Chapter Three
Being bound and caged wasn’t putting Cade in a good mood. If he wasn’t so tired, hungry, and sore, he might have vented the fury he felt. Wolves gawked at him like he was a circus attraction, the chain around his ankle rubbed against his skin, the brand on his back burned, and there was no way to sit or lie comfortably in the cramped cage. It had been Baelon’s idea to cage him and not the hosts of the Gathering. At least the Black Tails made sure he had water.
For some reason, him being in a cage gave the wolves the impression he couldn’t hear or understand them. He picked a lot of information in a matter of hours. The first was that Baelon asking for payment for him wasn’t going down well with their hosts, seeing as buying mates wasn’t a normal part of the Gathering. That gave Cade hope. Maybe not all of the packs were as unreasonable as Baelon’s. Maybe not all of the alphas were overbearing bastards.
He overheard other things too; learning that the fading away of shifter powers among the wolves was much worse than he’d realized. He’d thought Baelon’s pack was just badly affected but the guys who set up his cage couldn’t name a single active shifter between them outside of their own alpha and one of his sons. Never mind omega being rare, active wolf shifters seemed to be dying out before their very eyes. Cade didn’t fully understand the reason this was happening but given his treatment so far at their hands, he wasn’t feeling obliged to give it much thought. Whatever it was, chances were it was their own fault. They and the bears and the lions had all pulled away from their obligations, years ago. Maybe now they were suffering the consequences. Either they figured things out for themselves or became nothing more than humans with a shared shifter history. Still, all the more reason for Cade to get free and go home.
The Presenting was insufferably long, taking over an hour, as each shifter to be mated was brought forward and introduced. Someone, usually their pack’s alpha, spoke on their behalf. It was easy to tell those with a pre-arranged mating. The alphas kept it short and their mates stood prominently on the edge of the circle. There was a time when omegas would have had a big part to play in overseeing a ceremony like this but as far as Cade could tell, he was the only omega there, and an unwilling participant in the proceedings at that. At a glance, Cade could tell a lot more about some of the intended couples than most others there. Some were clearly on the right track, had formed steady attachments, were truly in love. Others… he winced. No good would come from them getting together.
Cade was last to be presented and, to his disgust, they didn’t even let him out of the damned cage. Baelon left his enforcer to do the talking and there was some disgruntlement when the payment was mentioned. In the background, he could see some angry conferring among alphas that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. What were they arguing over anyway, sticks and straw? The wolves had already blown the house down.
Once the presentation was over, there was food and drink passed around, though none came his way. He became a sideshow again, kids standing around his cage, looking in. A few even tried to pass food through the bars, the innate kindness of little ones overtaking their fear. He didn’t mind them so much, not the young wolves who hadn’t yet been poisoned by their parents. Crouching down, he met the eyes of a little girl who stood mesmerized just beyond his cage.
“Are you magic?” she whispered. She was so young that Cade guessed she might never have seen another shifter change form, let alone got to experience that herself. It was a sad thought, and it wormed its way through the anger held tight inside him.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “I am.”
There wasn’t a lot he could do to prove that, not in his condition, trapped in such a small space, but kids were usually impressed by the simple stuff, especially when they were too young to know any better. So he focused, drawing on the power inside of him, and turned his dark gray eyes a warm amber. She gasped, clutching the hand of the boy next to her. A moment later someone called to them, and they ran off into the night.
Cade straightened up to find an alpha watching him. He didn’t like the way this alpha was looking at him. It wasn’t an ‘I think you might be the one for me’ look, it was an appraising look, like Cade was an expensive piece of jewelry and he was deciding whether the omega was worth the price tag. He hoped the alpha might come closer, so he could dissuade him from that notion, but instead, he melted back into the crowd.
That was when Cade noticed the second alpha eyeing him. The markings on his skin told him he was one of Red Fang’s wolves. He’d heard a lot about them so far. They were harsh and cruel by reputation and feared by the other packs. If this alpha chose him, he probably wouldn’t get the chance to escape. And if he did run, and they caught him, he’d likely regret it a lot more than he regretted running out on Baelon.
The alpha moved away and a sense of relief washed over Cade. He needed options. If escape wasn’t going to happen before the alphas made their choices, then he needed to make sure he was chosen by a less dangerous pack, by an alpha who would be careless enough to give Cade the chance to slip away. All he wanted was to go home. Was that so hard to understand?
It had long gone dark by the time they came to get him. He was crouched on the ground in his cage, falling asleep despite the discomfort. It was a relief to see that it was the Black Tails who took him out of the cage and not Baelon’s people. That relief died a quick death when they brought him to the disused stables beside their pack house and chained him up there.
“So much for hospitality,” he muttered. The wolves just laughed as they left him alone.
He checked the chains, just in case they weren’t as secure as they looked, but they wouldn’t budge. With a sigh, he settled back against the wall, closing his eyes. The bastards hadn’t even given him a blanket. He wrapped his arms tighter around himself as the cold settled in, a shiver running across him. There was a sound nearby and his eyes flew open. He looked up to see a pair of dark eyes staring back at him.
“What’s on your mind, Hunter?” Seth asked out of the blue.
“Huh?”
They’d finished eating and had a few beers but neither of them wanted to go back to the cabin. They didn’t want to sit with the older crowd and listen to stories about the good old days when shifters could shift and life was wonderful.
“You’ve been quiet since the Presenting. I can’t tell if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. Or a sign at all.”
Hunter wasn’t sure either. If the situation was reversed, it would have been easy. If Seth wasn’t talking, you knew there was trouble.
“I’m just thinking.”
“Thinking you’ve found your soulmate and you can run off into the sunset together? I’m seeing long walks on the beach, picnics on the cliffs, piña coladas…”
“Seth.”
“Okay, I can’t take the suspense. Have you seen someone you like or not? Because I really don’t want to lose you, Hunter. You being exiled… it would be like losing my right arm.”
Hunter looked over at Seth, finding his cousin in earnest. “You’re left-handed.”
“What difference does that make? You always do this when I try to-”
He decided to put a stop to Seth’s diatribe.
“The omega.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking of choosing the omega.”
“The guy in the cage?”
“Did you see another omega there?”
Seth stopped walking and turned to him. “Okay, okay. But the omega, seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Hunter wasn’t ready to let Seth in on his plan. He needed to be sure his cousin wouldn’t give the game away. And sometimes the best way to ensure that was not to tell Seth anything he needed to keep secret.
“Okay. Dad is gonna flip, though. You know how he feels about omega.”
“He never said I couldn’t choose an omega. And he said I had to choose a mate. I’m doing what he asked.”
“So you think you and the omega might have a spark?”
“I don’t know. The guy’s in a cage. We haven’t done more than look at each other through the bars.”
“Then how about we do more than look.”
Seth had a gleam in his eyes that Hunter recognized. They were about to do something very dangerous or very stupid. Probably both.