The trio hadn’t come into pack territory at the same entrance as the other humans, so Shaya could only guess that they had taken advantage of the pack being preoccupied during the attack to force their way through the gap Tao hadn’t yet had the chance to fully secure. Humans wouldn’t have stood a chance against it, but another shifter could.

“So, I was just wondering,” she began in a flat tone, “what’s the plan?”

Eyes the color of a dark storm landed on her, twinkling with malice. “Logan wants Nick to find you. He wants him to watch you die. After what Nick did to me, I like that plan.”

“What did Nick do to you?” He didn’t answer. She cocked her head at him, noticing he had a very chimp-like face. “Why do you hate shifters so much?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like for me.”

God, he sounded like her mother. “Then tell me.” And keep your mind away from Nick.

His upper lip curled. “Imagine how it feels to have to share your own soul. Share it with an animal, no less—an animal that selfishly pushes its wants and instincts on you. You have to live in a pack with an Alpha for a dad—someone everyone looks up to, while they look down on you for not being as good as he is. Imagine how it feels to find that fate has dumped you with a true mate who is nothing but a slut. Yeah, that’s right, she imprinted on someone else, even had pups with him.

“The only good thing about this life is the power and strength. I told my father to step down and give me his position, but would he? No. He said I didn’t have what it took to be an Alpha. So I did what had to be done—I killed him in his sleep. Did the pack accept me as their Alpha? No. They threw me out. As I had no place to go and no money, it was no wonder that I soon found myself in juvie. That was a hell like no other.”

“And that’s where you met Nick,” she surmised. She couldn’t recall Nick speaking of anyone he’d severely pissed off in juvie, though. Or anyone who resembled a chimp, for that matter.

“Speaking of Nick, he should be here soon. He’ll definitely come for you. I know that much.” He turned to the humans. “Where the hell is Logan?” They merely shrugged. “I’m going to take a look outside, see what’s going on.” To Shaya’s frustration, he disappeared out of the hut, closing the door behind him.

“What’s his problem with Nick?” she asked the two humans.

“That’s his business,” said the chubby compulsive spitter who would look right at home on a porch swing with a banjo.

Shaya released a sigh of frustration and turned to the gangly guy beside Chubby. “What did Nick do to him?”

Without moving his eyes from her br**sts, Gangly absentmindedly replied, “Merrick just wants to make Nick suffer—it’s like a tit-for-tat thing.”

Merrick? That name certainly rang a bell. “But…Merrick’s dead. Nick challenged him in juvie; he killed him.” And he’d spent most of his life feeling bad about it.

“Obviously, he didn’t. I’m pretty sure Merrick would have left Nick alone if the game preserve hadn’t been found and Logan hadn’t been goading him.” Gangly shrugged carelessly. “In any case, he intends to make your mate suffer.”

“If you want Nick to suffer,” began Amber, “all you have to do is kill her. Let me go, and I’ll heal you.”

“You hadn’t really healed Nick at all, had you?” Shaya somehow knew. Amber’s shocked expression told her it was true. “I have to admit, it didn’t occur to me at first. You looked so genuinely devastated when he told his mom and Roni about the memory lapse. You even asked for the chance to heal him again. But you wouldn’t have truly healed him. No. Keeping him sick meant that you could keep him coming back to you, didn’t it?”

Amber’s expression turned somber. “It was the only time he’d really let me touch him. The only way to make him—the guy I love—need me.”

“That’s not exactly an excuse, sweetie. You kept my mate ill to the point that he thought he couldn’t claim me. But that was the whole idea, wasn’t it?” Before Amber could answer, Logan came bursting into the cabin, hobbling and bleeding, with Merrick close behind him.

“Nick’s unconscious,” Logan told them all. “I managed to get away while the shifters were concentrating on helping and healing each other. But it won’t be long before he wakes up. We need to be ready.”

Merrick retrieved a can of kerosene—kerosene?—from the floor.

