Unchained (Dark Shifter Romance) (3 page)

Consciousness crept up on Lacey slowly, almost as if it didn’t want to disturb her. The sun was warm, yellow and buttery as it fell over her face.

The sun?
She blinked blearily, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

She hurt. She hurt a
lot
. Her body ached like she'd been at an all day festival, in the mosh pit until the sun came up.
God
. She tried to stretch, but was frozen in place by a spike of pain.

Memories seemed to crowd her head, all of them clamouring for her attention but not one of them clear enough to make itself known. Muzzily, Lacey rolled her shoulders tentatively, seeking the source of the pain.

Halfway through the movement, she hissed involuntarily. There, between her shoulder and her throat, was a dull ache, throbbing warningly. Hesitantly, she skated her fingertips lightly over it, feeling a light ridge of scar tissue.

The crowd of memories vying for her attention broke, like a dam spilling over its banks. Everything hit her at once.
The man!
she thought. He'd bitten her, and then she'd run, and then there was the river…

She stared around herself belatedly, realising that she had no idea where she was. A cabin? It looked homely enough, someone’s rugged little forest getaway, but she’d never seen it before. She looked down at herself, and then let out a sharp inhale of alarm. Someone had stripped her clothes from her, leaving her naked on the sheets save for her underwear and an oversized shirt she’d never seen before.

Where was she? Who had done this? And, more importantly, what did they want from her?

It was only then, with all her senses slowly restored to her, that she noticed the collar.

Her fingers flung to throat in numb horror. The collar was made of thick, heavy iron. It latched behind her neck securely, and when her fingers traced around in exploration, she found that there was a padlock there, holding it in place. A chain led from that lock to the head of the bed, locking her in place.

A cry of panic forced its way out of her paralysed throat. Wildly, relentlessly, with all the animal terror of a rabbit in a trap, she yanked at the chain.

It didn’t budge an inch. Whoever had put this on her, they had clearly wanted it to stay there.

Unbidden tears threatened to spill over Lacey's cheeks, and angrily, furious with herself, she wiped away with her hand. For a moment she could have entertained for that a good Samaritan had picked her up out of the river, placing her helpfully in a bed until she had awoken, then helping her to safety. Now, though, that illusion was shattered. No good Samaritan chained up someone that they were trying to help.

A vicious shiver ripped through her, and she looked around the cabin, searching for anything to help her. It was an ordinary cabin, the likes of which anyone in town could have kept. Surely they’d have something that she could use to defend herself from whoever had chained her here. Where was the rifle? A hunting knife? Why was there nothing to help her?! All she needed was one thing to defend herself with, to hold on to, something to give her even the slightest glimmer of hope…

Her panicked thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside. Lacey froze, her hand flying to her heart. Silently, she watched the door as the footsteps approached, growing closer.

Please don't let it be that man from the town,
she told herself, clutching desperately at the sheet like a lifeline.
Please don't let it be him, please...

Despite the rest of the day, some small sliver of luck must have been with her. The man that opened the cabin door was not the hideous, grinning psychopath that had bitten her in town. In fact, it was someone she had never seen before.

"You're awake. Good." With nothing more than that, the man set his rucksack down on the table, beginning to go about some small tasks. Lacey stared in amazement, her heart pounding wildly. Any minute now, she knew, the man would pull something horrible from his rucksack, like a knife, or a gun…

Lacey had never been the sort to let someone else take the lead. She glared at her captor. "Who are you?" she demanded. "What do you want from me?"

The man glared at her. He would have been handsome under any other circumstance, Lacey acknowledged, with piercing blue eyes and a face somewhere between rugged and sophisticated, intelligence and strength both writ large on his appealing face. He was strong but not brawny, his athletic body visible even under the shirt he was wearing.
Damn it
, Lacey thought.
Why can't I meet a guy like this at work, instead of when he's kidnapping me? Thanks, world
.

"What I want is for you to rest up."

With that, he turned back to whatever he was doing.
Great
.
The real talkative type.

Though, she reflected, she didn't necessarily want him to talk more. She was barely keeping a lid on her panic at the moment, with him pretty much ignoring her. How would she deal if he suddenly started telling her about all the ways he wanted to use her skin in home decorating projects? No, maybe she didn't need him tell her every detail of his plans. But she needed something…

"What--" she yanked on her chain, punctuating her words with a harsh rattle of metal on metal. "Do. You. Want. With. Me?"

Again her captor turned those bright blue eyes on her in disapproval. "I want you to gain your strength back," he said, as if talking to a particularly stubborn child.

