Because she’d been coming from home and Nick had to get all the way down a mountain and across town from Elizaveta’s rental, Jane arrived at the motel at the same time as him. He stalked toward her as she climbed out of her car, scowling so fiercely, she might have been afraid if she didn’t know the man so well.
“I told you to stay home,” he said.
She reached back into her car, pulled out the shotgun, cracked it open, and slid in two of the cartridges loaded with silver buckshot. “And I told you, I wasn’t letting you come here to check on him without me.”
“What about Ben?”
“At the sheriff’s fixing his emails. Which room is Dom’s?”
Still scowling, Nick cursed under his breath and led the way.
They passed between the thick wooden planting boxes lining the edge of the parking lot, separating it from the walkway in front of the motel’s first-floor room doors. Pine and fresh snow and the faint hint of gasoline from the nearby highway hung in the air, all familiar smells of home to Jane.
Dom must have had a ground-floor room since Nick walked away from the external staircase leading up to the two levels above and stayed on the sidewalk heading toward the far end of the motel. Jane glanced toward the main building with the check-in desk where Diane was still on duty. No one seemed to be around, or paying any attention to them.
As they got closer to the rooms at the far end of the building, Jane realized the way this part of the motel angled slightly away from the main building made these rooms hard to see from the check-in desk. Unless they were paying attention, the staff could easily miss Dom coming and going from his room.
Nick paused just outside the second-to-last door and started cursing again.
Jane scooted around him to see what he was looking at. There was a dark stain on the concrete that looked like blood and next to it was a room key.
Her heart started to thud so fast and hard it stole her breath. “Jesus. Tell me that’s not blood.”
“It’s blood,” Nick said, running a hand through his hair. “Dom’s blood. And I can smell wolf.”
*****
Dom came too with a groggy groan, but when he reached up to rub his head, he heard a clank and found he couldn’t lift his hand past his sternum. That realization brought him awake fast.
He scanned his surroundings with his senses as he tried to piece together what had happened. He was sitting on the wooden floor of what might have been a cabin, his wrists bound in thick metal cuffs attached to even thicker chains. He gave them an experimental tug—most ordinary chains couldn’t hold a tiger shifter. Unfortunately, he realized after a few good jerks, these were not ordinary chains. The alloy was clearly strong enough to hold out against his shifter strength.
What in the fucking hell had happened?
He squinted and blinked a few times to clear the spots in his vision, then studied the room around him. It was a mostly bare space with a single wooden table against the far wall, wooden floors, wooden walls, and a single door opposite him with some substantial looking locks. There was an overhead bare bulb, the only light inside the room, and the spots he assumed were windows were covered over by curtains. No light leaked past the cracks in the curtains, which meant either they were boarded over or it was well past sunset.
Sonofabitch. Jane!
His head pounded, but he forced away the irritating pain and concentrated, thinking back to the last things he remembered clearly—breakfast with Jane. Dropping her off at work before heading back to the motel… He had some work to do, mostly paperwork and going over the payroll, before he checked out and moved his stuff up to Elizaveta’s cabin. He’d avoided going into the diner so he wouldn’t get caught up in family before he could get his work done.
He had a vague memory of pulling the motel key out of his coat pocket…
And then a blinding pain in his head that was followed by nothing but blackness.
As he tried to pull up anything that might explain all this, the subtle scents in the room finally separated out and made themselves known—cedar, oak, the nostril-irritating scent of bleach…and wolf.
A lot of wolves had been through this place, but most of those smells had been faded by time. The strongest, most recent scent came from one very specific wolf with a grudge.
Dom cursed, low and eloquently. The motel was outside Nick’s territory, and it was outside the parts of the wolf territory Dom had always avoided to honor the deal Nick had made with the former alpha. But Dom had assumed the area around the motel was part of the wolves’ extended territory, the places the alpha could control.
Stupid, arrogant mistake.
He jerked on the chains again, straining against their solid resistance. He was a lot more irritated than scared. If Frank had to chain him, it meant the bastard knew Dom could and would kill him. Frank had ambushed Dom this time, rather than call him out to a fight like he’d done the night he’d kidnapped Jane. The bastard didn’t want a fair fight now. He wanted revenge, and he knew a regular challenge match wouldn’t do it.
Dom snarled and cursed again. If the asshole wolf thought chains were going to save him from Dom’s anger, he was very wrong. Dead wrong.