“Remember,” said Logan, “don’t splash the hut. We don’t want the place to blow up or burn too quickly. Just dribble it around the perimeter of the hut. It’ll spread to the hut quick enough, but not so fast that Nick doesn’t get to hear, feel, and smell her burning to death.” With that, Logan followed Merrick outside, closing the door behind him.

Motherfuckers. Logan would know a lot about Nick’s past through his juvie records; he would know about the accident that killed his father and forced Nick’s wolf to surface prematurely. Yeah, if there was anything that would make Nick suffer, it was this. Fuck. That. It really was time to go. One half-shifter against two humans was much better odds than if Merrick and Logan had been standing there too.

“I’ll give you only one warning,” she told the two humans in her gravest voice. “Release me, or I will kill you.” Instead of heeding her warning, they both laughed. In fact, so did Amber. How dumb. Seeing that Gangly was still ogling her br**sts, Shaya sneered at him. “Must you be a perv?”

He gave her another of his creepy smiles. “I’m just wondering what color your ni**les are.”

She raised a brow tauntingly. “Why don’t you come over here and find out for yourself?”

“You know what, I think I will.”

If she had been calling his bluff, Shaya would have been panicking right about then. But she hadn’t been calling his bluff. She in fact wanted him to come to her, because what he didn’t know was that her wrists were no longer bound.

Fueled by her rage at what had happened to her mate, Shaya waited until he was close before supporting her weight on one hand as she sharply whipped up one of her legs and kicked the rifle out of his hands. Before he could react, she whipped up her leg again and booted him in the balls; he made a strange choking sound and fell to his knees. Abruptly, she snatched the knife her father had long ago given her that was tucked into her boot and speared it into his chest.

When a stunned-looking Chubby came charging at her, she rolled to the side and sliced both his Achilles tendons as he stumbled past. Like a sack of spuds, he fell to the ground, crying out. Rolling once again, she seized the rifle and twisted to see that Chubby was trying to crawl away. He froze when she cocked it and gave her a pitiful look. She shrugged. “I told you I’d kill you.” The bullet hit him dead-center in his forehead.

It was then that Merrick swung the door open. But she had already cocked the gun again, ready to shoot, and was aiming it as his head. “You should have run, Monkey Boy.” But the awkward bastard dove to the side, making the bullet skim his ear. “Fuck.” Then a wall of flames suddenly formed around the hut, and Merrick slammed the door closed. “Double f**k.” Before she could even think of acting, a hand shackled her ankle.

“You can’t leave me here,” growled Amber.

Shaya found she didn’t have an ounce of mercy for this person who had deliberately kept Nick ill, who had made her almost lose her mate. “Of course I can.”

“You bitch!”

“Personally, I think I’m more evil than that, but whatever. Give me one good reason why I should help you.”

Instead of answering, she yanked hard on Shaya’s ankle, making her lose her balance and crash to the floor. She lost her grip on the rifle, which went skidding away from her. “If I’m gonna die, so are you,” snarled Amber.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t her own life that Shaya was so frantic about saving. It was Nick’s. Knowing he was unconscious and hurt was making both her and her wolf panic like crazy. Shaya knew that if the bond had been fully developed, she could have used her own strength to bolster his, to help him wake up. Trey had done the same thing for Taryn during the battle with his uncle: He had surrendered to the bond while she was unconscious, and when the bond clicked into place, Taryn had quickly come around.

Since waking up in the hut, Shaya had been trying to do the same as Trey had, trying to surrender to the bond, but she had no idea how. Over and over she’d tried with no success. She knew what stood in the way—her trust issues, her need to feel indispensable to him, her worry that he would come to resent her submissive status. But, she suddenly wondered, were those things really that important to her? Or had she just been finding excuses all along to keep a distance between them?

Over the past few months, he had given her all the assurances she could have needed, hadn’t he? You’re stronger than anyone I know, he’d told her right before he claimed her, echoing every act that communicated he considered her as his equal. Repeatedly he had assured her, I don’t want anyone but you. and, thus, soothing her worry that her submissive status made her less desirable to him. She’d never forget when he said, My life’s worth shit without you in it. And then there was the, You’re indispensable to me—essential to me on every level.

