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45
She took my offered hand, and this time she froze as her hand gripped tightly to mine. She let go a moment later, eyes wide in fear, and started crying uncontrollably. I wanted to pull over, but I couldn’t; she was turned away from me, her arms wrapped around her chest as her wails of pain echoed through the car. “Baby, relax… please, Jessie, you’re scaring me here.”
I ran my hand over her back, trying to comfort her. It was breaking my heart to watch her fall apart like this. It took ten minutes before she sat up, her face tracked with tears. “What did you see, honey?”
“Pain. You were in pain, on your knees, I could feel it cutting me like a knife, John.” She looked ahead at the car. “We have to get out of here, John. Something bad is going to happen.”
“It’s too late, baby. If we do anything now, they’ll kill us both.” We pulled through into a clearing, the grass extended from the treeline down to the lakeshore, and up to a large, three-story building that looked like a hotel. The Pack House had a sign on it, the “Windy Point Timeshare Resort.” It was a clever way to hide the existence of an entire Pack in plain view. Smaller cabins and homes were spread around the clearing and the lakeshore, while a large pole barn sat in back.
We circled around the entryway and stopped in front of the wide stairway leading to the main entrance. I was not happy to see the number of warriors waiting for us, nor the presence of both rifles and dart guns. I could see tasers on the belts of a few near the driveway. The Alpha and Luna were at the top of the stairs, guarded by large men.
“Quite a welcoming party, isn’t it?” Jessie was a little wide-eyed at all the scary-looking guys, and I wasn’t happy either.
“Yeah.” I put the car in park, and a guard was at both doors immediately. “Play it cool, Jessie.”
“We’ll both be little Fonzie’s out here,” she said with a smile as her door was opened. I stepped out, and two men flanked me as I walked around to take her hand in mine.
We walked over to the base of the stair where the Alpha gestured for us to stop. I looked up at him, he was older, clearly past his prime physically, but his eyes were bright his Pack’s loyalty was obvious. “You have trespassed on Vermillion Pack lands, and I am Alpha Sven Hirkkel. Who are you, Beta? The name you gave at the hotel gave no hits, and your car is registered to a human in St. Paul.”
“My apologies, Alpha Hirkkel. I was traveling under an assumed name for security reasons, and I did not see your markers in the woods. These lands are not familiar to me,” I said in my thick Scottish brogue. “I am Beta John Pearson of the Highlands Pack in Scotland. This is my mate, Jessie.”
“A human?” The Luna shook her head. “No werewolf can be mates with a human, silly.”
“She is my mate, Luna. There is no doubt of that in my mind.”
I felt the guards closing in behind me, this wasn’t going well. “She’s a witch,” the Alpha said. “You dare to trespass onto MY lands and bring a witch? Are you MAD? Seize them.”
The guards worked quickly; I was tackled from behind, and quickly swarmed. Silver cuffs were placed on my wrists as my arms were wrenched behind my back, and my ankles were shackled with more silver. I struggled, but the silver was already sapping my strength.
“PLEASE!” Her cry caused me to look over at her, and I struggled to break the cuffs as I saw what was happening. Jessie was on the ground, her arms bound, and a gag was forced between her teeth and tied behind her head. Four men hauled her up, each holding a limb as she struggled.
“Take her to the dungeon, she will be put to death at moonrise,” the Alpha said.
“NO! YOU CAN’T! SHE’S MY MATE, SHE’S NOT A THREAT!”
“Toss him in the dungeon as well, make sure they can’t touch each other. After she’s dead, this spell she cast to make him think she’s his mate will break and then we can talk.”
“I’ll fucking kill every last one of you if you hurt her,” I said as I looked around. “There is nowhere you can hide from my vengeance.”
The Alpha just walked down the stairs as his men held me back. He took his phone out; grabbing Jessie’s hair, he took a picture of her face as tears ran down it. He then walked over to me, and I’m sure the photo he took showed the hatred I carried for him right now.
“Sedate him and get him out of here.” I felt a needle jab my shoulder, and a few seconds later everything went dark.
Alpha Sven’s POV
I spent some time in the dungeon talking to the woman, getting her story, then I returned to my office just before lunch.
I emailed the photograph of the woman, along with her fingerprints and my message, to a friend in Canada. He copied the content into a new message and sent it along to Alpha Yuri Zubkov in St. Petersberg. I only waited an hour for the answer. I made sure the only light in the office was behind me, and I cast my face in deep shadows, placing a fake beard over my face. He could never know who really was talking to him. When I was ready, I logged into the web-meeting software; Alpha Yuri was already there, his Betas in the background. “Yuri, I have something you want. Have you confirmed her identify?”
