Chapter Twenty-Five
The heat of the morning sun roused Peder from a deep slumber. He ached from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. He kept his breathing shallow and steady so he wouldn’t give away that he was awake. The hardest part was not tensing his sore muscles, even though his alpha hated it when he feigned being asleep.
He froze. The sound of his racing pulse deafened him to everything else. His alpha? Wasn’t he dead? If he was dead, then who had beaten the shit out of him?
Fingernails scraped the back of his arm.
Yelping, he jumped to his feet and smashed his head into something hard. Stars flashed in front of his eyes as he crumpled to his knees and clutched his head. Fire scalded his side and he traced the stitched cut along his flank.
Fuck. He groaned and blinked to clear his vision. Part of his consciousness still seemed rooted in foggy visions. Metal bars surrounded him.
Again.
Someone stared at him through those bars, his hand dangling through the narrow space. “Good morning, sunshine.” His rough voice sounded familiar. Not alpha though. Thank goodness.
Peder rested his forehead against the dirt floor and shuddered. The alpha was dead. Sorin had killed him. Even after all these years, that rabid dog still haunted him. “I have to break this habit of waking in strange places.”
The male chuckled. “I thought the same thing when I first woke.” He cleared his throat and spoke more solemnly. “The fucking slavers caught us, Peder.”
Sitting back on his heels, he met Nahuel’s gaze. “Have they said anything to you?” It appeared they were inside separate small cages buried underground. The only view was of the blazing sun in the sky overhead.
“No, but I can hear them talking to each other.” Nahuel peered above as if searching for a way out. “I can’t imagine Timothy will be too happy with us.”
No, he wouldn’t. They had escaped before the public challenge last night. How much money had Timothy lost? Peder would never leave this cage alive. His only consolation was Kele had escaped. “I’ll take all the blame, Nahuel.” The idea to run had been his.
“A cage is a cage. Be it underground or above. I will not live my life enslaved.” The sun glinted on the beads of sweat forming on Nahuel’s skin. “So are all the rumors of your clan true?”
Peder scratched his head and found a comfortable spot on the ground, facing him. The cage was designed to not allow the occupant the chance to stand or lie flat. With his already beaten body, he would be a mass of cramps and spasms before long. “Some. We don’t eat our young or fuck our mothers.”
“I thought those were fake. What about trespassers?”
Sighing, he tried to push away the shadows of his past but Nahuel seemed determined to drag them out and poke holes into the darkness. “Why do you want to know?”
He shrugged. “When I was a pup, my brothers and I would bother my father to tell us scary stories at night. Your pack was in most of them. I always wondered if they were really just stories to scare pups.”
Peder rested his hands on his knees and stared at the cuts on his knuckles. He’d beaten two males to death to get these marks. Who would have thought he was capable? “They’re true.” He flexed his hands into fists. “You’ve seen it with your own two eyes.” If Peder remained in Timothy’s care, he’d become no better than the beast who’d tormented and raped him.
“Those were extraordinary circumstances.”
“Except I’d never fought a real challenge until that night and I killed them.” Peder closed his eyes, unable to look at his battered limbs for another moment. “What will I become with more practice?” He made mistakes just like everybody else, except he couldn’t seem to forgive himself.
Fingers settled upon his toes.
His eyes sprang open but he didn’t want to meet Nahuel’s gaze and witness his pity. Peder swallowed with a throat gone dry and lifted his chin. He didn’t see what he’d feared, instead a measure of respect was in Nahuel’s face. “I would have killed them, but I didn’t have the strength and I am hunter born. You, Peder of the Apisi, brought something savage and pure to that fight. Those things didn’t have anything civil left in them. They had to be put down.”
“Do these city people think all wild shifters are feral beasts like those two in the ring?”
Nahuel withdrew his touch. “Maybe.”
Peder ran his hand over his face. He’d spent years running from his past and now he dreaded his future. The only measure of happiness he’d had was the one night he’d spent with Kele alone in a slave cell. He took this memory and balled it deep inside his mind to protect it from damage. It would be the only thing of her he’d ever have.
Kele had taken such great care in washing his wounds, so gentle and fearful of hurting him. Except for when he’d been a pup, he couldn’t remember anyone ever bathing him. It had always been his job to wash others.
The hunters, most of them covered in blood, would come home with their kills. A few favored him, both male and female, and he’d be taken to the washing hole in the back of their den. The ability to say no had been beaten out of him from his earliest memory.
Then he watched the old alpha die. Something knotted and dead inside him woke up.
