Page 59 of Enspelled

KEANE

There’s no gradual awakening.

One second I’m dead to the world, and the next I’m on my feet, a snarl on my lips, my hands shifting to claws and the knowledge someone is going to die.

Painfully.

I sweep the large, open room with unfinished walls and a wooden staircase leading up. From the faint sounds overhead—faroverhead—I’m in a basement, and from the overlapping wolf scents, I know just whose basement I’m in.

And I’m alone.

My eyes go to one side of the wall as I draw Briar’s scent deep into my lungs. But I wasn’t alone before. Briar was here. Recently.

I shift my claws back to hands and prowl closer to the place I smell her most strongly. Crouching, I search the area. No blood, and no stink of terror. There’s nothing to suggest she was hurt, at least not physically.

The only blood I scent is mine, but it’s so faint that it must have been from the blow that knocked me out. What I’m smelling is old, dried blood on my skin.

But Briar is soft and easy to scare. When I remember how terrified she was after I’d kidnapped her, I know it wouldn’t take Liam much effort to do the same.

A growl rumbles from my throat, and I rise before crossing the space toward the wooden staircase.

It’s dark enough that someone would have had to either guide Briar up the stairs or, if she was unconscious, carry her.

The wooden staircase creaks as I thunder up them, only to jerk to a stop at the sight of steel bars blocking the wooden door. A shifter cage. That’s what this place is. Steel doesn’t hurt us, but the solid stuff like what I’m seeing is strong.

I could break through it… eventually, but with the five scents I’m picking up on the other side, I doubt my guards are going to stand there and wait for me to break out.

But Briar is out there.

And then I remember the stupid fucking stone I got from the witch.

What if it stops Briar from shifting, and Liam thinks she’s lying when she says that she can’t?

I stare at the door as another thought enters my mind.

They had a thing once, and since I didn’t smell a female shifter on Liam when he cornered me in the grocery store parking lot, maybe this is what he always wanted. Briar as his mate.

And now that she can shift…

My wolf growls.

In my mind, a vision of them takes shape. It isn’t my hands gripping Briar’s hips as she straddles me in the truck, but Liam’s, and the air sultry with her arousal isn’t because she wants me, but him.

It’s his hands shoving his pants aside before he—

Snarling, I grip the iron bars and pull. Metal screams as a furious roar bursts from my lips.

Mine.

Not his.

Mine.

“Hey! Calm the fuck down,” a male voice yells.

Roaring, almost lost in my fury, I fight with the bars, only distantly aware of the male voices on the other side of the door.

“What the fuck is his problem?”

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