Chapter 121

Wes’s POV

My heart in my throat, as soon as we hear out Ella and learn that Ollie not only is running from us but that she’s possibly been attacked, my brothers and I rush out the door of our manor, already shifted into our wolf forms, and take off running into the forest.

Conrad, the most physically adept of us, takes point, but we are all close behind, pushing our own limits as we hurry to catch up to follow in Ollie’s route.

If she was attacked, she could be in danger at this very moment. Every second it takes us to get to her is one more second where she could be hurt or worse.

Hugh howls as we run, with the rest of us chiming in, each of us alerting our pack to our anger and our worry. If they hear our calls, our pack should be on alert.

If anything happens to Ollie, there will be hell to pay.

Ollie’s POV

I wake up with a splitting headache on a cold metal floor. Clutching the back of my head, I glance down at my fingers and see some blood on them. I’ve definitely been hit over the head.

Attacked.

I should have known I was just tired at that the person following me wasn’t likely to let up!

It doesn’t matter how. All I can do is try to figure out what to do next.

Start to stand but stop when I realize there are bars above me, keeping me down in a kneeling position. Glancing around, I’m in mostly darkness. But just by reaching out, I touch metal bars and realize I’m in a cage.

The ground is rumbling beneath the cage, and I slowly realize that I’m in a crate in the back of a boxed-in truck. Something like a moving van, maybe, I’m not totally sure. But I’m definitely being transported somewhere without my knowledge. Caged like this, they clearly don’t want me sneaking off while I’m taken.

Tracing my hands along the bars, I quickly determine which side of the cage is meant to swing open and put all of my weight into trying to force the lock. But this isn’t a cheap cage. The owner did not skimp on the material or the lock.

At least, my human strength isn’t enough. The cage is just big enough to hold my wolf form, so I shift then try to force the lock.

Yet, even with the power of my wolf behind me, I cannot break the lock. It’s as if this cage was made specifically to hold werewolves.

Maybe an Alpha could break the lock, but my normal werewolf strength isn’t enough.

I keep trying though, unwilling to just give into my captor.

I have no idea how long I was out, how long I’ve been transported, or even where I’m going. My fear starts to spike, as I realize that no one is likely looking for me. I told Ella I was running away. She might worry that I ended the call so abruptly, but she probably wouldn’t act on it.

Even if she did, who would she tell? How would she find me? How would she know where I’m being taken?

As my eyes adjust to the dark, I don’t see my bag or my phone anywhere. Likely my abductor left all of that in the forest after taking me.

I’m alone in this, so I can’t give up. I keep pushing, keep trying. I won’t give up, I can’t.

This person could be taking me somewhere to kill me.

My efforts remain fruitless, but I keep trying. For minutes, for hours, I don’t know. My muscles burn and I’m rubbing the fur off of my shoulder from continually pressing against the door.

The truck slows, eventually pulling off of a paved road onto gravel. The bottom of the cage is slippery, so I slip slide with each turn.

After a while of scrambling to stay on my feet, the truck stops and the engine dies. A door opens and then slams closed. Footfalls crunch on the gravel as the driver comes around the truck to the back. There, a door is swung open, blinding me with the sunlight.

“Good, you’re up,” says an older male voice. Oddly, it’s somewhat familiar, though I can’t immediately recognize why. “That should make this quicker.”

I shift back to human form so that I can speak. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

“You don’t recognize me? Why should you, I suppose? When you were adopted by the old Alpha and Luna, you didn’t have need for me anymore. Why remember someone so lowly, right?”

From his words, this has to be someone from my past, back before I was even adopted. I try hard to remember and eventually piece it together.

“Caretaker Stephens…” I whisper.

“Ah, now you remember,” he says.

As my eyes adjust to the brightness, I take him in. He’s still tall and lanky, but now he’s more hunched over. He’s lost a lot of his hair as well, except for over his eyebrows and his now gray mustache. The cruelty in his eyes is familiar though.

I never understood, not back then as a child and certainly not now, why a man who hates children would ever want a job as a caretaker.

He retired a few years back, I think. Or at least that was what I assumed when I heard the orphanage closed.

“Where are we?” I ask. “What do you want?”

He grins, and some of his teeth have yellowed. “Why, we are at your old home, Ollie. Don’t you recognize it?”

Beyond the open door, I start to take in details of my surroundings. This way, I realize that we are parked out front of the old, abandoned orphanage.

“What are we doing here?” I ask.

Caretaker Stephens shrugs. “I thought it was poetic. This was the place where our journey together began. Now it’s also the place where it ends.”

“’Ends?’”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” he asks, then laughs. “Ollie, I brought you here to kill you.”

Conrad’s POV

My brothers and I run through the forest northward, tracing the lingering scent of our mate. We’ve been running for hours, ever since Ella told us what happened, that she had reason to fear for Ollie. From the cabin, we’ve tracked her, following her trail.

Fortunately, she’d been moving slowly, so we feel like we are making progress.

Each of us is moving faster than we ever have before, even me, who has specifically trained for speed and strength. I’m in the lead but my brothers still manage to keep up.

Eventually, we reach an abrupt stop in Ollie’s path. I halt, my paws sliding in the dirt. My brothers follow suit. Then we all go back to search the spot the scent stopped.

“Here,” Declan says, after shifting back to human form.

Ollie’s duffle bag is in the brush. Her phone is in the dirt, battery dead.

The second scent, the one that we had noticed was following her is stronger now.

My stomach drops, realizing with dread that everything we feared was true.

Ollie has been taken.

We search around the spot, and quickly find a new trail, heading east. This asshole dragged Ollie out of the woods. We follow the trail the entire way to the road. There we lose her scent entirely.

The asshole put her in a car or a truck.

Did he think that would stop us from tracking her? Ollie is our mate. We will follow, no matter what.

I sniff at the tire marks, learning the scent of the vehicle. My brothers do the same. Then we all turn south. The road leads back to our pack, the way we’ve come. So much wasted time.

I howl as I tear forward. It’s easy to move faster on the road. Three answering howls quickly follow as my brothers follow me.

Ollie’s POV

Caretaker Stephens struggles but eventually drags my cage from the truck to the orphanage entryway. There, he pushes the cage against the wall.

If he wants to kill me, I have no idea what he’s waiting for.

But then, there’s a knock on the door.

“Ah, just in time.” Turning to the door, he opens it.

Sylvia steps inside. She looks over to me in my cage and grins. “Finally where you belong.”