"Yeah? Sounds real great of you, thanks a bunch. I bet I'd get my strength back a lot faster without this thing on me."

She hoped that rudeness would get some sort of response, but despite her ribbing, he refused to talk to her. He went about the cabin doing god knows what, shifting food from his rucksack into the cabin, moving supplies from here to there. It made Lacey want to scream, to yell and cry, just to get any sort of response from him... but, stubbornly, she didn't want to give him the pleasure. She wanted to retain her dignity.

Yeah, dignity. That was definitely what she should be focusing on right now, not the fact that she was chained to a psycho’s bed in the middle of nowhere while nightmare creatures roamed the town.
Nice priorities, self.

She waited, tense, as her captor went about the cabin. If he came nearer she would… well, she wasn't sure. Fight, definitely. Scratch, bite, gouge… whatever it took. But despite her tense muscles and her alert gaze, the man stayed on the other side of the cabin. She watched as he rifled through his rucksack, sorting out God knows what, and then sat down at the small single person table.

When he pulled out a packet of trail mix and a slab of jerky, she narrowed her eyes. How long had it been since she'd eaten last? She wasn't sure. It depended on how long she had been out on the river. No matter how long it had been, her stomach had decided that it had been too long. At the sight of the man tucking in to the jerky, it let out a queasy growl, audible even across the small cabin room.

She paused, ready for the man to taunt her, or to maybe even offer her some of what he was eating, but he just flat out ignored her. From her position, she could watch his face as he looked out of the small window by the table, scanning the woods, his blue eyes alert but calm.

Her stomach let out another groan, and Lacey pressed one hand down over it, as if to quiet its complaints. She felt the flush of fury wash over her as she sat there. Not only at this man, whoever he was, but at the fact that he wasn't even acknowledging her. She didn't exactly want to know the gory specifics of what he had in mind for her or anything, but this nothingness… It was somehow even worse.

“You want some?”

The man held out a hand, offering Lacey an opened energy bar.
This is a trap
, she thought, but felt ridiculous even as she was thinking it. She was already trapped. The stranger had her exactly where he wanted her, there was no reason for him to need to trick her in to anything.

His expression was blank as she scrutinised the situation, her heart hammering. She did want it. Her stomach twisted with hunger, and a simple energy bar had never looked so good.

“Okay, sure,” she said. “Throw it over.”

The man's lips quirked in a quick smile, softening his features for one brief moment, then he went back to his implacable blank expression. He shook his head sternly, as if Lacey was a clueless child, and then he leant over towards her. Still in his chair, he extended his arm, offering the energy bar to her from his fingers.

“If you want it,” he said, “then take it.”

Lacey shot him a venomous look, then began to reach out with one hand.

The strange made a low
tsk
deep in his throat, a sound of reprimand. It was ridiculous, but Lacey still felt herself freezing in place. He shook his hand a little, still offering the bar, but with one brow cocked as if in warning.

Lacey frowned at him, unsure and wary, but then it clicked.

He wanted her to eat from his hand.

Heat flushed across Lacey's cheeks, blazingly hot.
Screw that!

With all the grace and poise she could muster, she turned over on the bed, lying down with her back to the man. She forced herself to breathe easily, listening to the sounds of her captor. Would her gesture anger him? But all she heard was a soft, quiet chuckle, then the small sounds of a man going about his lunch.

She tried to remain alert, listening for the first indication that he was even so much as thinking about approaching her, but even with her back to him, she could still tell that he was completely ignoring her. She tried to stay alert, but the minutes slipped into an hour, and then another, with nothing else to occupy her mind. Her aching body, still sore from the events of the night before, slowly dragged her down into the depths of an uneasy sleep, with nothing but the sound of the stranger to keep her company.

Jack knew that he should have been angry when the girl turned her back to him. It was disrespectful, and he wouldn't have put up with that from any new wolf attempting to join his pack. But this was different, he reminded himself. She had no reason to respect him… Not yet, anyway.

He watched the rise and fall of her rib cage through the sheet as she ignored him, pretending to sleep. Her breathing was even, measured. He'd been expecting panic at the very least, from the moment she woke up. But whoever the girl was, she was hard to faze.

His inner wolf squirmed within him, ears pricked and tongue rolling. The metal that this girl was displaying, her calm, practised defensiveness, backed with the heat of righteous fury… If she had been a born wolf with a personality like that, she might have even been an alpha, rising quickly through the ranks to command her own pack. God, that was a thought. He could barely imagine the glorious bitch wolf that she would turn into, maybe even a match for him.

