For a second, I almost try to make him laugh again. I liked the way it felt. The strange, stupid sense of connection it brought, like sharing a joke with someone who gets you.
Then I remember. Again. I’m being kidnapped.
Why the hell do I keep forgetting that?
I’ve been so starved for companionship that making my kidnapper laugh stirred something inside me.That’s so fucked up, I don’t even have a joke for it.
The trees thin out, and we emerge into a clearing. I blink, taken off guard.
Cabins dot the landscape, rustic and cozy, smoke curling from chimneys. Children run and chase each other across a wide lawn, their high-pitched squeals carrying through the air. Women hang laundry on lines strung between the cabins. Warm, lived-in, real.
My stomach clenches.
“What the hell is this?” I mutter.
Darius turns to me and leans down, his voice a low rumble near my ear. “Welcome home, little omega.”
I twist to glare at him. “This isn’t my home, you psycho.”
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps walking, leading us to a large log cabin set apart from the others—huge windows, rough-hewn beams, a wrap-around porch that practically begs for rocking chairs and lemonade.
“Didn’t realize kidnapping paid so well.”
Amber eyes snorts. “You have no idea, sweetheart.”
Inside, it’s warm and lived-in, but the whole place is saturated with alpha scent. Thick and heavy. Pine, pepper, wood-smoke, and hot turd.
My wolf perks up at it, and I tell her to shut the hell up.
Clown sets me down on a chair at the massive dining table.
“Sit,” Darius tells me. “Stay.”
“Fuck you,” I snap. Archer advances and pushes me down, gentler than I expected, and before I can react, Amber eyes grabs a rope and binds my wrists to the chair’s arms. His fingers linger a second too long near my collarbone, and I snap at them with my teeth, barely missing.
He jerks back, cursing. “Fuck, she is feral!”
I grin, all teeth. “Aw, did the big bad alpha get scared?”
His hand lands on my shoulder, heavy and warm, and I hate the way my wolf stirs under his touch.
Dammit.
“Behave,” he says, his voice low. I can feel the threat under the word, the promise of what happens if I don’t.
Darius speaks up. “We need to change. Watch her, Silas.”
So the big-ass clown is Silas. Good to know.
They file out, leaving me alone with him. He leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching me with that same quiet intensity as before. I meet him head-on, refusing to flinch. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
His lip curls, but he doesn’t say anything.
The silence stretches between us, and my mind races. I need to find a way out. My eyes scan the room, cataloging weapons and exits. A knife block on the kitchen counter. Windows on two sides. The front door, currently unblocked since the others went upstairs.
But there’s another part of me, a weaker, traitorous part, that’s already thinking about the possibility of a warm meal. Maybe a hot shower. My body is so tired and so hungry that the thought of fighting my way out right now makes me want to cry.
They return moments later, coming down from the second floor. Changed out of their hunting clothes and looking like regular people instead of masked psychopaths, which is somehow worse.