Shifter's Revenge (Alpha Lineage) (9 page)

“They won’t.” Rayland mocked a few feet from them. His hands were bound but he had shoved to his feet and was sandwiched by two of Jason’s followers. “You have ruined centuries of careful living by my kind only to have us come out like this.”

“Donavan?” Kera called out in a rasp. Her voice became scratchy as her throat tightened with anxiety. “You never said you would use me for bait.”

“You can’t expect us to not keep tabs on you after what you did for us.” Gavin called out.

“You are not bait, Kera.” Donavan spoke next. “You are the light on a war we cannot ignore.” The men began to shuffle closer. Some moved swiftly against the walls as they began to surround the inside of the warehouse.

Maddox’s frown deepened as he realized how candid she had been with the military. Disappointment filled his eyes and caused tears to sting hers.

“What do I do?” she whispered again.

His eyes slammed shut for a moment and he shook his head. “Nothing more
, Kera.” His words were so faint she knew only she heard them.

Jason began to speak beside her. He called out Donavan’s name and addressed him as one leader to another. He requested that his men drop their weapons and insisted that he and the other men in the room were shocked and confused that their private gathering would be infiltrated as it had. He continued on to claim her absent ramblings were in no way associated with himself or anyone in the room. “We don’t want any trouble. I assure you that there is no war and whatever Kera may have done in your presence does not reflect on us.”

“I understand that you, Doctor Howell, research genetics.” Donavan retorted calmly. “I think that a closer look into your research may give us a little more light on what we discovered.”

“I seriously doubt that will help you
and my research is public knowledge.” Jason’s voice dropped into a deep rumble.

“I won’t ask again.” Donavan called out fiercely. “Hands up and drop to your knees.”

This time Jason lifted his hands and Maddox followed. He turned his back to her again and fell to his knees for the second time that morning.

Kera had no idea the danger she had just placed every man in this room in. Maddox clinched his teeth in fury and barely controlled instincts. He felt the rise in tension from humans and shifters alike. As she knelt softly behind him, her breath sawing in and out of her mouth, he wanted to rage at her and protect her at the same time. The confusion and fury over what she had done to them battled with the intense feelings he had for her. He would be lying if he said he didn’t think that it would be easier if he had never met her. His heart couldn’t take another scar and yet he felt the knife plunge into it and twist painfully.

He stifled a growl when the men and their guns advanced closer to them.

Donavan was the largest of them and he was followed closely by the man who had been tracking the device in Kera’s phone. They walked over to him with their weapons trained on his chest.
Their eyes were covered by a helmet but by the tilt of their jaw he could tell that their attention darted between him and Kera as she knelt behind him.

“This is surprising.” Donavan murmured. “Half the men in here have been reported as missing.” He inclined his head to Maddox in recognition.

Maddox stared up at him, afraid that if he spoke it would release all the emotions he was so carefully containing within him. His instinct prowled around in his mind and beneath his skin. The urge to protect and defeat was overwhelming.

The smaller of the two men stepped around him and stood in front of Kera. “My guess was right Kera.” He murmured to her. “We didn’t have to look far to find who your father worried was corrupting you.”

Maddox swiveled his head to the side to stare at the man. He watched him kneel down and place a hand on Kera’s shoulder. She tensed but didn’t order him off of her. Instead she stayed silently staring at the floor. He saw a drop of moisture fall from the tip of her nose to the hard floor in front of her.

“Gavin, take your hands off her.” Donavan commanded.

Maddox didn’t turn away until the man obeyed. He looked up at Donavan to see the man lower his weapon and pull off his mask. His skin was dark and his brown eyes were cold and aged with violence. Maddox inclined his head to him and spoke loud enough for all to hear. “Whatever you think you know doesn’t compare to the danger you are putting yourself in today.”

“Son,
” Jason whispered harshly, trying to quiet him.

Maddox ignored his father. “You told Kera that you wanted to partner with her. You took her on a dammed mission that could have got her killed
and then you let her go. The complete disregard you have for the value of life just shows that you don’t want a partner. You want to eradicate anything different from you. If you don’t understand something you are willing to use it as a weapon and dispose of it when you have no more use for it.”

“Wise words Jason.” Rayland laughed. “Your son understands more than you ever did.”

