Page 55 of Wolf Fated
With all my might, I jerked on the chain, but the stake didn’t even wiggle. I curled into a ball trying to get the pain to ebb enough for me to think.
Stephen left me alone and I didn't know if he was gone for good or if he was coming back to do something worse. So, as quickly as I could manage, I stood up clutching my stomach. I pulled on the gate, but I already knew that it wasn't gonna budge.
It was useless, but I had to try. My fingers brushed over the lock, and I wished again that I had taken safe cracking or a lock picking class that would have come in very handy right now.
I jerked again on the chain, hoping to get free. But the damn thing wouldn’t move.
Stephen marched back with a stuffed duffle bag. He set it on the ground, pulling out a pile of clothes in his arms. I watched bewildered as he laid out my old clothes in a wide, spiraling circle around me. One I recognized from the night before we left for Vegas, and I had spilled spaghetti sauce on the front of my white dress. Had he raided my room?
"What are you doing?"
"This is to make sure that your guys can come find you when I'm ready for them."
My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach.He really does know their werewolves.It wasn't a question. There was no way anyone human would be able to pick up a scent from old laundry like that. What I didn't know was why he wanted them here. Did he think that something had happened between me and the men? Was this a fit of jealous rage that I'd had sex with them while engaged him?
"Stephen, I didn't sleep with them." Well, not in the sexual intercourse way. Not that I hadn't wanted to. Not that I hadn't thought about it every time they looked at me, every time they touched me or kissed me.
He looked up at me with a shrug. "I don't care if you fucked them or not. This isn't about that."
I winced when a fresh pain of nausea rolled through me. "Then why? What are you doing? What is all this for?"
"It's like a double jeopardy." He grinned at me in a way that made my skin cold.
"What are you talking about?" Stephen wasn't making any sense and it was scaring me more than everything he'd done so far. "Double jeopardy is when a person can't get convicted of a crime twice." Oh God, was that what he was going to do? Somehow kill me and blame Axel, Drake, and Nathan?
"Whatever it's called." He waved a hand like he was shooing an annoying fly. "I'll get double-winnings for a bitch like you."
His words stung. "I don't understand."
Stephen finished laying out the last item of clothing, a pair of my underwear I'd thought I'd lost at his house. Had he kept them for this?
"I know about your lovers, Brookie. I know what they are, and I know what you all are. Do you think it was by chance that I found you alone in their mansion? I had a tracker device on your phone, but their system jammed the signal until today. Then I scoped out the place with heat-seeking goggles and found only yours inside." His grin widened. "Those bastards will pay anything to get you back. And I intend to collect double the money. Cash from them for what they owe me, and the humiliation they put me through in that stupid game of theirs. How they took you from me, turning you into a slut."
"No, I—"
"Shut up!" His face turned beet red and clenched his fists before shaking his head. “When I sent them the information about you including your sizes and photos, they didn’t believe you were real. Had to set up the game to bring you to show I wasn’t bluffing before I could spring the trap.”
His gleeful glare showed what he was really like on the inside. I could see now that when he was with me before the poker game, he’d worn a mask.
“You looked so much like your fucking dad that I couldn’t believe my luck. And so hungry for love that you believed anything I told you.” He chuckled.
Ice grew in the pit of my stomach. “How do you know about my father?”
“With my dad’s dying breath, he blew your bastard father’s head off. Can’t heal from that.” He rolled down the window and spat. “I would never marry you, but I had to get those assholes wanting to do anything to get you."
"So you lied." I lifted my chin, blinking back tears that weren't worth the cost of this loser. And he was following in his father’s footsteps. I hated him. I hated him for everything he’d done to me and hated his father for taking mine away merely because he was a werewolf.
"Exactly. Our engagement, the wedding date and location was all planned out. A setup." His chest puffed out like he was damn peacock. “Know how you can tell a full-blooded werewolf?”
I didn’t even bother to answer him.
“The eyes. They aren’t natural colors—which most people don’t realize with all the contacts and such. Shine a light in their eyes, even from far away, and it reflects just like an animal's.”
My skin grew ice cold. A month ago, Stephen had gone to Vegas for a business trip he said. When he got back, he said he found the perfect place for us to get married and proposed. So glad I didn’t marry Creepmiester3000.
"What do you want now? Money?" I snorted. That was Stephen's only love. I could see now that he never truly loved me. "They'll pay you whatever you want."
"Oh, I know they will." He pulled out his cellphone, snapping a picture of me. "And I'll get more money from the other hunters I invited to this shindig when they pay me for a chance at killing all four of you—all four of you fucking werewolves."
