Twin Alphas: Claimed (A BBW Werewolf Romance) (12 page)

Malcom and the burly man who’d drugged her sat at a wooden table, playing cards, along with Virgil.  There were a dozen men in the room, all big and muscular and armed, and – a werewolf. One of the werewolves from the Red River Pack, she realized. She could tell by his necklace and by his lean, hawkish face.

Karlie. They had Karlie too. She struggled not to panic.

              “What the hell are you doing?” she glared at Malcom. “Why are we here?” She leaned back on the couch. She felt horrible; whatever he’d drugged her with had packed a wallop like the kick of a horse.

              Karlie shook her head regretfully.

              “Your new job was a setup,” she said. “They never wanted you to write a research paper. They  just wanted to know that you could cross over and come back successfully.”

              Of course. The job, the money, it had all been too good to be true. She should have been suspicious – but she’d wanted the money so badly that she’d convinced herself that it was on the level.

              “Wait a minute,” she said to Virgil. “You really do work for the university. I’ve seen lectures that you’ve given. I read one of your books.”

              “They let me go a few months ago,” Virgil said coolly. “Of course, you couldn’t know that, because you had no access to the internet. Besides, I was never paid what I was worth, and my new friends here are compensating me quite handsomely.”

              “He molested a student,” Karlie sneered. “I overheard them talking about him.” She inclined her head at Malcolm and his burly friend.

              “Molested! She was an adult, and she led me on! She came to my office dressed like a tart, crying about how she’d do anything to get her grades up!” Virgil said indignantly.

“Oh, and Tiffany’s father was the one who told them about us. I overheard that too,” Karlie said heatedly. “That douchebag. I hope they’re paying him really well.”

“We are,” Malcolm said, with an unpleasant smile.

              “Son of a bitch. I will personally kill that asshole,” Amelia said furiously. Just as soon as her head stopped pounding and the room stopped wobbling. 

              But how? How would they ever get away from these people? They were in a room full of armed men, and she would never try to escape as long as they had Karlie.

              Her family had been right. It was dangerous for people to know about their special powers. It had been whispered around town for generations that the Baxters were special, different, strange…so it wasn’t a surprise that Mr. Pratt knew about it. The fact that he would betray Amelia’s family to this level shouldn’t have come as a surprise either.

              Amelia looked over at the werewolf. “You’re one of those asshole Red River pack losers,” she said furiously. “I recognize your ugly face. You look just like the rest of your mangy fleabag relatives.”

              He leaped up from the table and stalked over to her. “Don’t you dare talk about my pack that way.”

              “Or what?” She glared up at him defiantly.

              “Or I’ll rip your throat out.”

              “I doubt that,” Amelia said, with a braveness she didn’t feel. “Nobody but me and my sister can cross the Breach, and we’re the only ones who could take you back home. You’re trapped here, aren’t you? You must have wandered over here when the Breach opened up. Without me, you’re stuck here forever.”

              Too bad he hadn’t tried to go home like all the other werewolves who’d accidentally wandered over. Then he’d be dead. Instead, he’d stayed over here to consort with criminals – and she suspected that she knew why. They were going to be involved in some kind of smuggling operation, involving silver.

              “I don’t need you alive. We can just use your sister,” he growled, and fur rippled on his face.

Suddenly half a dozen men were pointing guns at him.

“Get away from her! There’s silver on these bullets,” one of the men yelled at him.

The werewolf stood his ground and shot them a look of disgust.

“Do you think I don’t know that? I can smell, you idiots. And I will not tolerate my pack being spoken of with disrespect.”

              “Ricardo. These girls are worth a fortune, and if you harm either one of them, I will kill you,” Malcom said. His gun was trained right at the werewolf’s head.

              Ricardo’s lip wrinkled back in an ugly snarl, and he sneered at Amelia. “I can smell wolf on you. Who did you fuck? It smells like Bay Hills, whoever it was. Let me tell you what’s going to happen to them. You are going to help bring silver over into my world.  We will use it to make bullets and mow down every last Bay Hills wolf and all their children, and we will take their land and their women.”

              A wave of fear and fury washed over Amelia. The thought of anything happen to her Alphas, and their big, loving, happy family made her tremble with rage.

              “The Sentinels will kill you,” she snapped. She didn’t know that much about the Sentinels, but she got the impression that they enforced the law for werewolves.

              “Stupid bitch. Do you think we didn’t anticipate that? We have enough packs allied with us to take them down, once we have silver. Then we’ll go back to the old ways, where might makes right and the strong, the ones who deserve it, claim what they want. Women. Land. Riches.”

              Amelia responded by bending over and puking on his shoes.

              He let out a howl of fury, and lunged at her. She heard a gunshot crack through the air, and then a scream of pain. Then she smelled sizzling flesh.

              She forced herself to sit back up, her head swimming. What was wrong with her? What had Malcom done to her?

              “Get it out! Get it out!” Ricardo screamed, and through bleary eyes she saw one of the guards digging out a bullet from Ricardo’s arm with a knife. Blood streamed from the wound.

              “You fucking asshole! That’s going to leave a scar that never heals!” Ricardo shouted.

              “I told you not to touch her,” Malcom gritted out. “Are you stupid? Control your god damned temper.”

              Despairing, Amelia slumped back against the couch, and Karlie went to put her arm around her – but one of the guards grabbed Karlie and hauled her to her feet.

