Grayslake: More than Mated: UnBearable Secrets (Kindle Worlds Novella) (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Olivia

“Let go of me!”

Olivia had a man flanking her on either side, gripping her upper arms. She attempted to drag her feet at first, but now she was kicking and threatening to bite them if they got too close. One moment, she was standing talking to some clan members and the caterer, Cadence, about heading back home, and the next, a group was shuffling her toward the woods. And now here she was, standing in the dark with two strangers leading her to an unknown location.

She was in so much trouble.

“I swear to God, you better let me go, or you're going to be in some serious pain.” Freaking asshole, as soon as she could she would let him have it.

One man laughed, a deep cackle. They were both slightly shorter than her but a lot stronger. How had she gotten grabbed? How could she have not been paying enough attention to realize that as the group moved toward the trees a couple of the guys were pulling her away. She just been so enamored with the party, she let her guard down. That was a mistake.

“What the hell do you want with me anyway?”

Suddenly she heard a voice from behind her. “It's not
you
that we want.”

“What? What do you want?”

A man walked forward out of the protective shadows of the trees, wearing a dark gray suit with a navy tie. He was short like the men who were holding her, with black hair slicked to one side. He looked slimy. But she couldn't let him know that she was afraid of him. For now, she wasn't afraid of anything.

He stepped closer to her, the moonlight illuminating his face. He had a sickening scar from the top of his forehead down through his eye and partway on his cheek. She didn't recognize him. She didn’t like what she saw, though. Someone with a scar like that had been through some serious shit.

“I want Bianca.”

Well, that was unexpected. Olivia's brows came together in confusion. “My sister is dead. And what do I have anything to do with that? What do you want with her anyway?”

“I understand that she didn't tell you about me,” he said as he put his hands behind his back and began to pace in front of her and her assailants. “I'm not sure why that is. I have to find her; you understand that now. Now that you've met Sam. It doesn't matter that you’re from such different clans, you want to be together.”

This guy was an effing nut job. There was no doubt in her mind.

“I don't know what you're going on about, but I've no idea who you are and Bianca is dead. Now just let me go!” She struggled against her attackers, but one growled at her in response and bared his teeth. An ugly little man who was balding, he had more hair on his arms than his head. She could feel her bear prowling beneath the surface. But even if she shifted, she couldn't take on three at once. She wasn’t a skilled enough fighter to handle them, and they knew it. It was why they sent two men to collect her. They knew she could have taken out one of them, but not all three.

“Bianca isn't dead.” He said it so confidently she nearly believed him for a moment.

“Like hell she isn’t! I was there. What do you know about it anyway?”

“I was there too, at the lake. The night in the dark. She was supposed to run away with me. Get away from your parents and all the prying eyes of being shifter royalty. We were going to combine our clans and make our territory great. But I couldn't find her that night.”

“That's because she drowned. I don't know how else I can say this to you. I'm sorry your little fantasy didn't come to fruition, but my sister is gone.”

“They never found the body, did they Olivia?”

Olivia sucked in a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She knew the truth—they hadn't ever recovered her body. They buried an empty casket on the family plot. The police force found it hard to believe, but it was a huge lake, and some of the crevices couldn't be searched properly. They assumed that she fell into one of those cavernous spaces, the deepest, darkest places of water. Olivia had pushed all that from her mind for so long; she didn't want to think about her sister's body down there all alone in the dark.

“No,” she said in a low voice, simply unsure of what else to tell him. This guy was clearly a crazy man, and she doubted Bianca even ever gave him the time of day. He was a stalker, nothing more.

“That's because she got out of the water, Olivia. She was supposed to come with me, but somehow our plans fell apart. And now I’ve spent months looking for her, waiting for one of you to come out of the compound you call home and get the information I need.”

Olivia's arms were starting to hurt from them squeezing her. She considered fighting against them once more but she knew it was useless. Sam would realize that she was missing soon, and he would come for her. She just had to keep this guy talking long enough to buy her some time. “You're wrong. I don't know what you think she told you, but none of that ever happened.”

He stopped walking and got close enough to Olivia that she could smell his overbearing cologne. “I know so much more about her than you ever will.”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “I was her sister, you idiot! I knew everything about her. And I know that her body is at the bottom of that lake.”

“You think you know that. I should've tried to snatch one of your brothers instead. I'm sure your parents have told them the truth about where they’re hiding her. Boys, you can let her go, she's not going to be of any use to us.”

The man to Olivia's right looked up at her and bared his teeth. His eyes turned a familiar black color that she had become accustomed to her whole life and she realized quickly that the things that were sprouting out of his mouth were not consistent with the bear. These were the Wolverines. Just as the man in the suit began to walk away from her, she heard the pounding of paws on the forest floor. The man in the suit looked over his shoulder at Olivia and said, “Until next time.”

Like hell.