He’d kept every promise, he’d gone at her pace, and he’d been as patient with her as she had needed him to be. Yes, he’d earned her trust with everything he said, with everything he did, with every promise he kept. She did trust him. And yet…the bond wouldn’t snap into place.

Well of course it wouldn’t, she thought with a snicker. It had never really been her difficulty to trust at all, had it? Sure that had played a factor, but that hadn’t been the barrier between them. What had held her back all along had been fear—the fear of him leaving her, the fear of being alone, the fear of just what it would do to her to have to live her life without him being a part of it. And, most importantly, the fear of the power it gave him to admit to herself that she loved him. But clinging to that fear in order to protect herself wasn’t fair to either of them, nor was keeping those words from him.

Ironically, it had been fear that had held Nick back from claiming her at the very beginning, but he had let go of his fear, determined to not let her suffer for that fear. Now, she needed to let go of hers. And she found that she could.

It was not the scent of fire, smoke, and wood burning that made the gray wolf skid to a halt. It was the sudden bang in his chest and impact to his head. He did not fear either. There was no pain. Only the feel of his mate inside him: the feel of her heartbeat, the rate of her pulse. Neither was as strong as it should be. He took no time to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing their bond was now unbreakable. He needed to get to his mate.

With a number of wolves following, the gray wolf allowed the bond to lead him to her. Seeing the small building alight, his mind immediately flashed back to a distant, painful memory—one that brought with it fear, panic, desperation, and the feeling of being trapped. Those same feelings taunted the wolf now, making him hesitate, making him howl. But then he heard his mate’s voice, felt her sadness. She sensed his fear and wanted him to stay back. The wolf could not do that. She was his. She belonged to him. She needed to be safe. The sight of her in danger caused a different kind of fear—not the kind that made him hesitate, the kind that acted as fuel and made him act.

Feeling the bond click into place, Shaya’s wolf and soul screamed with joy. But Shaya didn’t have the time to rejoice about it, because she needed to be free of the evil bitch clinging to her ankle. And she needed to do it before the fire now attacking the wooden walls collapsed the building and killed them both. It was hot, it was dark, it was frightening. She couldn’t hear a thing over the hissing, sizzling, crackling, and popping around her.

Coughing and panicking as her ability to breathe became more and more difficult, Shaya kicked at Amber’s face and hand, wishing she was wearing her stilettos. Amber only tightened her hold and bit into Shaya’s leg. “You weird bitch!” she croaked. Shaya reached down, fisted her hand in her hair, and pulled hard until Amber’s teeth released her. She would have shifted forms, but her wolf was too spooked by the fire.

Using her hold on her ankle, Amber dragged Shaya toward her and went to claw at Shaya’s face. But the move was clumsy and awkward—most likely as Amber was already weak from her injury. Shaya’s hand shot out and snapped around Amber’s wrist. Digging deep for every ounce of strength inside her, Shaya propelled Amber onto her back, pinning her arm to the ground. As a submissive wolf, her strength shouldn’t have exceeded Amber’s, but knowing what this bitch had done to her mate, Shaya and her wolf were close to feral—it gave her the added strength she needed.

With the hand still fisted in Amber’s hair, she slammed the bitch’s head down over and over until Amber gave a dizzy, hoarse moan. Had she been able to see anything, Shaya might have been able to find her knife or rifle and kill the bitch, but the black smoke made it impossible for even shifter vision to see much. She wasn’t sure where the door was, or she might have tried to crawl toward it, but there was the possibility that she might simply crawl farther into the hut.

Sensing that her mate was now outside, Shaya would have smiled with relief if she hadn’t also sensed the fear and memories tormenting his wolf. It broke her heart to feel just how deeply the accident so long ago had scarred him. She tried to communicate to him that he didn’t have to put himself through this again, that she didn’t want his scars to deepen, but she didn’t have a freaking clue if it was working.