Chapter 5

Briar May

Christ. What the fuck was happening to her? First there was whatever-the-hell-happened in the Jeep that started all this, but even now—after being drugged and held captive—it was like she wasn’t in control of her body. She wanted to spit on him, yell abuse at her captor, but instead she was having traitorous thoughts. Something dark and scalding hot reared up inside her. She wanted to run her palms all over his bare skin. To tear off that t-shirt in one swift, savage movement to see how far up that dark, scrolling ink on his arms extended. He’d have scars, she was certain. She’d seen a few jagged ones running along his arms, most of them hidden by the ink.

Right about now is a good time to get a fucking grip.

She hadn’t responded and he took her silence for defiance. “You can either behave, or I can make you behave.”

That ominous warning sent a terrible tingle right between her legs. She might be a middle-aged virgin, afraid of the outside world for all intents and purposes, but she knew what Stockholm Syndrome was. It must be that—because nothing else about this whole damn situation made any sense, and especially not what had happened in the Jeep.

She needed to find her backbone. She was the daughter of an alpha and the sister of the current alpha. She could be fierce, she was a wolf, she was a survivor. She was no trembling mouse or damsel in distress. This man was literally the devil incarnate. He was her captor. She wasn’t just blithely going to obey him or give him an easy time. He’d pay in any way she could make him. He wanted to play at being the devil? She’d make his life a living hell.

Maybe he’d get so tired of her, he’d just let her go.

Her mind suddenly went back to his warning about what his pack would do to them. She remembered the she-wolf who had been her elder brother’s mate and gave an involuntary shudder. Could his pack be worse than the Rangers?

No, that would not be her fate.

She tilted her face up, refusing to cower, shoving down the sick desire that edged into the pit of her belly when she got another full-on look of his powerful build. It wasn’t her fault that her body reacted. Men like this, physical specimens who defied nature in every way, in their prime, obviously skilled in the arts of protection, he was exactly the kind of man who lured women into reading smutty romances because he was so hot he set the cover on fire. It was that face they’d imagine as they read, those icy eyes staring straight into their souls.

She knew because she’d read more than a few in her time, but maybe she should have spent those years reading self-defense manuals instead.

“You’ll make me behave?” she taunted. She was pleased when a shudder of pure fury slowly rolled through Hades. His jaw visibly ticked, and she continued. “How will you do that, Mr. Viking Wolf? With your blood-soaked axes? I’m not some princess you stole away from a sacked battlefield. You can dress up and play warrior all you want, but you’re just some twisted little boy in a big man’s body who took a defenseless woman from her home. How are you going to make me behave?”

Her palms grew damp at his silent, lethal posture. He was angry, but there was zero change in his breathing. In his cold, dead face. She could just sense it.

It might be a mistake to goad him, but she’d watched as he’d kicked the axes out of the way. Maybe if she could get him angry enough, she might be able to make her escape. She just needed him to shift away from the open window. She had no chains on her now, and the effect of the sedative had almost worn off.

She’d taunted him. Parroted him. Sassed him.

He turned with deceptive calm and faced the window, massive hands resting at his sides. She hadn’t quite pushed him hard enough, she needed him to step to the side.

“How are you going to make me behave?” Perversely, she wanted him to tell her. She wanted to see just the tiniest crack appear in his control. She wanted to know if it was even possible to find a single weakness in a man like him. Part of her just straight up wanted to let him know that he might have kidnapped her, but she wouldn’t let him win. She wasn’t afraid of him.

She watched his broad back intently. “Is it with your cock?”

He growled viciously and spun around. There was a darkness in those icy blue depths that promised her endless pleasure, but only if she was willing to take the endless pain. That fire burned bright, but he quickly extinguished it. His eyes were still abnormal. Strange eyes for a wolf. For a human. For anyone. They were so pale, a blue that was almost gray, with light ashy flecks, all of it caged by a vivid cerulean ring.

“That’s a big word for a scared, naive little wolf.” He was the one taunting her now. A wicked grin pulled his lips back from straight, white teeth.

“I’m not a little wolf,” she snapped. She realized just how deep she was digging her own grave. Naive indeed. She was just proving him right and it was mortally embarrassing.

He stalked over and knelt in front of her, so close that the heat from his body felt like she was staring straight into the bowels of the very hell he’d crawled out of.

Hades.

While she didn’t doubt it was a false name, there was no moniker more suited.

“I’ll make you obey with restraints and the tranquilizer if I have to. If that doesn’t work, then I’m not afraid to get the chains back out.”

