Page 32 of Broken Arranged Mate (Badlands Wolves #4)

“Well, this has to be the worst girls’ night ever,” Raegan jokes, wriggling her wrists where they’re tied to mine. “I thought you guys said you usually get margaritas?”

We’re locked up in what must be the most stereotypical kidnapping room—a dank, dark room with a dirt floor beneath a nondescript building on the outskirts of the city.

There’s a pole in the center of the room, to which they’ve tied all of us, looping the rope between our wrists and around Veva’s cuffs.

“Ha, ha,” Veva says, grunting a bit as she tries to slide her way up the pole. “And I thought you guys were supposed to be tightening up the ship over here. Highway bandits ? I didn’t even know that was a real thing.”

“Hey,” Emaline says, dryly, “don’t knock it until you try it.”

“I am trying it,” Veva says, blowing a piece of hair out of her face and turning to Emaline. “Not a good review from me.”

“Maybe we could tighten up the ship if Oren listened to any of my suggestions,” I say, and I feel all the women quiet, listening to me, registering that this is more than generic complaining. “In fact, I’m not sure what’s going to happen with us.”

“Well, I guess we’ve got nothing better to do,” Raegan says. “What did my stupid brother fuck up this time?”

Slowly, hesitantly, I rehash the story, this time mostly for Raegan. I start with that night, the super blood moon. Talk about the plateau. Our encounter, me trying to claim him, and him denying me as his mate.

How I’d tried to forget about him until he showed up again, and how much it had sucked having him in Ambersky.

Then, I tell them about the watchtower, him making sure it was ready for me.

I tell them about the way he looked at me, how I’d stupidly thought he felt something for me, even after everything that happened that night.

“Oren and I aren’t that close,” Raegan says, her voice small. “But I do know that he’s stupid about love—we didn’t exactly grow up with good role models.”

“I think the problem is that neither of you talks to each other,” Kira says gently. “If he won’t talk to you, you might just have to talk to him first. Tell him everything—just be up front about how you feel. The key to a strong relationship is vulnerability.”

“Or you could just leave him.”

“ Veva .”

“I’m just saying—we should be honest about her options.”

“Oh, yeah, and would you just leave Emin?”

“No,” Veva admits, “but he’s made up for all his mistakes. You’ll have to see if Oren is willing to do the same.”

There’s another beat of silence, then Emaline asks, her voice so low I barely catch it, “Do you love him?”

I hesitate for only a moment. “Yes. I do.”

“Then you should do everything you can to keep him,” she says. “You never know how close you are to missing out on the love of your life.”

“I—”

“Shut up in there!” a guy calls from outside the room, and Veva scowls, looking down at our hands again. “Or we’ll come in and gag you, too!”

There’s a beat of silence, then we hear the guy turn and go back up the stairs.

This is the perfect opportunity for me to think about what they’ve said, but my chest is still aching from everything with Oren, feeling too tender for me to fully reconsider, so I turn my attention back to our situation.

Based on everything we’ve seen so far, these guys don’t seem like seasoned criminals. First of all, anyone who knew what they were doing would not have taken in the four of us.

The second that any one of our men—Oren, Aidan, Emin, or Dorian—realizes we’re missing, they’re going to have a hard fucking time on their hands. Likely, the guys are already on their way and ready to kill someone.

Before, they would have just been angry with us. But now they’ll get to take out all that energy on the men upstairs—that is, if we don’t get to them first.

“Hey,” Veva whispers, drawing me out of my thoughts, her eyes moving to mine. “You still know how to pick a lock?”

“Of course,” I whisper back, eyes darting to the door, under which I can see a shadow moving, a different guy just outside it. “But I don’t exactly have my lock-picking kit at the moment.”

“Here,” Kira says, leaning forward and shaking her head a bit until one of her bobby pins falls from her hair and onto the ground. “I am not going back to that fucking market.”

Emaline reaches forward with her foot, sliding the pin along the ground to Raegan, who pushes it up, bending her knee to slide it into Veva’s hand.

Then, Veva hands it to me, pushing it into my hand forcefully so I don’t drop it.

“I’ve never done this backwards and without looking,” I say, sucking in a breath and closing my eyes. “But I’ll try.”

I run my thumb the length of the pin, feeling the thin metal warm against my palm. My fingers are shaking slightly—from adrenaline, from anger, from the chill of this basement. I take a deep breath and try to steady them.

Letting out the breath, I focus on bending the pin, creating a small L-shape at one end—the end that will become my tension wrench. The other end I bend into a slight curve with a tiny hook at the tip. This will serve as my pick.

