“Freya!” I barked. She jumped, skittish as a rabbit. “Who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
She was lying. Hunter looked back at me, his amber eyes hard. We both knew what needed to be done.
“We’re giving you one last chance, babygirl,” he threatened harshly. His hand came to rest on the back of her neck. Freyagasped as he pulled her toward him until they were nose to nose. “Who was he?”
Crickets.
One more glance back at me. I nodded, giving my go-ahead. We needed answers, and Hunter would be the one to get them. There was also one more thing that needed to be done between us all, but I’d let Hunter have it first.
After all, he did love the chase.
Stubborn silence. My heart ached. She didn’t trust me enough to confide in me. In us. But I had to remember that we barely knew one another. We may be fated mates, but that didn’t come with implicit trust. Especially from someone who looked as if she’d been through hell.
Doc mentioned that severe trauma and internal disharmony could make it difficult for her to feel the mate bond. Which told me she had a shit-ton of baggage and wasn’t in harmony with her wolf. The latter was easy to tell.
Unlike what fiction would have people believe, we didn’t communicate verbally with our wolves. There were no internal conversations of any kind. But we did hold a connection. Their instincts drove us, and oftentimes those instincts could take the driver’s seat. Shifters nowadays had more control over their primal sides due to the inability to fully shift. Not that it never happened, but it happened less often. Our claws were still lethal,and our bites still dangerous. We just didn’t transform into our four-legged animal selves.
I imagined it was harder for Red to control her wolf than other shifters. The look in her eyes when she’d been in the café had been pure animal. The only part I’d seen to be Freya was when Wolf first commanded her. That little head tilt was all her. I’d spent years training to control the beast within me. The Collective had forced me to hone my abilities and project them into being weapons, not just tools of survival and instinct.
When I’d sensed Freya in her wolf form, it felt as if she had no control. Panic, fear, and loneliness are what had seeped from her wolf. Along with anger and vengeance, the two greatest agitators for a loss of control.
Wolf and I were more than positive that Red hadn’t attacked Granny. She’d defended her. Killed her attacker. But pieces were missing. The story was untold. The man in the café had held no scent, and the blood in the café didn’t account for one man. Some of it had been Granny’s, but there was still too much flooding the floor.
It told us there had to be another.
That and there was no way in hell one man in a suit had gotten the jump on that old bat. I’d seen her take out several men twice her size all at once. Something wasn’t adding up, and we needed to know what it was if we were going to get ahead of it.
“If that’s how you want to play it,” I growled. Red shifted, her thighs clenching as she tried to move away from my grip. My finger wrapped into her hair and wrenched, eliciting a cry from the beauty that would soon be beneath me.
All in good time.
Freya cried out as I dragged her from the bed by her hair, hauling her toward the medical bay doors and out into the hallway.
“Hunter.” My free hand caught the ropes Wolf tossed at me, and I gave him a thumbs-up as I forcibly marched the struggling vixen from the safe house and into the woods that surrounded it. She fought against me, her whimpers and pleas doing nothing to deter the course ahead. It could have been different. I’d hoped to introduce her to my darker side slowly, but she’d forced my hand when she’d refused to cooperate.
There were demons in her past that needed defeating, and I would be the one to start killing them off. Red needed to know she could trust us. That we had her back. I doubted she’d ever experienced loyalty and devotion like that. Not if she had been part of the Collective.
“Where-where are you taking me?” she stuttered as she tried to buck against my hold. One of her soft hands wrenched at the one buried in her hair while the other struggled to hold her robe shut.
It was a fruitless endeavor. I’d be divesting her of it within minutes.
“Into the wood, Little Red.” I shot her a dark, toothy grin. Another few moments, and I’d determined that we were far enough into the forest that she wouldn’t know her way back to the safe house on her own. I wanted her disoriented. Scared.
Removing my harsh grip on her hair, I grabbed her wrists before she could make to move away from me. With quick, effortless movements, I had her wrists tied in front of her and a noose around her neck.
Red’s eyes bulged, her bound hands clawing at the rope around her neck as I secured the length of it around a tree branch above her head, wrenching it until she was nearly standing on her tiptoes. I’d used this rope technique on a few men in my time. Any time the person shifted too much, the noose tightened around their neck in small increments until they’d hanged themselves.
I’d built in a safety knot just for her. I wouldn’t let it get to the point where she’d hang herself, but I wanted her to believe I would.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was alarmed, fearful. Good. Now maybe she would start to tell the truth. “Please…” She’d stopped tugging at the rope, noticing how it had tightened when she’d tried to pull it slack. Smart girl.
“Here’s how this is going to work, Red,” I informed her. “You’re going to answer my questions. If you don’t, or if I suspect that you’re lying to me, you will be punished. Tell me the truth, and I will reward you.”
“Fuck you,” she growled, spit flying in her anger. It struck me as funny that she was tied like a hanged man to a tree, yet her wolf didn’t stir. I’d be able to sense it rising to the surface to protect her, but there was nothing.
Nada.