Fair Game

She couldn’t afford to wait – she had to make her own chance. Because A

Despite her determination, she was scared. Her chances weren’t good – these men had managed to kill a lot of people, werewolves and fae, some of them considerably more experienced at protecting themselves than she was.

The sick, acrid smell of her terror burned out the last of the chloroform from her nose and she grabbed her fear, the lingering pain of the headache, and the ache that was seeping into her muscles from the silver. She pitted it all against the metal cuffs that held her– neck, wrists, and ankles – and called on the change.

These were not a pack of werewolves; they were human and fae. Raping A

The change always hurt. Always. And she’d long ago learned to use the pain to bully her way through the freaky feeling of her bones stretching and bunching, of muscles growing and teeth sharpening that was so much more intolerable than mere pain.

This time the change was worse than usual.

Her throat buckled under the pressure of the silver collar. Then it rehealed and buckled again, trapped inside a metal band that was too small to contain it. She thought she’d just stymied her kidnappers by killing herself when something in the more-fragile mechanism of the lock finally broke, sending a piece of metal flying. The collar fell away from her, hitting the floor and bits of chain with a harsh clank.

Sucking in air like a bellows, she still had to hold on to her thoughts and make her arms that were becoming her front legs move at just the right time while her hands were still hands but after her arms had slightly reshaped in order to get out of the wrist manacles. Her wrists bled and she panted, trying to keep quiet, as she dragged herself free of the two-inch-wide silver bands that imprisoned her. She didn’t worry about the cuffs on her ankles because they were wider and the wolf would just step out of them.

She waited, but there was no pause in the conversation outside. Either they were too involved to notice, they expected her to be making some noise, or their ears were too human to hear through the walls the way she could hear them.

She lay spent for a moment– then realized that moment was dragging on into the next without any further change happening. Dangerous to stay half-shifted, though some of the most dominant wolves could do it for a while. She scrambled for a way to continue the change, but her body was exhausted, shaking with the need for food and

They had doped her up with something. Mostly werewolves were immune to drugs and alcohol. Their metabolism just ran through it too fast, but they had given her something, probably a whole lot of something. GHB or Rohypnol, maybe– or some sedative designed to keep her passive. It had been no match for the adrenaline surge that the thought of being helpless in the hands of rapists and murderers had brought – but it had stalled out her shift.

Pain came in waves, because her body wasn’t meant to be caught between for this long. Fluids, clear, pink, and bright red, began to leak onto the floor of the cage. She reached out for Charles and found the moon instead.

Tomorrow would come the night of the full moon, when her song was too strong to resist, but tonight she was waxing and full of strength that she lent to her daughter who asked. With a painful jerkiness that scraped chain and manacles loudly on the bottom of the cage as her muscles flexed and tore and reshaped themselves, A

Charles was deep into his work. Brother Wolf loved the hunt even when it was on computers instead of in flesh and blood. Both of them could smell their prey, weak and quivering just out of their reach. So the first knock on the door elicited no more than a growl of a

It was Brother Wolf who noticed something was wrong the second time the knock came. Even buried in the endgame of his hunt, his senses were still on alert, and they told Brother Wolf that the smart FBI lady, the smart FBI man who tried very hard to be underestimated, the fae whose daughter had been hurt, and the local Alpha were knocking on his door– and they were all supposed to be with his mate, who was not here.

A

Enraged and terrified for A

Isaac was supposed to make sure no one hurt her while Charles worked. The temptation to blame the Olde Towne Alpha rose and was banished. A

‘We were hoping you could tell us,’ Isaac said. ‘She went to the ladies’ room and never came back. You two are mated, right? Can you tell where she is?’

Charles tried again. Right there and then, with the others still standing in the doorway, he tried again to open up the bonds he’d closed to protect her.

Nothing. He tried harder, tried until it hurt worse than the change. He growled and tried again– and felt the ghosts who haunted him howl in triumph. He turned and walked almost blindly until he stared into the big mirror in the bedroom. The ghosts were unrecognizable, having melted into one creature with fifty mouths and twenty hands that were busily tying the ribbon of his bond into knots.

We can kill her no matter how you try to protect her, it told him, its voices high and vicious.Your fault, your fault we died, your fault she dies. One voice started laughing, and then the others continued until there was an unholy cacophony in his head.

There was a drip of blood leaking out of Charles’s nose and the whites of his eyes were pink from broken blood vessels – it made his yellow eyes look particularly bizarre.

‘Did you try to track her?’ he asked Isaac, as Charles continued to stare into the mirror, his voice so low and rough he didn’t recognize it as his own. He stuffed his rage into a small icy place and promised it release if it would let him work right now. He would be cold and controlled untilhe found where they had stashed his A

‘Yes,’ the Olde Towne Alpha said. Charles turned away from the mirror to find Isaac watching him warily from the relative safety of the living room as he continued to explain. ‘I trailed her into the ladies’ room and out again. Then she walked about two feet the wrong way if she intended togo back into the party – which she did, because she’d ordered another round of fish and chips according to the waitress who delivered it – and then her scent trail just ends. Like Otten’s did.’

Isaac must be a good tracker. It was unusual for a wolf that new to be able to trail that well, even in wolf form. No matter how good he was, Charles was better.

The computer hadn’t confirmed his guesses yet, but he was only waiting for the final nail. He considered going after the people he had decided were behind the killings – but if he was wrong, it meant A

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Leslie asked in a quiet voice that nonetheless interrupted his thoughts. ‘Why is he bleeding like that? Do you see his eyes? They weren’t like that when he opened the door.’