Page 10 of Mated By the Pack
“They’re getting closer,” Frank says.
“They?” Carl slides his hand across his gun and chambers a bullet. “How many are there?”
“Four… Maybe five,” Frank growls. “We’re no match for that many of them and they know we’re here. We just have to hope we’re too much trouble to be their next meal.”
“Fuck this.” Carl jumps up. “You want some, motherfucker? Come get it!”
An explosion of gunfire makes me cover my ears and squeal. I’ve seen the peace officers in Haven North carrying guns before, but I’ve never heard one actually fired. It’s so loud it makes it sound like it is thundering inside my head.
“Stop!” Frank roars, shoving the barrel of Frank’s rifle toward the ground. “They’re moving away.”
“That’s what I thought, motherfucker!” Carl shouts.
“It wasn’t your outburst that did it,” Frank mutters, glancing at the cage for a moment. “It was something—else.”
His gaze lingers on me too long for comfort, then he looks to the vine still wrapped around the wheel. It twitches, then shrinks back into the forest.
“What do you mean, something else?” Carl snaps, his voice still trembling from adrenaline. “There’s nothing else out here except us.”
Frank doesn’t answer. He stares into the dark, his jaw flexing like he’s grinding something between his teeth. Finally, he turns his attention back to Carl.
“Jeb can take first watch. I’ll take second,” Frank says, moving back to the center of the campsite.
“Don’t touch any of the girls,” Carl says threateningly, pointing at Jeb. “You do and you’re walking back to Haven North to get a replacement. Maybe even two, as an apology for keeping the buyers waiting.”
Jeb’s lip jerks into a snarl, but he nods in agreement. The Tangle is quiet now. Almost too quiet. An eerie stillness that keeps me on edge, even after Carl, Frank, and Jed settle in for the night. Jeb glances at us several times. There’s a hunger in his eyes I’ve never seen before, but I know what he’s craving. His hand moves to his crotch, and he rubs it a few times, as if he’s confirming it is lust fueling his stare.
I put myself in front of Fiona and Tansy, trying to shield them from his hungry gaze. Brenna seems worried but not panicked. Nara is still relatively calm, despite everything. I’m scared, but I’m angry, too. I bite my tongue, remembering what Nara said. We can’t do anything until the cage door is unlocked, and I’m not going to antagonize Jeb into whipping one of us to make that happen.
Jeb eventually loses interest or gets tired. He walks around the perimeter with his knife in his hand, aiming it into the darkness with a lot more bravado than he had when the wolves were howling. The stillness around us allows my adrenaline to fade. Fatigue begins to set in.
“We should do the same thing they’re doing,” I whisper. “Four of us sleep and one of us keeps watch. If anything happens, they can wake the others.”
Nara nods in the dark beside me. “Make sense,” she murmurs. “I’m surprised by how tired I am, considering how long we were out.”
“Some sedatives don’t give you a peaceful rest,” I say. “I doubt they got theirs from the Upper District, where the good medicine is.”
“Want me to take first watch?” Brenna offers, still glaring at Jeb.
“No, I got it,” I mutter. “You can have second watch.”
Despite the fatigue, I’m not ready to close my eyes yet. Fiona curls up next to me, resting her hand on my leg. Tansy shifts close to Nara. Brenna finds a spot away from all of us. I sit cross-legged and stare. At Jeb. At the darkness. At the mysterious Tangle that encircles our campsite. Waiting is about all we can do. If one of our captors opens the cage door right now, running would be difficult. I can’t even see the road from here, and staying on it in the dark would be almost impossible.
Jeb’s patrol ends and he wakes Frank. Frank sits up with his teeth bared, then relaxes. He rubs his eyes, growls, and mutters something to Jeb I can’t hear before standing up. In the dark, he looks more lion than man, but I’ve only seen lions in old books. In school, they were one of the animals believed to be extinct. I guess their hybrids survived—maybe they just evolved.
Frank waits until Jeb is asleep, then he approaches the cage. I sit up and prepare to wake the others, if needed, but Frank doesn’t seem to have any anger or lust flickering in his emerald-green eyes.
“I assume the asshole didn’t feed you?” Frank growls.
“No,” I answer.
Frank nods and walks to the space that separates the cage from the front of the cart. My heart skips a beat when his fingers brush against the whip, but he doesn’t grab it. He opens a box, removes several packets of rations, and tosses them into the cage.
“Here,” he says, putting a canteen down on our side of the bars. “You’ll have to share the water.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, biting my tongue as soon as the words leave my lips. I shouldn’t be thanking him for basic decency, but he’s the only one who has shown kindness so far.
“I’ll have to collect the canteen before I wake Jed for his watch,” Frank says, turning away to resume his patrol.
