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  Shadow Claw Book 3

  Sarah J. Stone

  Copyright © 2017 by Sarah J. Stone. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Chapter 1

  She stared at the ceiling, her eyes dull. It was the same stone ceiling. How long had she been here? Who was she? These questions came to her every now and then, but she never had an answer for them. The warmth of the wolf inside her comforted her and she wanted to shift back. They would return soon, and, if she was in her wolf form, they would torture her even more.

  Every day was the same. She studied the fresh scars on her body, which layered over the faded ones. Didn’t they tire of asking the same questions day after day? She still had no answer. Her wolf whimpered in misery, and she shushed it.

  She had seen that wolf again in her dreams. His silver fur was so beautiful that she wanted to run her hands through it. He had been running. She had called out to him, but he didn’t stop. Those crystal blue eyes had been hauntingly sad. His size revealed him to be a shifter.

  She tried to swallow and realized that her mouth was dry. They hadn’t fed her in over a week. Punishment, she was told, for being such a stubborn bitch and not giving them the information they wanted.

  Her lower body ached, and she tried to distract herself by tracing patterns on the roof with her eyes. Shame, embarrassment – these words no longer meant anything to her. What use was there in feeling guilt over something that she couldn’t control? Besides, they would like it if she begged them to stop. They became more vicious when she cried. So she had just stopped.

  The air was stale in her cell, but then again, she was accustomed to it already. She would rather think about that silver wolf. She ignored the shooting pain in her stomach and visualized that wolf again. Wondering if she knew him from somewhere, she felt a tug on her hair. The rat scurried by, and when it came too close, she snapped at it. She wasn’t going to make a meal out of it, but it must have sensed the predator in her because it hissed and ran for cover, squeezing itself under the door toward freedom.

  She heard muffled voices, and her wolf snarled. She didn’t know why she still resisted or how she still had any fight left in her. She had nothing to lose now. A part of her refused to believe that. Even now, something inside of her quivered with determination, but what she was trying to protect, she had no idea.

  It was that very determination that made her snarl when the door opened and the men entered. She fought when they grabbed the chain fastened around her neck and pulled.

  No, they still hadn’t managed to break her completely.

  Not quite far away, a silver streak darted between the trees. It stopped at a rise in the ground, which overlooked the forest, and waited for its companions to catch up. A large, grey wolf stepped out from among the trees, followed closely by his black companion.

  The silver wolf shifted into a naked man, and he leaned down to untie the bundle on his leg. His cropped, silver hair stood out against his tanned complexion. Clear, blue eyes held signs of exhaustion, but also a fierce determination. He unrolled the thin jeans and tugged them on as his companions did the same. Taking out the map, he studied their location and looked over the trees from the edge where he stood.

  “A day’s journey at most. You guys start a fire. I’m going to go check in with Raoul.”

  He took out his flip phone and called up his senior lieutenant.

  “Fergus. Any update?”

  Raoul was in charge of the Tikaanis while Fergus was away. Fergus trusted him, but he never trusted anyone completely. As an alpha, he always liked to be aware of everything that was going on.

  “Getting closer. Everything okay at your end?”

  When Raoul hesitated, the alpha immediately came to alert. “What’s going on?”

  A sigh. “Gina had some complications with the pup, so the elders took her to the nursery.”

  His wolf shifted. His packmate was in pain. He wanted to be there to comfort her. “How bad is it?”

  “Don’t know yet. No word has come. Payton wanted get access to the nursery to check up on her.”

  Fergus’ tone turned sharp. “Well?”

  Raoul sounded annoyed, and Fergus heard the sound of papers shuffling around. “Of course not. I didn’t forget, Fergus.”

  The wolf alpha felt the tightness in his chest ease, and he grinned. “Never doubted you for a second, man.”

  “Asshole.” His friend’s tone was light. “Tell me when you find Diana.” Fergus was about to disconnect when he heard Raoul say, “There’ve been a few sightings of humans in the area. The wild wolves drew them off. Just thought I should let you know.”

  Fergus frowned as he turned around to see the two lieutenants he had brought with him arguing with each other. “Create overlaps in duties. And add one more soldier to the rounds.”

  He tucked the phone in his back pocket, the frown still present on his face. Humans. Why would they wander so far into the woods? Even hunters kept to the outer limits. On second thought, he took out his phone and dialed Luke.

  The bear alpha was not pleased to be disturbed.

  “What do you want, wolf?”

  From the background, Cassie called out, “Hey, Fergus!”

  Fergus smiled. Cassie reminded him of Diana in so many ways, and she had managed to wiggle her way into his heart. He had never had a younger sister, but if he could have chosen one, it would have been Cassie.

  “How’s my favorite girl?”

  “She’s pregnant. And she’s not your anything. Now what do you want?”