Jason growled low in his chest. “This is what you wanted Rayland,” He bit out, “a name for yourself? Look now and see what name you will have in the world now. A man who was found on his knees with his hands behind his back before the government soldiers following the weak words of a little girl who doesn’t know what to do with the life she was given.”

Maddox ground his teeth at the banter between his father and uncle. It was a good thing that the humans couldn’t hear them.
The soldiers began to pull each of them to their feet and lead them out the door. His father murmured a command to his followers to go with them quietly and without violence. Rayland did the same and one by one they were taken to the back of vans and were secured by the wrist and ankles with heavy chains that led to heavy bolts on the floor.

Maddox
tracked every movement Kera made. He couldn’t determine if it was to find out if she was in on the mission or to make sure she was safe. Her long blond hair hid her face as she continued to stare at the floor. She followed along behind him with the human male firmly by her side. He caught a glimpse at her red rimmed green eyes when she stepped up into the back of the van behind him. Her vacant expression didn’t diminish her beauty. No matter how hard he tried to ignore her allure it continued to hit him square in the chest at the most inopportune times.

The first time he saw her when he was a child rushed through his mind. She had been present when he found out what he was and lost his mother in the process. For years he considered her an angel who protected him during the worst moments of his life. Before his accident he had felt her beside him and he had considered the possibility that it was her that spared his life when he couldn’t imagine how he had survived such heinous injuries.

He remembered again the moment he caught the strange heartbeat in class only to turn and find her flushed face staring at him like she too recognized the connection they had. After that he couldn’t stay away. He followed her many times before he decided to speak with her and find out who and what she was. Her persistence in the library that she had never been in the area only intrigued him more. She pulled away from him every chance she got. Her life seemed in danger at every moment either by passing out in his car on the way back to her room from an innocent cup of coffee to the pleading call she made from her car where he found her bleeding and barely breathing locked inside her jeep with her unconscious roommate.

He watched her from the corner of his eyes as the soldiers drove them away from the mountains to god knows where.
They headed down the same road she had taken back from her father’s house just yesterday. Though it was almost a day’s drive from her home in Texas to his father’s in Colorado, he was sure this place was somewhere between.

His eyes roamed over her as she sat stiffly beside him. He knew Kera was feeling guilty about their situation.
Her shackled hands hung limply in her lap and her head mimicked them by hanging loosely around her shoulders in defeat. His fingers itched to caress the light golden strands that framed her face. Even with how angry he was with her actions she still made him want nothing more than to kiss and touch her.

At first he had thought the extraordinary feel of her skin could only be expla
ined by the fact she was an angel. The kiss they shared in her room had branded her on his heart. When she confessed that she was healed after the animal attack he had been elated. Shortly after that, everything she did had gone strictly against his new revelation that she was an angel. He met her father. She claimed that her mother had died on the same day his accident. Luke claimed her as his niece and Laura Larson’s daughter. She told him that she had a vision that Andrew had caused his wreck. All of these things didn’t even compare to the moment she told him she was a shifter.

His world had fallen apart and he did the only thing he could think of and turned her in to his father to be questioned. He battled with himself after that. He began to spend more time trying to figure her out than he did trusting her and opening himself up to her. He cruelly told her about the rumors of her mother just to get a reaction out of her. He used the command to force her to tel
l him anything he wanted in order to force the truth when she had come to tell him about Andrew’s second attack on her. Finally after everything he put her through he gave into his emotions for just one night and poured his heart out to her on her birthday just to have her taken away from him the same night.

Maddox watched her more intently and wondered how much more there was to what she told him during their training session. She had been beaten and starved. Emotionally terrorized by Andrew and stripped down and almost raped by Markus
and unnamed friends. He looked around the small space and tried to determine if anyone enclosed in this space was responsible. When he glanced back at Kera to gauge her reaction to the men she was surrounded by, he ached at the defeated posture she carried.

Maddox slammed his eyes shut as guilt wrapped around him. Some part of him had blamed her for
him killing Markus. They had grown up together. Hunted together. Though he wasn’t as close as him and Nick, Markus was family.