But that wasn't the way it was. She wasn’t an alpha wolf. She was just some girl that he'd pulled from a bad situation, bending her to his own needs. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. The raw, weeping ache of his bereft pack sense was shaping his thoughts, he knew. Why else would he be admiring a girl he'd only just met, a girl he'd effectively kidnapped?
Justifications
, he thought.
You're just happy that she isn't crying and screaming, begging you for mercy. Would you be able to stop yourself from giving it? Could your humanity survive the pain of the wolf inside you?

He frowned and glared out of the window, glad that the girl was no longer watching his face, scrutinising him with the intensity that only a trapped animal could, searching for any sign of weakness. He had to pull it together. But when he looked back over his shoulder towards the bed at the appealing curve of her body, that slender waist and curve of hip plugged straight into his animal nature…
Pull it together, huh? Easier said than done.

Finishing the meagre rations that he'd scrounged, Jack got up from the table and settled himself down into the overstuffed armchair in the far corner of the room. Let the girl stew, he thought. The longer she spent around him, the easier it would be to foster the alpha bond. Her inner wolf wasn’t yet formed, but the full moon was looming, soon ready to rise into the night sky. Her wolf side would unfurl within her, and with it would come the urge for an alpha.

She was going to belong to someone, whether she liked it or not. It might as well be him.

He'd arranged the furniture in the small abandoned cabin carefully, measuring out the chain while she was asleep, making sure she could not cover the whole space. He knew that the armchair was out of her reach, even if she did manage to find some weapon that he'd somehow overlooked. Knowing that he was safe to sleep, he let himself settle down, watching as the thin dawn light of the sun illuminated the cabin. He'd spent many nights in the woods, and yet the effect of a new dawning day still was potent to him. The pale silver light seemed to caress the shoulders of the girl, her long dark hair. In that hallowed silence, she seemed somehow very near to him, as if she was just waiting for him to slide into bed with her, to gather her up in his arms.

It was misleading, but it was still a nice thought.

Jack slept, but not for long. He woke a scant few hours later to the firing of nerves, his body twitching in his sleep. The ghostly traces of his ever-present nightmare clung to him, his heart beating fast. All his dreams were nightmares now, the empty-eyed faces of his pack member staring at him, pleading with him.

Let us rest, Jack.

Trying to ignore the ache of pain in his tired bones, he got up from his chair. A minute later, he was standing across the room from the girl, boots in hand. Whoever had owned the cabin had stocked it well, and he’d found the spare pair of sturdy leather boots in a mouse-proof box. He sent a silent thought of thanks to the owner, though he doubted that they’d ever hear it.

Even without seeing her face, he could still tell when the girl woke up. The low, measured breathing of sleep gave way to the slow squirming of wakefulness, the girl stretching her slender calves and curling her toes as wakefulness slowly set into her body. Then her form stiffened again, and he knew that she had remembered where she was, and who exactly it was that had woken her.

She rolled over to face him, and though her eyes were still lined with sleep, her glare was no less full of fury and hatred.

He tossed the boots across the room; they skidded to a halt in front of the bed. "Put these on," he said, his tone brooking no disagreement.

She locked eyes with him, her searching gaze trying to figure out her next move, his next move, and what she could do with whatever was presenting itself. He could almost see when the realisation hit her, a brief layer of surprise igniting behind her eyes like a lit match. Keeping her eyes on him, she slid her body out of bed, and began fitting her feet into the boots.

If he wanted her to walk somewhere, then she was being unchained from the bed.

With a black satisfaction, he noticed that she not only tied the laces tightly, but looped the excess around her ankles, fixing the slightly too-large boots to her feet. She was preparing to run.
Good
, he thought.
She hasn’t given up.
He could barely keep his mouth from curling into a smirk.

Once she was done, she stood up, toeing the boots to the ground to test their fit. When she was ready, she crossed her arms in front of her, cocking her head back to stare him straight in the eye again. "Where are you taking me?"

"You'll see when we get there."

When he fished his hand into the pockets of his jeans and pulled out the key to the chain, he saw her eyes light up with a desperate hunger. At the same time, she tensed, drawing herself away from him.

He had been kind to her so far, letting her get over her injuries and the demanding drain of the bite she’d suffered, but now it was time for him to step up to the alpha plate and take full control of the situation. He crossed the floor, watching her face as he approached her for the first time. Fear and the urge to run mixed with anger and aggression in her appealing little face, those warm brown eyes nearly electric with tension.

He stopped one step away from her. Slowly, he lifted his hand, holding the keys in the air between them.

"Take it," he said.