              No! They couldn’t take Karlie from her!

              “We’re keeping you two separate,” Malcom said to Amelia. “That way we know you’ll cooperate.”

              Panic clutched at her throat, and she struggled to breathe.

              “Leave me here with her!” Karlie cried out desperately. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

              “Yes, you will, or we’ll cut up her face.” Malcom’s voice turned hard as he dragged her away from Amelia.

              Amelia bit her lip as they hustled Karlie out of the room. She could hear Karlie’s stream of curses growing fainter and fainter as they forced her outside, and she’d never felt so helpless.

              Malcolm glared down at Amelia as she struggled to stay upright. Panic choked her, and she fought for control. 

              “You can’t hurt either one of us, because you need us.” Amelia’s voice was a weak groan. “So what are you going to threaten us with?”

              “We know where your parents live,” he said to Amelia. “You will be leading a group of men across the Breach tomorrow, or we’ll kill them.”

              “My parents have guns. There are dozens of families currently living on their property.”

              “And this entire area has no cell phones, no phone service, no way to call for help. Your family and their friends will be no match against a team of armed mercenaries. We’ve already got men stationedin the woods watching them.”

              Amelia slumped back against the sofa. Her head was whirling so much that she couldn’t think straight.  There had to be a way out of this. There had to. She couldn’t let these men kill her family, she couldn’t let them wipe out Clayton and Holt and overthrow law and order in their world.

              “What the hell did you dose her with?” she heard one of the guard’s voices coming from a million miles away.

              “Just chloroform. She shouldn’t be this sick. Carry her to her room.”

              She let two men drag her down the hall to a bedroom, and dump her into a bed, where she curled up in a ball of misery.

              As the day wore on, she felt sicker and sicker.

              Her head was pounding. Her heart was racing.  She gulped down water that they brought her, and took aspirin, and then heaved it up again.

              “What the hell’s the matter with you?” the guard demanded as he set down a plate of food in front of her.

              She was barely able to mutter “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, asshole.”

              The guard yelled out, “Hey, she’s really sick!”

              “She’s faking it!” another voice called back.

              “Nah, she’s white as a sheet and soaked in sweat. Something’s wrong with her.”

              She heard footsteps approaching, and through blurred vision she looked up and saw Malcom and Ricardo standing there.

              “You’re right. We’ll have to get a doctor for her, I guess.” He glowered at her, like it was her fault that she was ill.

              She was shaking, she realized. She couldn’t stop shaking.

              “But we need her to head out first thing in the morning,” the guard protested.

              “Nah. We can just use her sister.”

              Not Karlie. “I can go,” she croaked.

              “Doubt it,” the guard said callously.

              The night was a blur of sickness and the room swam around her. Her head pounded. At one point, she felt someone jabbing her arm. They were starting an i.v. 

              “She doesn’t have a fever, but she won’t stop shaking,” a voice said. Malcolm.  She felt her stomach gurgling again, turned towards him, and let out a gushing stream of vomit that was mostly water by now, and then fell back down, bitterly satisfied by the stream of curses he let out.

              “Why can’t we find her?” Clayton’s voice was choked with anger and worry. He was pacing back and forth in front of their cabin. Neither he nor Holt had slept at all the night before.

              He could sense that something was wrong, but neither he nor Holt could figure out where she was, which was impossible. She’d bonded with them. They should be able to locate her and go straight to her.

              Had she actually run out on them? Why would she have left after she let herself form a psychic bond with them?

              He’d spent years and years happily dodging any notion of settling down – and now that he’d found her, he didn’t know how he’d ever lived without her. He barely knew her, but he already knew that she was the woman he wanted to be with forever. She was funny, and sexy, and sassy, and – gone.

              “She wouldn’t have left deliberately – would she have?” Clayton groaned.

              “I don’t know. Maybe.” Worry creased Holt’s forehead.

              “What do you mean?” Clayton demanded.

              “After our psychic bond started forming, I did sense some doubt, some hesitation. Didn’t you?”

              “Yeah, but I thought that was just because I was pushing too hard. Maybe it was. Maybe I drove her away.” Misery rushed through Clayton, like nothing he’d ever felt before.

              “It has nothing to do with you. Something was on her mind,” Holt said. “Our psychic link just hadn’t formed enough for me to tell exactly what.”

              “She’d have to know that leaving us after the bond formed would literally kill her.  Am I that terrible? That unbearable to be around?” Somehow, this must be his fault. What had he done wrong?

              “Stop doing that to yourself.” Holt put a hand on Claytons’ shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Let’s stay calm and try to figure this out.”

              Clayton nodded unhappily.  “If only we could pick up on where she is. I just don’t understand this. It’s like she’s on another continent or something.”

              “There’s one of the Sentinels,” Holt said, pointing at a tall man striding in their direction. Sentinel Carmichael.

              Clayton desperately tried to read the man’s expression. Did he look like a man about to deliver terrible news? She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be. He’d sense it.

              He was picking up the faintest sense of distress from her– barely a whisp, but it was there. That meant she wasn’t dead. It also meant that every instinct in his body was screaming to find her, to protect his mate, to kill whatever was causing her distress – and he couldn’t. It was driving him mad.

              “Did you find her?” Clayton demanded as Sentinel Carmichael walked up to them.