“We have, facial recognition is a match as well as the prints. You will eliminate her?”
“For the right price. I’ve been doing my own research, it’s amazing what some time chained in a basement will do for her motivation. Your reward of twenty-five million dollars pales in comparison to what she is offering to let her live. I rather like her deal, but since you asked first, I figured I’d give you the right to match it.”
Yuri was turning red. “What was her offer?”
“Her lawyer estimates the estate will be worth over seven hundred and eighty-seven million dollars once fully in her control. Of course, this amount varies daily with company values and investment results. Her offer to me was half of all she would inherit. Since I will have to wait months to get all this from her, I expect by then it will be worth four hundred million dollars, American.”
“I don’t have four hundred million sitting around, you fool!”
“Yuri… We can still do business. Time is money. Three hundred million dollars, transferred to the account in the email I sent you within eight hours, and she dies tonight. I’ll stream it live for you, hell, you can jack off to it later for all I care. Your problem goes away, you get a nice snuff film, and all that money goes to you. Just like it was always intended.”
“I need a week to get that kind of money together.” He was panicking.
“If I have to wait, I’d be better off taking her offer, Yuri. I’m not a patient man. You have eight hours to get the money together. If it is in my Swiss account by then, we log back on here and you get to watch her be killed, live and in color. If not, I’ll keep her here, safe in my cells, until she is declared heir. I marry her, we get a divorce with the prenup, and I walk away with half of your brother’s estate, tax-free. I’ll be watching my account, Yuri. You do whatever you have to do to get the money and I’ll do the rest.” I closed the connection and sat back in my chair, smiling as I poured myself a drink. This had turned out to be a hell of a day for me.
John’s POVProperty © 2024 N0(v)elDrama.Org.
I woke up on the stone floor, feeling like I’d been run over by a tank. It took a few minutes to push myself up to a sitting position in the small cell. It was hewn out of solid granite, with silver-plated bars on two sides and a small gate. All that was inside was a thin blanket under me, and a bucket in the corner. “JESSIE!”
“Shut up, you idiot,” a man said. “The jailers don’t like it when you make noise, they’ll come down here and use a cattle prod or fire hose on you.” He was in the cell across from mine; he looked to be in his forties, his eyes a little crazy, hair greasy and tangled.
“Where’s Jessie?”
“The woman? Over there.” He pointed to a dark corner of the room, I could see a small cell. I could barely make out her form; her hands were chained to wall above her head, her ankles to the floor. She was spread in an X-shape, her head hanging down, the gag still in place around her mouth. “Oh Luna, Jessie… wake up, baby, wake up.”
“She’s been out since they brought her back from the interrogation room. They worked her over good.”
Oh Luna, WHY? Jessie is gentle, loving, loyal; she’d done nothing to warrant this. “How long have I been out?”
“All afternoon,” he said. “Dinnertime is in about ten minutes, and sunset an hour away. Moonrise is in two.” Fuck… I didn’t have much time. “You better say your goodbyes, I hear she’s gone with the moon.”
I pounded my fist into the bars, ignoring the pain and the burn. “You watch yourself, rogue. That’s my mate you’re talking about.” I started looking around the cell, looking for any point of weakness I could use.
“Don’t bother, those bars are an inch thick of steel with a silver clad, sunk two feet into the solid bedrock,” he said. “The Hulk couldn’t get out of these.”
I folded the thin blanket and sat down on it. I checked my pockets, everything had been taken out. My belt was gone along with my shoes, they had given me flip-flops on my bare feet. I was regretting my decision to go dark, no communications at all. No one was looking for me, no help was coming.
Revise that, plenty of people were looking for Jessie, but none of them wanted to do anything but kill her.
I heard the door unlock, and a fresh breeze came through the cell before it closed and locked again. I could smell what was supposed to be food; what came through the bars looked like it had been rescued from the garbage bin at lunch. Pieces of bread crust, some beans, lettuce, half a hot dog. The food was all soaked into the pieces of bun, it was cold, and flies were buzzing around it. “Bon appetit,” the guard said with a smile.
“I need to speak with the Alpha, it’s urgent.”
“Of course you do, sir. Why, I’ll go fetch the Alpha right now. Anything else I can do for you? Fluff your pillow? Turn down your bed? Do you like those little mints on your pillow too? I know, maybe I’ll fuck your girlfriend for you, it’s clear you haven’t done the job.”