Chapter Eighteen

“Austin,” a voice reached into his consciousness, seemingly from far away. His head hurt. He tried to lift a hand to figure out why, but it was too heavy. He couldn’t get his arm to follow directions from his brain.

What the hell?

“Austin,” the voice demanded again. Closer this time. And something wet landed on his forehead. A wash cloth? Was he sick? Maybe he had a fever. “Wake up. Come on, Austin, wake up.”

He forced his eyes open, blinking them several times before he could focus.

His sister Abigail was staring down at him, her brow furrowed in concern. Suddenly her face lit up a bit, and she gave a small smile. “There you are. I thought you would never wake up.”

He tried unsuccessfully to clear his throat. Where was he? Why was he so stiff? The surface beneath him was hard, not a bed for sure.

Her face sobered again. She started talking fast. “You were hit by a tranquilizer dart. Grazed your leg. Probably the only reason you managed to get back to the house.” She lifted the cool cloth and moved it to the side of his face.

He winced. Something stung.

“Sorry. Small cut. It’ll heal. I need you to tell me what happened. Where’s Nuria?”

Nuria… Nuria! His eyes flew the rest of the way open, and adrenaline pumped through him so hard he managed to lift his arms. He grabbed Abby’s biceps. “Oh, God. She’s not here?” He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t obey, and his head hurt like he’d been struck with something. And then he remembered the enormous shifter who’d hit him over the head with his tranq gun.

Abby set a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t try to move yet. You have a head injury. Just tell me what you remember. You need to shift as soon as you can to help clear your head faster and start the healing process. But talk to me, Austin.”

“Dad? Oh God…”

“He’s fine. We found him. He had shifted. He’s coming to now. He’ll be okay. Austin,” she shook his shoulders, “Nuria?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to reach out to her. As expected, he couldn’t. If she wasn’t close to him, he wouldn’t be able to reach her. Except something was wrong. Different.

Suddenly he knew, and his hand flew to his neck to the very spot where she’d bitten his skin to bind them together. Half of him wanted to throttle her. The other half had never been so happy in his life. He even smiled slightly. Smart woman. But why couldn’t he reach her? “Nuria?” Nothing.

“She must have bound you to her before she disappeared,” Abby stated. “I could sense you were connected as soon as I entered the house.” She smiled. “I guess you didn’t know? You were probably unconscious. Smart woman.” She repeated his exact thought.

Would she get in trouble for binding them while he was unconscious?

Abby must have read his face or his mind. He certainly wasn’t able to block well under the circumstances. “No one will know but you and me. And besides, no one will care, either. It’s not like you weren’t fated to be together. But where did she go, Austin? Do you know?”

He shook his head, sending a new wave of pain through him. After clearing his throat, he spoke through the haze. “I told her to run. A man attacked Dad and me. It was only a matter of time before he got here and did whatever he intended to Nuria.”

“But you can’t reach her?” she asked, hopefully, her voice cracking a bit.

Austin inhaled sharply. “No. Nothing.”

In his heart he knew two things—she’d been incapacitated with a dart just as he had, and she was still alive. He would know if she was dead, wouldn’t he?

»»•««

Everything hurt. Her head. Her body. Even her fingers.

Nuria moaned, trying to roll from her back to her side. Was she sick? She rarely got sick. Shifters didn’t tend to succumb to many illnesses. Maybe she was injured. The moment the thought filtered through her mind, she knew it was true.

The events of the morning flooded back to her. Waking up to realize Austin was outside with his dad. Losing contact with both of them. Pacing the house waiting to get some form of communication. Austin slamming into the sliding glass door, injured, fainting in her arms. Him telling her she needed to run. Her binding them together. Running. And then collapsing from the sting of a tranquilizer dart.

She slowly opened her eyes, knowing she would find herself hostage to someone. What she didn’t understand was what anyone would want with her. She’d never hurt anyone in her life. She hadn’t even been in Silvertip for fifteen years. What the hell warranted all the hateful calls and vandalism and now kidnapping?

Hoping to keep her consciousness a secret as long as possible, she didn’t move a muscle. She simply let her eyes open to slits and took in her surroundings in her peripheral vision.

She was in a small, dingy room with gray walls. On a cot perhaps.

It was almost pitch dark, though she could see fairly well anyway.

She inhaled slowly, scenting the surrounding area for shifters or humans. One. Male. Grizzly bear. He was close. Probably in the house. Was he the man who abducted her?

Remembering the connection she would now have with Austin, she reached out to him. “Austin?”

Instantly he responded. “Nuria? Thank God. Baby, where are you?”

“I don’t know.” She turned her head slowly to one side, enough to realize she was alone. Four walls. A door. She was indeed lying on a cot. There didn’t appear to be anything else in the room. “Must be a basement or cellar or something. No windows. Just gray.” She rolled onto her side and discerned that the mattress was bare and the floor was concrete.

“I’m gonna need more information, baby. Please.”

“Give me a second. I can hardly move yet. I’m still under the influence of the drug.”