  Although gruff to the point of rudeness, Fergus knew that Luke was concerned about him. He had even offered to tag along. The wolf alpha would have appreciated his strength. But, he couldn’t tear him away from his mate, who was due any day.

  Hearing muffled voices in the background, he got straight to the point. “Have you seen any humans in your area?”

  That took Luke by surprise, as it had him. “Humans? Why would they come to the back end of the woods?”

  “Some hunters have been sniffing around our territory.”

  Luke’s voice turned grim. “The pups–”

  “Safe for now. They’re too deep in.”

  “I’ll increase patrols.”

  After a few brief seconds where Cassie argued with her mate and grabbed the phone from him to ask Fergus about his mission, he closed the phone and made his way back to their makeshift campsite.

  Luke and Cassie were aware of where his pack’s pups were hidden. It was a safety precaution. If he ever got himself captured or killed, Shadow Claw’s alpha pair were to assist the elders of his pack to relocate the nursery. It was a carefully thought out decision. He didn’t know why Diana had sent him that last message before suffocating their mating bond, but he had taken it very seriously.

  Alan, their pack healer and one of Tikaanis’ lieutenants, was making a poor attempt at hid
ing his yawn. His grey hair, which resembled his wolf’s coat, was all messed up.

  “Get some sleep,” Fergus told him. “I’ll keep first watch. You, too, Matt.”

  Matt was a broad-shouldered, hulking wolf, and he was already snoring, having shifted back to his wolf form. He had probably only shifted to call his one-year-old daughter, Lizzie, and his mate, Tara. For all his threatening appearance, the lieutenant was tightly wrapped around his mischievous one year old’s finger.

  Fergus shifted and settled on the ground, letting his packmates sleep.

  Two wild wolves came out from behind the trees and watched him warily. Fergus gave them an unblinking stare, and they bared their throats submissively and settled down near him.

  The next morning, he heard the scraping of something along the ground and opened his eyes to see Matt dragging along a freshly killed deer. He lifted his head and watched from his spot as Alan got up and stretched in wolf form. His mouth opened in a yawn, displaying all his teeth. Those grey ears perked up in interest at the prospect of a meal. Both his packmates looked toward him. Being an alpha, he had the first right to everything.

  Fergus turned his head away in disinterest.

  He had no appetite.

  He got up and walked away from his packmates. Shifting, he dug in his jeans that lay on the ground to study the map again.

  Ten years.

  Did she know that he had thought her dead all this time? That he had stopped searching for her when he had found her skinned fur? That he had mourned for years, but he hadn’t looked for her?

  His heart clenched as he recalled the day he had stumbled across her skin. He had buried it as his wolf had howled and howled. He had broken down and held, what he thought was all that remained of her, to his chest. It was as if somebody had ripped out his heart and clawed through it, until it was in shreds.

  If not for the pups, he would never have returned. He had let no one touch him but the pups, his grief so tangible. His world had become a broken shell in which nothing mattered. He wouldn’t even play with the young pups, who tried to offer comfort for a sorrow their young minds were too innocent to comprehend. They had licked him, tumbled over him, clambered on him, and tried to engage him, but his heart had become numb after months of that wild grief.

  When the pack started crumbling, he was forced out of his grief, and he concealed his heart under layers of stone. He once again led the pack. He became the alpha they needed. Diana became a taboo topic. When he fought, it was with wild abandon as if he had nothing to lose. Because he didn’t. Every battle he went into, he hoped it was his last.

  But, the gods had not decreed it so.

  The wild wolves that were now consuming the remains of the deer ignored his presence as he stalked past them.

  His voice was quiet, filled with unrestrained impatience. “Let’s go.”

  This time, the wolf alpha didn’t shift. He was fast in both forms. His silver fur belied his association with the Tikaanis. He belonged to one of the northern packs, which claimed to be royalty, or so he had found out from the archives. Although, why royalty would dump one of their own was beyond him. Not that he cared. When he had been old enough, he and Diana had gone roaming together, and they had looked for his old pack. Their claimed territory was abandoned and destroyed, which had made him question, back then, whether he truly was an orphan. Of course, Diana hadn’t liked his tone, so she had kicked his ass.

  A sad grin flitted over his lips.

  His mate was a wild creature in her own right. She had been the one to find him. He had been a one-year-old pup, when she had stumbled onto him. A three-year age gap between them had done nothing to diminish his feelings for her.

  From a childish devotion, to a teenage crush, and settling into a firm determination to make her his, the fact that she had been more dominant than him when they were young, had not even been a deterrent. He had grown into his dominance. Where he had once chased her, the other pack females chased him. A fact that had bit at Diana.

  His heart thumped as he remembered all the antics he had done to get her attention. He had even recorded him howling her name as her ringtone.

  She had been so mad.

