breathe through the pain. She strained her ears, listening, trying to figure out as much about her surroundings as shecould.
Birds chirped outside. There was the usual rustle of small animals in the woods, confirming that she must still be in the forest. But it was the sound of footsteps that alerted her she wasn’t alone. Footsteps going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, as the person paced and mumbled to themselves so low that she couldn’t make out thewords.
The pacing was nearby, but it didn’t sound like it was in the same room so Luna squirmed a little, testing the bindings on her wrists. It was tight and sharp-edged, cutting into her skin, and she deduced that she must be bound with zip-ties, clever really, and no doubt part of the supplies that had been stolen during the last raid on the Crescent pack. She pulled at them with all her strength but all she succeeded in doing was slicing her skin open and she bit off a cry of pain that would have attracted the attention of herkidnapper.
Luna lay still for another moment, trying to get her bearings and figure out a plan. She needed a plan. She had to get out of here. Sasha had always hated her but the way she’d looked at Luna in those woods left little doubt she despised her now. The scar on her bicep from the other woman tingled with the memory of the pain she’d enjoyed inflicting and this time, Luna knew she would doworse.
Muchworse.
She couldn’t wait around for someone to save her this time. Michael would come. He would find her, eventually. The mate bond would lead him to her but that would take time. It was more of a general sense of direction than pinpoint GPS. Besides, if Sasha was as smart as she’d always claimed she was then she’d have covered their tracks and their scent making tracking them almost impossible. Time wasn’t something Luna had and she couldn’t spent a second more of it lying on the floor, cursing herself for getting into this situation and hoping someone would come to rescueher.
It was up to her to saveherself.
Another glance around told her that there was a window nearby and since she couldn’t see the door, or the place where her captor was pacing and mumbling, Luna rolled to her side and pulled her legs up to her chest. Her thigh stung like a bitch, reminding her of the arrow that had gone through it, but it was healing. She couldn’t be sure how long she’d been out but the hole in her skin had already closed and she could feel the muscle beneath knitting itself back together. She’d been out a while then, she supposed, which meant that Michael and the others knew she wasmissing.
She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a very bad thing. She didn’t want any of her family or friends rushing in here to save her and getting themselves injured or worse. She wasn’t even sure why Sasha had kept her alive for this long unless that’s what she wanted, to lure the others in, and Luna refused to let thathappen.
With a little bit of maneuvering she could scoot herself across the floor, though she had to bite her lip to keep the yelp of pain in her throat. Her leg ached and stung with the movement but she pushed through, using all of her strength to inch her way across the dirty hardwood floor towards the wall with the window. She was breathing hard by the time she reached the wall and used it as leverage to sit upright but as soon as she did, shecringed.
Through her own labored breathing and the distraction of the pain, she hadn’t heard Sasha come into the room. Or, rather, now that she was upright and could see the rest of the space, she realized Sasha had been in the room all along, she’d just been on the other side of the one-room cabin. Now she was standing just behind the couch, her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted in a cruel sneer as she watched Luna struggle to a sittingposition.
There was a time, back when they were kids, that Luna had been jealous of Sasha’s beauty. She could have been a model. Tall and thin with jet black tresses that were always perfectly straight, cascading over her shoulders in a silky waterfall that had never seen an ounce of frizz, Luna had longed for that kind of easy beauty. She’d envied the exotic way Sasha’s hazel eyes tilted up at the corners and the delicate nose and chin that were all perfectlyproportioned.
Next to her, Luna had always felt plain, messy and too boyish. She constantly fought her naturally curly hair in the Louisiana humidity. Her nose was too wide and her mouth was too plump. Her eyes were just a plain ol’ basic brown. It had taken a long time for Luna to come to terms with the body she’d been given and even longer still to appreciateit.
But now, mated to Michael, she saw the things he loved when she looked in the mirror. He said her curls were adorable. He thought her mouth was sexy. He said her breasts were the perfect size to fit his hands. In fact, he said her entire body was perfect, made to fit against him in every way because she’d been made forhim.
He made her feel beautiful and loved, cherished and adored, and now, looking at Sasha she didn’t see the gorgeous girl she’d known in the past but instead a mean, angrystranger.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” The other womanhissed.
Luna narrowed her eyes, “Home,actually.”
“Hell maybe. Not home.” Sasha snorted, her claws digging into the couch as she leaned over it menacingly, “You know I had a plan for you? I had this whole thing worked out. Been casing that Moirae compound for weeks just waiting for my way in and then you screwed everything up. You always screw everything up, Luna! First with Leo and then with Mad and now this, well this is the last thing you screw up forme!”
The woman was crazy. Luna worried her bottom lip. Instead of her usually sleek appearance she was rumpled and disheveled. Her hair was dirty, with twigs in it, and dirt streaked her face. Her eyes were wild, flashing to gold and back too quickly for her to be in any sort of control. Her claws were still extended, cutting into the old couch, and Luna wished there wasn’t a wall behind her. She really wanted to put more distance between her and thiswoman.
She’d always wondered if Sasha wasn’t a few cards short of a full deck. She was wild. She could practically be feral. She’d had trouble learning to control her wolf and even when she had, she’d lashed out at the slightest provocation. But from the looks of it, she’d truly gone off the deep end this time and Luna didn’t there was anything comingback