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing just how much that disturbed her. The thing any shifter most feared, or at least any wolf, was captivity. Nothing wild ever thrived behind bars. No human truly could either.

She wished she could shift now, but after reassessing the situation she’d realized it would be pointless. He was a wolf too and he’d always be faster, stronger, and more deadly than she was. If she ran, he’d catch her. If she wanted to make her escape, then she’d have to come up with a better plan.

“As to the rest, I’ll never touch you.” He was back to throwing off ice, his face hard and expressionless. “You’d have to beg me first, and still not then. I’m here for one purpose only. My mission is revenge and only revenge. Your pack took something from me. They took my family. Mybrother. I took you in exchange. I can never get my brother back. He’s dust of the earth now.”

“And that’s what you plan on doing with me? Killing me?” Fear curled through her blood like a toxic smoke, but her anger was greater. His words only pumped much needed adrenaline through her veins. Right now, was the time for action. But what could she do?

She bit down on her lip in frustration. When his eyes were drawn straight there, she released it, tasting the blood.

Suddenly he was on her, the heat of his body pressing against her, as her back hit the wall. She felt the roughness of his beard graze her cheek as his lips crashed against hers, his tongue licking up the ruby red droplets. Heat flared to her core and her heart was racing. She could feel his hardness, and with a gasp she realized just how big he was.

His tongue plundered her mouth and she felt as if she was falling. Shockwaves coursed through her body and it was as though the flames would devour her. Then just as suddenly he jumped back like he’d been scorched.

She could sense the anger which seemed to emanate from every pore, anger not directed at her, as far as she could tell, but at himself for losing control.

Her heart was still racing as she leapt to her feet. She was about to let the wolf looseand fight to her death, but a spatter of red froze her mid-motion. Mid-thought. She stared down at the red drop on the dirty old floorboards. Another soon joined it. Blood.

She snatched her eyes to the roof. There was no horror movie style body strapped to the ceiling that she’d missed dripping gore. The blood was coming from an ever-darkening patch on Hades’s shirt. The black conveniently hid the stain from view.

“You’re hurt.” Understatement of the century. He was bleeding now like he was trying to single-handedly restock the nation’s supply.

In a daze, he hauled off his t-shirt. The ink did indeed extend up his arms and all down his chest. There wasn’t an inch of skin to be seen. She wasn’t wrong about the scars. They dotted his body, calling to her, a map for her fingers to explore and learn. Thankfully, her attention was immediately drawn to the once white bandage wrapped tight around his side. It was now a vivid crimson. Blood welled from beneath the makeshift wrapping and continued to spatter the floor.

“Fuck.” His hand shot to the wound like he could hold back his lifeforce.

“Were you shot?” Just how violent had that fight with his men been?

“Knife wound.”

He stormed over to his pack in the dusty corner. How much time had he spent getting her here? Barricading the place? Cleaning the little farmhouse to make it semi-habitable? All while he was injured like that?

“You need treatment.”

His jaw ticked as he pulled the bandage off, unwinding it from his thick torso. His abs flexed as he heaved a breath in and out. He was trying to measure his breathing. Control the pain so he could force himself not to feel it and not to react. As soon as that bloodied strip of cloth hit the floor, she was the one who couldn’t control her rough gasp.

That was no simple wound. As a shifter, he should have healed long ago, but he hadn’t. The wound went deep. She could see the layers of the cut. It was more than just a slash. It looked like he’d been stabbed with a serrated knife. Whoever had been wielding it clearly wanted to slice him in half.

The blood started flowing more freely and his chest heaved in and out once, the swirling ink coming alive. Two ancient warriors standing in a field of grass, a huge oak tree surrounding them. They had their heads bent almost touching. Overhead, the birds flew and above that, like it was both night and day at once, the stars. An endless sea of stars that covered his shoulders. Across his pecs, breaking the stars, was a Latin inscription, Memento Mori.

He was a giant, fearful and awe inspiring, oddly beautiful in a god of death kind of way. He seemed untouched by life, but he wasn’t. This wound was only proof. The inscription on his chest, a part of him until that death came, seemed to prove true when he faltered. He took one step forward and then went down on his knees. His eyes glazed over and blood poured from between his fingers.

He seemed as stunned as she was.

She could have run.

She should have run, but instead in that moment her only thoughts were of helping this man.

