At the Mercy of the Pack

 Chapter 2

 At the Mercy of the Pack

Waking up sucked nearly as much as passing out in the freezing-cold mud with an alpha werewolf threatening to kill me, but a lot less than getting chained up and chanted at by a shaman trying to turn me into a slave. So hey, chalk one up in the win column.

I blinked, then blinked again, and then gave up when my vision stayed stubbornly fuzzy. I was dry, and I should have been warm — I was in a bed, and under a pile of blankets — but I was goosebumpy and shivering in spite of what felt like a real feather comforter and a set of flannel sheets.

Looking around the best I could with only half my vision, I caught glimpses of ugly wood paneling, a ceiling painted mustard-yellow, and a few other items of bedroom furniture, probably a dresser and a nightstand and maybe a chair. There was some kind of psychedelic poster on the opposite wall, although thankfully I couldn't see it very well.

Not that anyone had ever accused werewolves of having a lot of aesthetic sense, but seriously? I was probably going to die in a place that looked like a set designer from That 70s Show threw up everywhere.

I tried to sit up, but yeah, still cursed. My muscles quivered with the effort of scooting up the bed and tucking the pillows behind my head a little more firmly to prop it up. There was a faintly musty, mildewy smell that made my esophagus tighten up and bile rise to the back of my throat.

“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone there?” Even if they were going to kill me — or, to save effort and blood clean-up, just let me die — they'd probably give me a glass of water, right?

A second later, heavy footsteps came nearer, and then the bedroom door opened to admit two werewolves, one of them welcome, the other one definitely not.

Matthew Armitage was five years or so older than Ian, but aside from also being an alpha, he didn't have much in common with his younger — definitely not little — brother. He wasn't glaring like he wanted me dead ten minutes ago, for one thing. He hadn't liked his cousin Jared very much, maybe because Jared had been an unbelievable prick who openly plotted to take Matthew's place leading the pack. I thought Matthew's stance was pretty reasonable.

Ian, on the other hand, always thought Jared could do no wrong. When Jared died under questionable circumstances, Ian blamed me. After all, if Jared hadn't been glamoured, or ensorcelled, or whatever Ian thought I'd done to get his cousin to fuck a warlock, he wouldn't have had to sneak out of the pack's territory without telling anyone where he was going.

I thought Jared could have solved the whole sneaking-around problem by admitting he was seeing me to his family, but hey, I was biased against being the guy's dirty little secret, so sue me.

“Nate,” Matthew said with a nod. His tone wasn't exactly welcoming, but he didn't seem hostile, either. Ian, glowering behind him with his arms crossed over his massive chest, had that covered for both of them. Matthew just sounded...wary. And I couldn't really blame him, under the circumstances. “Looks like you ran into some trouble with the Kimballs.”

“Looks like he's probably working with the Kimballs to kill you,” Ian grumbled, in the tone of a man who'd already said the same thing twenty times.

Matthew turned his head to shoot him a quelling glance. “You know what they say about assumptions.”

“Yeah, you're already an ass,” Ian shot back.

I really couldn't stand the guy, but if I hadn't been so weak, I would've had to fight not to laugh at the look of disgust on Matthew's face. I'd always wished I had a brother, but these two made me wonder if it was worth it. I'd known all the Armitage boys since we were kids, and I'd soothed the desperate, grinding loneliness and envy I always felt when I saw them together by reminding myself how much they beat each other up and argued.

And then Matthew gently bumped Ian's shoulder with his, a gesture of such understanding affection that my chest ached. Yeah, it was worth it. Too bad my only family had been a father who saw me as a walking magic battery.

“They definitely want to kill you,” I put in, and the brothers turned to look at me in unison, two pairs of eerie light-blue eyes fixed on me with a little too much intensity. So maybe they had a few things in common, despite Matthew's dark hair and slightly less-huge build and general ability not to be a dick. “But I'm not working with them.” I had to struggle for breath to get the rest of the words out. This curse fucking sucked. “More like doing their dirty work for them, if they'd had their way. They kidnapped me last night.”

