I felt a burning sensation on my wrists as my mind tried to pull itself out of the groggy haze of sleep. I hissed under my breath and tried bringing them around in front of me to see what was wrong, but I couldn't. 

My hands were restrained behind me and the harder I pulled the more they burned. My eyes shot open and I frantically looked around. What was going on? What had happened? Where was Nolan?

"Kat!" I heard his voice call to me, It came from behind. I struggled to turn myself around and found him leaning against a tree, his hands behind his back as well. 

"You're awake!" He said with a sigh of relief. 

"What's going on?" I asked, my heart pounding out of my chest. 

"It was rogues, you were drugged. I knew we were close to them, but I hadn't realized how close, I would have stopped sooner."

Rogues? The rogues had found us out here. We had been drugged and tied up. 

"What do they want?" I asked. "What did they think we wanted?"

"I don't know, but they know who you are."

As more panic raced through me I tried to free myself, only to feel the binds burning my skin more. I heard the sizzle and bit back a scream as the pain coursed up my wrists into my arms. 

I tried to shift, hoping it would provide enough strength to break whatever it was holding me there. 

I felt my bones sliding under the surface, so slow it was painful. I could feel every tendon pulling, everything slipping out of place to take on a new form. And then it just stopped. 

Everything slid back into place; the shift hadn't taken. I groaned and swayed feeling dizzy and like I needed to lie back down. 

I heard someone approaching through the trees and some laughter. I couldn't turn to see who was there, each time I turned my head it started to pound. 

"You're not going to be able to shift darling," one of them said as they came closer. 

"What did you do to me?" I growled. 

"We didn't do anything to you exactly, it's what we put on you." A woman said. 

"Your binds are coated with a very powerful mix of Wolfsbane and Kurlan. Separate, well, you already know what Wolfsbane can do. Kurlan however is relatively harmless. But dilute the Wolfsbane and add some powder from the Kurlan plant, and you get the perfect binding combination. They work together to keep a werewolf from shifting." Someone else finished. 

They stepped around in front of me and I looked up into their eyes. The man and woman loomed over me. 

"It won't do much damage, beside those burns, anyway. Well, I suppose that's not entirely true. If left on too long it could potentially damage your wolf," the woman said with a dark smile. 

I froze immediately. They were hurting my wolf. "Why are you doing this?" I whispered. 

"You're needed for something Kat," Nolan said standing up and walking by the other two. 

I stared at Nolan in disbelief. What in the world was going on? This had to be a dream, a nightmare, this couldn't really be happening. 

 "You see, you're like the missing piece in all of this," he said. 

"What are you doing?" I asked. 

"Me? Oh, I'm with them."

"But you said you weren't, I was there. Rafe said you weren't lying."

Nolan just shrugged. "That's because I wasn't lying, I just know how to talk around an Alpha." 

"Are the others in it too then?"

"Those people? Gods no. They wouldn't do anything even if provoked. They're spineless fools."

I felt anger and fear bubbling up inside me, bringing tears with it. I had trusted Nolan, and now he was betraying me.

"You should know better than to have so few of you here," I spat at him. "Rafe will be here any minute."

The woman just tipped her head back in laughter. "That's what we're hoping, but he won't be here for a while," Nolan said. "You left him a note telling him you were going to see your parents."

"He wouldn't believe that." I said to him. "What do you want with me or us or whatever, anyway?"

"You see," the woman said. "We have a little bone to pick with your Alpha. That's our reason behind all of it really."

"And when Nolan here told us he could get close to him, get something the Alpha held dear, well how could we refuse?" The man added. 

Bile rose in my throat and I was working to keep the tears back, there was no way I could break down in front of these people. I couldn't make myself seem weak. It didn't matter if they had me trapped, bound inside my own human body with no way of escape, I couldn't make myself seem weak. 

"So all of this was a lie from the beginning then wasn't it?"

Nolan's face dropped slightly as he looked down at me. "No, not from the beginning."

"I really had liked you Kat, I had even hoped you would like me too. I didn't want you to go back with him, but when I saw you had made your decision, I couldn't fight it. I couldn't keep someone from their mate. But then he showed up, when I saw that your mate was The Blood Alpha, well..."

My head bobbed slightly. He had used that time to his advantage, to make a way into the pack and into my trust. 

"I still didn't want to do it, Kat. I really did like you, I did. I'm just fueled by something even stronger. Rafe has hurt me in one of the worst ways possible, and he must pay."

"I know he wasn't the best person, he has a past. Everyone has a past, but he's been working to make himself better."

"It doesn't seem like he's working hard enough. He didn't even want to come out here and face us himself," the other man spat. 

"If he would have come out here would you really have listened to him?"

"Probably not," the woman admitted. 

I nodded as if I had suspected the answer. I was hoping it wouldn't have been their answer. I had hoped that I was right, that they would have listened to us to begin with, but these people were so blinded by rage, even the guy I had accepted as a friend. 

"What could he have possibly done to warrent all of this hatred?" I asked. 

"He has taken from all of us. Taken our homes, our packs, our families," Nolan said with a fire in his eyes. "He killed my mate."

I felt like I had been kicked in the chest, all the air knocked out of me. Nolan's mate had been killed, that's why he had never found one after we met. He had already had her, but she'd been taken from him. 

"No, Rafe doesn't do that."

"Oh really? He doesn't kill people?"

I shook my head, my eyes closing tightly. "He only kills men who cross him."

"He may not kill women who are in packs, but rogues? Why would he care? And how do you even know what he was doing over two years ago? Just because he says this now doesn't mean it was always true."

"No. I refuse to beleive it." I said. 

"You can refuse it all you want. The fact still remains, Rafe has hurt all of us and he must pay. I'm just sorry you have to be a part of it," Nolan said. "If only you had made a different choice."

"What are you doing?"

The other man walked around until he was behind me, squatting down and leaning in close to my ear, whispering. "Well, we need to make The Blood Alpha suffer in the ways we have. We're going to take down his pack, tear it apart until there's nothing left. Then, when he feels like he's lost it all, we're going to pull the rug out from under him, take away the last thing he has. You." 

A chill ran down my spine, my hair standing on end. They were going to destroy the pack and kill me, all to get back at Rafe. And I had just made this that much easier for them by walking straight into their camp. 

**************

Oh boy. It's all unfolding now. What are your thoughts? What do you think's going to happen? What do you want to happen?

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