She didn’t step forward. She simply looked at the keys, and then at him.

"Take it," he repeated. He shook his hand, the keys jingling merrily in his grasp.

Her breathing grew slower again, almost as deep as it had been when she was sleeping. Jake noticed with no small appreciation that she was free of the fractured clinging tension that you found in panicking creatures. She was no brittle creature, about to lash out wildly, hoping for something to save them. Instead, she had the air of a
predator
. His heart beat faster, pounding in his chest. She was magnificent…

Slowly, as if she was in a dream, he saw her press one hand to her chest, above her own heart. He sucked in a breath. The gesture was small, curious, completely at odds with the pragmatic stance she was taking.

His thoughts careened wildly. He'd heard of mated pairs picking up each other's heartbeats through the fated bonds that bound them. Had she felt his need for her? She had only been in his presence for less than a day, but with the tension between the two of them, their body heat mingling in the charged space between them... Had she felt his heartbeat alongside hers, even for a moment?

The only warning he got of her sudden movement was the narrowing of her eyes. She struck at him, her knee lashing out towards him in what would have been surely a crippling blow. Even as she did, her other hand was heading towards his face, her fingers hooked into a dangerous claw, ready to go for his eyes.

If he hadn't had the lightning reflexes of the wolf inside him, her plan would have certainly worked. Instead, he simply sidestepped her, pivoting on light feet to avoid her blow. He snapped out one hand to grab her wrist in an iron grip; as she let out a howl of fury and bought the other hand up again at his face, he grabbed that as well.

She screamed a cry of pure animal rage, but he ignored it, throwing her back against the bed, face-down against the sheets. She thrashed, trying to get her limbs underneath her to get back up and attack him again, and he threw himself down on top of her, easily pinning her in place with the weight of his body.

He let out an animal snarl, holding her down. He was well-versed in dealing with petty uprisings, a confident alpha who knew how to deal with unruly subordinates. His inner wolf took over as he pressed her down, pure command radiating in every line of his body, telling her in no uncertain terms that disobedience would not be tolerated.

His grip on her wrist must have been painful, his strength more than any ordinary human man, but the angry noise she made in response had nothing to do with pain. She bucked up again underneath him, wildly, forcing him to press her harder down into the sheets.

His wolf side was off and running, his heart pounding with alpha energy. He leaned down to her and growled, a low, unmistakable sound of command.

Underneath him, her slender body finally froze. He could feel her breathing hard, her ribs jerking up and down underneath his chest. He expected her to swear, to keep fighting until he had no choice but to overpower her even further.

Instead, she rolled over.

When he looked down into her wide brown eyes, he breathed in hard. He'd only ever seen those eyes filled with fury and frustration and pure wild hate, but now…

Now they were the calm, submissive eyes of a submitting wolf.

Breathing hard, she pressed up against him, her bare stomach rising to meet his own in supplication. There was no fear in those eyes, no fight in her slender body. For a moment, underneath the commanding weight of his alpha form, she was submitting to him.

It was intoxicating, overwhelming. He breathed in heavily, inhaling the sweet scent of her, filling his senses with the woman offering herself to his mercy. Still raw from the loss of his pack, that act of supplication was even more heady than anything merely sexual could have been. There was a trust in her eyes that he'd thought he'd never see again, offering herself and knowing that he would be fair. His mind raced, his inner wolf howling for more, wanting to breathe in the creature beneath him and make her his own.

He sat back abruptly, letting go of her wrists, putting some space between the two of them. Seconds passed, and then he saw a strange confusion creep into her expression, those wide, calm eyes narrowing back into alarm and fear. Her chest rose and fell in panicking, rapid breaths, clearly as overwhelmed as he had been-- if not more. Jack fought the urge to reassure her, to tell her exactly what had happened, and teach her about the pack dynamics to which she would soon be held to.

Instead, he stood up, leaving her alone on the bed. Fetching the key from the floor, he locked eyes with her. Even though confusion was still clear in her face, she turned her head, one pale hand sweeping the mass of hair that cascaded down her back over one shoulder, baring the padlock at the back of her neck. In one deft movement he unclipped the lock, the chain falling to the bed with a cascade of metallic tingles, almost unbearably loud in the suddenly silent of the cabin.

He stepped back, grabbing his rucksack from the table. "Let's go,” he said. If she noticed how gruff his voice had now become, she didn't give any indication of it.

When she got up from the bed, fear and confusion had been replaced by the wariness. Careful to keep outside of arms’ reach of him, she stood and cocked her head towards the door. "Where to?"

He opened the door. “I’m taking you for a walk.”