Page 21 of The Goblin in the Sink Drain
I hit the woods where I could muddy my scent and hopefully power up a burner phone to call for help.
I had been hunted here, of course. It had been a favorite game of kids in my age group. And since Dad had believed that if I got pushed to my limits, I would smash through them and shift, I got no help from him when they beat me senseless. Even Mercer had stood back and watched, crunching on suckers and letting me bleed out on the grass.
An image of Goldie in that situation attempted to form in my mind, but I couldn’t picture the Walshes treating her that way. Then again, she had shown an aptitude for fire, and kids who shifted early or had all the markers to guarantee a successful first transformation were nurtured through their adolescence.
A sharp yip to my right drew my eye toward a wispy blur on the edge of my vision.
Mottled skin. Tufted tail. Luxurious ears. And…a fashionable scarf?
“Fayne,” I panted, certain I must be hallucinating. “What are you doing here?”
The small dog cut in behind me, nipping my heel, directing me north when I had been heading south. As the landscape became familiar, I oriented myself toward one of the older outposts. Single sentinels used to live there, but I overheard the handful of rooms had been repurposed into cells tough enough to hold rogue shifters caught on the property or other threats to the pack in recent years.
“Is this where they took Sloane?” I perked my ears for sounds of pursuit and sank onto my haunches to conceal myself behind wild blueberry bushes. “I’ve never been inside, but I’ve hiked past it a few times.”
Her soft rumble of confirmation turned my palms sweaty with dread over how we could extract Sloane.
As the low building came into view, bright copper notes hit my nose.
Blood.
Lots of it.
We had found Sloane, what was left of her. Mercer had forced her to shift, collared her and chained her, securing her to a metal flagpole. The sentinels present, I counted seven, were taking turns attacking her. Some with teeth and claws. Others with metal batons and fists. Somehow, none of the blood was theirs. Even if Dad hit her with a direct order to stand and take it, no one in that shape could leash their instinct to defend themselves. And then I spotted the reason for her submission.
A muzzle.
Sunlight glinted off the basket encasing her snout. Thesilverbasket. No wonder she hadn’t fought back.
The worst part was knowing that if I had stumbled across this when I lived here, I would have assumed Sloane deserved the punishment. I would have cringed at the harshness, but I would have blamed that bloodthirstiness on shifter nature and reassured myself I was happy not to suffer the same fate. I would have averted my eyes, walked away, and done my best to forget it.
That shameful realization got me wondering how often I had looked the other way when Dad said or did something I knew in my soul was wrong but left it for the others to grapple with their own consciences. I had fallen into a comfortable habit of convincing myself it wasn’t a problem because the outcome didn’t affect me. With the pack working so hard to exclude me from their world, I worried the petty part of me believed they got what they deserved for living in it.
A cold nose bumped the back of my hand, and Fayne stared up at me, waiting for instruction.
“Do you know if Tara and the others are here?”
After sitting, she used her hind leg to scratch her scarf until it slid free then kicked it toward me.
The fabric was from a corner of a light jacket, and when I brought it to my nose, I scented Tara.
That told me the reason she had come, part of it, but it wasn’t an answer. “Is this a yes or a no?”
The dog shook her head, confirming that the cougar pride had kept custody of its captives.
“Rían gave me this.” I showed her the brand on my hand. “Should we use it now?”
Silver claws or not, there was no way I could fight off that many sentinels on my own.
Head down, Fayne considered our options, but she must have come to the same conclusion as me because she pawed my ankle.
“Okay.” I fumbled the lighter from my pocket at her insistence. “Here goes.”
I finished one pass over the mark with the flame before the lighter was kicked out of my hand. I twisted out of my crouch, halfway to rising, when the next hit snapped my head back with enough force to leave me seeing stars. I fell against a tree, its bark carving my palms, and held on as my eyes rolled in my head.
“I figured it would come down to this one day.” Mercer towered over me. “I told Carmichael taking you in was a bad idea.” A sigh moved through him. “But he couldn’t be reasoned with when it came to your mother. He was obsessed with her. She already had a mate when they met, but Carmichael didn’t care.”
Mercer opening up to me now was not a great sign for me getting out of here alive.