Matthew's eyes narrowed. “Kidnapped you.”

My cheeks heated, and I couldn't quite make eye contact. His disbelief was kind of flattering, but convincing him was going to require admitting what a fucking idiot I'd been.

“There was this guy, okay? At this bar. He distracted me. And he managed to get enough witchbane in my drink that by the time I realized, I was already too drained to fight back.”

“Distracted you how exactly?” Ian demanded gruffly.

“How do you think?” I snapped. “We were in a club. You do the math.”

Ian made a gagging sound. “Can't keep an eye on your drink when you're bent over in a bathroom stall, right?”

Fury shot through me, fierce and bright enough to halfway counteract the draining effects of the curse for a second. I sat upright, fists balled in the blankets. “Fuck you, Ian. Like you've never been ambushed by a vamp because you were too busy going down on a biker chick in a back alley. Oh right, you have.”

He turned bright red and actually snarled at me, teeth bared. “What the fuck do you know about —”

“Just what Jared told me,” I snarled right back. Not as impressively, since, you know, no giant canines sprouting out of my gums, but I gave it my best.

That shut him up. He froze, every one of his muscles going rigid at once.

Matthew wrapped his hand around Ian's bicep, squeezing hard enough to break the arm of a normal human. “Out, Ian.”

“I'm not leaving you alone with this son-of-a —”

“Now,” Matthew said, low and quiet. It was more effective than shouting would have been. I wasn't a were, and I wasn't Matthew's subordinate, but even I felt the pack leader's power behind that one syllable.

Matthew stared Ian down until he stalked out, muttering. He slammed the door, and then there was silence. It was pretty clear he was standing right outside and not going anywhere. Matthew shrugged, sighed, and crossed the room to drag the chair over to the side of the bed.

Without Ian there to put up a front for, I sagged back against the pillows, my head swimming in circles. Matthew would give me a fair hearing, and he already knew how weak I was. There wasn't much point in trying to hide it.

“All right, Nate,” he said, sitting down and resting his chin in one propped hand. “How about you focus less on pissing Ian off and more on telling me what the fuck is actually going on here.”

“But he's so easy to piss off.”

Matthew gave me a long look I couldn't interpret. “Not usually.”

Right, I believed that. I'd never seen Ian with less than a scowl on his face. “Whatever.”

“Whatever works for me. What happened last night?”

“Can I get a glass of water first?” My throat was already dry as a desert, which didn't seem fair, considering how much rainwater I'd absorbed that morning. “And maybe a bathroom?”

Matthew was actually grinding his teeth together by the time he'd helped me to the en-suite bathroom, waited for me to take a wobbly piss and fill a glass from the tap a few times, and then helped me get back to bed, but finally I was settled again.

I took a deep breath. “I was at the Morning Star last night...”

It wasn't a very inspiring story, since it started — just like Ian thought, damn him — with me getting bent over in a bathroom stall. I glossed over that part as much as I could, and Matthew only rolled his eyes a little, because he was awesome like that. It took a while, what with me having to pause to pant for air, but I managed to get the main points laid out: kidnapped, chained, one shaman and several werewolves gathered in the warehouse, and a ritual that was meant to create a bond between me and one of the weres.

Matthew listened impassively, but when I got to what I'd overheard between the two werewolves, Matthew leaned forward, brow furrowed and attention completely engaged. “Describe them, the ones who were talking. Especially the one you were supposed to be bound to.”

“He was older, maybe fifty? He wasn't the pack leader, though. I've seen Sam Kimball. It wasn't him. I don’t think he was there.”

Matthew waved an impatient hand. “You said it seemed like they were doing a ritual that would create a bond? A mating bond?”

I hesitated. I'd been fudging the truth a little bit, because admitting how long, and how badly, my father had used me wasn't something I liked to do. I was ashamed of how much power he'd had over me, horrified by what he'd done with the magical strength he drained from me. So instead of telling Matthew I'd known what the ritual would probably do because my father had done something like it to me, over and over, for years, I'd said it was like a spell meant to create a mate bond.

But. If Matthew knew something I didn't, the distinction might be important.

