Page 32 of Alphas Never Hide (Willow Lake Supernaturals #5)

Chapter Thirty-Two

RYLEY

The black fabric shopping bag tied around my head smelled musty and a bit like rotten vegetables. Not the greatest smell, but at least it wasn’t suffocating me. I sucked in a deep breath and tried to figure out if I’d actually seen what I thought I’d seen.

I had to be mistaken.

Conny couldn’t be working with Robbie , because he just couldn’t be. Conny was only in his twenties. No one left the herd at that age. Well , except me. But I wasn’t considered a true faun. And the herd was all the way on the other side of the country.

Except .

There was no mistaking what I’d seen.

The flute-playing faun at Robbie’s side was unequivocally Conny .

The last time I’d seen him, he’d been thirteen. His hair had been a lot longer and his cheeks a lot softer back then, but I knew this was him. Especially with the frantic way his eyes had locked on mine over his flute. He’d kept on playing the damn thing, barely breaking long enough to breathe, as Robbie shoved the bag over my head and secured my hands with zip ties. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized fauns could use their nasty flutes to make magic, but that flute wasn’t making music. So that was another lie my herd told me. How had I not realized the whole flute connection before now? I bet I would have rocked playing the flute if they’d given me the chance.

Or not.

After all, it was a fucking flute, and they were the worst.

But no one had given me the opportunity to learn. Horrible bigoted elitist herd. They were a bunch of wet whisky farts, the whole lot of them.

“ Bend over,” the guy who was holding me demanded.

“ I don’t even know your name,” I said.

He shoved me forward.

My stomach hit something. It took a second for me to realize the moving thing beneath me was furry. Interesting . They were trying to fold me over someone’s back. This felt like an opportunity. If my hands weren’t tied up, I would have rubbed them together and cackled.

Okay . Probably not. But it felt like the right time to do something like that.

A few seconds later, the body under me moved. We were on our way. With the bag over my head, I couldn’t tell if a handy shrub was close for me to hide behind. So , I just had to take a chance. I wiggled and squirmed until I started slipping .

As soon as I hit the ground, I rolled, right into someone’s paws.

“ What are you playing at?” Robbie growled.

Damn it.

I was back on someone’s back again.

Crap on a broken cracker. I’d acted too fast that time, except it didn’t go any better the next time either.

“ Stop ,” Robbie commanded. “ Everyone , shift. And you, faun, keep playing that damn flute. You know what’ll happen if they find us.”

I didn’t know what would happen, but apparently Conny did. His magic surged.

Someone tossed me over their shoulder—their very boney, very human shoulder. I didn’t think Robbie was carrying me. That barnacle licker was too lazy to carry me through the woods. Then I was bouncing like a lumpy sack of potatoes. The guy’s knobby shoulder dug into my stomach with each step, making me both nauseous again, and short of breath too.

“ I’m going to puke.” I gasped.

Whoever was carrying me tightened his grip on my furry legs, as if warning me he wouldn’t take kindly to wearing vomit on his ass. Honestly , I wasn’t too keen on the idea myself because if I did lose it, most of it would get caught in the bag and that was not something I needed in my life right now. Or ever.

And the guy holding me needed to watch where he was putting his damn hands. My shift didn’t come with clothes, and he was getting a little too close to the goods.

No one spoke, but magic flowed around us as Conny kept playing his magical fucking flute .

I needed a plan. Again . I was so tired of constantly needing a plan. And what was I going to do about Conny ? Was he here because he wanted to be?

He couldn’t be, could he? My sweet little Irish dancing brother couldn’t be in league with someone like Robbie .

I needed to figure that out, but not now. My priority had to be getting back to my mate and my pack.

Ha ! Wouldn’t these bull nuggets be surprised when Hayden showed up on his white steed—or centaur, as the case may be—and saved me from their evil clutches?

Wait , did that mean I was a prince in peril in that scenario? Yeah . That wasn’t going to work for me. I could save myself. I’d done it before. I could do it again. Or , well, I could if I had a plan.

And now I was back to where I’d started.

