Chapter 27: Billie

Chapter 27: Billie

I sat in the bedroom where I had spent my entire life, oblivious to the oppression I suffered under Alpha David. Freedom was never something I could have earned; he had only taken me in so I could serve a purpose. But I supposed I would find out soon enough what his intentions were.

My bedroom has been untouched since I left. Without my constant cleaning, a layer of dust gathered on the surfaces of my dresser and bedside table, dust bunnies rolling across the oak floor. All the clothes I hadn’t packed still hung in my closet, most of them hand-me-downs from Catrina, some donations from other packmates, none of them new. I cleaned my wounds the best I could with water from an old water bottle beside my bed and got dressed in leggings and a black sweater. Exhausted as I was, there was no chance I would try to sleep. David had thrown me into the bedroom and left a packmate to guard the door until he could deal with me; every minute that I was alone, I scoured my room for a means to escape, praying that I could come up with a plan before David returned.

The floor creaked as the man outside shifted his weight. Footsteps eventually came up the hallway, but I knew from their weight they weren’t David. When a nearby bedroom door closed, my heart thudded with hope: Colt! My brother was home! He had to know I was here, but why didn’t he try to talk to me?

I hovered by the door, leaning off my injured ankle. “Colt?” I hoped he could hear me.

The man outside grunted. “Quiet down.”

“I want to talk to my brother.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“How do you know?”

“Mind your own business.”

A flicker of indignation bolstered my voice. “Colt!”

The man turned and pounded on my door. “Hey! What did I just fucking say?”

“Colt!” I shouted again.

“Don’t make me come in there!”

Aislin’s daring personality was starting to rub off on me. “What are you going to do, hit me?” I trembled a little when I spoke, but it was empowering. I’ve taken worse blows. I could take this too. I wanted him, or someone at least, to know that I was angry and I wasn’t going to hide with my tail between my legs anymore.

“You little bitch,” the man said behind the door. My doorknob rattled before another voice growled down the hallway.

“What’s going on?”

Okay, maybe my plan backfired a little. I wasn’t trying to get David’s attention.

The man muttered that I was calling for Colt and David’s harsh footsteps approached my door. I willed myself to hold my ground, but the moment my door opened and David appeared, my confidence faltered. I staggered back toward my bed as David pushed into my room and bore down on me. “Growing rather gutsy, aren’t you,” he drawled, rolling up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, his top two buttons undone. “Colt cannot and will not help you, Billie.”

Green fire blazed in my eyes. “What are you going to do to me?”

David closed the door, leaving us alone in the arena of my bedroom. He stormed into my personal space and my instincts screamed for me to dart away, but he grabbed my wrist before I could, taking a fistful of my hair above the back of my neck. Roughly jerking my head back, he examined my neck. “Gavin didn’t mark you yet, did he?”

We hadn’t even talked about it. There was too much going on for either of us to think about the marking ritual. “No.”

“What’s he waiting for?”

“For you to back off.”

David hummed. He stood so close to me I could feel the sound reverberate in his chest. “Then he’s lost his chance,” said David. “Do you remember your parents, Billie?”

The question made me feel cold. “I was only three when I lost them… Gavin said you told people I was your daughter.”

“I had to in order to dispel any suspicions about where you came from. But you and I both know you aren’t mine. I only raised you. Tried to shape you into something I could use.”

“How?”

David’s mouth tightened somewhere between a smirk and a grimace, like he couldn’t choose between amusement or disgust. “You look like her…”

“Rebecca?” I murmured.

“Your mother. Shannon Rathbone.”

My lungs quaked. “Were you…”

“In love with her? No,” said David. “I was quite smitten with Rebecca. I wouldn’t have left her for the world.”

He had never come close to telling me these things before. I craved to know more, but the sensation of his fingers on my nape made it hard to breathe.

“She left me,” said David, “for your father Joshua. So I stole you as revenge.”

My blood became ice.

“If I could no longer have the love of my life, my fated mate—I’d have Joshua’s daughter instead.”

“Have…?”

David sneered at my naivety. “In place of my mate.”

Nausea coiled up in my chest, and my heart sickened. I couldn’t be his mate. I couldn’t do the things with David that I had done with Gavin. I wrenched away from David but he tightened his grip and held me closer. “You can’t,” I shook. “You’re like a father to me.”

“I’m not your father. I hid you in the manor so nobody would know you were the Rathbones’.”

“You treated me like your daughter. You told everyone I was!” I pounded his chest with my fist.

David faltered, as if that detail was the only thing holding him back from assaulting me right then and there. “Nobody would know what we’re doing.”

“They’d figure it out. Colt would—”

“Nobody will know!” he snarled at me. “You were supposed to stay in the manor; weak, pathetic, hidden from the world. I thought the Moon Goddess blessed me when you never had your Moondream. I thought it was a karmic gift, and I could keep you to myself once you were old enough, but no—your fated mate had to be fucking Gavin Steele. I’m not letting all those years raising you go to waste. The plan isn’t changing. You won’t die, Billie, but you’ll never see the light of day again. I’ll make sure of that.”

David muscled me toward the bed. In panic, I thrashed and pushed him away, praying that whoever was outside my bedroom would hear and know that something was terribly wrong. “Help! Please, someone help me!”

“Don’t bother,” growled David as he clasped his hand over my mouth. “Nobody’s going to help you, Billie. It was only a matter of time before I took you in the way I always wanted to.”

Blinding fear took over as David bent me face down onto the bed, muffling my voice in the sheets and seizing the back of my neck with iron fingers. I heard the metallic twinkle of his belt unbuckling.

Footsteps once more raced to my bedroom door. “David!” called a man outside, “Gavin’s on the phone. He says he’s willing to surrender the unicorn in exchange for Billie.”

