Page 39

Harper

Mack was completely full of shit.

I mean he was normally, but when he was sleep deprived, it was particularly egregious.

No doubt he thought he was passing off introducing me to the secret bunker under his house as all very normal, but his nonchalance was ruined by the fact the door seemed to have this vacuum-sealed security mechanism.

That and he still had a damn rifle strapped to his chest. Mack was very quietly, very carefully, falling to pieces, and that left me thinking about last night.

Apparently, I’d signed up to become their emotionally available, well-adjusted girlfriend. Trouble is, I had no freaking idea how to achieve that. Daria and I might bitch…

Fuck, Daria!

This was the third damn time I’d thought about calling her to warn her about what was going on, and now I needed to actually follow through.

“Phone,” I said, holding out my hand. Mack stared at it with a frown. “May I please have my phone back, Mr. Wolf?”

“I thought we were watching TV,” he grumbled, right before yawning so loudly his jaw cracked.

“Um… who sits and just watches the TV without doom scrolling? Serial killers, that’s who.” I clicked my fingers impatiently. “You’ve got me locked up in your dungeon, so hand it over.”

“Fine.” It was placed in my hand. “You need to call your work and let them know you’ll be out for at least a few days.” Another perilously long yawn. He blinked furiously, looking like a little boy that was trying to fight his bed time. “Maybe a week.”

“Sure, I will totally not do that,” I said, smiling at his hissed reply as I unlocked my phone. Some texts from Mum, some emails that needed to be dealt with, a bunch of social media notifications and…

A voicemail.

I frowned, wondering who the hell would leave a message rather than texting like a civilised person. A quick scroll through my missed calls and my blood went cold. The TV audience’s laughter felt like it was mocking me personally as I saw I had several missed calls from my so-called best friend.

The one I’d blown off the moment I was getting multiple dicks. The one who I’d thought to warn about the situation more than once, but never followed through on. Maybe she was having issues with her car, I thought. Or just wanted to vent about the idiots at her bar. Or…?

“Hey.” My voice sounded creaky and weird. “Is there a toilet in this oubliette or…?”

“Down the hall,” he said, gesturing to where the safe room divided off. “I can show you?—”

“How to pee on the toilet like a big girl?” I forced myself to smile. “Nope, I learned that a while ago, and now is not the time to let me know you’ve got a watersports kink.”

“What? OK, I won’t show you.”

That way maybe, just maybe, those wolf Spidey senses of his wouldn’t pick up the way my heart was thundering in my chest. My skin felt chilly and clammy in turns.

I got up and marched down the hallway, walking past bedrooms until I found the bathroom.

Inside, I locked the door and then turned the volume down as far as I could and still be audible, before hitting play on the message.

“Harper…” I knew what Daria sounded like when she was upset. We’d held each other close as the other sobbed over a guy not worth a second of our time often enough. “Harp, I need you?—”

“Get on with it, bitch.”

How could his voice sound so similar to Mack’s and yet so completely different?

“Harp, stay where you?—!”

The way her voice cut off, turning into a scream, had me gripping the bathroom sink tightly. I was sure my nails had to be leaving indents in the porcelain. But right as I was about to try to call her, the recording continued.

“Hello, my mate.” Dax’s voice was like a trail of slime over my skin, leaving a disgusting residue in its wake. “Seems like my brother has been cruel, keeping you from me.”

I was glad I was in the bathroom, because waves of nausea were washing over me, each one crashing harder than the next.

“Because if you belong to him, then you belong to me too. You’ll come to me.”

“No, Harp?—”

My whole body jolted as I heard a brutal sound, then an accompanying wail.

“No,” I whispered. “No!”

“I’ll find you either way,” Dax said. “It’s up to you how many people get hurt in the process.

If you move fast, I’ll be able to stop my associates from…

relieving their tensions with your friend.

” My teeth ground together as my sight blurred, tears forming.

This was my fault, all my fucking fault.

“If you don’t? Well… I’ll tear the lovely Daria apart first, because I need somewhere to direct my frustrations.

Then I’ll go after those pretty tiger sisters.

Perhaps the bear’s mother?” In my mind’s eye, I saw each of his victims clearly and what he would do to them.

“Come to me, but if you bring my brother, just know how it works in my family.”

My eyes were closed now, and I silently sent up a prayer to who knows which god, begging for help.

“The woman has several fated mates, but each one is just a contender. They fight it out until one remains. That male has earned the right to rut with his fated mate. I will tear the heads off each of those idiots my brother wastes time with, bathe in their blood, and then after I end my brother, you and I will rut on a bed made of their corpses.”

Yep, sick, now.

I stumbled over to the toilet, flipping the lid to retch out the pretzels and coffee. After spitting the last of it out, I rinsed my mouth out and then scrubbed my teeth with a spare toothbrush before staring into the mirror.

Daria was dealing with this shit because of me, so it stood to reason I had to get her out of it. I could’ve walked down the hall, told Mack, and no doubt he would’ve gone all Rambo, lurking in the bushes before taking his brother out with a shot to the head.

Trouble is, if it was that easy, why hadn’t Mack done it before?

Dax was obviously just as driven, just as smart as his brother, just not hampered by pesky morals. That allowed him to operate with a level of brutality the rest of us couldn’t stomach. Instead, I had to go and have feelings.

Daria? It was a messy tumble of fear and guilt.

Tor? I wanted to smile and punch him on the arm most of the time.

