Page 66 of Lost and Bound
I pressed myself against the wall, heart pounding.
That was Calder, no doubt about it: the glow of his silver eyes and the shape of his nose and cheekbones confirmed it.
But he was a monster. I couldn’t imagine being truly afraid of him, not anymore. But monstrous was the only word that fit. He’d half-shifted, but not into any creature I could instantly recognize; a polar bear, maybe. Something huge, something with white fur to match the thick growth on his bare arms and chest…something even larger than Calder was in his human form, given that his head now brushed the ceiling and his shoulders almost spanned the double-width doorway. Six-inch gleaming claws extended from his fingers, and his jaw had stretched, morphed, into something distorted and totally inhuman, large enough to accommodate his dripping fangs.
He looked like a cross between the snow monster fromThe Empire Strikes Backand the Predator.
And I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life. My heart swelled—with love, it had to be love, nothing else could feel like this—even through the instinctive fear.Mine. My mate, in all his fucking nightmarishly terrifying magnificence.
“Give him to me.” His voice boomed, snarled, hit me like a wall, with nothing human left in it at all except the words themselves. Scarecrow rocked back another step, and Curly’s fingers went white where he gripped the edge of the counter. “My mate. Now. Or you’ll both die.”
Scarecrow raised his hands, and a bolt of disruption left his palms, like a rippling mirage whipping through the air. It passed through the barrier and struck Calder in the chest.
He stumbled, staggered, shook his head—and drew himself up to his full height again.
“Fuck,” Curly whispered. “I told you stunning him wouldn’t work.”
“It was worth a try,” Scarecrow hissed, but he sounded shaken.
Calder bared all of his teeth. “Give him to me.”
“No,” Scarecrow said, his voice only wavering a little. Christ, he had to bereallyconfident about that barrier. Either that, or he’d taken a fistful of Xanax before the phone call. “I’m going to throw this through the doorway.” He reached over and picked something up off the examining table: a collar, much like the one Calder had worn in his cell. “You’ll shift back, and you’ll put it on. Or we will kill this one,” he gestured at me, “right here and now.”
Calder’s hands flexed, the claws glinting. “You’re going to kill him once I put the collar on.”
Oh, thank gods. Thank all the fucking asshole gods there were that his shift, and his rage, hadn’t short-circuited his ability to think clearly. Because they would; of course they would. Did they really believe he’d do what they wanted? What the fuck could their endgame possibly be here? Calder would go, and they’d kill me, and then…then their lives would be like a flipped hourglass.
A small one.
Because Calder would hunt them to the ends of the earth. He wouldn’t be able to save me. He wouldn’t die for me—he wasn’t stupid and I wasn’t worth it. But he’d avenge me. That I could count on. Just like he’d promised to do back in our prison, when he’d sworn he’d kill them all for both our sakes if I died giving him what he needed to escape.
“No, of course not,” Curly said, his voice high and reedy and strained. “We want you cooperative. We’ll keep him alive. You’ll be allowed to see him occasionally. If you don’t cause trouble.”
Calder just stood there for a moment, looming in the doorway, only a foot from the barrier that would kill him if he touched it.
Fuck me. He was thinking about it.
He wasseriously thinking about it.
About collaring himself, making himself a prisoner again. With any luck he’d contacted Arik and my pack was on the warpath, but if these motherfuckers had Calder under their control? Plus whatever magic they commanded? Plus…I didn’t know what else they had up their sleeves. These two seemed to be working alone, and Scarecrow had said they’d lost all their research. So another facility somewhere full of their other experiments, or more allies, seemed not too likely.
But I didn’t know that for sure. And that meant they might be able to hide us away somewhere. And if my packdidfind us, my family…they might die in the attempt to rescue us. Some of them, anyway. Even one would be too many.
Either way, I’d be back in another cell, starved and hurt, alone, knowing Calder was in the same position.
Forever. Seeing him once in a while, maybe through bars. Never able to touch, because they wouldn’t risk that.
It wouldn’t be living. It’d be a living death.
“Don’t!” I cried. My parched throat and constricted lungs made it a hoarse, horrid croak. “Calder, don’t, don’t do it! Let them kill me, it’s better than what they’re going to do to us—”
I shrieked, my body convulsing, as Curly spun on me and extended his hand, bolts of crackling energy flying from his fingers and enveloping me. Like Arik’s magic worms, only these ones gnawed into every muscle and bone, devouring me in agony from the inside out. My vision went red, and I kept screaming, high and helpless, a keening that didn’t even sound like it came from me.
And then, even through the overwhelming pain, came a noise like a freight train colliding with a mountain, a building collapsing, a rending, booming roar that filled the room and battered my ears and whited out every other sensation. The pain stopped, leaving twitching aftershocks, and I blinked back to the world as the roar faded, leaving my ears ringing. Scarecrow and Curly were cringing, curling into themselves with their hands over their ears.
And Calder threw himself at the barrier, landing in the middle of it and—sticking there, caught like a fly in a web. For the first time since they’d captured me, I fought. I tore at my manacles like a beast in a trap, willing to rip off my arms, heedless of the blood running down from my torn and battered wrists, screaming and kicking. Calder was already dead. The moment he touched that barrier, he was a dead man, and my screams echoed off the ceiling…
His face contorted in pain, fangs gnashing, and he shoved with one massive shoulder, his legs straining. “Fuck, he’s still alive!” Scarecrow, dancing backward, scrabbling for something, anything—some kind of weapon, but it didn’t matter.
