Un.Requited (Claimed Series) (37 page)

Devan shrugged. “Fergus decided to eat the jar of sauce that Addie was going to use in the lasagna tonight. So
we
get to go to the grocery store.”

Wondering just what Fergus could have possibly wanted with plain spaghetti sauce, Hayden unwillingly shut off the television. “Do we at least get to take Cole’s car?” The grocery store was a bit further from town, which meant they could take full advantage of the car’s quick acceleration.

“Of course,” Devan replied. She flicked her short, brown hair away from her eyes. “But I’m driving. Cole hasn’t given you the stamp of approval to take the wheel yet.”

Grumbling after the other female, Hayden stomped into her shoes and ventured outside. Devan was obviously in a hurry, as she was already scrambling inside the car and slamming the door shut behind her. As if sensing Hayden’s stare, the other female looked up and impatiently motioned her to hurry. It took a great deal of restraint on Hayden’s part not to intentionally go slower.

“The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get this over with. Trust me, I don’t want to spend my night with you either,” Devan said sharply. As soon as Hayden closed to door to the passenger side, the woman backed out of the driveway and sped off down the road.

Hayden leaned back in her seat, her eyes wide as Devan pressed down the gas pedal. Sending off a short prayer, Hayden reached for the seatbelt and buckled herself in. Car accidents couldn’t kill werewolves, but she would rather stay clear of the windshield if they were to stop suddenly.

“And when did Cole give
you
the stamp of approval to take his car?” Hayden demanded as they whipped around the corner. She clung for dear life, her pulse beginning to race. “Obviously he was blackmailed into giving you the keys. Because if he ever experienced
your
driving, he wouldn’t want you five feet from—”

“Hayden, please shut the hell up.”

At the clipped order, Hayden’s eyes narrowed and she turned to assess Devan. The woman’s earlier good mood seemed to vanish and a nervous air took its place. The hands on the steering wheel were white-knuckled in order to stop the obvious tremors and her hazel eyes
were dilated
, tunneled, as they fixated on the road in front of her.

“Are you alright?” Hayden inquired doubtfully.

“After I get this over with, I’ll feel better than ever.”

The scrap of paper Devan had held up in the living room caught Hayden’s attention. She stared down at the
list
of groceries that sat between the driver and passenger seat, recognizing that there was nothing written on it.

And
that’s when Hayden realized this wasn’t going to end well. 

“You were so worried about your little human friend that you
begged
me to bring you to the hospital to see him. At first, I declined, thinking we shouldn’t
get
mixed up with the Hunters. But everyone will understand how convincing you can be.” Devan smiled grimly. “Cole will see the note we left in your room, explaining that we took his car to visit Red Donovan. He’ll be angry, but at least he would know we
tried
to make it to the hospital. It would explain why we crashed on the road leading to the main interstate.”

Hayden seized the inside of the car as Devan ran the only stoplight in Albertville, almost hitting a pedestrian in the process. They took another sharp turn, heading in the direction of the interstate but also away from the location where the Alphas
would be gathered
.

She understood Devan lured her out of the house, but she didn’t understand
why
. “So you’re going to kill us?” Hayden wagered a guess, wary. “You couldn’t just commit suicide by
yourself,
you had to pull me in as well.”

Devan delivered a look that would make any man or woman recoil. “Don’t be stupid, Hayden. Of
course
I’m not committing suicide. I’m only completing my side of the deal.”

That didn’t sound good at all. Hayden exhaled deeply, irritably pushing away the sense of betrayal and focusing on the situation at hand. There was a possibility she could talk Devan out of whatever the female was planning.

“You… you’re still not over Joseph, are you?” she guessed. “Did you make some sort of deal with him and Falco?”

The other female shook her head forlornly. “You are so clueless sometimes. I was never
over
Joseph and Joseph was never over me. And Falco isn’t even a factor in this outcome, he was only a scapegoat.” She glanced at Hayden from the corner of the eye. “Who do you think would organize all of this in return for you?”

Nicolas
.

Hayden curled her hands into tight fists. “I don’t understand,” she said heatedly. “What’s in it for you?” She was shouting, but she could do nothing to stop the fear from taking
over
. “What could he possibly have to give you that would entice you enough to betray your pack?” It was hard to believe. Devan couldn’t have possibly been behind everything this whole time.

The brunette-haired werewolf hardly reacted to Hayden’s inquiry as she accelerated the car. They were entering deeper into woods and the gravel roads were beginning to narrow. It wasn’t the best road to go postal on, but Devan seemed to have the hang of it. Then again, Hayden remembered Devan mentioning something about an impending crash.

“You don’t have to do this,” Hayden continued frantically. What little control she had over her emotions had collapsed and she was trembling in her seat. At the speed they were going, the consequences of jumping out of the passenger side wouldn’t be any different from crashing.

Devan jerked the car around a narrow bend, her eyes determined but her mouth creased into a frown. “I know I don’t have to do this, but I
want
to do this.” She turned almost frenzied as she hunched closer to the steering wheel.

“My relationship with Joseph was on unsteady grounds when I was assigned Nathan’s mate, but we worked things out. We could handle the simple hurdle, and in the end, it would be worth it. It
will
be worth it.”

The extent of Devan’s betrayal wasn’t even a consideration to Hayden
at the moment
. She was more worried about what the other female was planning to do with the car and how fast she planned on going when doing it.

Fear curled its wicked hands around her throat, compressing it, but Hayden still managed to scream as Devan drove off the road and into the woods. The car nearly took a nosedive in the ditch, but it ended up making it to the other side of the trench. Bracing herself, Hayden angrily cursed Devan as they veered in the direction of a solid tree. They definitely weren’t stopping anytime soon and the tree was certainly not going anywhere either.

