Bound by Fate

Bound by Fate - Chapter 2

Mac and Leo went through each of the three other rooms and both bathrooms. Dirty, cluttered spaces with little furniture. Some had a few cowering females, but none of them looked restrained or badly beaten or starved. One of Thane’s primary rules was the omegas not be treated as slaves. In fact, he had banned slavery altogether from those packs under his control. Leo mind-linked with him to tell him all was clear, but when Thane took a step forward he smelled it again. A faint trace of blood and something else… that strange mixture of enticing and wrong, almost like something left to rot. His wolf, Rowan, growled in the back of his mind.

Up. Rowan growled and when Thane looked up he saw the entrance to what could only be the house’s attic. He reached up to pull the cord to lower the stairs, but Lennon snarled, “There’s nothing up there but insulation and dead mice”.

Thane gave Lennon a piercing gaze, “Then it won't be a problem when I go up there”.

As soon as she pulled the string to open the hatch, the smell of blood and wrongness filtered down to him. He growled low in his throat as he pulled on the stairs to lower them.

Restrain him. He told Leo and Mac over their mind-link as he placed what he was surprised to find was a trembling hand on the ladder.

Leo and Mac wasted no time, pinning Lennon to the wall as Thane climbed the ladder. The inside of the attic was pitched black, but he was able to use his heightened senses to find the dangling cord to the single exposed light bulb. His nose twitched, and his wolf growled, but when he pulled the cord and looked around he almost wished he hadn’t.

Lying on the ground in a pool of her blood was a young, female wolf. Her back was to him, and he could see that her arms were bound together, but everything was… wrong. The blood pooling around her, dripping lazily from her arms, shouldn’t be there. Whatever she would have sustained should have healed itself. He took a hesitant step forward, not even sure if the young woman was alive, but as he did, Rowan howled in torment. As Thane moved closer he could see that the woman’s arms had been stitched together, not just by ropes, but by a silver chain that glittered through the gore of congealing blood. The wrongness that he had smelled now made sense. All wolves we sensitive to silver, but especially those who were young or weakened. But the other smell, the enticing one. It was her. It was all hers, but twisted somehow, probably due to the silver that must be in her bloodstream by now. He barely contained a snarl as he gently reached down to check her pulse. It was faint, but it was there. The female made a barely audible whimper of pain but didn’t rise.

How much pain must she be in? What kind of monster would even do this to a member of their pack? His mind raced, but his first priority was to get the silver off of her, then get her somewhere safe. Somewhere he could protect her.

“Leo!” he growled, his voice echoing in the otherwise empty space, “I need you!”