“I didn't see all of it,” I hedged. “Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it would have created a connection. Maybe even a conduit. Something meant to share the magic of the two parties back and forth, only with one in control and the other subordinate.”

“But is it something you could do if one of the two people involved already had a mate bond?” Matthew pressed. “Because one of Kimball's brothers isn't mated, and neither is one of his seconds. Either of them could fit the description you've given. If a mated werewolf could do this, then that puts Kimball's other brothers and his uncle into play. Kimball wasn't there. That means he either didn't authorize this, or he didn't want to be directly involved. If one of his inner circle is betraying him, or working against his orders? I want to know which one. Especially since the pack's shaman is working with whoever it is.”

“I don't think it would work if he already had a mate bond,” I said, after considering it for a minute. I was being honest about that, at least, which salved my conscience. “The two bonds would conflict. Cancel each other out, or blow up, or something.”

“That's helpful,” Matthew said dryly. “Really. Good to see your magical expertise is so detailed.”

“Bite me,” I muttered, and then quickly added, “Figuratively! Figuratively, Matthew.”

He laughed a little, but he sobered at once. “Let's skip the biting for now and get to the part where you were in the middle of being bonded and ended up crawling through my territory at dawn.”

That wasn't actually hard to explain. I'd been under the influence of the witchbane when the ritual started, but burning through it faster than they would have expected. After all, I was pretty strong. More than pretty strong. What I lacked was control, because I'd been denied most of the training I should have had as an adolescent. Yeah, I could do the basics — warding, minor illusions, transforming simple physical objects — in my sleep, but I couldn't do a lot of the showier magic that powerful warlocks liked to flash around to impress the masses. Everyone underestimated me as a result, to the point where the money I pulled in for my freelance magic jobs barely kept me in a crappy studio apartment and a few pairs of outlet-store jeans.

And even though my raw power meant I'd shaken off the effects of the potion faster than my captors probably expected, I still would've been screwed if it hadn't been for the sheer, overwhelming terror that hit me as I realized what they were doing. If I'd learned control as a kid, I’d have been so conditioned to only use my power carefully that the witchbane would’ve been enough to keep me helpless. But the fear and rage and blind, animal instinct to get away won't be bound again would rather die — it all burst out of me, in a wave of unchanneled power that disintegrated my chains, flung my kidnappers in all directions, shouting and slamming into walls, and blew out the side of the warehouse in a cloud of splinters and flying nails.

I ran, and I ran, and I must have used more magic to move faster, because when I came back to something like rationality, I was already less than a mile from the edge of the Armitage territory. I didn't know exactly where I'd started out.

“Okay,” Matthew said, after he'd digested that for a minute. “Why are you here?”

I blinked at him. “Is that a trick question?” The words came out a little slow, a little slurred. I was starting to fade, even though the nap I'd taken had helped me a little. I needed to eat, and I needed more sleep, and more than anything, I needed a magical fix.

Matthew frowned at me. “No. And stop wasting the little strength you have fucking around.”

“You needed to know.” He looked at me expectantly. I sighed. “And I needed your help, because who the fuck else is going to help me right now?”

“So I owe you for coming here and giving me a heads-up, and now I help you fix whatever's wrong with you? Fine. I'll buy what you're selling, if it's not too expensive. What do you need? Some herbs? A chalk circle, or something?”

“Patronizing much?”

He shrugged. “I'm not a practitioner.” Well, no shit. Werewolves almost never were. The rare werewolf who could cast actual magic became a pack shaman, and those fuckers were worth their weight in gold. The Kimball pack was as successful as they were in large part because they had one. “Anyway, make a list. You look like shit.”

Yeah, I was sure I did, if I looked anything like I felt. Which meant my time was running out, and I couldn’t put off the moment of truth I’d been tap-dancing around. Because I'd had a lot of time to think it over, making my miserable snail-like way through the woods in the middle of the night, and I'd come to a horrible and inescapable conclusion once I had.

I needed Matthew's help. Without it, I was as good as dead — and his pack was the only place I could get what I needed.