Chapter 10: You're Mine Now

  He had to be lying. Bluffing. Anything. There was just no way that Ian had the power in him to break the bond between me and Tristan. But if I was so sure of being able to call his bluff, why was I practically shaking in fear? Now, it could be because he was only mere inches from having his face close up on mine, but it could also be because somewhere, deep down, I knew that he was telling the truth. It was just the glint in his eyes that made me gulp down my anxiety; he knew he had me trapped and loved watching me squirm.

  “Yeah… right,” I tried to scoff sarcastically, but it came out raspy. My throat was suddenly so dry and I could feel my pulse point throb through the mark that Tristan had given me, a warning sign. Right now, that was the only thing tying me and him no matter what happened. I was almost positive that he could sense my utter distress through the link, but had no way to prove it. He could be going on his merry way through the woods, hunting for the man that was coincidentally right in front of me--knowing nothing.

  Ian cocked his head to the side, silver irises boring into my eyes. I refused to back down, if this ended up being a ploy I didn’t want to be the one to cave. He has no control over me. I repeated my mantra over and over, hoping that it would be true. “You think I’m lying? Well, we’ll see if you still think so when I’m done with you.”

  Next thing I knew he hauled me up from my sitting position so I was pinned standing against the wall. A course of adrenaline kicked through me again and the courage helped me lash out at him, attempting a backhand to his face. But he saw the movement before it could come into contact with his face and snatched my hand from midair by the wrist before slamming it against the wall along with my other arm. With my arms being immobilized, I hardly noticed him using his lower body weight to press my legs back too, leaving me totally helpless.

  I barely caught a glance of his face again--his eyes morphed into an animalistic black filled with hunger and canines extended enough to harm—before he dove in for my neck. There was a second of hesitation on his part, his warm breath basking on my neck that sent shivers of fear down my spine. He isn’t going to do what I think he is going to do… I felt his teeth sink into the skin on the opposite side that Tristan’s mark was, the sudden jolt causing me to let out a scream. Whatever physical pain Wes or Jay had caused me in the past twenty-four hours was nothing in comparison to the psychological torture that was flashing through my mind. Even my wolf was writhing in pain; this wasn’t supposed to happen, she-wolves weren’t meant to have two mates marking them. I couldn’t believe it was even me when my scream turned bloodcurdling, my mind was already far away as I watched the strings that held me and Tristan together be snipped in half. Flashes of pictures came to my mind of Tristan suddenly dropping to the ground as he cried out in the same agony I was going through. If there had been no notice of anything being wrong with me, he now knew that everything was terribly destroyed. As much pain as I was in, I hated seeing him suffering so. I wanted to shut my eyes towards everything but it had to be part of the transition; to watch my other half slowly dissolve from my subconscious.

  With one action Ian was replacing himself as my mate and erasing Tristan’s presence from my very soul. He was tearing it apart, piece by bloody piece, as he deepened the bite with an inhuman growl emanating from deep within his chest. I could now understand why Jay had turned away when Ian had stalked towards me; this had to look horrible from any aspect. It wasn’t beautiful or by instinct, like a claiming that was supposed to happen between two people meant for one another. It wasn’t even natural.

  While it felt like an hour of torture, it had probably only lasted a few seconds before Ian released me to crumble back on the ground. Tears were streaming down my face as I cried at the loss of Tristan. I had lost the connection to the man I was in love with and his image was replaced by the demon who filled my every nightmare. There was no longer the tightly strained connection that had me going mad. Instead, it was an incredibly short leash because I was tied to the person in front of me.

  I was Ian’s mate now.

  I couldn’t help it, I sobbed as I curled up on the floor. Begging everything to just go away and leave me to mourn my loss. But Ian stood over me, his haunting figure gazing down upon me with a smirk on his face, my blood still on his lips made evident by the way that it caught the light of the lamp. Both sides of my neck were burning as if simultaneously making ashes of my previous connection and searing the brand of the new one.

  “Now you see what you get when you don’t believe in me, darling.” Ian chuckled, before turning around towards Jay, who I suppose had returned to facing the two of us but I didn’t know for sure. I just buried my head in my arms. Now there was no chance that Tristan would be able to find me, he was cut off just like me except there was nothing to replace it. I can’t even imagine, after all these months of being intertwined with another’s soul, to all of a sudden have my mind all to myself. It made me want to cry harder to grieve over Tristan’s pain, but I knew that I couldn’t cry so much in front of Ian. He may own my body now, but there was no way I was going to let him think he could worm his way into my very being.

  “You bastard,” I choked out, interfering with Ian’s whispers with his henchman. He turned around, looking amused at my outburst. “When I get my hands on you I’m going to tear you limb from limb. Screw any rescue team; you are going to have to worry every single moment of the rest of your life if I’m going to be the one to rip your throat out,”

  Ian simply took a step back in my direction, “Are you done with your rant now?”