“I’m so sorry, Nuria. I thought you could get away. I guess he managed to catch you. Has he hurt you in any way?” His voice, even through the connection, was shrill with anger and fear and frustration.

“I don’t even know who shot me. Never saw him. I don’t think he did anything to me. Must have picked me up and carried me out of the woods. I can scent him nearby.” When had she shifted to human form? Had he carried her to this location as a grizzly?

Austin sighed. “Okay. Good. See if you can stand. Take it slowly. You don’t want to fall. You’ll be wobbly for a few hours as you gradually get your strength back.”

She tried to lift her head and failed. Tears leaked from her eyes. “I’m sorry. Austin, I’m so sorry. I can’t move yet. I’m trying.”

“It’s okay, baby. Don’t worry. We’re going to figure this out. Stay calm.” His voice was soothing.

She took a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly. How was she going to get out of this mess? “Is your dad okay?”

“He’s fine, baby. Everyone is going to be fine. Even you.”

»»•««

Fielding Branch paced back and forth in the dingy room of the cabin. His phone hadn’t rung in two hours, and when it finally did, he lifted it to his ear, hoping to have reception if he stood just right. “Jenson, what the fuck, man?” He didn’t give the guy a chance to say hello before he laid into him. After all, Fielding was furious.

Jenson drew in a breath.

Fielding continued without pause, “You told me she wasn’t bound to anyone. You said this would be an easy job. You son of a bitch.”

“It was supposed to be easy. I swear. And I had no idea she was bound to anyone. Turner insisted she was not.”

“Yeah? Well fat lot of good that does me now since clearly she is,” Fielding growled.

“You’re sure?”

Fielding gripped the phone tighter, his face heating with renewed anger. “You questioning my ability to scent? I’ve been alive thirty-five years. You think I don’t know how to distinguish between an available woman and a taken one, you fuck?”

“Of course not. Didn’t mean to insinuate that,” Jenson said.

“Good, because I’m pretty goddamn pissed off right now. You hired me to snag this woman and babysit her. You promised me she wouldn’t have a connection to anyone alive. You were wrong. Now I’ve got some bitch in the damn basement of this miserable excuse for a cabin, and she’s probably already awake and chatting away with her fucking mate.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about her telling him where she is. She can’t possibly know.”

“And who the fuck do you suppose she’s bound to?” Fielding growled. “I knocked out two people behind Austin Tarben’s house. Austin was not bound to her, and obviously neither was his father.”

“How the hell should I know? I’m telling you what Turner communicated to me before he left the compound. He was under duress being loaded into an SUV under the guard of the Arcadian Council. Perhaps he fucked that part up.

“The important thing is that she has connections to the Tarbens. Austin has been harboring her, which means she’s important to him in some way. And that’s my meal ticket.”

“Well you better skip tennis and lunch at the club today to speed up your cockamamie plan because the clock’s ticking. If you’re planning to extort money from the Tarbens, get on it before the bitch finds a way to communicate with whoever she’s bound to.” Fielding ended the call, not waiting for a response.

He tossed the stupid phone on the odd piece of furniture that would have once been called a couch. It was more like a frazzled, disgusting, moth-infested relic from decades ago. No way in hell would he touch it or sit on it. He didn’t even want his phone on it. He picked up the damn thing and moved it to the small, equally old, beat-up kitchen table.

All he could do now was hope Turner managed to squeeze a sizable chunk of cash out of the Tarbens before Fielding got caught in the damn woods harboring this bitch.

Fielding wasn’t from around this area. He wasn’t even originally from Alberta. But he’d heard of the Tarbens. They owned a lucrative brewery in Silvertip. Since that shit-for-brains Turner had gotten himself arrested, it was only fair he set Jenson up with a method of payment. The fucker owed Jenson a hefty amount of cash.

Turner Garsea might find himself rotting in jail in the Northwest Territories for the rest of his life, but people would still find a way to kill him if he didn’t pay his debts.

»»•««

Austin was in grizzly form when his father’s cell phone rang. He lifted his still-aching head to watch his mother grab the phone from the table and hand it to her husband.

Beth had been fluttering around Austin’s house for hours, undoubtedly trying to keep her mind occupied by cooking and caring for her two injured men. She felt horrible for not being near her phone when Nuria tried to reach her. It had died, and she’d left it plugged into the wall in her office.

Allister took the call, turning to face Austin as he spoke. His eyes widened, and then he rubbed his forehead with two fingers as he licked his lips. “That’s a lot of money. Where do you think I’m going to get it?”

Fuck. Austin rose up onto his paws and let the shift wash over him. He needed to be alert for this.

Ransom? For Nuria? Why?

Without another word, Allister hung up. But in the few moments he’d been listening, presumably to instructions, the entire family had gathered closer. Abby set her hand on her father’s arm. Adriana leaned into Austin where he now stood two feet from his father, still wearing the same clothes he’d had on when he stepped outside to speak to him early that morning.

Even Alton had arrived recently, comforting their mother as much as possible. She looked like she might faint. Alton was the one to break the silence. “Ransom?”

