Bought By The Beast

CHAPTER 15: The Rescue

The factory sat on the edge of Werewolf territory like something the world had forgotten about on purpose.

Smokestacks that hadn't breathed in decades, fences sagging under their own rust, the kind of place where the concrete itself looked tired of standing.

Caspian killed the engine a quarter mile out and we sat in the dark listening to nothing, which was exactly the problem. A building that size should have had sounds. Generators, movement, something. The silence was a performance, and both of us knew it.

"He wants us to come in," I said.

"Obviously." Caspian checked his gun, then his knife, then the second knife I hadn't known about until he pulled it from somewhere behind his back. "Marcus doesn't take hostages to negotiate. He takes them to control the terrain."

"So we're walking into a trap."

"We're walking into rescuing David." He looked at me in the dark, and even without much light his eyes had that molten quality that meant the Beast was close to the surface. "That's different."

He wasn't angry yet. I could tell by the stillness in his hands, the way his breathing had gone shallow and even, like a man measuring distance before a jump. The rage would come later. Right now he was building something colder and more precise, the kind of thinking that ended with people on the floor.

"Stay close," he said. "If I shift, get behind me and stay there. If I tell you to run, you run toward the south fence where there's a gap in the wire. You don't stop and you don't look back."

"We've had this conversation before."

"And you ignored me last time."

"I'll probably ignore you this time too."

Something moved across his face that wasn't quite a smile but lived in the same neighborhood. He reached over and gripped the back of my neck, pulled me close enough that his mouth brushed my ear.

"If anything happens to you in there," he said quietly, "I will burn everything Marcus has ever touched. Every building, every asset, every person who ever took his money. I will erase him from the world so completely that no one will remember he existed. Do you understand me?"

My pulse kicked hard against his fingers and he felt it, I knew because his grip tightened by exactly the amount that said yes, I know what I just did to your heartbeat, and I meant every word.

"I understand," I said.

"Good. Then let's go get David."

We approached from the east side where the loading docks created shadows deep enough to move through without being seen. Caspian went first and I followed close enough to feel the heat coming off his body, which was running hotter than usual with the shift sitting right there under his skin, waiting.

The side door was unlocked, because of course it was.

Inside, the factory floor stretched out in a maze of old machinery and support columns. The smell hit me first, machine oil and concrete dust and underneath that... blood.

Not old blood, but fresh.

David.

Caspian's nostrils flared because he'd caught it too. His hand came up with two fingers pointed left, and we moved left.

The deeper we went, the more the silence felt wrong. Not empty silence but held silence, the kind where people are breathing quietly and waiting for you to walk past the right spot.

Caspian stopped. His weight shifted onto the balls of his feet and his chin dropped by half an inch, which was the only warning he ever gave before things turned violent. He'd sensed something behind us and above, but he didn't turn around. He just angled his body slightly so he was between me and whatever was there.

"Marcus," he said, his voice carrying easily through the open space. "I can smell your men. At least eight of them, two in the rafters, three behind the press to our right, and the rest near the back. You want to do this the hard way? We can. But David better be breathing when I find him."

There was nothing but silence in response.

Then the lights snapped on, bright and industrial and blinding after the dark.

I squinted against the glare and saw them. Armed men positioned exactly where Caspian had said... two on the catwalks above and three behind a massive hydraulic press. And at the far end of the factory floor, Marcus Thorne stood behind a chair where David sat bound and bloodied.

David's face was a mess with a swollen eye, a split lip, and blood dried in streaks down his neck. But his one good eye found us and something like relief passed through it before he locked it down.

"Mr. Valdyr." Marcus's voice was the same cultured silk from the phone call and he looked exactly like I'd known he would... expensive suit and silver at the temples, the kind of man who smiled at charity events and sold women at auction on alternate weekends. "Thank you for coming. I was beginning to think you'd let your friend die."

"Let him go," Caspian said. "This is between us."

"It really isn't. It's between me and her." Marcus's eyes found me behind Caspian and they moved over me the way someone inspects something they own, slowly and thoroughly, like he was checking merchandise for damage. "Hello, Rielle. You look well. The claiming agrees with you."

My stomach turned. "Go to hell."

"Eventually. But first, business." He placed a hand on David's shoulder and David flinched, which meant Marcus was pressing on something that already hurt. "I want what's mine. You were sold to settle a debt and that transaction was interrupted. I'm here to complete it."

