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  I straightened, preparing to suit action to words...and hit my head painfully on a wooden ceiling.

  Could it really be so easy? Just push off the lid and pop up like a jack-in-the-box? Putting my back into it, I spread both hands across the damp boards and pushed with all my might.

  The ceiling didn’t so much as budge. The hatch was either locked tight or covered with an object so heavy there was no way I could dislodge it.

  Or maybe I really am buried alive.

  My heart rate began to pick up, but I refused to be defeated so easily. Taking a deep breath, I decided: So I’ll carve my way out around the edges instead.

  Glad my fingernails were cut short, I scrabbled at the earth beside the wooden ceiling. Dirt fell into my hair, caught in my eyes, and settled around my feet. Blinking painfully against the invasive particles, I cupped my fingers into mole-like claws and dug yet harder.

  A tiny stone tore at the soft flesh of one cuticle, but I paid it no mind. Splinters embedded themselves in my skin as I continued to disinter more of the wooden boards that topped my lair, but it was too dark to see if I bled. I yanked the offending slivers of wood out with my teeth and kept going.

  Further and further I dug. I would break through.

  Only when I’d filled the entire bottom of my prison cell with six inches of debris and the air had grown decidedly moldy from a dislodged I-didn’t-want-to-think-about-what-it-was did I pause. I’d carved out an indentation on one side of the wooden ceiling large enough to fill with my head and shoulders. In other words, I’d created just a hair more breathing room...but there was no sign of daylight creeping through the cracks and the boards above my head felt never-ending.

  I’ll never see daylight again.

  I tried to breathe, tried to swallow down the massive knot in my throat. But I couldn’t even force myself to bend my knees and settle back into the dirt. Instead, I shifted forms without meaning to, my wolf emerging tangled in a mess of human clothing.

  Caught, tight, stuck.

  Terror-stricken, I lashed out at the bonds that held me in place.

  Then, relief, as my animal spirit woke and pushed my human brain aside. Pushed my consciousness back down into her lupine belly. Took complete command of the body that we no longer shared, that she had instead claimed for her very own.

  Happily, I sank into a new kind of darkness.

  Chapter 23

  “Fen, are you out there? I feel you. Where are you?”

  Lia’s voice echoed in my mind as I reentered consciousness. I opened gritty lupine eyes, but still saw nothing. Stretched my nose until it bumped into the same dank wall, only the surface was wetter this time around than it had been before. Plus, I was now paw-deep in a soup of mud rather than in loose earth. Perfect, my hole had become not only small and dark, but also out-and-out wet.

  Raining outside, my animal half suggested, soothing me as if I were a child. But, smell—fresh air coming in.

  Sure enough, the wolf was right. With her enhanced senses, I could feel the faintest eddy of air flowing into our prison cell through cracks in the earthen walls and the boards overhead. The urge to try one more time to dig ourselves free nearly overwhelmed me.

  Unfortunately, my previous attempt at emulating a mole had resulted in the wolf taking complete command of our body for who knows how long. So maybe that wasn’t such a great idea after all.

  Small, tight, trapped.

  I whined aloud, almost dropping out of consciousness as claustrophobia set back in with a vengeance. This time, though, my wolf buoyed me up and refused to allow me to drift down into the void.

  Shh, she whispered. We’ll be alright.

  I only realized the sound had carried across the pack bond when Lia’s voice once again entered my mind. “Fen?” The girl’s tone had been desperate before, but now she was even more frantic. So much so that I thought I could actually smell her fright and feel the sweat beading on her forehead.

  While I’d like to say the sensation focused my attention on my pack mate’s predicament, her fear instead exacerbated my own fight-or-flight reaction. My breathing turned harsh and as I contemplated overwhelming my animal partner just long enough to drift back down inside her lupine belly. I could let the wolf deal with the water slowly creeping up around our furry ankles. I could let the wolf deal with a terrified pack mate who wasn’t physically present but who must have been close by in order to reach me through the pack bond. I could let the wolf take full command of the situation.