Her hand flew to his shoulder in a swift move to steady him, but he surged back, away from her touch. She glared at him. “You can tell me what you to do or your stubborn ass can bleed out right here and I’ll find my way back to my pack.”

“My death would be no great loss for you.”

“Too bad you didn’t think about that before you started this whole messy venture.”

She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t care. She wasn’t a good actress, and playing the merciless, soulless cad wasn’t in her. She’d already given up so many parts of herself. She’d dreamed of being someone else. Someone more adventurous and less afraid. How could she manage the world out there, when she was barely able to venture an hour away from her pack lands to Sheridan? It was just a small city, and the few times she’d gone, she’d felt put on display. Like she was just a few seconds away from being captured and shoved into some lab or zoo, forever experimented on and stared at, left to die the loneliest and most painful of deaths. She wanted to be someone bold. Someone another person desired and wanted to take for a mate. She’d wanted, more than anything, to be a mother. Even if those dreams were the ones she’d all but given up on, she refused to give up the parts of herself she was proud of. It wasn’t wrong to be kind and gentle. There was a fire in that too. She’d heard her father say that about her mother more times than she could count. That she had a heart of steel.

Hades swayed on his knees. His blood poured steadily onto the floor, the bright red puddle growing by the second. It smelled hot and metallic.

“Fuck this.” She stalked over to the corner where she’d seen his axes and that small black pack.

The fact that he didn’t stop her was proof enough that he was in serious trouble. She had no clue what she was doing and none of the vials were labeled. There were empty syringes and some that weren’t empty. Which one had he given her to make her sleep? How much and how often?

She passed them over quickly, before he could notice her thinking about it. His eyes might be ice, but they burned like fire as they took in her every movement. She finally found what looked like a first aid kit in a plastic bag. Bandages, antiseptic, swabs, gauze. Inside that bag was the kind of needle used for stitches and suturing thread. Tweezers of several different sizes. Pliers?

“You’re going to have to tell me what to do.” Her voice shook, which shot her authority to shit.

Hades tensed, obviously in pain, though his face didn’t change. Her heart beat hard as she took the whole bag over to him.

“You need to lie down. I can’t do this while you’re hovering over me.”

“Give it to me.” He tried to take the bag from her, but he swayed and nearly fell forward at that small movement.

“Do you want me to sedate you?” she asked as she looked at the bottles.

He shook his head and growled, “No sedation.”

“Look, you don’t have to be so damn macho. If I was going to run away, I would have, it’s not like you’re in any fit state to stop me now. I want to help you.”

“No sedation,” he repeated.

She grasped his shoulder again, the heat of his skin sizzling under her palms. He was either running a fever or she imagined that heat. She wanted to get him onto the mattress, but instead he sprawled out there, pushing his legs out. His boots knocked against the floorboards. Stretched to his full length, he seemed to take up the whole room. He certainly sucked all the oxygen out of it. Out of her lungs.

“Clean it first,” he barked out.

“With the antiseptic?”

“Yes. That’s all I have.”

“That’s going to hurt.”

“Do it.”

By the time she got the bottle and knelt over him, he was braced for the pain. That was only going to make it hurt worse, but she poured fast, covering the whole wound. Hades’s body tensed and shook, but he never let out a single sound. Not even so much as a breath, and when it came, it came impossibly quiet.

“Good.”

She felt like she’d already killed him. Her heart was doing something it shouldn’t be doing. It was somewhere in her belly, and her belly was in her throat. All her insides were all mixed up, in a strange and horrible jumble. If she’d had half a mind to think, she might have given more consideration to the traitorous thought, that part of what she was feeling now had more to do with the aftereffects of his kiss, rather than this. But she was too busy running on adrenaline to give that much consideration.

“Start sewing.”

“I have no idea how!”

He grabbed the needle from her, the thread. He made his hands work. He pinched the wound together as much as he could, the blood welling and spilling, spilling, spilling, and then he started sewing. Until his hands paused and his eyes shut. His eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks, long and flaxen, a shade darker than his hair.

Had he passed out? She needed to get the rest of that wound closed up. She reached for the needle, but he knocked her hand away. Forced his eyes open. They were glazed over, he looked fuzzy with pain, but he continued stitching a messy, crooked line over his abdomen.

“How are you not dead?”

He snorted. Exhaled a little too long and sharp. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, shining in the sunlight spilling through the glassless window. “I’m good at not dying. It’s what a warrior does. What a soldier does. He stays alive to carry out his orders and complete his mission.”

“What kinds of missions?”

“The kinds you don’t want to know about.”