  I snarled in response as I sat back up against the wall, begging the wolf within that just this one time she’d come out without the moon so I could kill him.

  “I’m getting quite tired of your idle threats; even that voice of yours is beginning to grate on my nerves. So you will not speak until I say you can.” I felt the echo of his order inside my head, the words flashing with a flicker of pain.

  But when I opened my mouth curse him out for even thinking he could control me, nothing came out. In fact my mouth snapped back shut when it realized I was going to talk. What the hell did he do to me? I screeched inside of my head, the irritation coming out in the form of a rumble deep in my chest.

  Ian grinned at the instant of shock in my eyes, “Oh this is great. Tristan seriously never put to use his ability to order you around… there’s a reason he isn’t ever going to be in charge, he would never get anything done with people running amuck of their own free will. Your Alpha is of the same incompetence, I swear if we were all one pack again, things would be different.”

  Wait…what? My mind was running rampant with a million questions. Tristan had had the ability to command me to do anything he wanted through my mark? I had always been so stubborn, why didn’t he just command me to listen to him? And since when had the Mooncreak and Redwood packs been one single clan? But as many questions I had, I couldn’t voice any of them thanks to Ian. My chest growled more forcefully as I sneered at him.

  “We should get a move on before someone catches our scent here,” Ian said to the room in general, “We have a long way to go if we want to leave a disconnected trail.”

  Hours later I was back in the same car I had been kidnapped in, but this time I was fortunate enough to be allowed in the back seat instead of the trunk. Not that it was much of an improvement because I was sitting right alongside Jay with Ian driving. There were no more restraints on my hands and the rag filled with the sleep chemical was removed, leaving me totally unbound. Well, except for the complete control Ian had over me with his words.

  I tried not to seem scared in any way—tried to be confident that I was going to be fine—but I couldn’t help the way my body was shaking. For the first time since I had been changed into a werewolf, my blood was running cold—in fear.  No matter how much I clenched my jaw to make me look defiant there was little I could do without words and with my face red from crying. In other words; I was a mess. But to try and avoid facing the situation I was in, I kept my eyes looking out the window. It was ten thirty at night and we were speeding down the highway. Where we were going… I had no idea except that it wasn’t going to be anywhere good. Luckily I managed to glance at the clock on the dashboard and recognized the date enough to know that they had only held me captive for about twenty two hours. Isn’t there a show about the first forty-eight hours of a kidnapping being the most crucial? Hopefully someone would be able to pick up the unfamiliar scent and track it even with our travelling being by car. They just had to be able to.

   Cars passed us and we passed others. All of them were on their way to places, thinking briefly as they passed that beyond our windows we were just as normal as they were. I don’t think I’d ever be able to look at a passing car the same way again, that is if I ever get out of this. Growing sick of watching normality, I decided to bite the bullet and glance around the cab of the car. Jay was so tense beside me that I swear if I so much as shifted in my seat he’d jump, but his eyes were watching out the window for now. He wasn’t as cold and calculating as Ian seemed to be, for the driver was calm as he drove with one hand on the wheel. The other arm was leaning on the window, tapping against the glass occasionally. His eyes looked up and caught mine through the rear-view mirror and I had to restrain myself from pulling back my lips in a hiss.

  As his silver eyes gazed over me appreciatively, I had to wonder what the hell the guy saw in me to make him go through so much trouble to make me his. I wasn’t exotically beautiful, nor did I have a personality that men fell head over heels for. I was hardly half a year into being a werewolf, but that meant nothing to him since he had been following way before I became one. My only conclusion was that he had jumped off the deep end into insanity. I remember vaguely him talking about how I reminded him of his mate, that she was so alike me, but that made no sense since mating with humans was forbidden. Even his back-story was torture for me as I sat in the backseat with an invisible lock on my lips.

  But as much as I was enjoying our little car trip, my bladder was starting to catch up on the day without being able to relieve myself. I didn’t want to make a sudden noise because they would freak out over me trying to escape and do something rash. My only option was sitting next to me, looking out the window towards the oncoming cars on the other side of the median. Slowly, so I didn’t startle anybody, I reached my hand out to nudge him on the shoulder. As I suspected, Jay jolted in his seat and turned to me with dark eyes that bore suspicion. I tapped on my lips with a finger, hoping he’d get that I wanted to speak out loud. It’s not like I would be able to gesture that I had to go to the bathroom; I was never good at charades.  His eyes narrowed but he spoke up for me, “Ian, she has something to say.”

  Ian looked back at me again, contemplated for a few moments, “You may speak, Samantha.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I ground out, half because I hated even speaking to the man and half because my voice was scratchy with only a few hours of ill use. I also needed a bottle of water because my mouth was drying out, but I figured I wouldn’t push my luck.