Allister nodded. “It would seem someone is under the misconception that the Tarbens are loaded since we own a business. They’re demanding an exorbitant amount of cash in exchange for Nuria’s life.”

Austin’s legs threatened to buckle. This could not be happening. He reached out to Nuria again. “Baby, you okay?”

“Yes, still groggy. Furious. I shifted though, so I’m coming around.”

“Okay. As soon as you can give me more details about that room…”

“I know. I know. But Austin, I don’t think me circling the space and patting down the gray concrete walls is going to help much.”

“Okay. Just stay calm. We’re all working on this from our end. We’re going to get you out of there.” God, he hoped he wasn’t lying to her.

In addition to his head pounding, his heart ached. A literal pain that spread around his chest at the thought of his mate out there somewhere alone and scared while he remained helpless to find her.

A hand on Austin’s arm jerked his attention to one side. His mother stared up at him. “She okay?” she whispered.

Austin nodded, his lips pursed. He wasn’t usually an emotional sort of guy, but that was before he woke up and found his mate gone and discovered she had bound them together before she left him. His soul was crying.

“We’re going to find her,” Beth insisted.

He nodded again.

Neither of his sisters spoke, but they had tears in their eyes.

Allister moved toward the front door. “I’ve asked Bernard to come over. Isaiah’s with him.”

The idea of the Arthurs uniting so flagrantly with the Tarbens once again in the span of a few months was a good sign for the future of their family rivalry. But at the moment, all Austin could think about was getting to his mate. He’d use any means possible, and it wouldn’t hurt to have his best friend at his side with his far-more-level brain in the picture.

When Allister opened the door, a cold breeze filled the room. The snow had died down to flurries, but nearly a foot remained on the ground.

Isaiah bee-lined for Austin and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he stated emphatically. It was the tenth time Austin had heard that line.

Allister began telling Bernard about his exchange with the caller, the fucker who was holding Nuria hostage in exchange for money the Tarbens didn’t have.

“Fuck,” Bernard shouted. “Even if we combined the net worth of both our breweries, we wouldn’t have that kind of money, and that would be after selling them and everything we own. Who the fuck led this asshole to believe you could turn over that amount of cash in a few hours?”

Allister started pacing.

Austin lowered himself to the couch at Isaiah’s insistence. He had never felt so helpless in his life.

“Tell me what Nuria has said,” Isaiah encouraged. “You never know. Even the smallest detail could prove helpful.”

Austin described the small room, the gray walls, the cot. It was all he had to go on so far until Nuria could shift back and investigate further. Then again, there was no guarantee she could provide anything more interesting even if she was totally lucid.

Suddenly Alton jumped to his feet. “I know that place.”

Austin jerked his gaze to his younger brother. “What?”

He nodded his head vigorously. “I’ve been there. It’s a small abandoned cabin forgotten in the mountains a few miles from here. The brush is so overgrown around it, it’s almost impossible to spot even if someone knows it’s there.”

Austin jumped to his feet. “God, I hope you’re right.”

“Ask her if there’s a small window near the ceiling. If it’s the place I’m thinking of, it’s more of a cellar under the cabin. Weird room. Always gives me the chills.” He shuddered.

Austin’s hope shattered. “She said it’s completely dark. No windows.”

Alton furrowed his brow, and then his eyes lit up. “But she’s not all the way awake yet, right? She might not have noticed it. With the snow, it’s probably blocked from the outside. It’s a rectangle above the cot. Not more than six inches tall. Maybe two feet long.”

Not large enough for her to climb through if it were there. “Nuria. Baby, listen to me. See if there’s a window in that room.”

Her voice came through groggily as if she’d fallen back asleep. “Austin, I don’t think it’s possible. It’s so dark.”

“But the snow is deep. It fell for hours. Maybe it’s blocking the light,” he encouraged. “It’s above the cot. Try to stand on the cot and reach up to feel along the wall.”

“Okay.” She sounded so tired. “I’ll have to shift.” Her voice trailed off.

“Hurry, baby. I know you’re tired. Try, though. I can’t come get you until I know where you are.”

Several seconds went by. Austin could feel Nuria struggling to shift into human form. He could sense her breathing heavily at the exertion. And then she kept her mind open enough for him to picture her struggling to stand on the little bed and drag her small hands up the wall.

The instant her fingers hit the window sill and then the cold glass, he knew. He screamed out. “That’s it. She’s there. Let’s go.”

In less than thirty seconds, Austin, Alton, Bernard, and Isaiah were out the back door, shifted into bear form and running for the tree line.

The women would stay behind with Allister who was still groggy himself from the tranquilizer.

Austin was not one hundred percent, but no one said a word. It was his mate, after all. The drug hadn’t affected him as badly as his father or his mate because the tip hadn’t imbedded all the way into his body. Only a fraction of the drug had entered his bloodstream.

His bigger problem was the hit he took to the back of the head. But for Nuria, he would ignore it. He wouldn’t be able to rest until he had her in his arms.