He slapped me again. My head didn’t move even a fraction of an inch. He was weaker than I’d thought. My only problem was waiting for the Bane to wear off so I could break free of the shackles and rip out his throat.
“Roly, she won’t listen to you. Remember, I told you how stubborn she is.”
His demeanor changed, and he charged at her, grabbing her by the arms. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Of course I remember. But I’m not like your Alphas. I will get her to obey.”
Her face turned red again as he shook her. Every fiber of my being wanted to help her, but I was stuck half-paralyzed and chained up. My mouth was all I had at my disposal. “So, let me get this straight, All-Mighty-Runt, you think bullying little Stella here is the way to prove you’re a big, powerful wolf? Let’s be real here, you picked the weakest female from all the packs because you’re the weakest male I’ve ever seen.”
He tossed Stella aside and rounded on me. “She may be weak, but she’s smarter than all of you put together.”
“Look, I don’t give a shit about your relationship. If Stella wants to believe your lies and pretend you’re her mate, that’s her problem. If she wants to ruin her life, so be it. I’m just saying, if you want to fight someone, prove you’re a strong boy, fight me. Let me out of these chains and let’s see what you can do.” The Bane’s effects were getting weaker by the minute. I couldn’t break the shackles yet, but I could move enough to kick his sorry ass.
“Oh no, you’ll be here for a while. In fact,” he said as he reached into his shirt pocket, “let’s make sure you stay still for us.” He injected me with another dose of Bane and watched as it did its thing.
It wasn’t enough to knock me out, but it was enough to make my arms and legs feel like they weighed a million pounds each.
He moved to Stella, grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her in for a kiss. I watched them as they pawed at each other. They looked like thirteen-year-olds having their first make-out session.
He lifted the skirt of her dress to reveal her naked bottom. She tried to push it back down, but he grabbed her hand and twisted it behind her back as he pushed her dress up even more. He then pulled down the bodice to free her breasts. He latched on to one so hard I saw her eyes widened.
“Oh, Roly, not here. Not in front of her.” Her voice was strained. She may like it rough, but the more I saw, it really wasn’t so much BDSM as it was an ineptness on his part. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing. It just made me even more confused why she’d be with him.
His head snapped up from gnawing at her breast to growl in her face. “What did you just say?”
“I thought maybe we could go to the room,” she said.
He looked over at me with his head tilted to the side. His lips pulled into a sick smile as he let his eyes roam down to my breasts. “Nah, she’d be too hard to move. We’ll stay here.”
What the hell does that mean? I thought.
“Oh? I meant just you and me. Why do we need her with us?”
The smack echoed through the mirrors and her head flew to the side. When she righted herself, she was smiling a bloody smile.
The wound healed almost immediately. As I’d found out with my dad, it’s easier for a shifter’s abuse to go unnoticed. We heal quickly so the abuser could do almost anything and no one would ever know.
“Roly, when we get to the room, I have to give you a refresher on how to behave.” Her demeanor had changed. She was no longer anything like the Stella I once knew. “You know I don’t like when you look at other girls. You were a bad boy tonight.”
What in the ever-loving fuck is happening? I thought as I watched Roland’s shoulders slump, contradicting the bulge in his pants.
Roland approached me. “We’re going to leave you now. But we’ll be back, you’re the answer. Stella was right. She’s always right.”
“If you think I’ll do anything either of you want, you’re crazier than I thought. I’ll kill you the first chance I get. And if you ever hurt Stella in a way she doesn’t like, I’ll rip your tiny dick off.” He slapped me but again I didn’t even flinch. “You’re the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a shifter that ever lived.”
To my utter surprise, Stella laughed. “He is, isn’t he?”
Roland frowned for a second before sneering at me. “Just wait. Wait until the reveal. You’ll cower before me like the rest of them.”
“Doubtful.”
They turned the lights off as they left to go to whatever the fuck ‘the room’ was. I sat in the dark waiting for the Bane to wear off. He’d been so annoyed he’d forgotten to inject me again. So, twenty minutes later I was free of my shackles and making my way out of the mirror maze to find the room they kept mentioning.
After searching every inch of the funhouse, I finally stepped outside. I took a moment to scan my surroundings for any sign of them. A thunderstorm had rolled in, and it was windy and raining, but I could just make out two sets of footprints in the mud leading in the direction of the Tunnel of Love.
How old was this carnival? I thought as I neared the now decrepit ride.
The footprints veered to the left of the tunnel. I followed them around, but they just stopped. There were no tire tracks of any kind, so they hadn’t gotten in a vehicle or on bikes. On a ridiculous thought, I looked up, but there were too many trees for any kind of flying apparatus to have made it in. There was only one answer.
I knelt on the ground and moved my hands around where the footprints ended. My fingers brushed a metal surface, and I grabbed onto a hidden handle. I pulled upward and the hatch door opened to reveal a ladder leading down into a dark tunnel.