Short of breath, she paced at the limit of the chain’s length, searching for something to break the lock. She tried not to look at the other empty chains on each bedpost. No matter how much she tried to ignore them, her gaze would return.
Benic restrained people to his bed? Queasy, she pressed her hands to her stomach. Things could have been worse. She could have awoken restrained by all four limbs but Benic never struck her as the kind who would take a female against her will. Yet here she was, chained to a bed after being drugged.
Her parents lacked the resources to attack the castle. Would Benic bargain with them for her release? According to him, they wanted to mate her to some stranger and send her away.
She flopped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. No one would rescue her. She needed to make an escape plan and include Susan in it.
Resting her arms on her forehead, she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been such a fool. She’d watched Benic manipulate her parents for years. A simple statement at the right time or a minute change in expression. He used those same tricks on her so she’d allow him on her journey to the Temple.
With a small growl, she grabbed the chain and gave it a good yank again. She’d thought herself so smart.
Naïve. That’s what she was. Taking Benic into her confidence, thinking him a friend but he had played her. History should have taught her. Vampires knew how to weave themselves into a shifter’s life and tear them apart. She’d thought Benic was different. Sneaky, but not malicious.
He’d kissed her. Made her think he cared. She would have followed him home if not for Peder. The omega had opened her eyes. Showed her a shifter’s interest was what she truly wanted. She glanced at the bed. Benic would use her.
The bedroom door cracked open.
She jumped to her feet and swallowed her fear. With a snarl that would have made her mother proud, she met a stranger’s wide-eyed gaze.
He kept the door between them. “Benic must still be occupied in the laboratory.” Moving with the combined grace of a predator and a dancer, the stranger entered the room. His gazed traveled from her head to her toes. “I do love it when he brings me a present.” The stranger didn’t smell like shifter or vampire—or human. Step by slow step, he approached, remaining just out of her reach. “Aren’t you a pretty shifter? Do you bite?”
His scent drifted deeper into her muzzle. She leaned toward him. He smelled of cedar and fresh rain. She took a deeper breath and caught a hint of sex in his scent as well. Dark eyes watched her with pretend disinterest. She recognized such a look. Benic used it when he hunted, yet this one was no vampire. “What are you?”
The male sat on the floor. Crossing his long legs, he settled and made a pleasant sound in his throat. It vibrated along her spine. “Straight to what and not who?”
She wanted to stretch out over his lap and let him pet her. Shaking her head, she cleared those urges. Or tried to. Something was clouding her judgment, making her react more on an instinctual level.
He gave her a lazy smile. “I’m an incubus. My name is Inacio.”
Lungs burned and muscles ached as Sorin finally reached the edge of the forest, close to Benic’s castle.
Ahote and Peder followed somewhere behind him. Once he started running, he couldn’t rein in his speed, not with Susan awaiting rescue. He clenched his jaw to silence the snarl wanting exit. Better to keep his thoughts on task and not allow his limited imagination any freedom when thinking of Susan in Benic’s clutches.
Crouching in the thick underbrush, he caught his breath. The stone castle rose on the crest of a hill. Colorful pennants snapped in the wind on the peaks of the three towers. He had never seen a castle, let alone been in one. The thing was huge. Where would Benic hold Susan? A wall surrounded the structure, too high to jump, and soldiers guarded the entrance.
How would two-and-a-half wolf shifters take over this monstrosity? He laid his head on his arms and watched the guards pace the wall back and forth, more like a mechanism than people.
A silent brush of ferns announced Ahote’s arrival. He settled next to Sorin. “You drive a hard pace.” Licking his muzzle, Ahote took in their surroundings and panted. “I lost the omega though.”
“Peder will follow our trail. He has a great talent for tracking.”
The guards were shifters and never missed a beat. Back and forth, back and forth they covered the wall. In some sick way these shifters considered this eyesore a den. “Have you been here before?”
“Yes. My alpha came on occasion for diplomatic visits. You should try it sometime.”
Sorin cuffed his ear. “I bow to no one. A shifter doesn’t need to live in a castle to be domesticated.” Ahote didn’t deserve the brunt of his frustration but he kept poking at Sorin’s wounds.
“Are you calling my alpha a pet?”
Sorin ignored him. The vampires used diplomacy and sweet words like shifters used claws and teeth. Benic’s control over the Payami, the strongest pack in the tribe, galled him.
Sorin had been fighting the world his whole life. First his father, then the demoralization of his pack, now the illness, but he’d won each fight. He wouldn’t lose this one either. The only difference was for once he acted for himself.
“The gate is too well guarded.” Sorin pointed to the entrance at the castle front. Merchants and farmers passed through, each questioned by the guards before entering or leaving.
“Benic is smart. He’ll have warned the guards about us and given our descriptions.”
The bastard knew tactics. “He mocks us by leaving the gate open like an invitation.” Who knew how long he’d been fighting shifters? The vampires had ruled these lands all Sorin’s life yet he knew very little about them.
“We should wait until nightfall to move.” Ahote stared at the walls with as much hatred as Sorin felt.
“I can’t bear what he could be doing to Susan during those hours.” She could be dead by then. He shook his mane and laid his ears flat. “We move after the sun sets.” They had at least an hour to make a plan.
“You really do care about her.” It wasn’t a question. Ahote grasped his shoulder, the tips of his claws resting on the skin. “That’s commendable.”
Guilt stabbed Sorin’s chest. It didn’t last long but it made an appearance. Had this shifter cared for Susan? He glanced at the dark hunter and words escaped him. He nodded then turned his attention back to the castle. He almost wanted to apologize. Almost.
A branch snapped, and a disheveled Peder plopped onto the cool ferns—eyes closed, tongue lolling out. He caught his breath.
“Good, we didn’t lose you.” Sorin patted his shoulder.
“Not yet, Alpha.” He spoke between gasps.
“Tell me about the castle, Ahote.”
He sighed. “What can I say? It stinks of stale offal. The shifters who live within have gone nose blind. People are everywhere. They keep prey animals in pens and some…farm.”
Sorin shuddered. “Any other ways inside?”
“The south gate is just as guarded as this one. I haven’t been here enough to discover any secret ways in or out.”
Scratching his chin, Sorin continued watching the guards pace the wall but the eastern sentries passed at a slower march than the northern. “We’ll have to climb the wall under cover of night, take out the guards and search the castle.” With an army of shifters, they might succeed. He gazed at his exhausted, recently poisoned companions.
They were doomed.
“And how do we escape with the females?” Ahote asked.
“On my magic unicorn.” Sorin pointed at his cock then punched the hunter in the shoulder. “How do I know? We run. My main concern is getting inside. I must have missed the lesson on raiding castles as a pup.”