He dipped his head at her and then tore off through the trees. She considered running after him but first, she would deal with the muscle he left behind. Her teeth became the jaws of the angry grizzly that she held inside and she tore into the man on her right. He screamed in agony, pulling away from her. Just as she turned to the left to take care of the other one, a black bear came barreling at them, taking the man on her left without a problem and snapping his neck before he even hit the ground. The man on the right had already begun the change and she watched as his body twisted and contorted itself until it was a small Wolverine bearing its fangs just a few feet away from her. His neck was still dripping in blood—she had made her mark. She felt her claws start to come out of her fingers as another bear came from the other direction, behind the Wolverine, and jumped on its back. He ripped its head off and shook it before throwing it into the woods. The black bear shifted back first and Sam stood in front of her, trembling with anger.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Olivia flung her arms around his neck. “I was talking to these people one second, and the next, I was in the woods and this guy is yelling at me about Bianca being alive!”

The other bear swiftly transformed into a human once more and Ty stood towering over both of them. “Why do I have two dead Wolverines in my territory?”

Olivia threw her hands up in the air. “The hell if I know! There was a third, he was crazy! Blabbering on about my sister. Acting like they were together and she was going to leave with him? It doesn't make any sense! Bianca is gone.” The words came rushing out. She could hardly control her bear she was so anxious and confused. This night had fallen apart so quickly. Crazy ass Wolverines.

Sam ran his hands through his hair and Ty began to walk through the night back toward the party. “Follow me.” It was an order and both Olivia and Sam walked dutifully behind him as he talked.

“A couple months ago, a Wolverine came through here, spouting some craziness about your sister. It's how we knew she had passed. I didn't think anything of it at the time, as Wolverines are horrible liars and just generally not great guys. But staging a kidnapping on my territory? During a God damned party? No way in hell am I to let that go!”

“The only reason they came here is because of me! We shouldn't have stayed for the party; we should have just left. I'm so sorry, Ty.”

“No. I'm sorry. When you mentioned Wolverines back at the house I should've told you that one had come through here. But I didn't realize that they were still around. He must've heard that you were here.”

Olivia nodded vigorously as she stepped over twigs and branches on the way back through the woods. “He said that he was waiting for one of us, one of my family to leave the clan. He was targeting me, but he acted like I should know something. He said that my family was hiding Bianca from him, but that can’t be true. I'm sure she's not at home.” She couldn’t be. Not after all this time. Olivia’s head swam with thoughts of that night. Pieces of her memory fading in an out of view. Diving down to grab her sister’s hand and coming up empty. The boats searching the lake. Bears wandering around sniffing out her scent. But nothing. No one had ever found a clue.

So they ruled it an accidental drowning. But what if it wasn’t?

“She might not be at your home, she might not even be alive, but the Wolverines definitely think she is, and you have to tell your family about that.”

Ty stopped at the edge of the woods. “I’ll set up a perimeter, I wish half my guys weren’t plastered right now, though. It would help to have a couple sober bears around here.”

Sam sighed heavily. “I wish we could stay and help, Ty, but clearly we have some business to attend to.”

Ty shook Sam's hand and looked down at Olivia. “It seems that you do. But if things get really ugly up there, know that you can count on the Grayslake clan to have your back. I'll send out some of my best guys to find this man who attacked you. Justice will be served.”

Olivia took a deep breath and gave him a weak smile. She knew that Ty wouldn’t catch him, since he was already long gone. But eventually, she and Sam would find out the truth: what really happened to Bianca that night, and who this Wolverine really was.

Ty left them in the protection of the trees and Olivia once again put her arms around Sam's neck. “That was an eventful evening,” she said trying to catch her breath.

He looked into her eyes and put his forehead against her own. “A little too eventful. I was just trying to get you a drink. You didn't have to go do all that to get attention.”

He pushed her so that her back was against a tree, and she felt its rough bark on the back of her arms. “You weren’t worried, were you?”

He shook his head. “I was more pissed than worried. I know you can handle yourself. Besides, I missed out on a good glass of bourbon chasing some Wolverine ass through these woods.”

She laughed at him. Of course he was worried about his bourbon, when she was worried that they would never truly be safe. Not until all of this was resolved. But for now they were safe; that crazy man wouldn’t be dumb enough to come back tonight. No, he was gone. Maybe she would be lucky and he would let this go. But she doubted it. If in his mind he really believed Bianca was alive, he wouldn’t give up. To him, the truth didn’t matter, if it wasn’t the one he wanted to believe. But still there were so many questions about that night and the deep dark water…

“Do you really think what he said was true? About Bianca being alive?”

Sam shook his head, his blonde locks reflecting the moonlight. “I don't know. But I guess we need to find out. You ready to do that?”

Olivia nodded. “It's time to go home.”

Sam moved forward and pressed his lips against hers and she inhaled his deep woodsy scent. She'd only been gone a few days, but so much had changed.

Bianca might be alive.

She was going home after meeting the love of her life.

And the Grayslake clan had her back.

Not bad for a little getaway, not bad at all.

Hi Reader!

Thanks SO much for reading
UnBearable Secrets
. I really hope you enjoyed it, if so and you want to find out more about Sam, Olivia and all my couples head on over to my
Amazon Page
to find more sexy shifter stories!

Xoxo,

Terra

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