Chapter 12: Caged In
Alex’s Point of View
It took a few hours to know what had happened. While Tristan was only on the floor in pain for a matter of minutes, the moment he snapped out of it, his humanity vanished. He was up from the ground in the flash and ran from the room back into the rain.
He wasn’t himself, so he let his wolf take over and the house was left in silence in his wake. Once everybody recovered from the shock of it, Rayne and Wes were the first two to step towards the door. But I cut in front of them, blocking the exit.
It was definitely intimidating to be glared down upon by two six foot two men that had rage pooling into their eyes, but they would only make fools of themselves if they went after Tristan.
“Let him be. It’s obvious something bad has happened and he needs to deal with it before he can come back,” I ordered softly, not wavering when my Alpha growled at me.
“I don’t care if he has to find a cure for world peace, he needs someone to reign him in before he completely loses it,” Rayne snarled, not one ounce of compassion left in him. This day had been taxing on everyone, but probably most on our leader. He felt guilty about all of this happening under his watch and needed to make it right. But now was not the time or the place.
“He needs to work it out himself. You will only make it worse.”
Mrs. Everdeen started crying in the background, her soft sobs heard in the silence as my gaze crackled between Tristan’s brother and best friend. Seconds passed in the tension before Rayne’s eyes softened at the distress of his mother and he backed down. “Fine, but if he isn’t back in a few hours, we’re going to find him and drag the answers out.”
I nodded, it was a perfectly acceptable request; the last thing we needed was two missing members of the pack. Rayne walked away to envelope his mother in a hug and softly directed her away from everybody, his soft words only audible to her. But Wes still stood in front of me, glaring down at my much smaller frame.
I should have been scared of him; should’ve had my bones turn to jello as I withered under his gaze--but instead I held my ground. Over a short period of time I had relayed a amount of trust in him, and I hoped he could do the same and trust me when I said that Tristan needed time.
“Are you sure he is alright?” Wes asked, his voice low, but more vulnerable than I had expected. He was sincerely worried about his friend, a trait that couldn’t be faked and proved that he had a heart to feel with. My arms itched to wrap around his waist and hold on tight, absorbing his musky scent until I couldn’t think coherently. But I just nodded and reached for his hand instead.
“Something bad has happened, but I’m sure he’ll return fine,” I whispered, cherishing the feeling as Wes’s larger hand completely enclosed mine. With a light squeeze, I released him and bid him to come back to the kitchen.
There was still a lot to go over.
A couple hours later, like I had predicted, Tristan came back in the front door. He was soaked to the bone and his face void of any color, but he still managed to stumble into the kitchen. Somehow since Mrs. Everdeen had had her mental breakdown I had taken over the caretaker’s role and was instantly there for Tristan to place a towel around his shoulders.
He didn’t make a sound as I tussled his hair dry with another towel, or even when I said that he should really change. His only response to anything was to stare blankly at the table, whatever thoughts going through his head lost in a wave of grief. My heart sunk in my chest as I came to the conclusion that Sam was probably dead; it was the only ending that fit into this awful equation. If she wasn’t then Tristan would be able to sense her presence and there would still be a fire in his eyes to rescue her, but instead he sat rigidly like a statue, waiting for the world to change.
Wes wasn’t much help either. The moment our Beta walked in, he had fallen silent, searching his face for any sign. I wanted to start crying again but I knew that there needed to be someone with a strong resolve around here, so I sucked it up and continued flitting around the kitchen in search of something warm to get the boys to swallow.
Once the tea was nice and hot I placed the steaming cups in front of each of them. No one else knew that Tristan was back, so they were all still holed up in their rooms and the house was left to silence. I allowed the two men beside me to fight their quiet war within themselves until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Tristan? Please try and drink something, it would do no good for you to catch your death with pneumonia...”
No response.
With a deep sigh I reached over and tried to turn his face towards mine so he would look me in the eye, but his hand came up in a flash the moment my skin touched his ice-cold cheek. The grip he had on my wrist was a vice, but he finally turned to me, an ice storm raging in his silver eyes.
Wes snarled from across the table, and Tristan finally resurfaced from the coma he had sent himself into. Blinking a few times to regain his bearings, he realized how hard he was bruising my skin and released me.
I cradled my wrist to my chest, but ignored the pain so I could focus on him. “What happened?” I asked softly, careful not to startle him into hysterics. I had never seen him in such a state, not even when our former Alpha had died. Back then I hadn’t been close to the pack family, but I had seen them all plenty of times, and none of them had been in the catatonic state that Tristan was suffering through. He might not have shouted his feelings from the rooftops and acted like a man doped up on happiness whenever Sam was around, but there was no doubt that she was the most important person in his life. He truly loved her.
“She’s gone,” he croaked, planting his face in his hands so he could glare down at the table top.
“What kind of gone?” Wes asked. I could tell he was trying to be comforting, but the warrior he had been trained to be wouldn’t go away with something as trivial as grief; his question was a gruff interrogation, determined to get answers.
“The tie between us isn’t there. It’s like she isn’t there anymore--like she was never there at all.”
I could feel the prickling of tears in my eyes. This was all my fault. If I had followed the scent the moment I smelled it, we would have found her right away. She wouldn’t have fallen into the hands of a monster and paid the ultimate price for it. But now the evil bastards that kidnapped her from right under our noses were in the wind, gone to never be found. Fire lapped at my chest as I wrangled all the pent up fury that I had towards the traitors that came here.
