Captured - Cara Wylde Page 0,19

been tied for… a little over three hours, now. I proceeded to untie her. When she saw herself free, all she could do was wrap her arms around her body and shiver. I shrugged my jacket off and placed it around her shoulders.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Oh well, we need you alive for what’s to come. Jax and Reid wouldn’t be happy if I let you freeze to death.” I helped her to her feet, but she was too weak to stand.

“What’s to come?” she asked as I took her into my arms to carry her down the mountain.

“That’s a surprise.” I tried to give her the sort of grin Reid would’ve given her in this situation, but I probably failed.

The truth was that I didn’t know. I had no idea what my brothers had in mind for her. I wasn’t even sure what I had in mind for her. All I knew was that she felt good against my chest. She must have hated me, of course, but despite her hatred and fear, the warmth of my jacket and my body prevailed, and she snuggled close, so my bulky arms could protect her from the cold wind. I took her back into the caves, retrieved my jacket, locked her up in the cell, and walked out of there as fast as I could.

I didn’t like this. As I stopped to light a cigarette and smoke it under the stars – as I’d done so many times with Chase – I couldn’t help but wonder… We’d turned her into a prisoner, a slave. Didn’t that make us just as bad as our brother’s killers?

Six

Isabel

I didn’t sleep at all that night. The jeers, screams, and hatred of the werewolves followed me from the forest into the cold emptiness of my cell. The acrid smell of burning wood and flesh still stung my nostrils, and I could have sworn I still felt the scorching heat on my skin.

I remembered the agonized howls that had echoed around me as the pack had mourned the lost wolf, and tasted bile in my mouth. No wonder they all hated me. I couldn’t expect to find any mercy here.

Time passed as I lay there, tortured by my thoughts and loneliness. The only thing I had to cover myself with was the towel from earlier. A terrible migraine started pounding at my skull, and I was starving. I looked for the bread Thorn had given me, but I couldn’t find it anymore. I wished I’d eaten it all earlier. To top it off, I hadn’t gotten the chance to drink any water either, so I was thirsty as hell.

But my wishes didn’t matter here. If nothing else, the past couple of hours had made that more than clear.

Curling into a ball, I tried to find a solution to my situation. The funeral hadn’t really told me anything I hadn’t known before. The wolves hated me, and all of them wanted to make my life a living hell.

The brothers, though… They were different. They were the ones who were controlling my fate. Could I find a way to use that?

The first image that came to mind was that of Jax’s dark, icy eyes. I didn’t have a chance with him. He was cruel and ruthless. He’d killed my mother in front of me and had taken his time with my uncle and my father. For him, I was just a way to avenge his brother’s death. Nothing I said or did would ever convince him to change his mind about me.

Reid was just as scary, yet in a different way. He had torn my cousins apart with such brutality that their limbs had been all over the place. But Reid also wanted me. Out of all of them, he seemed the one most inclined to approach me sexually. And I hated myself a little – okay, a lot – for having responded to his touch, but he couldn’t have been immune to it either.

Maybe I could seduce him? The thought made me recoil. I was no sexy vixen, and I was bad at flirting even under normal circumstances. He might be attracted to me, but he’d also been very vocal about how much he despised me. Besides, he seemed like the type to be very kinky, and I didn’t want to poke that bear. Werewolf. Whatever. I might make things worse than they already were if I tried something with him.

That left Thorn. Thorn wasn’t like his siblings. He’d mourned