  His eyes flipped to the map in his hand, and he stopped, raising his hand.

  His packmates froze and sniffed the air. There was a strange scent – a very familiar one, like rotting corpses. Fergus frowned. What would ghouls be doing in this part of the forest? They stayed to their graveyards or underground hubs.

  He studied the ground, but there was no upraised earth, no rotting flowers. Just the scent.

  Very odd.

  He issued a warning, and they slowly advanced. His eyes on the map, he watched them move on it until he could make out a shape of a wooden cabin just ahead.

  The smell had become so bad that the two wolves shifted as they made a face.

  “Is this it?” Alan asked, trepidation in his voice.

  Fergus did not speak. He wanted to barge in and find his mate, but his instincts, honed from years of hunting, warned him to wait.

  So he did.

  After a few minutes when there was still no movement, they advanced.

  For what looked like an abandoned cabin built in the 1840s, the lock on it sure was new. When Matt was about to break it, Fergus put a restraining hand on his wrist.

  “It could set off an alarm.”

  When the hulking man looked disbelievingly at the harmless looking metal lock, Fergus didn’t even blink, “Better safe than sorry.”

  He used his elbow to break open the window.

  Shattering it completely, they entered one by one and looked around.

  It was empty.

  It was as if a tight fist was clenching on Fergus’ heart.

  Did it show that he was finding each breath a task?

  “There’s nothing here,” the disappointment in Alan’s voice was acute. He looked over to his alpha, whose head was bowed and his fists clenched. If he had not seen the tremble in that fist and the tightness in Fergus’ shoulders, the healer would never have seen the restrained anger.

  Their alpha had such a tight hold over his emotions that it sometimes worried him. Right now, it looked like he was going to rip that map apart.

  But, he didn’t.

  His fists unclenched, and Fergus smoothed the wrinkles on the parchment. His voice was calm, not betraying the storm of turmoil inside of him, “Why would the map bring me someplace she’s not?”

  Both his packmates shared a sorrowful glance as something occurred to them. Diana might be here, but no longer alive. The map had led them to where her remains were buried.

  Fergus’ eyes darted all over the small cabin. Dust covered every aspect of it. Even the faded rug on the ground was moth bitten.

  “I have to make a call.”

  Alan and Matt waited as he deftly put one leg through the broken window.

  A pained whimper.

  Fergus froze.

  He withdrew his leg and listened.

  The sound came again, as if from a wounded creature.

  It was muffled, but there was no mistaking it.

  His voice cold, Fergus ordered, “Tear this place apart.”

  Chapter 2

  There were no false walls or any sign of life in the small cabin. Dust coated everything. The bare furniture looked so antique that Fergus wondered whether this was just a set up or if this cabin had truly been furnished in the 1800s.

  However, he and his men left nothing to chance. They stripped the bed and checked every nook and cranny, but came up empty. A few minutes later, they stood staring at the remains of their search, and Fergus growled, his animal coming into his eyes.

  Where had that sound come from?

  Frustrated, he studied each piece of furniture with more depth, his eyes running over each article with precision.

  The moth-bitten carpet made him pause.

  Why would someone place a carpet under a bed?

  Especially when it di
d not even extend out enough from under the bed for someone to put their feet on it.

  Walking over to the bed, he pushed it to one side, his expression grim when he felt how light it was, as if it was merely a prop.

  He tossed it away and, kneeling down, he saw a trap door. The door was clean as was the iron handle on it. Which meant that it was in constant use. But, why couldn’t he smell anything in this room?

  It was like the entire place had been aired. Even airing a room still left behind traces of scent markers, but this was odd. However, the mixture of trepidation and impatience was terrifying. He pulled open the door and threw a glance over his shoulder at his two companions before ignoring the metal rails attached for support and jumping straight down.

  Landing on his feet, he straightened up and staggered at that familiar scent. How long had it been since he had smelled this wild and untamed scent that was so particular to his mate? This place was covered in it, along with various others, all of them belonging to shifters.

  The scent of blood, both fresh and old, made him snarl. It was dark inside, and his eyes adjusted themselves and he made out a large stone table in front of him.

  He heard one of his men moving about, and he heard the click of the light switch. The flood of light had him blinking.

  It was a torture room.

  That was the only way to describe it.

  Tightening the reigns on his temper, Fergus slowly moved about the room.

  It was ancient.

  Somebody had taken out a lot of effort to build this.

  The stone walls provided zero ventilation.

  His eyes roamed over equipment and instruments, which were on display in front of the stone table, probably for maximum impact on the person tied to it. They varied in size, and each one was crueler, and guaranteed to be more painful than the other.

  They all had stains of blood on it, like no one had bothered to clean them.

  The very thought of…

  Fergus cut off his train of thought. He needed his wits with him, and as hard as it was to control himself, he had to keep it together.