Page 7 of Taming the Alpha's Daughter

“Why is my guest looking for you? How does he know your name?” he asks, crushing my windpipe; I claw at his hands, my mouth opens needing air and I can feel my face changing color.

“You fucking always ruin everything. Did one of my men give you a phone? Fucking answer me!” he screams in my face. How can I answer when I can’t even breathe? Nova tries to shove forward yet is too weak to even help me.

He shakes me, my head rocking back and forth before he yanks me from the tub. He starts dragging me back to the basement. My surroundings blur as I try to take in what used to be my old home. The door opens, and I thrash, not wanting to go back to the basement.

“Alpha, they just pulled up out front!” someone calls.

“Fuck!” my brother snarls. The next minute I am airborne as I am shoved backward down the stairs into the basement. My body bounces off the steps before it hits the dirt at the bottom.

“One fucking word, and you die!” he snaps, slamming the basement door. Groaning, I crawl to my hands and knees, the sounds of distant voices and my brother’s footsteps on the floorboards above are barely audible with the ringing in my ears.

I cough, the metallic taste of my blood fills my mouth, and a warm trickle of blood is running from my hairline down my face. Everything hurts. My bones ache, skin aches, my soul aches.

Crawling, I move toward my cage and the little safety it offers. “What are you doing?” Shadow snarls at me and I lift my gaze to the corner. Her eyes peer back at me.

“This is your chance, fucking run!” she snaps at me. I shake my head.

“Fucking run!” she roars, and her tone makes me shake.

“He’ll kill me!” I whimper.

“You’ve been dead for years, what do you think he will do to you when he comes down here, fucking run. Save yourself.”

“I can’t leave you here,” I whimper, crawling closer when she starts laughing. I stop not liking the manic tone to it. It sets my skin ablaze with goosebumps and the hair on the back of my neck rises.

“Go, now! The idiot forgot to lock the door; I never heard it click!” She laughs harder. I try to move toward her when Nova lurches forward at her words, regaining control.

“We can’t leave her!” I cry out to Nova.

“She’s right this is our one chance while he is distracted!”

“You can’t even shift!”

“No, but I can run,” Nova tells me before shoving me back to the darkness of my mind.

“No, let me see, let me forward.”

“You won't want to see this!” Nova tells me when I am plunged into utter darkness.

ChapterSeven

“No!” I scream and claw to come forward, not wanting to be back in the dark. If we are escaping, I want to see. Nova’s newfound zest for freedom keeps me secure in our mind, trapped in the abyss only to listen to the thumping of her heartbeat, and feel the pain she ignores from shifting. She can’t block out the thunderous sounds of a chase that echoes around us. My mind wanders back to Shadow, who is still trapped back there in her cage, a cage I know she won’t escape for a long while since we have run. One we will be locked in if we are caught, that’s if he doesn’t kill us this time.

“Nova please!” I plead, unable to handle the darkness after what feels like forever of her running.

Knowing what she is attempting to do is almost more tortuous than imagining the things my brother has let happen to our unwilling body. Hours could pass, seconds, years in this confinement and I would not know otherwise. Trapped in here, time becomes irrelevant, lost in the nothingness of my thoughts, lost in the all-consuming worry of if this will be the last time I breathe, feel. Lost in thought, wondering will this darkness be the last thing I see.

Nova grunts, her speed picks up, and she howls loudly. “Nova, what is it?” I yell at her.

“I tripped one of their boogie traps.”

“What sort?”

“Wolfsbane, I'm fine. I can keep going,” she says, shoving me back out.

But when I feel her start to weaken, I know something has gone horribly wrong, especially when I am suddenly given glimpses of our scenery.

Nova groans and her pain rattles through me, her back leg throbbing to its own beats and she snarls angrily. Greenery makes its way through the veil that separates us, although I can tell it is luminescent. I shove with all my might, finding very little resistance when suddenly my bones start snapping as we are forced to shift back.

---