Page 163 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Piper cried out as he slapped her hard across the face. “Never enter my tent unannounced,” he hissed at her as she whimpered. “And never put your filthy hands on me again.”

The girl choked on a sob and tried to sign something, but Devin wasn’t paying attention.

“I’m sorry, sir, we heard the shouts and she just darted in. Slipped right out of my fingers for a second—”

“Get out,” Devin said to the guard, settling a glare on him so malicious that I wondered if Devin might strike him down right there and then for not having stopped the girl from entering.

The shifter vanished back the way he’d come, and by the time Devin faced me again, I’d managed to army crawl nearly all the way to the back of the tent. A useless endeavor, but still, I had to try.

“You,” he hissed at Piper. “Get over there and read her.”

The girl’s dark watery gaze flicked to me in muted horror.

When she didn’t move, he kicked her, and she winced at the pain while scrambling to her feet only to fall to her knees again in front of me.

“Does she have any intention whatsoever of making good on her promise to me?” The question was for Piper, but his luminous eyes remained locked on me. And then after another moment, his upper lip curling back, he said, “Does she intend to kill me?”

My jaw clenched as I found some last morsel of strength, and I hauled myself up to a seated position so I could scooch away from the girl. I shook my head at her, feeling my wolf waking from a too-long slumber within. She was weak though, muted, and I couldn’t seem to draw on her strength.

The realization that the alchemist’s spell may have somehow worked made me sick to my stomach, and I shoved away the idea. Pulling harder on that little flicker of her I could still feel deep within.

I couldn’t let this girl read my thoughts.

I didn’t think I would be able to hide them from her, and if she told Devin my intentions—that I would never let him have me, and that I fully fucking intended to not only kill him but make him suffer—then the deal was off, and my mates, my entire pack, were as good as dead.

Why hadn’t I seen this bullshittery coming? Damn.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

“Do it!” Devin growled and the girl darted forward, making a grab for my hands. I shoved her back, and she looked to Devin for guidance.

He rolled his eyes before coming over and settling himself behind me. I wasn’t able to fight him as he locked my arms with his and hauled my body against his so that my back was pressed to his chest and his hot breath skated down the back of my neck.

“What are you waiting for?”

I wriggled as Piper leaned in and placed her clammy hands on either side of my face, a hopeless sob expanding in my chest.

No. Please. Please.

Don’t think. Don’t think.

I implored her for mercy, begged her for it with my eyes, and watched as her chin quivered.

Clear your mind, Allie.

But even in trying to clear it, the edges of my subconscious thoughts were still there. Dancing around my conscious desire for them to shut the fuck up.

“Well?” Devin demanded.

Piper dropped her hands to wring them together in her lap. Her long hair fell back as she lifted her gaze to her alpha’s and began to sign.

I studied each vague movement, studying the symbols and praying to be able to understand something of what she was telling him, but it was no use.

I’d read a book on sign language once as a teen with good intentions of learning, but I’d never stuck with it.

I barely remembered how to sign the letters of my goddamned name.

“Hmmm.” Devin’s chest rumbled with the curious sound as his hold relaxed and Piper rose on shaking legs to take a step back from me. “Interesting.”

Interesting? What was fucking interesting?

“That’ll be all, Piper. Go back to your tent and stay there. I’ll see to it that you’re brought a proper meal for your assistance today.”

Piper nodded her head and cast me an apologetic look before she scampered back outside.

I jerked out of Devin’s grasp and nearly fell on my face, only catching myself at the last second as he rushed to follow Piper to the door. “Is it ready?” he asked someone outside.

“Yes. Shall I take her?”

“No. I’ll do it myself.”

Before I knew what was happening, Devin lifted me with a firm grip on my arm.

“Let go,” I snapped, still wobbling on my feet.

He jerked me steady and put his face in mine. “Keep fighting me and I’ll not just kill them, Allie, I’ll make you watch.”

So he knew…

He knew.

I felt nothing as Devin dragged my only half-functioning body from the tent out into the night. I barely registered the stares or the whispers as we passed rows of small tents and groups of naked bodies surrounding metal barrel campfires.

As pine branches slapped across my cheeks and thorny shrubs carved small wounds into my knees, I pieced together that we were entering a thicker part of the forest.

And then we were inside. It smelled of wood. Of old cedar and mothballs and metal.

Chains rattled, and I wasn’t able to claw back to myself from the pits of my despair in time to stop it.

I stared down into a dark hole in the wooden floor of what I assumed was some sort of old hunting cabin. The cloying smell of damp earth filled my nose as Devin released me with a shove and I fell.

The ground rushed up to meet me, expelling all the air from my lungs. I wheezed as I tried to get air, fingers clawing into the damp wood beneath me, trying to flip around.

Devin pulled the ladder up and discarded it somewhere up there as I fell onto my back, staring up, still unable to get a full breath.

There was a creak as the door above, so far above, began to close, and I blinked, trying to judge the distance. It had to be at least twelve feet.

“There’s something I have to take care of,” Devin told me, and the implication in his words made every inch of my flesh prickle and the back of my throat burn.

“You...you motherfucker,” I stammered, my chest still aching from the blow of the fall. “Don’t...don’t you dare—”

But Devin only smiled as he sealed me into the cellar with the smells of earth and wood rot as my only company.

Chains drew across the wooden exterior of the hatch and the chink of a lock clicking into place burrowed into my heart just as surely as a bullet might.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Devin called, his footsteps retreating until another door closed and I heard the muffled drone of low conversation outside.

“I’m going...” I coughed, my voice still so low that I doubted he could hear me. “...to kill you. I swear.”