“I’m sorry about your pack,” Nahuel whispered. “It shouldn’t be like that.”
Peder gave him a slow blink. “It’s not anymore. Sorin is a good alpha.”
“Sorin scares the wolf shit out of my alpha.”
“I didn’t say he was a nice alpha, just a good one. Compared to his father, Sorin is the Goddess reincarnate.” Sorin might not pull his claws when he cuffed someone for being an idiot, but he placed the pack’s needs above his own. Look at the measures he’d taken to save them when the sickness almost wiped them all out. “I hear very little of your pack.” Peder raised his eyebrow at Nahuel.
“That’s the way we like it.”
“Why would the Payami want an alliance with the Yaundeeshaw?” There were other packs in their tribe with better reputations.
“They wanted a connection to the outside world.” Nahuel gave him a secretive smile. “My pack travels and trades with packs from other tribes. We gather a lot of information this way. All the other packs are so concerned with what is happening in our small forest they forget how vast the world is around us. But we don’t.” He heaved a huge sigh. “I can’t imagine what is going on at home with our alphas dead. With all the chaos, I doubt anyone has figured out what’s happened to us.”
“My alpha’s not dead. He’ll look.” But he wouldn’t come this far. Not with Susan so close to dropping pups. Maybe he’d send someone, but their pack had been decimated by the illness. They couldn’t afford to send a hunter to track them, and if Sorin had, what could one hunter do except get caught by slavers? Peder kept his thoughts private. From the desperation on Nahuel’s face, he needed to keep hope for both of them.
“Why would Kele agree to mate with me if she loved you?” Nahuel’s soft question took him off guard.
Peder jerked his head up, his teeth clicking when his jaw snapped shut. They hadn’t concealed their feelings for each other in front of Nahuel and Peder hadn’t really considered the other hunter’s feelings since Nahuel hadn’t even met Kele until the day of their ceremony. “She—I meant no insult to you.” Peder licked his dry lips and rubbed the side of his face. “It’s complicated.”
“Love always is. I’m not going anywhere.” He gestured to their cage.
“We met under strange circumstances.” Heat of a blush burned his cheeks right up to his ear tips. If he’d been in feral form, he might have whined. “I was her prisoner.”
Nahuel leaned forward, mischief in his eyes. “Do tell and don’t leave out any details.”
Peder smirked. “Her hunters caught me on Temple lands and she decided to keep me for ransom.” He glossed over the details of why. They had all decided that Susan’s origin was best kept secret.
“Too pretty to let you go?”
“Something like that. Kele gave me a gilded cage to sleep in compared to this.”
Nahuel let out an exasperated noise. “Sometimes I envy omega males. I bet she fed you by hand and brushed your fur.” These were things mated couples did in the privacy of their rooms.
“No.” She had brought him food though and taught him the beginnings of reading. “Nothing like that.”
“Then why are you blushing?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “She was very kind to me.” How could he expect a hunter like Nahuel to understand? Hunters took what they wanted or fought for the right to take it. He was used to being fought over but none of the hunters had ever asked him what he wanted. Not until Kele. If she had asked him to bed her when he was captive, he wouldn’t have denied her. It wasn’t in his nature to. Not then.
Maybe that was why he hesitated to take her virginity. He didn’t want to be a tool. He needed her to want him, to love him. She seemed very naïve when it came to males. How could he be sure this wasn’t puppy love on her part?
As damaged as he was, he had to be careful. There was a fine line between sex for fun and sex for love. He hadn’t crossed it until two nights ago and he wasn’t sure if he liked it. The way he’d survived all these years was to hide those vulnerable feelings that Kele drew out of him.
Peder hoped her new master treated her well. He hoped she would escape someday. And he prayed she didn’t do anything foolish like try and come back for him.
“When she traded me back to my alpha, Lord Benic snatched her to his castle and chained her to the wall of his bedroom like some pet.” Bile rose in his throat as he recalled finding her with that sex creature Benic kept. It was the first moment where he sensed his inner hunter awaken. He had wanted to tear that monster’s throat out.
Nahuel leaned forward. “You rescued her from the vampire’s castle?”
“Not by myself. My alpha and a Payami hunter came.” He stared at the dirt again. “We kept in touch but…” He shrugged again. “I’m Apisi and she’s the daughter of the Payami alphas. You’re a hunter of a pack they wanted connections with. I assume she wanted to do what’s best for her pack.”
“That doesn’t matter now.”
Peder tossed him a glance and sensed his resolve solidify. “No, it doesn’t.”