But Jane…
Dom’s gut tightened as fear bit down hard. She was his biggest vulnerability and the wolf knew it. What if Frank somehow managed to lure Jane away from Eirene? What if she went to the motel looking for Dom and the wolf was waiting for her, the way he’d waited for Dom?
Fuck. Panic shot through him as fast as it had the night Ben called for help. He jerked harder at the chains, hard enough that the cuffs cut into his wrists and the chain bolts imbedded in the thick walls behind him stretched. They didn’t break, but now that Dom realized what was happening, he also knew these chains wouldn’t hold him for long—they were for wolves, made with silver threaded through them. Designed to hold a different beast.
Dom stared at the door, letting his senses of smell and hearing take in all the surroundings, letting his tiger sort through everything for the valuable information, as he pulled at the cuffs around his wrists. While a werewolf wouldn’t be able to shift with his wrists wrapped in silver, the silver was no impediment to a tiger shifter. Dom could let his tiger out and slip free of the cuffs easily enough while he was mid-shift.
But even at his fastest, it still took a few minutes to change fully, and while he was in the middle of shifting, he’d be easy prey to the wolf.
That might have even been the bastard’s plan. Dom couldn’t be sure if Frank was working alone now that he’d been banished or if he still had other wolves helping him. Dom couldn’t smell anyone beyond Frank, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more wolves out there somewhere that hadn’t come into the cabin yet. It was possible someone was just waiting to enter this room and kill Dom mid-shift. Though if they’d wanted him dead, they could have killed him while he was unconscious.
Dom could barely think logically around his fear for Jane, but he tried to force his mind to work. Though wolf musk permeated the place, he could only smell Frank strongly. The longer he focused, the more Dom could smell under all that dog-stench, wood and bleach. There was a definite metallic flavor, a coppery scent of blood. His lip curled almost reflexively. The scent of blood called to the predator in him, bringing his tiger to the surface.
What the hell had happened here? Where was here exactly? This was obviously a wolf place, but it had to be outside pack territory or Frank couldn’t have brought Dom here.
He stretched his senses to their edge, looking for signs of Frank or any other wolves beyond the cabin. He couldn’t sense or scent anyone nearby but that wasn’t a guarantee none were in the area. A tiger could smell other shifters, but Dom couldn’t sense them the way he did his own people, beyond a sort of vague otherworldliness when another shifter was close. And a werewolf could lay in wait, upwind, outside Dom’s ability to sense, smell, or hear, and still move fast enough to reach the cabin while Dom was in the middle of his change.
It was a risk he had to take. He needed to get out of here. He had to get back to Jane.
He let out a long slow breath, turning his focus to the change, letting the shift take him. His clothes shredded as his body contorted, bent and broke, reformed from the inside out. His face stretched and moved, fur covered his arms.
He was well past the point of being able to stop, his tiger rolling over his human form, taking over, when the cabin door slammed open.
Frank stood in the doorway, grinning, and all Dom could do was roar as his tiger rushed to get free.
*****
Jane bent and retrieved Dom’s dropped room key as Nick sniffed the area. “We should check his room,” she said.
“He didn’t make it inside.”
“How can you tell?”
“Hard to explain. The way things smell, the position of the key. Dom hadn’t gotten it near the lock yet.”
“Still… I’m checking.” She opened the door, not even a little guilty about invading Dom’s privacy.
The room was neat, the bed made, his clothes put away except for a pair of jeans hanging over the back of the desk chair. She hunted through the room, just in case, found the safe locked, the bathroom empty, the message light on his phone blinking, and no signs of trouble.
“Nothing,” she said stepping back outside.
“It’s Frank,” Nick said, his voice a little distracted and distant. “Not smelling any others…” He pulled out his cellphone and dialed someone.
Jane tapped her foot, waiting impatiently as panic swelled in her throat. She had to do something, find Dom, save him…
Jesus, was this what he’d felt when she’d been taken? It was a wonder he hadn’t ripped Frank apart. Because she intended to do just that if he’d so much as wrinkled Dom’s shirt. The fact that Dom’s blood was on the ground, too much to be a good thing but fortunately not enough to mean Dom was dead—
At least, she hoped not. She stared at Nick, wanting to ask but not wanting to interrupt, especially when she heard him ask for Gabriel Walsh—that was one of Siobhan’s brothers. A werewolf.
Nick stared at her as he spoke to the other man, telling him what had happened quickly. He listened, cursed, then hung up.