He shook his head and reminded himself that she didn’t even know he had taken his first life. It didn’t happen often but as Alpha if someone was sentenced to die it was
the Alpha’s responsibility to execute. Maddox had hoped that he could get through his entire life without falling victim to that lone rule. Murder was the reason he had broken off from the pack for five years. The death of a young girl at the hands of either of his cousins was inexcusable. Accident or murder. For years he thought that the accidental death of Hannah while making love to Nick was enough to turn away from his family. After what Andrew did to Kera and Nick’s confession that Andrew had been the one to take the young woman’s life, Maddox had drawn closer to his family.

His values were now skewed.

Suddenly he wondered if she too was a victim to his skewed values. After thoroughly reviewing their past together he didn’t doubt that he had unfairly judged her. “Kera.” He whispered. He reached out as far as he could to her before the chains at his wrists tightened against the bolt on the floor.

She looked at him through the curtain of her hair and sucked in a shaky breath at the sight of his open palm between them. Brittle as she seemed
, she ignored the murmurs around her and reached out for him. Her fingers shook subtly when she lightly touched his skin. Unable to stand it, Maddox wrapped his hand firmly around hers.

H
er touch was a powerful thing in itself but the most impossible thing to believe was her willingness to continue by his side. He entertained the idea of spending the rest of his life with her on multiple occasions and every one of them had ended up a different outcome. Not one of them prepared him for the harshness of reality. Every one of his musings had ended with an unbreakable bond able to withstand pack law and raising children in a world full of secrets and the unexplained. So far he received more heartbreak than love and the secrets continued to pile up around him at the same rate as they were exposed.

Maddox
stared at the soft skin beneath his palm and let his eyes wonder up her delicate arm to the slight curve of her shoulder. Her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths that reminded him the scent of fear that filled the small space permeated from her in thick clouds. He began to stroke the outside of her hand with his thumb hopping she would look at him for reassurance.

“That man looks like he wants to carve your heart out.” Nick whispered from across him.

His eyes shot to Gavin and true enough the man’s stare sliced through the air in blatant rage. Other than this man there were three other humans in the back with them. Each of them beside a shifter like their presence alone was protection against whatever threat they posed. Matt, who had run off with Rayland, was sitting closest to the door. The man between him held a gun pointed straight at his heart the entire time. Beside him was Heath, whom had disappeared as well the same night which Kera had been found.

Maddox stifled a growl at the two and tried to determine if they were in any way responsible with what happened to Kera. Their eyes stayed lowered submissively after he whispered his question. “Where you with Markus the week he died?”

Kera’s hand tightened around his and suddenly her fear wasn’t the only choking smell in the room.

“
Opprimendum Vincent.”
He growled at them.

Matt
’s eyes shot out the window moments before he stood and tore the bolt to his chain out of the flooring. It buckled and the metal groaned. A gun went off and Matt slumped against the door. His hand reached for the gaping wound in his side. The tires squealed on the road and jolted them toward the front of the cabin.

“Cease fire.” A voice screamed through the com unit on every soldier’s belt.
Blood had sprayed the window blocking all view of the outside. Doors slammed, the lock on the back of the van was freed and the door was wrenched open. Matt fell to the dirt and street at the feet of the men who scrambled to diffuse the situation. His skin was pale and clammy as his blood drained from his body.

Maddox growled at Heath to get his attention.

With eyes widened in fear he brought his eyes up to Maddox. “Did you take any part…” with his teeth clenched and voice loud enough for every human and shifter to hear what he asked, Maddox continued, “in the torture or assault on Kera?”

As soon as the answer registered on Heath’s lips and even before the sound of the forced
yes
reached his ears, Maddox bolted out of the seat beside Kera and wrapped his forearms around his cousin’s head and swiftly twisted it until his vertebra separated and his lunges emptied of air.

There was a slight struggle behind him he heard through the pounding of revenge drumming in his brain. He turned to the soldiers on either side of him and then behind him. Nick had quickly extracted their weapons and Kera stood with her head held high, chains dangling free from her wrists as she tried to cover his entire body from the mass of men outside the vehicle.

“Damn it woman.” He wrapped his arms around her and tried to pull her from harm.

“No!” she screamed as guns were cocked and aimed. “No. Please no. Don’t hurt him. Maddox you have to stop.”