  “We really don’t have the time for you to do that, I’m trying to keep a schedule,” Ian sighed, clearly annoyed. Oh sorry, next time I’ll make sure my bladder is more respectful towards your plans on kidnapping me. I wanted to snap at him for being an asshole, but I gulped back the insult and put forth a more polite method.

  “I really don’t think you want me to pee all over the seats of this car. If I’m correct, we still have quite a while to go before we get to your destination and I’m sure you don’t want to be sitting in the stench of urine the whole way,” What? I said the more polite way, not totally submissive.

  “It’s not that… whatever, fine.” Ian relented, pulling off at the nearest exit. I breathed sigh of relief when there was a gas station only about a minute from the exit ramp. The bright lights of the overhead lamps above the place illuminated inside the car, changing the atmosphere. Even though Ian would always send a jolt of fear through my veins, the light cast away the shadows that made him look even more devilish. He turned around in the seat once we were in front of a pump, “Jay, fill it up.”

  Jay nodded and got out to do as Ian said, leaving only me and him in the car. I stared deep into his eyes, not allowing him to see anything through my impassive facade. “You’re going to be a good girl and not talk.” My lips sealed shut again to my frustration, but his ordering wasn’t done, “And don’t even try to escape.” His words were magnified in my head to the point of hurting my sensitive ear. I wanted to fight him tooth and nail, but at the moment I really had to go pee, so I just nodded.

  Quickly I scrambled out of the car, stumbling as my feet met the pavement. It felt surreal to just be walking away from my kidnappers, but really I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere, my traitorous body wouldn’t allow it. Just before I reached the door I glanced back at the car to find Ian grinning back like a Cheshire cat. With a disgusted grimace I went into the gas station.

  Really it was like any old station, short shelves full of cheap food and radio music playing quietly over the fractured speakers. I saw the sign of the bathroom and bee lined in the direction. Once I was done with my business, I just stood in front of the mirror looking at myself with the cold water running. I looked terrible; my face was pale except for flushed cheeks, my hair was going every which way, and there was the start of a bruise making its appearance on my jaw line. The worst was looking at the twin marks on either side of my neck. One was made to grow into love and the other ravaged with hate. While Tristan’s mark was faded into a mere scar, Ian’s was red and angry almost as if my body rejected the claiming. I could only wish, but I knew because of the commands that I was under Ian’s thumb.

  I splashed the sink water onto my face to try and wake myself up from my nightmare but I looked back up to the same face, only now wet. At least the water had felt good. I was pathetic. I was away from the men holding me captive, but still couldn’t do a thing about escaping. The window in the bathroom was so inviting, but I couldn’t even budge a step towards it because my body knew it was escape.

  My eyes started to well up again as I grew frustrated with my situation. I would be here for a minute, then gone the next, and no one from Mooncreak would even know I had been. Or would they…?

  I thought back to the power of scent and wondered if my body would allow me to touch as many things as possible in here. I reached for the wall and was glad when my legs moved to follow; joy of the simple measure towards freedom fueling my task. Pretty soon I was rubbing up against the wall, trying to get as much of my scent into the room. It didn’t matter that only god knows what happened on the cold tile walls or when they had last been cleaned. My only stopping point was rolling around on the floor because that was going a little too far.

  Pounding on the door halted my task, and my head whipped towards the door. “Samantha, hurry up, we have to go.” It wasn’t Ian, but Jay on the other side, and even though he was as much of a threat to me as his Alpha I visibly relaxed. Knowing I only had moments I grabbed a piece of paper towel from the dispenser and snatched at the broken pen I found near the sink.

  Ian had been about to correct me in the car when I had said it was going to be a long car ride, so that could only have meant that we were close. I wrote on the towel against the wall, scribbling out ‘I’m not far from here’.

  Another pounding came on the door as I folded up the note and wrote as cleanly as I could ‘Tristan’ on the front. I threw the pen back on the ground and crumpled the note in my clenched hand before walking out of the bathroom. Jay looked disgruntled and a little worried; he probably thought I would get him chewed out by his boss but I just shrugged passed. My stomach rumbled as I saw the food section and I grabbed at a granola bar before looking back at Jay pointedly.

  He was about to say no, I could see it on his lips, but then he looked through the glass window walls of the gas station out in the direction of the car and merely nodded. He took the bar from me and grabbed my wrist before tugging me up to the counter to pay for it. I stood obediently by his side, scanning the counter for one of the boxes for donations to random foundations. One for children’s cancer was next to us and even though I felt bad for using the clear box, I silently slipped the note through the slot.

  I didn’t get to see whether it was facing so that somebody would be able to see the name or not because Jay was already leaving. How I wished it would be placed correctly, but I knew I was getting my hopes up. At least I did something; if only to make me feel like I wasn’t surrendering.