“Come on,” he said to Jane. “We’ll take my truck.”
“Where are we going?”
“The wolves have a place… I’ll explain on the way.”
She climbed into his truck, settled the shotgun on her lap, the barrel pointed toward the door, the safety on, then pulled out her cell. One of theirs was in trouble. Time to call in the cavalry.
*****
Dom was dimly aware of the wolf stalking closer to him, but he was on the edge of full tiger now and couldn’t defend himself. He pushed his shift, the adrenaline of fear and anger sending him into his tiger form faster than any time before—other than when he’d raced into the woods to rescue Jane. That thought pushed him through the last changes, his body settling into his tiger shape just as Frank reached him.
But before Dom had a chance to adjust to his new form, the wolf punched him in the side with a long metal stick—a cattle prod that sent a bolt of electricity through Dom.
His body jerked out of his control, landing him flat on his stomach. The shot of electricity was so strong, it locked his jaw and he couldn’t even roar.
“Poor little kitty,” Frank said, and punched him with the stick again.
This bolt made Dom’s limbs buck and he bit his tongue, despite his jaw being too tight to open. Frank smirked and paced a few feet away, watching Dom as he panted and tried to force his limbs to work.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Frank said. “Doug used this on the strays he collected.” He gestured to the cabin. “Outside pack territory. On purpose. Designed to hold us converted strays. If the alpha took us into pack territory, it was as good as agreeing to accept us. Couldn’t have that until we agreed to accept him as alpha. So he brought us here first. All of us.”
Since Dom was in tiger form, he couldn’t have answered even if he wasn’t still trembling from the electrical shocks. His limbs stung and his nerves jumped, but he could almost make his paws move so he focused on that, concentrating on getting his body back under his control.
“That old alpha bastard tortured us until we gave in to his domination,” Frank continued. “Then he made like a magnanimous leader by taking us into his pack.”
The wolf settled in the chair at the table, staring in Dom’s direction though his gaze was distant.
“When Doug finally died and Chris took over, things got a lot better for wolves like me. Chris knew how to run a pack.”
Dom grunted and managed to get his legs under him so he could roll onto his stomach. He still couldn’t stand, but at least he could move on his own again.
Frank’s gaze sharpened and he smiled. “You’ll find the cuffs have tightened. Can’t just slip those big paws out now.”
Dom snarled down at the silver bands still tight around his forepaws. His tiger wrist was a lot thicker than his human wrist, and the cuffs now bit into him, through fur and skin, making it difficult to move his paws at all. The electrical current sent through his body had heated the metal, and Dom smelled scorched skin and fur as well as blood. He licked at the area around the hot cuffs, to speed his already fast healing. But he wouldn’t get the damned cuffs off now.
“Thought you’d be able to slip out during a shift, didn’t you?” Frank smirked. “Probably could have without me distracting you.” He laughed. “The look on your misshapen face when I walked in.” He snarled and leaned forward, the cattle prod held casually in his hands where they rested on his spread knees. “Feel that fear, kitty cat? That’s only a hint of what I’m going to make you feel.”
Dom lifted his lip in a snarl, hissing a warning. Even with the damned cuffs on, the chains wouldn’t keep his tiger contained for long. While a werewolf was significantly bigger than a regular wolf, it still wasn’t as big as a full-grown male Amur tiger—and not quite as strong. Tiger shifters might look more like their natural animal counterpart than a werewolf, but the tiger shifters were significantly stronger.
Without making it obvious, Dom leaned forward, ensuring the chains were stretched tight. He jerked his back legs in a spasm-like movement, letting Frank think he was still suffering under the effects of the cattle prod.
Frank watched him with a slight smile, his dark eyes glittering. “Are you worried for your woman?” he asked quietly. “She’s next. I’ll bring her here while you’re still alive, but too fucked up to help her. Then you can watch me fuck her, and bleed her, and choke the life out of her. All while knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Dom narrowed his eyes, his tiger focused on prey now, his body still and controlled, waiting to pounce. The chains stretched tighter as he inched his body forward a little more.
Frank stood suddenly and punched Dom with the cattle prod again, sending another breath-stealing shot of electricity into his limbs. Fucking hell! Dom’s body convulsed again, robbing him of all the advantage he’d gained.
“Now, kitty,” Frank said, squatting down so he could look Dom in the face. “What shall we play with first? The knife? Or the ax?”