Black Wolf's Revenge (11 page)

When Marshall’s fist was centimeters away from her, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut but nothing happened. Marshall’s weight disappeared off of her.

She cautiously opened one eye, but he was gone. Her vision blurred from the lack of oxygen, but a man carried Marshall by the throat and slammed him up against the wall by the door with a sickly thud. She could only see his back, but it was enough. “Grey,” she rasped. Despite all of her faults, he’d come for her. Her body betrayed her, pressing against the chain to be closer to him.

Marshall hit the wall and the entire room shook. Pieces of ceiling dislodged and fell onto the floor near her feet. Grey held him in the air and Marshall flailed. He kicked at Grey while he clawed at the hand that was cutting off his air. Grey grabbed Marshall’s leg with his free hand, wedged it against his knee and snapped the man’s leg at the femur like a toothpick. The audible snap of the bone came a moment before Marshall let out a shriek of pain, high and grating.

“Oh my gosh,” she whispered.

Grey slowly turned around, looked at her with feral, empty eyes. She had been mistaken that it was him. His gaze churned in angry glowing slits and his face was contorted in a rage that terrified her.

Grey wasn’t home. Only Wolf remained.

Grey snapped his head back around so fast he blurred. One second she was drowning in his fury-filled eyes, and then she was looking at the back of his head. His cheeks widened with a smile as he snapped the man’s neck with his bare hand and threw the body to the side. He stood, panting through his clenched jaw and glaring at his kill. His muscles were tensed into stillness.

“Grey? I was so scared you were dead.” Fear and shock were thick in her voice and it trembled like a flame, but it couldn’t be helped. “There’s another one. He’ll be back soon.” She searched his face for understanding but found nothing recognizable.

“Did they touch you?” His voice came out a throaty snarl, each word sounding odd behind gritted teeth.

It hurt to frown. Could he not see her face? Her nose had stopped bleeding for the most part, but she could feel all of the caked blood from everything that happened. Her face had its own pulse it hurt so badly. Of course they’d touched her.

“I mean,” he clarified, “did they
touch
you.”

Her eyes widened with comprehension. “Not yet,” she whispered.

Grey’s nostrils flared. “I can smell him on you.”

Under his scrutiny, she wanted to look away so badly. Wolf scared her, now more than ever. Turning, he closed the door and dragged Marshall’s body to the far corner where he wouldn’t immediately been seen by John when he walked in. Grey took his shirt off. It was bloodied from torn stitches and soaking gauze, but it smelled a hell of a lot better than the rank rag she wore. His hand was steady as he offered it to her and she draped it over her lap. Her neck was exhausted from hefting the chain and she set her face back down on the edge of the mattress. He kneeled down in front of her and laid his hand against her ear. The tiny patch of flesh was the only undamaged area on her face. She leaned into his hand and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Could he hear the inky depths of despair in her words? Could he hear the truth in them?

“Don’t you dare apologize for what those monsters did to you.” Gold-flecked eyes studied the lock on the collar and as he gave it a test pull, she groaned as it dug into her chaffed neck.

Balanced on the balls of his shoes, he rocked from side to side, intense gaze focused on the metal. His jeans smelled of his blood, and the bandages that crisscrossed his torso were bathed in crimson. The muscles of his arms flexed as he rested them on his knees, and his jaw twitched under the pressure of his clenched teeth. A lock of hair had fallen forward, and she wished for the courage to press it out of his face so she could see all of him. She’d never seen a more beautiful sight in her entire life.

“John has a key. The one who is coming back.”

“John Gates. He’s the one responsible for this, isn’t he?” At her nod, he promised, “I’ll get it. I’ll get you out of this. Wade will be here any minute and he can help clean you up. I don’t even know where to start,” he said, hands fluttering over her face but never touching it, as if he was afraid of hurting her more.

“They told me they’d killed you. This whole time, I thought you were dead.” Her voice hitched and she swallowed against the urge to sob her relief that he still existed.

The corners of his mouth turned up, but the smile never quite reached his eyes. “Not yet.”

