Chapter 153

Hannah

“David?”

David smiled coldly as he approached, his blue eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Hey, you remembered my name,” he said. “That’s a start. And to think that I thought you didn’t like me.”

I swallowed hard against the oncoming tide of fear, although it did nothing to quell it. “What do you want?” I whispered. I wanted to move away as he drew closer to me, but I couldn’t—not with a pistol pointed at me.

He shrugged. “Look, I’m just here on business. My boss would like to have a word with you.”

“Your boss?” I echoed, my mind racing. Who could possibly want me badly enough to send armed men to my rental house? “I don’t understand. Who is your ‘boss’?”

“That’s not important right now,” David said calmly, his eyes roaming my bikini-clad body. “What’s important is that you come with us quietly. If you do, this will all be very easy. No one needs to get hurt.”

I glanced between David and the man with the gun, weighing my options. There was no way I was going with them willingly—the first thing I learned in self defense training was to never, ever, let myself be taken to a secondary location.

I had to fight, or die trying.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said firmly.

David sighed. “I was afraid you might say that. Look, Hannah, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s your choice. Which one is it gonna be?”

“Hard way.”

In one swift motion, I ducked and rolled, hearing the gun go off above me—the sound muffled by a silencer. The bullet missed, embedding itself in the wall behind where I had been standing.

“Shit!” I heard one of the men curse as I scrambled to my feet and ran for the house.

“Get her!” David hissed. “Don’t let her get away!”

My heart pounded as I raced through the rental, desperately trying to think of a way out and how to alert the others without getting them hurt. But as I rounded the corner to the front door, it seemed my decision had already been made for me: I found my path blocked by more men emerging from the shadows.

Shit. How many of them were there?

I spun around several times, looking for another escape route, but they were closing in from all sides. Even with the combat training Noah and Drake had given me recently, I knew I was outnumbered.

But I wasn’t going down without a fight. Reaching deep down into myself, I borrowed the strength of my wolf; in that moment, I felt my eyes begin to glow and my fangs drop slightly, my body instinctively preparing to fight.

“Aww,” one of the men cooed, “she’s trying to shift. Look at her struggling…”

He was right; I couldn’t shift. It had been far too long, and I cursed myself inwardly for that. But it didn’t make me weak or slow. As one of the men lunged for me, I grabbed a vase from a nearby table and smashed it into his face with as much force as I could muster. He went down with a howl of pain, blood instantly streaming from his nose.

“Get the little bitch!” another man snarled, reaching for me.

I dodged his grasp, landing a solid kick to his groin. He doubled over, giving me a chance to slip past him.

“Someone grab her!” David yelled from somewhere behind me as I bolted.

But there were too many of them. For every one I managed to evade or knock down, two more seemed to appear, each one bigger than the last. Their glowing eyes and sharp fangs glinted in the moonlight, terrifying and imposing.

“We have to get her to the waterfall!” one of them shouted.

“Come on. The boss is waiting,” another added.

Waterfall? My mind raced, trying to make sense of it all. Was this connected to the hiking trail David had mentioned at the bar?

But it didn’t matter; I knew I couldn’t keep this up much longer. My lungs burned, and my muscles ached from the exertion. I needed to alert the others.

Ducking behind a couch, I fumbled for my phone. With shaking fingers, I quickly typed out a mass text to all of my main contacts: “WATERFALL!” Emma, Viona, and Amber would understand and know where to look for me if I went missing. I hit send just as a hand grabbed my ankle, yanking me out of my hiding spot.

“No!” I screamed, kicking and thrashing as they dragged me toward the door. “Let me go! Help!”

“Shut her up before someone else sees,” David barked.

A cloth was pressed over my mouth and nose before I could scream again. I held my breath, trying to fight it, but eventually, I had to inhale. The world began to spin, and darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.

The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was the night sky, the stars twinkling above me as a pair of strong arms carried me away.

…

When I came to, I was in motion. The low rumble of an engine and the feeling of movement told me I was in a car, although I couldn’t see anything. My hands were bound behind my back, and a rough fabric bag was over my head.

Panic surged through me as the events of the night came rushing back. I had to get out of here.

I started kicking wildly, my feet connecting with something solid—probably the back of the seat in front of me.

“Fuck. She’s awake,” a gruff voice said from nearby.

“Just keep driving,” another voice—David’s—replied. “We’re almost there.”

I redoubled my efforts, thrashing and kicking with all my might. My foot connected with something that gave way with a satisfying crack, a feral growl ripping from my bloodied lips.

“Dammit!” the driver cursed. “She broke the tail light, the little bitch!”

“It doesn’t matter,” David said calmly. “When we get paid, you can buy a whole new car.”

“Fuck a car,” the driver said with a chuckle. “I’m going somewhere warm and getting one of those motorbikes. What are they called… Vespas?”

“Vespas are for girls,” I heard David retort.

Their casual demeanor left me infuriated, although when I tried to reach for my wolf’s strength again, it was useless; the drugs they had given me had weakened me too much, only leaving me able to scream and snarl like a feral animal.

“Let me go!” I shouted, my voice muffled by the bag. “You won’t get away with this, you bastards!”

“Oh, shut up,” David said, almost like an annoyed sibling. “Or we’ll have to sedate you again.”

I did shut up after that, if only to keep my head clear enough to plan an escape. I don’t know how long we drove. It could have been minutes or hours. With the bag over my head and the plastic zip ties cutting into my wrists, time seemed to lose all meaning.

Finally, the car came to a stop. I heard doors opening, footsteps crunching on what sounded like gravel.

Then, hands were grabbing me and pulling me roughly from the car. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I tried to run. But with my hands bound and my vision obscured, I only managed a few stumbling steps before someone caught me.

“Nice try,” a gruff voice sneered in my ear. “But you’re not going anywhere.”

I was half-dragged, half-carried across uneven ground. The sound of rushing water grew louder with each step.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, still struggling against their grip.

“You’ll see soon enough,” David’s voice replied.

Suddenly, I was thrown onto hard ground and the bag was yanked off of my head. I blinked in the sudden brightness, my eyes slowly adjusting to the light of the full moon.

I was kneeling on hard stones at the edge of a cliff. To my left, an enormous waterfall raged and cascaded over the cliffside. At my back were dense woods, the trees stretching up toward the starry sky.

My gaze darted around, taking in my surroundings and looking for any chance of an escape route. But I was surrounded by men on one side and met with nothing but a sheer dropoff into a rocky water basin on the other side.

And then I saw him.

“Jake?” I breathed.

He stood at the center of the group, flanked by several other men I recognized from the years—men who, I had assumed, were all his lovers.

But the Jake I saw now was nothing like the charming man I had once known as Amber’s fiance. I didn’t know what was going on here, but it was far more than a case of a closeted man cheating on his girlfriend.

His face was twisted into a cruel smirk as he looked down at me. Slowly, he crouched down, bringing himself to my eye level.

“Hello, Hannah,” he sneered, eyeing my bikini. “I see you’re already dressed for a swim.”