As I work, I think about Dorian teaching me this in the yard, his voice soft and patient with me as I tried and tried and tried. When I got frustrated, he told me to take a breath and try again.

“Why am I even learning this?” I’d snapped, putting my hands on my hips—something I’d loved to do once I turned ten. “Isn’t picking locks a bad thing?”

“Ash,” he’d said, leveling his gaze with mine, looking serious.

Dorian, it seemed, always looked serious—Gramps was instilling into him that since he was taking over, it was his duty to approach everything like an adult, even as a kid.

“You’re the granddaughter of a very important person.

You know how you’re doing with training? ”

I’d crossed my arms, thinking about the self-defense and fighting I’d done alongside them. “Sure.”

“Well, this is the same. If anyone ever tries to lock you up, and you know this stuff, you can get yourself out of there. You won’t have to wait for someone to come and save you.”

Now, I wrestle the pin into the lock on Veva’s handcuffs, closing my eyes and listening, feeling the vibration of how it turns.

Then, with a pop , the cuffs come open, and Veva moves her shoulders a bit, a silent celebration, then we sit still as the warm diffusion of her magic floods between us, not scorching, but hot enough to feel.

A second later, the ropes around our wrists turn to ash.

Across the dim basement, Kira helps Emaline to her feet while Raegan pushes her hair away from her face, fixes her hat, and starts to rub feeling back into her hands while glancing toward the door.

“He’s coming back,” I whisper, scanning the room for anything we can use as weapons.

My heart pounds against my ribs as I take stock of our situation. While we were waiting, I counted five of them in this building, maybe fewer. Five of us, five of them. Though Emaline and Raegan might not be much help in a fight.

With Veva’s magic on our side and the element of surprise, we’ll be able to make it out.

“Should we sit back down?” Raegan asks, “Pretend like we’re still tied up, then go at them?”

I chew on my lip, thinking. “We need to get them to open the door. How can we get them to do that?”

Ten minutes later, we’re seated on the floor again, gathered around the pole like we were never able to free ourselves, with the exception of Emaline, the only one small enough to fit on the shelf above the door.

Veva flexes her hand, and a man’s voice rings out from the other side of the door, like it’s come from a phantom.

“Oi! Hello—anyone there?”

Heavy footsteps creak overhead in response.

“Hell- o?”

Someone comes down the set of stairs, stopping outside the door.

Cautiously, a younger voice asks, “Red? That you?”

Veva flexes her hand again, and the voice rings out, “’Course it’s me, you idiot! Locked myself in. Open the fucking door!”

“Sorry,” the voice says, and we wait, holding our collective breath as a key enters the lock on the outside, and the door starts to creak open. “How did you—?”

But Emaline hesitates before dropping the brick like she was supposed to. It lands right on the guy’s shoulder, spinning him to the ground. On second look, the guy is actually a kid—a teen boy, not much older than Veva’s daughter.

He cries out, and Veva stands, holding her hands up and putting him to sleep. The plan was to kill the first man to come through the door, but as we stand together, looking at him, we all collectively, and wordlessly, decide that’s not going to happen.

We move into the hallway, past shelves of tools and supplies. I grab a rusty hammer, feeling its weight in my hand, while the other girls grab their own items.

The door at the top of the staircase is open, letting yellow light spill down the wooden steps. We halt for a moment, listening, but nobody else appears, so I take a breath and start to lead us up to the next room.

I peek out and see three of the guys right there, apparently not even realizing the door is open. I pull back and signal to the others, and Veva moves up next to me, her hands ready.

I see the exhaustion in her face—she’s already used a lot of magic tonight—but she looks ready.

So we turn and charge inside, catching them by surprise.

Sliding in, I head for the guy on the left and swing my hammer right into his knee, the sound of the bone crunching surprisingly visceral and close.

While I’m getting up, the one in the middle turns and grabs Veva, and I go after him. I catch Raegan behind us, her elbow connecting with the nose of the final guy.

So, she does know how to fight.

Kira comes running from the other side of the room, wielding a long, rusty pipe. She brings it down hard on the arm of the man holding on to Veva, and he howls in pain.

“Fuck,” Veva rasps, turning, her eyes wide. “Glad you didn’t miss.”

“I’m a pro with these,” Kira jokes, before turning around and lifting her pipe up again, only to find Raegan standing with blood smeared over her arms, breathing heavily as she looks down at the final guy.

“You guys did a great job,” Emaline says, her voice small, laughing as she looks to the door. “Now, can we go?”

Kira nods and starts for the door, but two things happen in quick succession.

First, the lights go out. And second, four hulking figures burst through the door.