A door slammed upstairs and John called Marshall’s name. With uncanny speed, Grey looked up and his nostrils flared as he put a finger to his lips. Slowly and silently, he backed into the corner Marshall’s body lay in. The light had gone out on that side of the room, and through the darkness, two glowing golden eyes watched her, their reflection eerily appearing and disappearing in cadence with the swaying of the light bulb.

“Marshall, where are you?” John yelled. “Someone kicked in the door to my fucking house!” John came down the stairs, keys jangling in his hands. Morgan’s heart raced as the door handle turned and the door opened.

“Marshall?” John’s gaze fell on her mutilated face and anger lit his features.

Morgan kept her gaze only at him, careful not to look to the back corner and give Grey away. “Have you heard the rumor about Demon Wolf?” she asked coolly, keeping his attention on her.

John sniffed the air and looked uneasy. He stayed frozen in place, no doubt feeling hot breath on the back of his neck and hearing the quiet rumble from another wolf’s chest. He shot an arm out, taser ready, but Grey was faster. He blocked it and sent it clattering to the ground, as he used the momentum to hit John in the face with a lightning-quick strike. Grey took the keys from John’s limp hands and strode over to her, trying the tiniest key first. The click of the lock was the most beautiful sound on earth, and the clatter of metal as the collar fell away would echo through the rest of her life. She sat up and sucked gulps of air, inflating her lungs painfully but completely for the first time since she had been chained to the floor.

Grey picked the taser up off the floor as John groaned and opened his eyes.

He wriggled the taser tauntingly between two of his fingers. “Classy. I’m curious, how does it feel to be an alpha with no pack?” He gestured over to the corner where the lump of Marshall’s body could be made out.

Realization dawned on John’s face that no help was coming for him and his eyes widened as he stared into churning golden eyes.

“Morgan, could you come here?”

Clutching his shirt like a shield, she got up gingerly and walked over to stand beside the man who’d risked everything to save her.

“He is the one I smell.”

She cringed and nodded once. “He had plans to claim me. I woke up with his shirt on. I don’t know where my clothes are and the shirt reeks of him.”

“I wouldn’t have to claim her against her will. She was practically begging for it,” John said, leering at her.

Morgan snatched the taser from Grey’s hand and hit the button as she connected with John’s groin. His body went rigid and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“Hurts like a mother trucker, doesn’t it?” She threw the tiny torture device angrily into the wall, and it exploded into dozens of pieces. The satisfaction of destroying it overrode her pain.

“Morgan, if you want me to kill him, I will, but if you need to do it for closure, I understand. Tell me what you want.”

She glared at the man on the ground, debating. Even after everything she’d been through, after everything he’d done, she still couldn’t imagine taking a life. “No, I still don’t think I can do it. I’ve never killed a man before.”

John had recovered enough to chuckle, and she looked from Grey to him.

“Can I make a request? I might not be able to do it, but it doesn’t mean I think this man deserves an honorable death,” she said.

“Wait,” John said.

Grey’s fingers brushed hers as if he understood what she asked of him. “Do you need to watch?”

“No, I trust you to get the job done. I’ve seen enough for today.” She stumbled to the mattress and plucked the keys from the stained fabric. “Good-bye, John. The pleasure was all yours,” she murmured as she walked out the door, shutting it firmly behind her.

She sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited until the screaming stopped. Within minutes, the door opened and Grey tossed a bloodied rag he’d been wiping his hands on into the corner.

“It’s done,” Grey said, sounding exhausted.

As they climbed the stairs, she glanced back at her prison that had come so close to breaking her. Her mate had killed an entire pack to get to her.
Her mate.

He watched her with feral eyes, blood soaking his bandages and looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She slipped her hand into his and smiled painfully at him.

The time to leave her hell had come.

The sunlight hurt her eyes, making them water with its intensity. Shadows stretched across the shallow porch of the run-down house and an old wooden rocking chair swayed in the winter wind. “How long have I been down there?”