Squeezing her eyes closed, Hayden held her breath as they hit the tree head on. The impact sent her neck snapping forward and her whole body flew into the restraining seatbelt. Even her soul seemed to detach from her body and continue forward without its host. When it raced back into her, Hayden wheezed, breathless. Airbags deployed and smacked her in the face and head, disorientating her for quite some time.

“And we were driven off the road by a scheming rogue, imagine that,” Devan panted.

Hayden blinked open her eyes, the world spinning too fast for her to handle. Through hazy and weary eyes, she watched as Devan tugged her mangled fingers from the crushed steering wheel. Fighting the nausea, Hayden stared at Devan as she began cracking the crooked fingers back into place.

In the distance, the sound of an approaching car shook Hayden back to the present. She turned her head marginally in order to catch a glimpse. For a fleeting moment, she thought her misfortune would end. The car would stop and help them, saving Hayden from Devan’s insane clutches.

The car did end up stopping, but it was a dark van. Hayden’s breath hitched when she saw the identity of the two men who exited the vehicle. Blindly, dazedly, she groped for the handle to the door, desperately hoping to run away before they could reach the car.

“Not so fast.”

A sharp needle embedded into Hayden neck and she instantly slumped, her body turning boneless. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth as she slurred vulgar insults to Devan. Whatever earlier panic she had beforehand had been neutralized by the drug. 

“You’re not going with Tracer,” Devan soothed when she noticed Hayden watching the approaching rogue with dread. “We just need his scent around the car to draw Cole in the opposite direction.” She then patted Hayden’s head mockingly. “I don’t want to bombard you with too much information. I know you find it difficult comprehending things.”

Bitch.

Hayden fell ungracefully out of the car when the door opened. Her pulse gave a heavy
thump
when his slimy hands caught her around her waist and hauled her up. Without much concern for her comfort, Tracer dragged her body over to the industrial van. On the way there, she tried her hardest not to look at her captor. 

Once deposited into the back of the van, Hayden
was forced
to face the rogue.

“Hello puppy,” Tracer greeted with a wide sneer. He bent at the waist and considered Hayden’s subdued form. “Didn’t think you’d see me again, did you?”

Hayden gazed steadily back at him, her fear most likely palpable to the spectators. The last time she’d seen Tracer, he had a silver dagger shoved into his stomach. Considering what the silver had done to her thigh, even after immediate treatment, she would have thought Tracer would have died from his wound.

Devan sat next to Hayden in the van, her hands entwined lovingly through the man’s in front of her. “Do you have the scent suppressant?” she asked amiably.

Dismissing Tracer’s leering face, Hayden felt a rush of intense hatred as she looked at the second man involved in this
kidnapping.
Joseph was standing next to Devan, appearing almost as deliriously happy as Devan. He was stroking her hair endearingly, while passing her a familiar-looking serum.

They were all just
magnificent
actors.
Just wonderful.
It took an extremely cold-hearted person to pretend they were the victim, while putting their pack and family in danger.

Despite Devan’s insistence that Hayden couldn’t intelligently piece things together, she was able to grasp what was happening
. 
Devan was setting up a fake kidnapping. When Cole stumbled across the crashed car, he would smell their scents and Tracer’s scent leaving the car and entering another vehicle. Cole would then hunt after the van as best as he could,
thinking
that he was tracking both Hayden and Devan.

However, they weren’t going to be with Tracer. From what Hayden could smell, or what she couldn’t smell, Joseph had no scent on him. He was most likely planning to administer the serum to Devan and Hayden. The three of them would then go in an opposite direction as Tracer.

It was a rational plan to lure Cole away from their actual location.

She remained slumped against the van, hardly able to keep her eyes open, let alone ward off the needle that was poking in her arm. The serum
was pumped
into her system and Hayden could hardly raise a finger to stop it.

As the trio of werewolves conversed around her, Hayden began nodding off. She temporarily wondered if Joseph and Devan were planning on going back to Albertville and pretending as if they had nothing to do with this. Surely, the others would be suspicious of Devan turning up unharmed when Hayden didn’t return at all.

Just as the serum started to work, a set of arms grabbed Hayden from the van and slung her over a broad shoulder. She fell unconscious to the sight of the thickening woods and the sky bleeding a sinister crimson.

The heavy cloud of unconsciousness began to lift as Hayden struggled to pull herself together. Steadying her breathing, she kept her eyes closed in order to scope out her surroundings undetected.

She was currently propped against a sturdy tree with a wire coiled several times around her torso. From the difficulty it took to breathe past the constraints, she knew it would take quite a bit of effort to break through. Even if her fatigued body did muster enough strength to do so, she didn’t know if she could escape without getting sliced open by the wire. 

Reaching out further with her senses, she was aware of the close proximity of both Devan and Joseph. Their scents were nonexistent, but she could still hear the steady and subtle sound of their heartbeats. They seemed to be sitting motionless, most likely listening to their surroundings with just as much intensity as Hayden was.

“She’s awake,”
Joseph
informed softly.

Despite his awareness of her consciousness, Hayden kept her eyes closed as his quiet footsteps approached her. She couldn’t help but to growl lowly as his calloused hand checked her pulse and ran across her forehead. His ministrations were hardly gentle, and every bit uncaring.

“Her body handled the drug just fine, but it won’t be long until it wears off.” His voice came directly in front of her. “He’s late. By the time he gets here, she’ll be able to morph into her wolf. I don’t have a second injection.”