Kieran? His quiet, steady energy would’ve been so welcome right now, but what would I have said?

He and the guys would’ve rode off to rescue Dar, literal guns a-blazing, and then what?

This was obviously a trap. Dax was using Daria, then me, as a means to lure the guys in, and…

I swallowed hard, the nausea still there, even if there was nothing left to throw up.

A tactic Dax would use to execute them all.

This is why I didn’t let myself get involved with people. Feelings led to connection, connections created points of weakness, and all there was after that was pain. I shook my head, ready to start on a whole avoidant rant when something stopped me.

“Ready to jump, pretty girl?”

I could almost hear, see, Kieran saying that, then Tor, their voices multiplying inside my head, drowning out my fear.

I pushed back against it. It was OK for them to talk about making the leap together.

I thought that meant negotiating life with three guys who insisted on leaving the toilet seat up, not dealing with murderous brothers.

Free Daria, I thought furiously, pushing my brain to come up with a solution.

Free Daria and get her to safety. Make sure every single woman in all of our families was locked up with us down here and?—

“Harper?” Mack’s muffled voice came through the door. “Everything OK?”

“Um… yeah,” I said, hastily washing my hands. I blotted my face as I looked in the mirror, trying my best to mask my misery before sliding the door open. “What, are you checking I didn’t fall in now, Fur Face? Creepy, much?”

“You’re really bloody annoying, you know that, right?”

“Never answer a question with a question,” I shot back, deliberately keeping my tone light. Bamboozle him with banter and stop him from realising what was going on until I had a plan worked out, that was the next step.

“I question the wisdom of the gods every time I’m forced to acknowledge you’re my mate,” he muttered.

“You mean thank the gods.”

For a moment, I could pretend that I didn’t just hear that terrible message, that my friend’s scream of pain didn’t reverberate around in my head.

Instead, me and one of the guys destined to be my mate were hanging out in his basement, riling each other up.

That his smile was marred by the obvious signs of exhaustion.

That he would turn serious, then march upstairs with the rifle in hand, ready to take Dax on.

And I couldn’t let him.

“When did you sleep last?” I asked, and that had the smile fading from his face.

“I haven’t.” He forced himself to stand taller. “I won’t, not until this thing with Dax is sorted.”

“Mack—”

“I’m fine.” His hand took mine, his grip curiously gentle as he directed me towards the couch. “Now, let’s watch the stupid re-runs as we wait my brother out.” He glanced down at his phone. “If this is anything like the other times, he’ll make contact soon.”

But he already had.

I stared at Mack as we sat on the couch, watching him far more closely than the screen.

“What?” he said, trying to keep the edge of irritation from his voice and failing.

“Why don’t you call the police?”

That was met by a frustrated sigh.

“If they were capable of bringing down Dax, don’t you think they would’ve already?” Mack said. “They’ve been after him for years, my father before him, but they’ve never been able to catch him.” He shook his head. “Hampered by rules and regulations.”

“So why not get the shifter communities involved?” He stopped pretending to watch the TV and stared at me openly now. “I mean an army of tigers and bears, that’s gotta count for something, right?”

“Harper—”

“You could ask for help, you know. We could ask for help.”

My voice trembled on that last bit.

“Harper…” He pulled me onto his lap, stroking his hand down my sides. “Beautiful, I know this is hard?—”

“If your twin is the evil mastermind you make him out to be, then you…” My throat was closing up and I couldn’t seem to stop it.

Stuff it down, I thought furiously. Stuff all that feeling down, like you usually do.

The same mechanism that had me biting back my anger when customers were shitty, or containing my irritation when I was having to deal with yet another boundary violation from Mum snapped into place, allowing me to act like I was calm.

“Then what’s the plan, Mack?” I glanced down at the rifle now sitting on the coffee table.

“Wait for Dax to rock up here, then shoot him as he tries to burn the place to the ground?”

“What else can I do, Harper?” I’d seen Mack grumpy, cocky, but never hopeless, so I blinked at what I saw right now. “How the hell do I keep everyone safe? I never…” His hands gripped my hips. “I never should’ve formed a pack with the guys. I should’ve walked away the moment they found you.”

I went to climb off him, but he held me fast. His hand went to the back of my neck, tugging me close enough that our lips hovered over each other’s.

“But I didn’t, couldn’t. You’re my girl, Harper. I will use every resource I’ve got to protect you, protect my pack from him. I won’t rest until he’s ten feet under or…”

Or he was.

I saw it now, what he had planned. Why Mack was so stressed about the guys going to their parents’ places. He wanted to lock us all away here and then go and fight it out with his brother, leaving us to emerge later to see who survived.

And that wouldn’t do.

I knew what Mack was thinking. He fancied himself a lone wolf, detached from everyone around him, free to act on his own without consequence.

I’d watched a documentary on wolves as a kid, stuck in my grandmother’s lounge room after Mum dropped me off so she could go out on a date.

Wolf packs were extended family groups that worked together to ensure they survived, because lone wolves…

They didn’t do so well. Many starved, got sickly and died without that pack support.

My hand went up, hovering for just a second, before stroking down the side of his face.

It still felt unreal to touch him, like he was forever out of my reach.

Emotionally unavailable guys were always my weakness, but I think I’d met the final boss in Mack.

His eyelids fluttered just a little, his eyes red and bloodshot, yet unable to look away before turning his head and pressing a kiss into the palm of my hand.

That was the moment I knew I needed to do something very stupid.