Page 34 of The Wolf and his Witch

The first thing to hit Annabelle as she regained consciousness was the pain. Her shoulder was on fire, her head throbbed like a bitch, and a million sharp needles pressed into her body. She groaned. Anyone would think she’d been hit by a…well…a truck. Her eyelids fluttered open and she winced, something crusty crinkling on the side of her face? Blood? She tried to touch her face, but her hand wouldn’t move.

She scrunched up her brow and moaned again.Oooh, that hurts.

She squinted at the flickering light bulb above her. A bug buzzed around the dim, yellow glow. On the edge of her awareness, the murmur of voices coming from the other side of the room.Am I in a hospital? What’s my prognosis? Gabriel?

Oh, God. Gabriel. He’d taken the full force of the impact. He was a shifter, but… A sob caught in her throat and her eyes teared up. Could he have survived that? She closed her eyes and let the tears slide down her cheeks. She tried to move her hand to wipe them away, but again, she couldn’t move her… No. That wasn’t right. Annabelle flexed her fingers. She had movement. She wasn’t paralyzed, but she couldn’t raise her hands to her face.

A memory scratched at her foggy brain. Of being pulled from the car and put…no,throwninto the back of a vehicle. Avan,not an ambulance. She tried moving her arms again. And her legs. Nope, nothing. Awareness punched her in the gut.Someonehad tied her to the bed. She wasn’t in a hospital. Someone had kidnapped her.

She blinked, blinked again and her vision cleared. Rough log walls, a small window blacked out and a low ceiling with copper pipes running the length. Boxes stacked up against the wall and a dripping water heater. On the far side, a set of stairs going up. Someone’s basement? But whose?

“Annabee. You’re awake?”

“Dutton?” Her voice was little more than a croak.

“You should have agreed to marry me, Annabee. We wouldn’t be here if you had.”

Annabelle growled at the smarmy face leaning over her. Gabriel would have been proud of her effort. Tears pricked her eyes again.

“Gabriel?” She had to ask.

Dutton chuckled. “Not even a shifter could have survived a collision with a Mack truck. He won’t be bothering us. Shame, really. I was looking forward to seeing the look on his face when I stole his one true mate from him.”

One true mate?Annabelle blinked back tears. No, Dutton was wrong. If she were Gabriel’s mate, he never would have left her in Paris. Would he? Did it matter now? She swallowed around the lump in her throat. If Gabriel was gone? Could she trustanythingDutton said? Annabelle rolled her head to the side and closed her eyes. Dutton was right about one thing. A shifter couldn’t survive the kind of injuries Gabriel would’ve sustained. Could they?

He’d been gone from her life for three years. A pain that had hummed in the depths of her heart no matter how deep she’d tried to push it down. But if he was really gone? Forever? She choked back a sob. Not now. She couldn’t fall apart now. Not here. Not trapped like this. Not in front of Dutton. There was no way she was letting Dutton see her pain.

Dutton settled on the bed beside her. “Ah, Annabee, did you love the growly shifter? Sorry, not sorry. I did tell you it wasn’t appropriate to spend time with other men. Now the broody shifter is out of the picture, there should be no more obstacles to our marriage.”

Annabelle shuddered. If she ever got out of this mess, she was going to kill Dutton. “You never stood a chance, Dutton. And since you’ll soon be dead, I’m absolutely certain I won’t be marrying you.”

Focus.She dug deep, past the pain in her shoulder and her head. Past the images of Gabriel—his sexy smile, his dark eyes, laughing with her as they walked along the Seine, the way he looked at her when he kneeled between her thighs—images that threatened to overwhelm her and shut her down. She was a Jackson. A blood witch. Astrongblood witch. She would get out of this. Then Dutton was going to pay.

She rubbed her fingers together and winced. There. A particularly nasty cut. Probably from a piece of glass from the shattered windscreen. She picked at it. If she could get the blood flowing…

Dutton’s hand pressed against hers. “Uh uh, Annabee. No blood magic. I know what you can do with it, given half the chance. But even if you should try, it won’t matter. This whole room is warded. You’ll never break out of here.”

“You think your wards could stop me?” Could they? Her blood magic was powerful, but was it powerful enough?

“Not my wards, darling.” Dutton’s supercilious grin chilled her. “Guess whose basement we’re in?”

Annabelle swallowed.God, no.

Triumph glittered in Dutton’s eyes.“That’s right. Great Aunt Cordelia has a vested interest in our union. So, you could try to best her wards, but all you’ll probably do is waste more of that precious blood of yours.”

He brushed his hand across her injured forehead. Annabelle recoiled.

“Personally, I’d rather you save it for when we join our two bloodlines together.”

Annabelle bared her teeth at him. “Never going to happen,dickhead. You think my family won’t find me here? That they aren’t already searching? That this wouldn’t be the first place they’d look? Have you forgotten Stefanie? And the Langeais wolves?”

“Oh, our union will happen, Annabelle. There’s nothing you can do to stop it now. They’ll never find this place. No one is coming to save you. And by the end of the day, it will be too late. By then, we’ll be married.”

Annabelle chortled, wincing at the flare of pain from her shoulder. “Really, Dutton? You think after smashing a truck into the side of my car, then kidnapping me, tying me to a bed and denying me medical treatment I so obviously need… You think I would marry you? You’re delusional.”

“Oh, Annabelle. So naïve. I’d hoped you’d come around to my way of thinking. Come to appreciate what I’m offering you. I wanted to give you one last chance, but I don’t need you to agree. Not now. I just need your blood.”

Annabelle swore her heart stopped beating.

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