  I’ve already failed. What’s the point of banging my head against the wall over and over again?

  “Fen!” This time, the agitation in Lia’s tone had been replaced with excitement. “I’m so glad you’re awake! I’ve been feeling your wolf for hours. But she’s not so good at words, and I thought I might be dreaming the whole thing....”

  And there was that vision of Lia’s prideful chin once again. Of the halfie valiantly leading SSS wolves toward the medusa-like gaze of the uber-alpha without worrying about the risk to her own flesh and bones. If Lia was so brave without any extra alpha energy to call upon, then how could I be less so when I bore Wolfie’s gift like a mantle protecting me from harm?

  So I squashed my fear of the close, dark space. I squashed my own feelings of failure. And I got to work. “Are you alone?” I thought as loudly as I could, hoping the words would transmit down the invisible pack bond.

  Abruptly, a brilliant line illuminated the air, the starlight and magic of the connection seeming to pierce the darkness...but not actually brightening the space in which I sat. Still, the thread of fluorescence gave me at least a modicum of information—that Lia was located off to my left, and that none of the rest of my clan was within communication range. Because the only other line of starlight beyond the one connecting me to my fellow prisoner was the thin umbilical cord through which Wolfie’s alpha abilities subtly bolstered my own.

  “No, I’m not alone. They have me and Savannah together,” Lia answered, sounding like a young recruit enthusiastically reporting in to her drill sergeant. Her entire emotional signature had changed as soon as I took control of the situation, and I could almost see the girl raising one hand in the air in a military salute.

  It was so easy to pep up the young—to make Lia believe I was strong enough to save her from a horror I couldn’t even elude on my own behalf, let alone break another free of. Too bad it wasn’t equally easy to bolster my own lack of self esteem.

  Careful, my wolf whispered. But I shook our shared head, rejecting the animal’s admonition. No, she needn’t worry. I wasn’t going down the oh-poor-me path again, not with Lia listening in. One pity party per hole in the ground was sufficient.

  “What do your surroundings look like?” I asked Lia instead. I got the distinct impression that the more she communicated, the better she felt. And her growing good spirits buoyed up my own.

  Plus, we’d need some sort of weapon to aid in our eventual escape. The wolf and I didn’t seem likely to find one within our earth-walled pit, our meager stores having already been depleted by our recent jaunt into fur form. While I’d been comatose, in fact, my lupine half had wriggled her way out of all of our clothing save some now-stretched-out panties...which was a good thing for the sake of our emotional health, but not so much for the sake of our belongings. I was pretty sure that Crew’s collar had been washed clean by the water rising up around our feet, so even that long shot was now absent from our arsenal. Hopefully Lia’s surroundings would prove more productive.

  “We’re in a locked room,” she began....

  Then, abruptly, I could see out through the girl’s eyes. The dim but present light from a small lamp settled into my belly like a balm, and it took me a solid minute to gather my focus enough to pay attention to details.

  There was Savannah, conked out on a metal cot, the thin mattress lacking any blanket or pillow. Her hands and feet were bound, but no gag covered her mouth. So the girls were probably stashed somewhere far enough away f
rom civilization that the SSS was unconcerned about strangers hearing their prisoners scream.

  Unfortunately, this close to the vast expanse of the national forest, that didn’t narrow our location down much at all.

  “Show me the rest,” I requested. Obediently, Lia’s gaze panned slowly around the small space as if she were filing its contents away for later perusal. I saw a commode and a sink, although how the girls were supposed to use either with their hands tied behind their backs was beyond me.

  The only object that looked remotely weapon-like was a pencil. “Can you slide that into your waistband?” I asked, and Lia promptly obeyed.

  Not that a thin piece of wood and graphite was going to help us out much in the struggle ahead. What we really needed was an exit point, but the room boasted no windows and only a single door.

  “Locked?” I asked. Even hog-tied, I was pretty sure Lia possessed the spunk necessary to check out all of her options.

