Most of the shifters trapped here are adult males. Where were all of them coming from? Their scents are all mixed up with sedatives, and the acid stench of cortisol makes it hard to sort out their pack scent.
Thankfully, none of them are Blackwood shifters, but I scent some Stonevalley and Edgeriver wolves in here. Neither of those packs would stand for humans stealing their packmates—they must have thought that their missing males were killed during the wars.
A few of them are Evenfall Ridge wolves, and somehow that makes sense to me. I’d heard that there was a sickness brewing amongst the alphas of the Evenfall pack; that something in their social dynamics was downrighttoxic.
It still seems impossible to think that they wouldallowthis to happen to their wolves. That they wouldn’t notice their declining numbers and protect their own, shredding any human who threatened their pack. So then how did so many shifters from the Evenfall Ridge pack end up here?
Five of the shifters we release are males from Evenfall Ridge, and if I am not mistaken, the small female in the cell our alpha just broke into is too. She looks like a doll, so delicate and fair with porcelain skin. If I couldn’t smell the wild tang of wolf on her, I’d have trouble believing that she was a shifter. Her features are dainty, and she has a little button nose in the middle of her heart-shaped face. Whatever the humans have been doing to her must have blanched her fine hair—all of it is turning white, and only the tips remain a light brunette.
Whoever she is, she doesn’t belong here. She should never have had to deal with any of this.
I grab the metal at her wrists, ignoring the burn of silver, and wrench hard—but before the metal snaps beneath my hands, I feel it… light flares across my skin as my fingers brush her wrist. Her touch awakens something within me… recognition echoes through my bones, as something deep within my spirit reaches out to her.
Somewhere in my chest, deeper than blood and tissue and bone, a bond snaps into place. Spreading from my fingertips across my hand, the light etches marks in my skin—constellations and moon phases—in a pattern that I’ve waited for my entire life. Identical markings bloom across the wrists of the sleeping girl before me—an exact match.
Within me, my wolf howls so loud that he drowns out all thoughts but one.
Mate.
Whoever this girl is, she ismine.
Chapter 5
Nyx
Rage fills me, flooding my limbs, until I am twitchy with the need to fight, with the need to break something… with the need to kill the humans who did this to her all over again.
It isn’t enough. I want to make them pay more. I want to make themhurt.
How dare they do this to her?
Their deaths flash through my mind. I recall the exact expression of a human male in a lab coat—pure terror and shock in his eyes—as he held his arms up to block me. As if that could do anything against a hundred and fifty pound beast with razor-sharp claws and two-inch canines.
I want to kill him again, but the need to destroy her enemies fades the moment her doe-like eyes snap open. Eyes that are round, and sweet, and as blue as the sky on a perfect summer’s day.
She blinks in confusion; her gaze flicks from the new patterns on her skin, over to the exact match on mine.
I lift her frail body into my arms as a light bursts all around us, marking us. Now that I’m holding her, I won't let her go for a single moment, notever.
My gaze flicks over to my alpha in a silent question. If he needs me, I’m his wolf. I’ll fight his battles without question. But my mate… She needs me too, and she doesn’t haveanybody.
My alpha doesn’t make me choose. Roman nods once, signaling me to go. Take care of her—another reason I would follow him anywhere. The Blackwood alpha doesn’t fling his power around like a weapon, forcing all the wolves around him to submit. No, Roman is a true leader.
Gingerly, careful not to drop her, I turn from the room murmuring. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Willow.” My mate whispers in a raspy, yet sweet voice.
She’s staring at me as if she isn’t quite sure that I am really here. There’s something off about her reactions… like she’s still fighting the silver in her system—even though I’d torn off her chains and the wires holding her in place—there is something about the way her gaze slips off me, losing focus… I don’t like it.
I don’t want herhere,surrounded by all these sick and dying wolves and by the corpses of the humans who’d experimented on her.
I grip her carefully as I pick up the pace, making my way out of this labyrinth of cruel experiments and shifter misery. “Willow, my name is Nyx, and I’m going to get you out of here,” I vow.
Willow is under my protection now.
Anyone who even thinks of lifting a finger against her will have to deal withme.
Chapter 6