01 Taming the Wolf - Anna Avery (23 page)

“Besides,” I added. “We were together last night.”

“So you’re each other’s alibis. I guess we overreacted and everyone can go on their merry way,” Nicholas said with a sarcastic smile. If I knew I could get away with it, I would have reached across the table and smacked him.

“You know what I find funny?” I replied, gaining courage the madder I got. “That Adam and I are treated like criminals when you, a leader, are free to molest women and no one says anything to you. If anyone deserves to be punished, it’s you, Nicholas.”

The room got scary quiet, the leaders all traded looks. The air around the table was suffocating. Nicholas was emanating an overwhelming, angry power. He. Was. Pissed. He might have had some lusty juju, but that wasn’t an excuse to use it on whomever he wanted. Sure the women thought they wanted him, but once his seductive influence was withdrawn, the women were left feeling dirty and used. I couldn’t be the only one who had a problem with a man like that as one of our leaders.

Nicholas shot up and stalked around the table, his angry gaze trained on me. I knew what was coming and couldn’t do anything about it. If I struck him back, the leaders would bring the hammer down on my ass.

Adam stepped around my chair, blocking Nicholas’ path. “You can’t get mad at her for telling the truth. If she has said something that’s not true, by all means, prove her wrong.”

“How dare you stand against me, alpha,” Nicholas said, his voice dripping with venom. “Move!”

Adam held his ground, squaring his shoulders and curling his hands into tight fist. As much as I would’ve loved to see Adam take Nicholas down a notch, it wouldn’t have ended well. Adam would be punished for assaulting a leader. Luckily, the remaining leaders took care of the situation before anything uglier happened.

“Nicholas, take a walk,” Jeff advised, rising from his chair with Wade and Michael following suit. Nicolas looked over at his brethren, and then turned his icy glare to me.

“The day will come when they won’t be here to protect you. I look forward to that day,” he threatened, stalking out of the room.

“Seriously, what’s up with him being a leader?” I asked, turning towards the men around the table.

“It was his birthright,” Wade answered. “His father was leader before him, his grandfather before that.”

“And did they also have the influence to take away a woman’s willpower?”

“From what I understand, his grandfather was a ladies man, but I don’t think he had any special power. His father had a little bit, but it seems to have gotten stronger with Nicolas. I’d hate to see what his son will be like.” Wade stared in the direction Nicholas had stormed out, a look of disgust on his face.

At least I wasn’t the only one who thought Nicholas was a sleezeball. “Do a lot of werewolves have special powers?” I sat back down, anxious to learn more about my kind. Adam took the chair Nicolas had been sitting in, and the energy in the room settled to a comfortable level, well as comfortable as it could being in the presence of three leaders and an alpha.

“It’s rare, but it’s not so uncommon that it’s a big deal, ya know?”

I nodded and was about to ask another question when Michael spoke up.

“You’re very good at distraction, Ms. Avery. We’re here to talk about you, not the history of our kind or how loathsome Nicholas may be.”

The relaxed look on Wade’s face disappeared and was replaced with seriousness. I glanced at Adam. He’d calmed down now that Nicholas was gone, but I could still tell he was revved up.

“You want to know if I killed, Eve,” I said, tired of the questioning. “I did not. If I wanted to kill her simply to be with Adam, I would’ve done it months ago. Matter of fact, I turned Adam down countless times because I didn’t think we should be together while he was mated to her,” I explained.

“Yet you didn’t hold those same worries last night,” Jeff noted.

“Do you deny your stomach when you’re hungry?” I asked, and I heard a soft laugh escape from Wade. “I was supposed to be sentenced to death tonight. I didn’t hold
any
worries last night. If I was going to die, then I was going to end my life on a happy note.”

“So you could’ve killed Eve, since as you said, you had no worries. What would be the point of worrying about being caught for murder when you would be dead within the day?” Michael questioned.