There was no way in hell I was just going to sit back and let this happen.
“No.”
The sharpness of my tone snapped both men’s attention my way; Wes’s stony resolved and Tristan’s anguish. I gave each of them pointed looks so they could see the determination that was in my soul; I wasn’t going to let this go.
“There is still hope. Right now we’re all pretty sure it was Ian. Who else would have the guts to traipse in here and steal her from us? He is a sneaky bastard with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, so we can’t give up hope on Sam yet. She wouldn’t take this like an invalid; she was a fighter just like each of us.”
I took a deep breath, “We are going to go after them. I don’t care how long it takes or however far it makes us travel, we are going to track him down and tear him limb from limb for even daring to step back here again. He took someone special from us, and there is no forgiveness for that.”
I could see the same fire in each of their eyes. We weren’t totally human, that would have made us normal. No, we were werewolves from birth and we couldn’t consult our humanity without also giving equal attention to our feral side. That side wanted a revenge that only blood and gore could suffice, to see Ian’s head planted on a stake so we could all have the chance to avenge our loved one. There were families that were tied together through lineage, and then there were packs that were tied together based on a common past that none of us could skip.
We weren’t going down without a fight.
Sam’s Point of View
I didn’t recall falling asleep--I don’t even know how I could being as tense as I was--but the next thing I knew I was being lifted out of the car bridle style. My immediate and natural reaction was to snuggle into Tristan’s chest before going back to sleep, but the scent was off. The shirt my face was buried in was muskier than Tristan’s fresh-out-of-the-woodsy-rain aroma.
Everything crashed back into me with the weight of a gale force wind. Tristan wasn’t holding me, nor was he hidden in my subconscious. He wasn’t even my mate anymore. No that was a lie; he was and always would be my mate in every sense of the word besides the physical portion. Ian wouldn’t be anyone to me besides my kidnapper and the devil who marred my skin. Luckily, it wasn’t Ian holding me, instead it was Jay, who was cradling me a whole lot gentler than his Alpha would have.
“Make sure she stays asleep, she doesn’t need to see any part of the house besides her room.” Ian snarled under his breath, his voice somewhere close by. I must have been drugged again because while I was awake in my head, I couldn’t open my eyes. It must’ve still been night because wherever we walked in, the silence emanated from the walls. My ears strained to hear the nearest sound, which was the sound of slow breathing. The sounds of sleep.
There were other people here? Was Ian’s whole pack as deranged as him to openly let him kidnap other a member of another pack and take control of them? They let him toy with emotions with his commands and take whatever he wanted? I wanted to scream for help, but the drug kept me under and sufficiently sedated. Only moments passed before even my thoughts went blank again.
The next time I awoke I could open my eyes. It took awhile to adjust, but my superior sight eventually caught hold of the darkness of the room. The softness at my fingertips that radiated through my whole body suggested I was on a bed and facing the while ceiling. My ears perked up to hear anything but there wasn’t even a creak in the walls.
Pure silence.
It was unnerving because even places that were supposedly quiet had the tiniest motions that suggested life, but the only thing I could hear in the room was the sound of my blood pumping through my veins. A soundproof room. They had locked me away so I would slowly go mad just listening to myself. Torture seemed to be their specialty.
Sitting up, I winced at the bruises on my skin from where I had been hit. They throbbed but it wasn’t anything that was unmanageable.
The room was small. The queen sized bed I sat on took up nearly have the area, leaving the rest for the open tile floor. Two doors were on the wall opposite of the bed; one a steel contraption that looked like it could hold a hurricane at bay, and the other a plain white door like you’d see in a neighborhood home. Beneath me on the bed was a black comforter and two pillows to match, soft enough to be comfortable but my head was repulsed by them because of where I was.
This had to be the pack house of Redwood. Vaguely the memories of me being carried in flickered in my mind, and I remembered at least ten other people sleeping within the walls. That meant ten members of the pack were there to make sure that I wouldn’t go anywhere--even if I managed to get out of this horror room.
My feet were bare as I set them on the cold tile floor. There wasn’t even a rug to keep the chill from seeping into my bones. It was the heat of summer and I had elevated body temperatures, and I was still shivering. My stomach clenched when I realized I was in different clothing than I had been when I was kidnapped. Someone had wrangled leggings onto my lower half and a t-shirt onto my chest. Ian or Jay had touched my bare skin while I was sleeping; had seen me in my underwear when I completely incapacitated to do anything to stop it.
I wanted to puke.
Since the steel door didn’t look like it would do anything for me, I went for the while one instead. There was a small bathroom, with a shower, sink and toilet. Graciously I lurched towards the toilet and emptied the contents of my stomach into the bowl. Tears mixed leaked onto my face as I sobbed.
All I wanted was to go back home. It didn’t even have to be the pack house anymore, even my house would be sufficient. Somewhere, anywhere, that I wouldn’t have to see my captors ever again. My chest ached at the complete loss of everything that I had worked hard to achieve--my father wouldn’t even know where I was, Tristan had no way of finding me, and all of my friends would just assume I left town. No one would find me in the little basement room that I was locked away in.
Who would even care to search?