“They took you two and a half days ago. I was unconscious the first day, but Wade and Marissa put me back together and I left for Montana within half an hour of waking up.”

His presence beside her filled her with a warmth she’d missed so much in the past weeks, and she shot him a sideways glance just to get one more greedy drink of him.

“How did you find me?” She shielded her eyes, still unable to look up at him as they walked to his truck.

“The pack has been tracking you. When I got to Yellowstone County, you weren’t at John’s property, so Jason tracked a cell number that had been calling one of their dead wolves. He and Dean figured out where you were by tracking the pack and pack family properties. This place was under one of the dead wolf’s names, and it was the closest property we could find to the cell phone signal.”

Silence followed, as if he didn’t know what to say next, and she got it. She didn’t know where they stood either. As much as she wanted to get lost in his embrace, she had spent months torturing them both, and it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Grey, listen--”

“Don’t,” he drawled. “I didn’t save you so you’d feel obligated to come back to me, and I sure as hell don’t need you letting me down easy. I’d come for you every time, Morgan. Every time, but that doesn’t mean I’m confused about what we are. Me hanging on? That’s my choice. I respect the decisions you made. Please, just don’t explain what it’ll be like when we go back home and back to our separate lives. I know.”

It was then she realized just how much she’d hurt him. God, she could see it there, shimmering beneath his careful gaze. It wasn’t just him either. She’d burned them both with her decision to pull away. She’d been wrong about his duty to what she was overshadowing his feelings for her. It wasn’t out of some sense of obligation that he’d risked his life to come for her today. It was out of devotion.

He spun, but she touched his bare hip with her fingertip and he froze. His profile was stiff, every muscle in his body flexed as if he were ready for flight. Every word she said mattered now if she was ever going to make things right between them.

She traced the V of muscle that wrapped around his waist and disappeared into the top of his jeans. His stomach flexed as his breath sped up and his eyes burned with their intensity.

“Grey, I--”

A noise in the distance pulled her from what she was about to say. The relief on his face at the interruption stung like a salt against open skin. Wade’s truck sped down the road toward them, trailing a cloud of dust. When the Chevy skidded to a stop in front of Grey’s truck, Brent hopped out and ran straight for her, wrapping her up in a big bear hug, while Wade hauled an oversized medical kit from the back.

Golden eyes watched her carefully, but he didn’t react to another male touching her. Another sting. He let down his tailgate and sat heavily on it.

Wade looked from him to Morgan and back again, as if deciding who needed medical attention more. She must have looked like hell because he chose her.

He checked the gashes on her face but the bleeding had stopped. “Head wounds are always gory,” he explained. “Is there anything else? Are you hurt where I can’t see?

She knew what he was asking and shook her head uncomfortably.

He stared at her for a long moment before he nodded. “I’m going to go redo our boy’s stitches over there. He isn’t looking too good, and your injuries will hold until I can get him fixed up, okay?”

Brent brought over a bag of clothes they had borrowed from Rachel. She thanked him and debated on going back inside to change in a bathroom. She didn’t want anyone else to see her without clothes on, but the thought of going back in the house with the dead bodies in the basement had her skirting around the corner to change. She pulled the shirt off and dropped it in the dirt beside her. She kicked it against the old siding for good measure. Tilting her face to the sky, she took a deep pull of fresh air.

“Wade will need to look at your ribs.”

She jumped at the sound. She hadn’t even heard Grey approach. She pulled the clean shirt up to cover herself. He stood leaning against the corner of the house, staring unashamedly at her. Nudity wasn’t a concern for werewolves who Changed together so much, but Grey had never seen her Change and had never seen her body completely uncovered. Definitely not what she had in mind for his first full body view.

“Let me help,” he said as he strode toward her.

She was so tired and so sick of fighting everything. She dropped her hands to her side, defeated, as he took the shirt from her. Tenderly, he pulled it over her head. All of her adrenaline had worn off, and by the time he was finished dressing her, she shook and swayed. Without saying a word, he picked her up and carried her to the truck bed. He set her gently on the edge of the tailgate.