“For crying out loud! I’m talking about sleeping with a man that I’ve refused myself, not murdering his mate! I don’t care enough about Eve to go through the trouble of killing her out of spite. I know you want to pile all the guilt onto my shoulders, that’d be the easiest path, but by killing me for the crime, you’d become the very thing you’re accusing me of—a murderer. I am innocent in this matter.”

When I was a kid I hated the merry-go-round. I didn’t see the point of climbing onto a metal circle and being spun until I was so dizzy I couldn’t see straight. Tonight I was of a figurative merry-go-round. The questions went around and around, but never went anywhere. Asking the same questions a different way kept the problem at a standstill and me dizzy with fury.

“If you don’t believe, Anna, then believe me,” Adam said, reaching a hand under the table, his fingers gently squeezing my knee. “All of you have known me for a long time. I was with Anna last night and at no point did she leave my side, nor I hers. We spent the entire time in the cabin until Joe came this morning.”

The leaders looked at each other as if they were having a mental conversation that our ears couldn’t hear. Hell, maybe they were. Their eyebrows would arch, dip, and scrunch as if debating their argument to each other. This went on for at least five minutes. I reached my hand under the table and gripped Adam’s. Life was so much easier before becoming a werewolf. I’d never seen the inside of a police station, and now I felt like I was on trial every day of my life. I’d gladly go back to doing my chores and not complaining if it meant the leaders would leave and never come back. I had a soft spot for Wade. He was like a moody older brother. Still, he was a leader first and foremost and wasn’t the type to let a friendship get in the way of his duties. As I watched him, I wished Elle batted for his team—they’d make a great couple.

“A decision has been made,” Michael announced. “We believe you when you say that you did not have a hand in Eve’s disappearance.”

“But?” I questioned.

“We cannot overlook the link between you and the murdered humans. This connection to Adam impedes with your sentencing. I do not know if it’s true, but if we were to kill you, Adam would die also—or at least suffer severely from the loss. We do not wish to punish him for your wrongdoings.”

It sounded good, anything was better than death.

“You will be shipped to Idaho and be housed in the Anderson pack. There you will work as a servant until the end of your days,” Michael said, causing me to gasp.

“I request to go with her,” Adam insisted, his fingers gripping my hand so tightly I winced.

“You would abandon your pack for your own selfish reasons?” Jeff asked with aversion.

“No,” I interrupted. Looking at Adam, I said, “You can’t give up your post as their alpha because of me. I won’t allow you to leave them for me.”

“What kind of life will I have if you’re not by my side? Do you think I’ll be a good alpha when I’m distracted by thoughts of you? I will not lose you.”

“You were going to lose me anyway,” I reminded him. Had it not been for our pairing last night, I would have died tonight. “At least this way I’ll still be alive, and I’m sure I can have visitors,” I looked at the leaders. “Even people in prison are permitted visitors.”

The leaders talked amongst themselves, and Adam stared at the tabletop, his jaw set in stone and his eyes just as hard. I was getting very good at putting on a brave face. The truth was I was terrified. I didn’t want to leave Adam or my pack. Would the new alpha be as respectable as Adam, or would he try to visit my bed every night? Would I be treated like a criminal for the rest of my life? All of these thoughts sent a shot of fear through me, but I had to remain strong on the outside for Adam’s sake. I was going to make sure that his number one priority was taking care of our pack.

“We will grant you seven, one day breaks where visitors will be allowed to visit you. But you are not to leave the grounds, and you’ll have a spectator with you at all times,” Michael said. “We don’t take joy in tearing you away from your family, Anna, but horrific crimes have been committed, and we have to take action.”

I nodded, unable to refute his words.

“If Anna is murdering people, and I still don’t think she is for the record, then what’s to stop her from doing the same in Idaho?” Adam questioned with anger.

“From what we understand, the attacks happened at night,” Jeff said, crossing his arms. “Anna will be caged during the dark hours with surveillance. This will help us see if she is, in fact, changing without remembering.”

