Chapter 2: The Kidnapping

I woke up to the sound of wheels on gravel.

For a moment I did not know anything. Not where I was. Not what had happened. Not why my neck felt like something had been driven into it with force. I just existed in that half-conscious space where your body knows something is wrong before your mind catches up.

Then my mind caught up.

My wrists were bound. Something cold and heavy was locked around both of them and when I tried to move my arms the chain between them pulled taut and bit into my skin. My mouth tasted like metal. My head was pounding so hard behind my eyes that I could barely keep them open.

I was in the back of a vehicle. A truck maybe. The floor beneath me was bare metal and every time we hit a rough patch in the road I felt it in my whole body. No padding. No consideration. I had been dropped here like cargo.

Because that was exactly what I was to whoever had taken me.

I lay still and kept my breathing slow and even. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to move, to fight, to call out. I crushed all of it down. I needed to understand the situation before I did anything. Damon had taught me that years ago, back when he first began training me alongside the warriors. Panic is loudest right before it kills you. Be quiet first. Listen first.

So I listened.

There were two of them in the front.

Men. Large from what I could tell by their voices. The kind of low rough voices that came from years of living outside pack structure, outside rules, outside anything that softened a person.

Rogues.

“How far to the handoff point?” The first one. Impatient. He had been tapping something against the door the whole time, a restless rhythm that was already making my head worse.

“Two more hours if the mountain road is clear.” The second one was calmer. More controlled. That made him more dangerous. “Stop asking.”

“I just want my payment.”

“You will get your payment when we deliver her breathing. So stop hitting that door and let me drive.”

A pause.

“They are paying a lot for one woman,” the first one said. He did not bother lowering his voice. They were not worried about me hearing. Either they thought I was still unconscious or they simply did not care. “She must be important.”

“She is the Luna.”

“Was the Luna,” the first one corrected. He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “After tonight she will just be a problem someone paid us to disappear.”

My blood went cold.

I did not move. I did not make a sound. But inside my chest, something cracked open because those words meant this was not a random rogue raid. Someone had sent them. Someone had paid them. Someone had specifically asked for me to be taken and had known exactly where I would be and exactly when.

Someone inside my pack had done this.

I reached for the bond.

Even chained on the floor of a moving truck with my head splitting open, even with whatever drug they had put in my neck still dragging at the edges of my consciousness, I reached for it. The mate bond was supposed to be unbreakable. It was the most fundamental thing between a mated pair. I should have been able to feel Damon the way I always felt him, that warm steady presence at the back of my mind, distant when he was calm, louder when something was wrong.

There was nothing.

I reached harder. I pushed everything I had toward that invisible thread between us and found silence on the other end of it. Not the silence of distance. Not the muffled quality the bond got when one of us was sleeping or deeply focused. This was emptier than that. Like pressing your hand against a door and finding nothing on the other side.

The drug. It had to be the drug. Something in whatever they had injected me with was blocking the bond, dulling my wolf enough that I could not reach through.

Or Damon was not reaching back.

I pushed that thought away before it could finish forming. I could not afford it right now.

The truck slowed slightly on a curve and I used the movement to shift my position without making noise. I got my back against the side panel and pushed myself up carefully until I was sitting. My arms ached. My legs were weak but functional. The chain between my wrists was about a foot long, heavy iron, locked at both ends with no give at all.

I looked around the cargo area. Dim light came through two small gaps near the roof. A rolled-up tarp in the far corner. A bag against the left wall. And between me and the bag, something small and gold caught the light for just a moment.

I stared at it.

I could not reach it from where I sat. I worked my way along the floor as quietly as I could, inch by inch, stopping every time the road noise changed, waiting to see if either man in the front would turn around.

They kept talking about the money.

I kept moving.

When I finally got close enough I looked down at what was lying on the floor and the cold in my blood turned to ice.

A bracelet. Gold chain with a small crescent moon charm. Three tiny diamonds set into the curve of the moon.

I knew that bracelet.

I had seen it on Vanessa Holt’s wrist at every pack gathering for the past three years. She never took it off. I had once asked her about it at a pack dinner and she had smiled her empty smile and said it was a gift from someone important to her.

I understood now what that meant.

I understood now exactly who had arranged this.

The truck began to climb.

The road changed under us, the gravel giving way to something narrower and rougher, and I felt the angle shift as we started going upward. Mountain road. The second man had mentioned a mountain road. Which meant at some point we were going to be on an elevation with edges.

My wolf stirred weakly under the drug. Not enough to shift. Not close to enough. But enough to push one clear thought forward.

Now. If you are going to do something, it has to be now.

I looked at the back of the truck. There was a latch on the rear doors. Old, from what I could see. The kind that lifts from the inside with enough force. My wrists were chained but my hands were free. If I could get to the doors quietly enough, if I could get the latch up before either of them heard me, if I could time the jump for a moment when the truck slowed on a curve-

It was not a good plan.

But it was the only one I had.

I got to my feet. The truck swayed and I braced against the wall and waited for the dizziness to pass. Then I moved toward the doors. Every step was deliberate. Every breath was controlled. The two men were arguing about something now, voices raised slightly, which helped cover the small sounds I was making.

I reached the doors.

I found the latch with both chained hands and lifted.

It gave.

The doors swung open and cold mountain air hit me like a wall and I saw the road dropping away behind us, the dark shape of the valley far below, the edge of the mountain not far off the narrow road.

The truck started to slow on the curve.

I jumped.

The impact was nothing as I expected. I had imagined rolling, controlling it, coming up on my feet as the warriors trained us to do. Instead, the ground came up brutal and fast and I hit it with my shoulder and my hip and my face and the world became nothing but pain and movement, rolling, scraping, unable to stop.

I hit something solid and stopped.

I lay there breathing in short sharp bursts, trying to understand what had happened to my body. Everything hurt. My shoulder felt wrong. My palms were torn open from the road surface.

Then I heard it. A sound beneath me. A low shifting sound.

I looked down.

The edge of the road was gone. There was nothing below my legs but open dark air and the sound I could hear was the ground at the very lip of the cliff crumbling slowly under my weight.

I could not move without making it worse. I could not call out without giving myself away. I pressed my torn hands flat against the ground and tried to find something solid to grip and the earth shifted again and my legs dropped another inch into nothing.

The ground beneath me cracked.

And I fell.