  “Yeah,” she answered dispiritedly.

  And yet, even as the girl sent her words down the pack bond, the knob began to turn. Slowly enough to feel like the entrance of the lead monster in a horror movie, the door cracked open to reveal a familiar face.

  Not Hunter, of course, but Quill. The cowboy shifter looked even more put together than he had while slumming it with our pack, and I realized that his drifter persona had been just that—an act. As my wolf had tried to point out at the time, the male’s van with the perfectly clean countertops and lack of clutter had likely been delivered by an SSS buddy to shore up his intended characterization as a lonely outpack male. I should have guessed that Quill had never roughed it a day in his life.

  “Why would you have expected Hunter?” Lia asked me, confused by the hints of emotion that had filtered down our shared line. But even though the girl sent her words in my direction, her eyes remained trained on the SSS member whose smile sent a tremor down both of our spines. There was nothing pleasant about Quill’s anticipated pleasure.

  “Because you said his name,” I explained. “Ginger found the video....”

  The pack bond broadcast images from my end to Lia’s in an instant. The showdown in the hotel room, the expression on Hunter’s face when he saw a bloodied Lia and heard his own name dripping from her cracked and swollen lips.

  Despite myself, my own feelings showed through as well, my pain and humiliation at having believed in a shifter who would dare to harm the youngest member of our pack. How I hadn’t even been able to bear the sight as my anger chased away a male who I’d thought was my mate. How I hadn’t seen him since.

  “But Hunter wasn’t there,” Lia exclaimed. “I was saying his name because it gave me the strength to go on. Because I thought he’d find me if I called out loudly enough. To help me escape.”

  Then our communication was abruptly cut short as Quill demanded Lia’s full attention. “Do you want to be first?” he asked, posing an unanswerable question. “Or should I wake Sleeping Beauty over there and see how well her heart goes with tonight’s dinner of liver and onions instead?”

  NO WAY WAS I GOING to let either Lia or Savannah be injured on my watch, not if I had another way to counteract Quill’s evil intentions. And I realized as I looked out through my pack mate’s eyes that I did have a way to stall at least. I should be able to draw the SSS member to me and away from the easy pickings he was now perusing with such an avaricious gleam in his eyes. In the process—with a little luck—I might also buy the rest of our friends time to track us down.

  Assuming I could summon help via the pack bond, that was. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  Instead of focusing on the unknowable, I forced words out of Lia’s mouth. “Don’t you think I’d taste a little better than these skinny kids?”

  The girl’s head jerked as her tongue fumbled a sentence she hadn’t planned on emitting, the words alien in her mouth. To our shared ears, the question sounded a little like Lia and a little like me, a strange combination of her voice and my intonation.

  But Quill didn’t notice the distinction at first, nor the unusual plural. Instead, he reached out, grabbing Lia’s arm roughly and jerking her upright. “So good of you to volunteer.”

  Time to really get the bastard’s attention. “Do you think this is what Faye would have wanted?” I demanded. I was pretty sure Quill hadn’t taken the time to confide in Lia about his dead mate—if the female was even real—so evoking her name now should be enough to prove my presence. And maybe the memory would also remind our enemy of his nearly absent humanity as well.

  Sure enough, the cowboy shifter was shocked into momentary stillness. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Fen? Is that you?”

  I nodded Lia’s head, hoping the kid didn’t end up scarred for life due to this short-term possession. “Yes, I’m really this powerful,” I taunted him. “Too bad you won’t be the one to tear out my heart and take that power for your very own.”

  “What do you mean I won’t be the one...?” Quill’s voice trailed off as he came to the same conclusion I’d hoped he would—that one of his compatriots had decided to sneak around behind his back and make off with the greater prize while Quill was busy checking on the younger prisoners.

  “Who’s there with you?” he demanded. When I didn’t speak, he slapped Lia’s face hard in retaliation. My pack mate and I both cringed away from the sensation of warm blood drizzling down the girl’s chin, her bottom lip resplitting where it had barely started to scab over. The cut burned.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, this time for my pack mate’s ears alone. “But I need to buy us some wiggle room so our friends can find us. And you probably won’t be able to hear me soon. Will you be alright on your own?”