"She's not a transaction," Caspian said. "She's my mate."

"She's a First Moon descendant carrying genetic material worth more than your entire Kingdom." Marcus's smile thinned. "I know exactly who you are, Caspian Valdyr. Lycan King. Don't pretend this is about love. You bought her at auction, so you're no different from me."

Caspian went very still, and not the calculating stillness from before.

This was something worse... the kind of still that happens right before an explosion when all the energy pulls inward for one held second before it tears outward and takes everything with it. My vision swam briefly as my body registered the force of what was building inside him before my mind could name it.

He held it, but barely.

"Last chance," Caspian said. "Let David go. Walk away, and take your men and disappear. Because if I have to come over there and get him, nobody in this building leaves alive."

"Bold. But I've prepared for you." Marcus gestured casually.

Two things happened at once. The men in the rafters opened fire, and Marcus pulled a knife and pressed it against David's throat.

Caspian moved before the first bullet reached us. He shoved me behind a concrete pillar and the rounds sparked off the floor where I'd been standing. I hit the ground hard with my gun already coming up.

The factory exploded into noise with gunfire raining down from the catwalks. Caspian shifted mid-motion as his clothes shredded and his Lycan form erupted outward, massive and silver-black in the industrial light.

He went straight up with his claws finding the steel support beam, launching himself at the shooters on the catwalk with the kind of speed that made my brain refuse to process what it was seeing.

There was screaming from above, then the wet sound of something I didn't want to think about.

The three men behind the hydraulic press broke cover and came at me. I fired and missed the first one, but I hit the second in the shoulder. The third tackled me before I could adjust my aim and we went down in a tangle of limbs and gun metal.

He was bigger and stronger, and his hands went for my throat.

I shoved the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

The sound was deafening at that range. His weight collapsed onto me and I rolled him off, gasping and covered in blood that wasn't mine.

The one I'd hit in the shoulder was trying to aim with his left hand, so I shot him again in center mass and he dropped.

The first one had decided running was smarter than fighting and was heading for the back exit. I let him go because David was more important.

Caspian had cleared the catwalks. I could hear him somewhere else in the factory dealing with the remaining guards, the sounds carrying through the space like something industrial themselves. Metal, bone, finality.

I ran toward David.

Marcus still had the knife at his throat, but his eyes were on the catwalks where his men had been and where they weren't anymore. His hand was shaking.

"Stop," he said when he saw me coming. "One more step and I cut his throat."

"Then what?" I kept walking. "Caspian finishes your men and comes for you. You think that knife protects you from a Lycan King?"

"It protects me long enough." His voice cracked on the last word and there it was, under the silk and the money and the power.

Fear. Real fear.

He hadn't expected Caspian to be this fast or this efficient or this willing to simply destroy everything Marcus had brought.

"You miscalculated," I said. "You thought numbers and guns would be enough, but he's not what you prepared for. He's not an Alpha and he's not even close to what you understand."

"I understand plenty." But the knife was trembling against David's neck. "I understand that you're a genetic miracle walking around pretending to be a person. I understand that the child you'll eventually carry will be worth more than anything else on this planet. And I understand that Kieran was supposed to give me that child before this animal interfered."

The mention of Kieran hit me somewhere behind my ribs, not because I still felt anything for him at this point but because of what Marcus was admitting out loud so casually, like he was discussing a business deal that had gone sideways.

"You planned it," I said. "Kieran dating me, getting close to me... all of it."

"Of course I planned it. Do you think my son has the initiative to seduce a First Moon descendant on his own?" Marcus's lip curled. "He was a tool, an effective one until he developed feelings and became useless."

David's good eye met mine and he mouthed something at me.

Ready?

I didn't know what he meant until he moved. David threw his weight sideways, chair and all. The knife cut his neck but shallow and not deep because the angle was wrong when the chair toppled.

Marcus stumbled and I raised my gun.

Marcus looked at me and for one second all the pretense fell away. He wasn't a businessman or a power broker or a strategic genius. He was just a man staring at a woman he'd tried to sell, who was now pointing a gun at his face.

"You won't shoot me," he said. "You need me alive. For information, for Kieran, for everything I know about your bloodline."

He was right.

I hated that he was right.

The back wall of the factory exploded inward.