“That’s bullshit!” Adam shot up and paced the floor like
he
was a caged animal. “She does not deserve to be treated like some dog!”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Jeff said. “The cage is very large and a full sized bed is inside, along with a mini fridge. We’re not sadistic, Adam.”

Just as I was about to say something to try and calm Adam down, the phone rang. Adam answered it a little ruder than necessary and then his face fell. “Be right there,” he told the caller, hanging the phone up. When he looked at us his eyes were wide and his mouth slightly open.

“What is it?” Wade asked.

“Eve’s shirt was found two miles from here. It was soaked in blood,” Adam replied.

We combed the forest for any more clues. Eve’s bloody shirt had been found hanging from a broken branch, but no other traces of her existed. The sky let lose a downpour of rain, colder this high up in the mountains. The pack spread out and continued to search for hours. Emotions grew heavy the longer we looked and didn’t find anything. Adam had been quiet. I gave him space, knowing this couldn’t be easy on him. They’d been together awhile so I didn’t take offence that he held feelings towards her. What kind of person would that make me if I were to get jealous of a potentially dead woman?

“I think I found something,” Sawyer called from twenty feet away. Digging my heels into the soggy earth, I ran forward. The sensation of running, the scenery bobbing up and down with my heavy footfalls, brought this morning’s weird episode back. I stopped, ignoring Sawyer and those who rushed to his side. Tilting my head up, I stared at the canopy of the trees. The sky was a gloomy gray, lending a dark eerie feeling to the forest. Swiveling my head from left to right, it was like I was seeing the vision again. This was the place I’d seen in the shower, but how?

The chattering of the pack drew me out of my thoughts. Jogging the rest of the way, I weaved in between the bodies to see what they were looking at. Sawyer knelt down on the ground, his hands carefully brushing leaves away from some markings in the dirt.

“What is it?” Elle questioned, bending over to get a closer look.

“Looks like scratches, like someone was digging their nails into the dirt.” Sawyer placed his hand over the markings, not to touching them. I knelt beside him and placed my hand over the indents. My head filled with pressure and my eyelids grew heavy, my arm falling towards the earth. As my fingertips made contact with the scratch marks, it happened again. Nausea churned in my stomach. A cold sweat broke along my brow and I became lightheaded. Then the vision came.

A hand clung to the earth. The fingernails digging into the soil for purchase. The person’s arm jerked back as if something tugged its body away from the spot. The movement was a simple one, but I’d never been more frightened in my life. The hand lost its grip with the earth and slid along the leaf littered ground as something pulled it away. Now that the nails weren’t obscured within the dirt, I got a good look at them—long, red, and tipped in white—exactly how Eve did her nails.

“Anna…Anna,” someone called frantically, shaking my shoulder. My eyes opened—a lazy action that felt like slow motion. I focused on Elle’s face in front of me, her red hair wet, and clinging to her head. Her green eyes were wide and water droplets trickled down her cheeks.

“I’m okay,” I murmured, still a bit dazed. “It was Eve.”

“What was Eve?” Sawyer and Elle asked at the same time. I hadn’t meant to say it aloud. These visions, or whatever they were, would only make the leaders think I was guiltier. They’d say they were glimpses into my memories, ones I thought I didn’t have. Sawyer and Elle waited as I bit my lip and wondered what to tell them. They both watched me with suspicion, a look I couldn’t take from my friends.

“I saw it,” I whispered. “I saw her hand being dragged away.”

Elle and Sawyer looked at each other. “What do you mean, you
saw
it?” Elle knelt down and slung her arm around my soaked shoulders. The rain continued to assault my body until I felt the icy coldness soaking into my bones.

“It was like a movie playing. I saw the arm that was here, nails digging into the earth as something pulled it away.” I looked down at the indent in the dirt. The rain was quickly washing it away, but I could still see the harsh lines from where Eve’s nails raked as she tried to hold on.