On the Run

Chapter Twelve

I turned away from the gruesome scene, unable to watch the death in front of me, no matter how well deserved it was. Seconds later, Mason was back in his human form and at my side. The dark look on his face didn’t terrify me like it would have on anyone else. He just took the Leader’s life to stop him from continuing to violate me. The only thing he had ever wanted was to protect me. Mason’s muscular chest heaved as he tried to break my restraints. “f**k! I need a key,” he shouted.

“Check his clothes,” I said, gesturing towards the Leader’s now lifeless body that had reverted to its human state.

Mason rushed over, digging through each pocket one by one. He finally came back to me with a key ring with ancient-looking keys. His hands shook as he tried each one and one of them worked. Throwing them across the room, he let out a long wordless yell. He stalked to the room that I was unable to open before, ripped the door off its hinge, throwing it to the side. The heavy metal door crashed loudly off the wall, sliding across the floor with an ear-piercing screech. He emerged with another set of keys, after a couple moments of rummaging around in the drawers of what appeared to be a small security office that hadn’t been used in decades.

After trying a few failed keys, the fourth one finally worked. Mason praised the Goddess as he released me from my restraints. My wrists were bloody and burned from the silver cuffs eating away at my skin. Mason helped me down from the table, standing me before him. “I’m so sorry, my love. I got here as fast as I could,” he said, pulling me in close to him. “I should have known something was up when he sent me out on the patrol headed for the Falls border.”

“What made you come back?” I asked.

“I could feel your fear, I knew something was wrong so I lied and said the Leader had called me back for an important security matter,” he explained. “It won’t be long until they realize it and come looking for me.”

Mason took me by the hand, leading me through the outdated security office. There we stood in front of a large storage cabinet. Puzzled, I looked to Mason. He smiled and pulled the file cabinet away, “While you were unconscious in the hospital, I looked into a few things I couldn’t mention before, like the blueprints of the breeding facility,” Mason elaborated. “Too many people could have been listening.”

Using his hands, he groped along the wall. Stopping for a moment, he then pushed in on the panel. The wall popped open with a barely audible ‘click.’ “You found a secret door? Where does it go?” I asked.

Mason motioned for me to follow him into the inky blackness of the passageway ahead of us, “That’s the f****d up thing, the crawlspace under your house,” he informed me.

I stopped right where I was. “Under my house?” I looked at him in shock.

He tugged on my hand lightly, urging me to follow along behind him. Once I was inside the hidden passage with him, he slid the cabinet back where it belonged before closing the door. My vision was completely black, but I could feel Mason’s hard body pressed up against me as he moved around me.

Mason continued to lead me through the dark passage, explaining all the research he had done on the breeding facility and other atrocities performed by the pack in charge of the Marshes Territory the last few generations. “They’ve been doing this for over a hundred years, Bethenny,” his voice laced with disgust. “Just thinking about him doing that to you… what he was about to do to you, and whatever he had already done. I could kill him again.”

Mason’s anger radiated from him in waves, but he always kept his grasp on my hand gentle, always making sure not to cause me any harm. Knowing he could be even tempered with me even when we are going through a tough situation made me so happy to call him my mate. By now, I would have been met with a barrage of insults and blamed for everything that happened.

My mind kept replaying the images of Leader Randall and what he had done to me. Like flashes of a bad movie on a broken projector. Inhaling deeply, I tried to calm myself. Don’t feel, don’t feel, don’t feel, I thought over and over. We both had to get to our children. My Amelia would never be safe in this territory with this pack. I couldn’t afford to reflect on what happened, my feelings had to be shoved down and put aside. Maybe I could unpack them and feel them later because if I break down now, we’d never make it out of here.

Mason squeezed my hand lightly, before speaking, “I think we’re almost there. When we get there, just pack a couple of things. We can’t waste too much time.”

At that I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m actually way ahead of you there,” I revealed. “We were going to escape the night you were assigned as my security detail. We can just grab the bags and head straight for –”

Suddenly, Mason stopped, causing me to run into him in the pitch-black tunnel. I crashed right into him, falling to the ground. “Goddess, I’m so sorry,” he said as he reached out, feeling for me in the darkness. “This is the end, I think we’re here.”

After helping me to my feet, Mason felt around the ceiling of the passageway, looking for the way out. Muttering to himself as he slowly and carefully examined every inch with his fingertips. A couple of moments later, a small cheer from him conveyed his success in finding a door. The high pitched scraping of two pieces of metal grinding against each other pierced my ears. Once the door was propped open, you could barely see the space above. Mason lowered his arm down through the opening, prompting me to quickly grab onto him. His large muscles flexed under my hands, pulling me up until I was safely in the crawlspace underneath the home I had lived in for the last eight years. I shoved various totes out of the way, full of things Colby and I had accumulated over our time as a married couple. All these years and I had no idea the doorway to pure hell was underneath us.