  “Of course,” the girl answered, her chin nudging upwards once again.

  She was so much braver than I was. Even as I began to draw away, Lia still stood strong and tall on her shackled feet.

  In contrast, my lupine form was already huddling into the corner of the pit, pressing our sodden and matted fur into the mud in an effort to disappear. We could almost feel Quill’s lupine teeth ripping through our skin.

  Worse, my human mind was already reeling from the imagined future agony that would flare up when I put the other facet of my plan into action.

  But I didn’t let any of that terror color my words when I spoke mind-to-mind with my youngest pack mate for the last time. “Good,” I told Lia. “I’m proud of you.” Then I watched Quill slam back out of my friend’s prison cell before I retreated into the quietude of my own mind.

  Chapter 24

  Wolf, I called softly. I need your help.

  Obediently, my animal half rose up to join me. What’s the plan? she murmured, her voice nearly too quiet to hear.

  We’ll try the easy way first, I replied. But if all else fails, we’ll break the unbreakable and see what happens.

  The wolf sipped my intentions out of our shared mind as if they were a long drink of cool water. Then she hummed her assent. It’s worth it, she agreed, to save Lia.

  Of course it was worth it. I closed our shared eyes and inhaled a few deep breaths, then reached out with as much force as I could muster in search of the tangle of intangible energy that bound me to my pack mates.

  There was Lia, alone once more. And now that I pushed more energy into the effort I could also catch my pack mate’s connection to the sleeping Savannah. Lia had obviously taken the other girl under her wing and connected her cell mate to our clan through sheer force of will.

  Good job, Lia, I whispered to myself. And I almost thought I saw the girl smile in reaction although I’d made no effort to push my words down our shared line.

  But those weren’t the shifters I was looking for. Instead, I visualized Glen, my most stout-hearted and steadfast companion. The lone male who had abandoned his chosen clan for no reason other than to protect my back. I could almost touch this firm friend with my human fingertips even though I currently wore paws. Could almost taste his scen
t on the air.

  But I couldn’t. Not quite.

  Frustrated, I growled into the darkness. Glen must be too far away for our more moderate tether to access. Which meant Ginger was my best bet for mind-to-mind contact.

  The female trouble twin and I’d had our disagreements of late, but our connection had previously appeared the strongest of anyone’s in the pack. I brought to mind the young woman’s smile as she danced atop the bar table. The glint of mischief and simple joy in her eyes as she—I now realized—tried to capture the attention of an elusive pack leader rather than—as I’d then assumed—catering to the libidos of a roomful of outpack males. Surely the friendship we’d built combined with Ginger’s dreams of something more would help me reach the young woman even from this distance as long as I concentrated hard enough.

  I sank my muzzle down onto my paws, trying to relax into the pack bond. But the puddled water had risen too high and I inhaled a choking noseful of muddy water by mistake. Coughing, I sprang to my feet and jabbed my hip hard against another stone jutting out of the rough walls of the pit.

  This is stupid, I berated myself. I should be putting every ounce of energy I’ve got into escape rather than fighting for alpha powers I don’t know how to use.

  Hunter, my wolf rebutted.

  Sighing, I admitted that my animal half was right. I’d already tried physical escape, so contacting the uber-alpha was my only remaining option.

  If bond strength was anything to go by, in fact, I should have called out to my newest pack mate first. Now, remembering the bright thread of light that had connected me to the Tribunal enforcer, I wondered how I could have ever doubted that he really was my mate...and that I was more closely intertwined with Hunter’s animal half than I was with any other member of our clan.

  Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Not the mate bond part—no, I was finally willing to admit that I’d made a supreme error in judgment sending Hunter away. He’d obviously been trying to protect me all week long, and his strong set of teeth might have provided the power necessary to sway yesterday’s outcome in the other direction.