Hayden and the others would know I was missing by now. They had to be right behind us. I knew he was there. I could feel it. Somehow . Must be the fancy bond we had.

So , I needed to either delay us until they arrived or escape and find my way back to them. Or what if I undermined Conny’s magic? If all those Willow Lakers were to be believed and I had as much magic as a purebred faun, it might be possible.

Hayden showed me I had magic. But calling it up, using it, and doing all the steps in between when my brain was panicking and struggling to get more air in my lungs? Yeah . Not the best conditions for experimentation. And I doubted whatever magic I had would be enough to counter Conny’s fancy flute.

I was going to be bitter about the whole flute thing for a long while. I hoped I lived long enough to get over my anger. It’d happen, eventually. But it could take a century or two.

It was time to act. I sucked in as much air as I could with a shoulder digging into my diaphragm and focused my energy inward. Hayden had said to breathe in deep and let it out slowly. That wasn’t an option right now. So , moving on. Then he’d said something about tapping into the place that warmed when I shifted. I’d always felt that in my chest. He hadn’t specifically described it as the place where my magic lived, but I wasn’t an idiot.

Hmm … That was going to be tricky, because with the way my lungs were burning, my chest felt like it was on fire and that had nothing to do with my magic and everything to do with lack of oxygen.

Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?

Whatever . I hadn’t lived through a bazillion years—yes, I might have rounded that number up by a zillion or two, but this moment didn’t require exact numbers—of torment from the fauns in my old herd without learning how to survive and roll with the punches.

I was getting a touch lightheaded, though. I just hoped I didn’t pass out before I unleashed my heroic escape plan, whatever that was. Oh , hey, what if I did a Vulcan nerve pinch with my stomach muscles? I squeezed and wiggled, but nothing happened. The guy was completely unperturbed. He didn’t even grunt or reposition me. What I wouldn’t give to have an engineer with a Scottish accent ready to beam me out of here. But at least I wasn’t wearing a red shirt. Small victories.

Actually , being an android like Data would be the best. He didn’t have to breathe, and he’d be able to subdue these guys, because they were the real problem. I could deal with the zip ties. I’d watched videos on how to do it, although they hadn’t covered how to break them when flung over someone’s shoulder. If I didn’t have the bag over my head, I’d try chewing through them or rubbing them against my horn.

And why was everyone so quiet?

It was creepy.

It was also past time to do something about this knee-to-the-nuts kind of day I was having. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anything through the bag anyway. I sucked in another deep breath, or at least as big a one as I could.

Yoo -hoo? Magic ? Come out, come out, wherever you are…

It was official. I was losing my mind. But my little chant worked. A little fluttering sensation tickled deep inside me. My magic. It was there. Waiting for me. I nudged it and praised it and begged it to grow. I envisioned it as the yellowy green magic that’d poured out of me last night when I’d been in Hayden’s arms. Bright . Beautiful . I remembered Hayden’s magic too and how his had joined with mine. Were we still linked through that magical cable?

Just in case we were, I took a moment to think about the joy and happiness and… Yes , the love I felt for him was there too. Then I asked the Eternal Magic to connect us like an old telephone operator. The magic inside me warmed and tingled, then it was gone with a whoosh. Message sent. I hoped he received it.

Because if my plan didn’t work, I needed him to know I loved him. I should have told him last night or this morning or even the moment I met him in the woods and realized I was relieved when my kick to the head hadn’t killed him. If it’d been his brother I’d kicked and knocked down, I would have kept kicking until he couldn’t get up anymore.

As a sign that we were fated mates, that wasn’t the most romantic thing that could have happened between us, but whatever. None of us were perfect.

Now it was time for my next party trick, which I liked to call “the faun kicks some ass,” which is also known as “the faun finds a way to get off this guy’s shoulder and hides under a bush until my mate rides in on a centaur’s back like a white knight”. Because that’d be epic.

This was it.

I grabbed onto my magic with both hands and squeezed the shit out of it, metaphorically speaking, as I channeled my determination to get the fuck out of this situation.