Page 63 of Lost and Bound
Who the fuck…? Calder had killed all the remaining torturers. He’d been sure of it, and he’d told me that our fellow prisoners he’d released had verified the body count. Even if I’d somehow missed seeing him during my time in that place, one of them would’ve known to look for him.
So this was someone new.
They’d been planning to take over the world, Nate had said. Hubris, yeah. But also…maybe they’d had a little more of a plan, more of a network, than we’d so optimistically assumed.
Stupidly assumed, more like.
My head thumped back against the wall.
I refused to speak first. Fuck him, fuck this, fuck everything. If he thought I’d start begging for my life, he could be disappointed. Even though the screams were bubbling up in my chest and trying to force their way out. Even though my head spun and spun and my forehead throbbed with the pressure of wanting to know why, how, I thought I’d been safe, I’dbeensafe, oh gods, what the fuck had happened, where was Ian, why why why oh gods…
“Do you know where your mate is right now?” he asked, his voice a little too high, a little too thin, scraping at the inside of my skull. “Does he have a phone?”
My mate. Calder. At least if they were asking, that meant they didn’t have him too. He’d left the Armitage territory before I had, made himself vulnerable…because we’d thought it was over.
After a minute, the man pushed himself off the counter and strolled over to me. “Just answer me. I can make you answer, but that’s less convenient for both of us.”
Even though I hadn’t met this particular son of a bitch before, he knew who Calder was, so he clearly had a connection to the other sons of bitches, like I’d been speculating a minute before. And he’d brought me somewhere with the right equipment and supplies to do anything he wanted to me.
My mind raced. Did it matter if he knew I didn’t know where Calder was, or if he had a phone? Probably not. He wanted to find Calder, obviously. Or try to use me against him, somehow. I might as well admit I had no idea…since I didn’t. And maybe that’d keep me alive a little longer. Although what the point of that might be I didn’t know, since I wouldn’t get out of here.
I had to face that. I’d gone home, my family knew I was alive. They’d look for me this time. My captor or captors would know or guess they would, and they’d have to kill me this time around and then skedaddle before Ian and Matt and the rest of the pack caught up with them.
So maybe my goal ought to be dying without being hurt too much in the process, and without giving them anything they could use against Calder. He’d be fine. He could take care of himself. Clearly, I’d been the much easier target.
“I have no idea. About either,” I rasped through my burning throat.
He smiled sourly. “Unfortunately for you, I believe you.” He shrugged, his thin shoulders making him look like a scarecrow under his black coat. “That’s fine. I’d prefer to do it this way, in any case. He’ll be more likely to come if he can feel you calling for him through the bond.”
Feel me…my stomach clenched, hard, and I nearly threw up again. “Bonds don’t work like that.” Shit, I’d all but admitted we had a bond. How the fuck did he know, anyway? “And, and we aren’t bonded,” I stammered. “There’s no—”
“Don’t play the fool, no matter how naturally it may come to you. You’re bonded. Do you think I didn’t do a magical examination of you already? I saw the bond, and I recognized that beast’s magical signature at the other end of it, although I can’t use it to pinpoint his location. And that doesn’t matter in the slightest, because he’ll pinpoint yours and come running.”
“Bonds don’t work like that,” I gritted out for the second time. Fuck, I needed water. My hands were going numb, suspended to either side of my head on those too-tight manacles. I was the unarmed man in a battle of wits, and I couldn’t even argue with his playing the fool comment, because when you were right, you were right, damn him. “You can’t—you can’t feel things through them like that. Shouldn’t you know that?”
“I know more about it than you do. A little amplification will take care of that annoying hitch. It’s an unpleasant process, unfortunately. For you, anyway,” he threw over his shoulder as he crossed back to the counter of nasty-looking supplies. “I couldn’t care less.”
Suddenly, I needed to keep him talking. The longer he gloated, the longer Calder would have to…do what? Not know I’d been kidnapped? He wouldn’t come anyway, I was sure of it. He’d have to be suicidal. And Calder was a cynical, untrusting bastard—thank gods, because it’d keep him far away from here. He’d know that if he came and handed himself over to keep me safe, they’d just kill or keep us both anyway.
Did I want him to come running to my rescue? A tiny little part of me did, of course. The selfish part. The part of me I’d hoped to leave behind in my previous cell, but apparently hadn’t managed to shed after all.
Because gods, I ached for him. His snarl as he broke the manacles and swept me into his arms…heat and safety surrounding me, and I’d never complain again about how gently he handled me. I’d never complain about anything again as long as he kept holding me close. I swallowed hard and forced that away.
I could keep that fantasy suppressed, because I had to for what was left of my own sanity. One thing I’d developed in my two previous years of captivity was a fatalistic ability to face reality. He shouldn’t try to rescue me. And he’d learned the same lessons I had. He wouldn’t.
But that didn’t mean I was eager for whatever was going to happen to me next.
“How did you find me? How did you—who the fuck are you?”
“My associate and I were affiliated with the ones who were studying you before, but we had a difference of opinion and left the project,” he said without hesitation, albeit with a tinge of bitterness.
Great. Not only did it not matter to him what I knew, which meant he’d definitely be killing me, he had a grudge against my previous captors. And they weren’t around for him to take it out on—he just had me. I’d already gone numb enough that the thought didn’t do more than send a little tremor through me, distant and unimportant. And distracting him wasn’t even working. He’d started doing something with his magical supplies, the conversation not slowing him down at all.
“We had surveillance on their facility,” he continued. “We’d been waiting for a chance to get in, get some of our research. And then you escaped and left the lab in flames, including all the data,” he snarled, shooting me a ferocious, wild-eyed glare over his shoulder. Fucking great. He had a grudge against me, personally, as well.
And…data? Fuck. Him. Everything that had been done to me, reduced to something as impersonal asdata. Hatred and fury welled up, overcoming any self-protective instincts I had left. “But what the fuck did you even want it for?” I spat at him. “What the fuck were you trying to learn? With all that—with that—” I broke off, panting, unable to even find words for what they’d done to me.
He paused in his work, setting down a sharp, shiny instrument that made my flesh crawl, and turned back to me.