“How many people have you killed?” She wanted to grab the words and shove them back down her throat. She watched his neck, the straining tendons there, the muscles in his jaw cloaked by the beard, but still jumping as his teeth clenched, the vein throbbing in his forehead.

“I don’t know. I’ve lost count.” He was lying. “I was a soldier. Legit. In the Army and all. That’s not a thing you ask a man who did something like that.”

“How many have you killed outside of the army, then?”

The needle paused. He was only halfway there. She’d probably do a better job of it than he did, but he didn’t seem bothered by how it looked. Only that the wound stayed shut and the bleeding stopped.

“I’m not going to tell you that. You know I’m a killer. Let that suffice.”

His pulse thrashed in his neck. Too fast. He wouldn’t look at her. His hand shook ever so slightly as he pulled the needle through his own skin again. It was all signs that it hurt. A lot. He was good at hiding his suffering. Had he grown up in a culture where showing weakness or fear or emotion was enough to get you hurt? Killed? Was it drilled out of him? Beaten out of him? Or did that come later, when he crossed whatever lines officially made him call himself a killer?

“For hire?” She wished she could shut up.

His eyes finally snapped to her even though his hands kept working. “I don’t do it for pleasure.”

She sat back on her heels, heart now hammering desperately. “That’s a relief.”

He was clearly struggling to finish off the last few stitches. His eyes weren’t right. They were even more glazed over when he blinked. They wouldn’t focus on her any longer. His hands paused. She surged forward, but he knocked her hands away again as soon as they brushed his.

He looked like he was barely holding on to consciousness, but he slipped the needle through over and over. When he reached the end, he tied it off and finally let his head slump to the wooden floorboards.

She had the insane urge to lean over his chiseled, frightful face and smack him. She leaned over and raised her hand, but then she let it fall. This man might have the face of death brought to life, but he was also frighteningly beautiful. She was only afraid to look at him because it stirred things inside of her that were all wrong. Painfully and horribly wrong.

She reached for the tiny pair of scissors in the kit and snipped the thread. She moved the needle and wondered about the ointment in the bag. She decided to forgo it and instead placed a few sterile patches over the strip of stitches. Luckily shifters weren’t as susceptible to infection as humans, so as long as the stitches held, and the wound stopped bleeding he should be okay. Only a thin line of blood seeped through the line of sutures. She watched for a few minutes, and nothing more came. The bleeding had stopped.

She finally took a breath, noting that it was the first full one she’d allowed herself throughout the entire awful procedure. She needed this man to keep her alive. She had no clue where they even were. He could have lied to her when he said Kansas. Even if he hadn’t, that might as well be the moon.

Now that a man wasn’t bleeding out in front of her and the emotion from the kidnapping and the drugging, the shock and danger of the whole thing was wearing thin, what Hades said about his brother finally hit home. She stared at his chest, rising and falling evenly, those two warriors inked there alive with his breaths.

Alive there on his skin, etched over powerfully carved muscle, alive in his memory, but no longer in the world.

There was only one warrior left.

She’d asked him how he was even alive, and she’d meant it. That kind of wound should have been mortal. That he’d carried it with him for a day or more only proved how tough he was. It proved what kind of a will to live he had. He also had some kind of luck that nothing vital had been hit. Maybe it was skill. Maybe he knew how to move, how to dodge, how to protect himself, how to take a death blow without it being fatal.

Maybe he wasn’t mortal at all, unlike the ink on his chest suggested.

Before she could stop herself, Briar May found her hand trembling over his chest, stopping short of actually touching him. She let her palm hover right above where his heart would be, still beating steadily, and instead curled it into a fist and brought it to her mouth.

She wanted to hate him, he was her captor after all. Yet she couldn’t.

She knew nothing about him, but it felt as if her traitorous body had claimed him.

She faced the window, stared longingly at the field. Somewhere beyond those tall, wavering grasses were her brothers and sisters. Her parents. Rome, who had started all of this the night he’d killed those Rangers. He’d taken his vengeance and now they’d come full circle, and she was here. Would she make it out alive to see any of her family again?

Did this man have anyone left?

Maybe the one person in the world who loved him, who meant anything to him, was now gone. Stolen from him, his blood and the ash of his remains soaked into their pack lands.

She bit down hard on her fist to stifle the wail of agony that tore from her throat.

Whatever cursed destiny had been set in motion that night months ago and that moment in the woods when she’d seen Hades and his men appear, they had to see it out.

Together.