My ears rang. David paused, grumbling, before his hand went to my hip and slid under my sweater. It disturbed me to feel his touch. He hesitated, and I knew he was weighing how badly he wanted to violate me versus the chance to take possession of Muriel, but ultimately he leaned close and whispered in my ear, “Behave, and I’ll spare Gavin’s life. Understand?”

Was this the only way I could protect my mate? I whimpered and nodded.

“Good.” David pulled away, smoothing out his clothes before turning for the door. “Tie her up and watch her,” he instructed to the man outside. “Make sure she’s ready for transport. If Gavin makes good on this deal, we can ambush and kill them all.”

I pulled my feet onto the bed and curled up, hiding my face between my fists. My back shook as I cried. The betrayal and frailty I felt then was immense, and I finally understood why David had never wanted to let me go. He never cared about me, never wanted to protect me and raise me into the wolf I yearned to be—he only wanted to rape me. I was a vengeful outlet for the desires that had been taken away from him.

There was no energy left in my body as the man guarding me stripped me of my sweater and bound my wrists behind my back. Resisting would only harm me and the end result was inevitable; I knew David wasn’t going to just hand me over, but it hurt that Gavin had actually agreed to sacrifice Muriel. Knowing that her sacrifice would be in vain filled me with grief, I couldn’t contend.

The sun sank into the forest by the time I was hauled outside and into David’s truck. Late red light burned my eyes as the truck rumbled down a gravel road, but wouldn’t last long; a dense, dark grey cloud had begun rolling in like an ominous spaceship, blotting out the sky and bringing with it the smell of impending rain. David sat behind the wheel with Catrina in the passenger seat beside him. Behind them sat Colt and I, but my heart ached too much to look at him. The fact that he didn’t try to communicate with me spoke enough about how he felt. He had given up on me. I didn’t mean anything to him anymore.

Once we turned onto Dawson road, I knew where we were planning to meet Gavin: at the Grandbay pack house. By the time we pulled into the long driveway, rain had speckled the windshield. The sun’s dying light cast the overhanging cloud pink and purple, but the oncoming rain sapped all the warmth from the air and made me shiver.

The truck stopped a dozen yards from the pack house, leaving ample space for the two packs to gather. Another car had traveled behind us, containing Lothair, Sibyelle, and two more Dalesbloom wolves. Still, David’s intentions of an ambush implied that more packmates and dragons were lurking in the forest, waiting to strike. My lungs felt heavy with dread before Catrina roughly dragged me out of the truck, and then in the damp, humid air, I was met with a conglomeration of even more scents. Not just Dalesbloom, but Grandbay. And… I swear, there were hints of Eastpeak, too.

Catrina clutched my wrists, placing me between herself and Colt, while David stood in front of us beside Lothair. Across the distance of wet grass, Gavin stood with Oslo, Gretel, Aislin, and Muriel. I met Gavin’s gaze and withered with guilt for having catalyzed all this. I felt the tension in Gavin’s body reflected onto me, his fear and anger brewing in my own gut.

David narrowed his eyes at the Grandbay wolves. “I see you’ve employed reinforcements,” he said, his voice level. “Send Muriel forward, and I will relinquish Billie to you. Then neither of us will be forced to make any rash decisions.”

He was talking about Eastpeak, but I didn’t know how many Eastpeak wolves were here. If the entirety of Dalesbloom and the Inkscales had come for the ambush, they would still outnumber Grandbay and Eastpeak. David didn’t have to bluff. I knew for a fact he wasn’t planning on letting me go.

“Give us Billie first,” Gavin leveraged.

“No,” David said simply.

I trembled with emotion both hot and cold. “Gavin, don’t do this,” I pleaded. “You can’t give her to them…”

“Shut up,” snarled Catrina, cuffing the back of my head.

Gavin’s mouth went taut before he glanced sideways at Muriel. Exchanging a subtle nod with her, he and the silver-haired woman advanced together, taking slow, careful steps. Lothair crossed the distance to claim Muriel, but when there were only a few yards left between them, the landscape behind Gavin and Muriel began to change. First, I saw somebody arise on the roof of the pack house, pointing a rifle at us. Then a tide of wolves emerged from the bushes, both Grandbay and Eastpeak, bristling and stalking closer. Gavin held his arm in front of Muriel.

In response, Colt and the Dalesbloom wolves—the ones that had joined us as humans—produced handguns and pointed at Gavin.

“The Mythguard won’t allow you to take Muriel,” Gavin said decisively. His voice was strong and bold with confidence, but I could feel his apprehension. Even with the wolves behind him, he was outnumbered. Wolves were useless against guns. “Killing us will only invite the Mythguard to recognize Dalesbloom as a threat and eradicate your pack.”

“Then perhaps I need not kill you all to get what I want,” David snapped back. He glanced at me, the gears in his mind turning—then his eyes went to Colt, and I saw them light up in revelation. “You can’t have Billie if she’s marked by another.”

He was right—even if Gavin was my fated mate, the marking ritual would eliminate our bond and connect me to someone else. But David couldn’t do it. He was still marked by Rebecca, and the marking was only lost if she died not by David’s own hand.

His solution was worse than I could have imagined.

“Colt!” he commanded. “Mark her.”

I gasped, catching Colt’s widened eyes.

“No!” shouted Gavin.

“Yes,” said David. “Do it!”

Swallowing his reservations, Colt grabbed my arm and pulled me in front of him, his gun to my temple. “I’m sorry,” he muttered in my ear.

If he did this, there was no way David could hide the pain I’d feel when he defiled me like he planned to later, but David didn’t seem to care. He’d do whatever it took to destroy Gavin. His madness defied all logic.

I shook as I felt Colt’s teeth on my skin.