Page 9 of Claimed

“Huh,” I say, realizing I’m a long way from the last place I remember being with my family in Illinois.

“Is it true you haven’t shifted in five years?” Gage asks.

I nod and lick my lips as I look at them, nervously waiting for what questions are coming next.

“Why?” Bain is the one to ask it, and I take a deep breath as I risk a glance at him.

“You won’t like the answer,” I warn him.

“Cherry,” he says, his fingers digging into my thigh. “Just because I don’t like the answer doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. If anything, it’s the opposite. I want to know everything about you.”

I shake my head once as I whisper, “I don’t think I can tell you everything.”

“Let’s start small,” Maddox suggests, pulling my attention back to him. “Why couldn’t you shift?”

“It was safer in my wolf form.”

“Safer from what?” Chase asks.

“From the guards. I…” I trail off as I glance around at the anger-filled eyes. Maddox's green eyes capture my focus, looking more understanding than the rest. So I focus on him as I explain. “I didn’t want them touching my body. It felt safer to stay in my wolf form.”

“Guards…” Maddox says with a nod, though I can see his jaw tensing. “Were they supposed to be protecting you, or were you a prisoner?”

“A prisoner,” I say, taking a deep breath as I prepare to tell them the rest. “When I was fourteen, I was on a run in the woods with my family. They came out of nowhere and killed my parents and both my sisters, but they left me alive for some reason.”

Several of them swear, and I move my eyes down, focusing on Maddox’s exquisite chest as I continue quickly, needing to get it out.

“Dr. J experimented on me and took my blood. One day, he pushed it too far and killed me. Imagine my surprise when I came back to life. I realized he’d done something to me. And after that, he continued to experiment with different ways to take my life.”

“How old are you?” Gage asks, and when I look at him, his face is etched in pain.

“Twenty-four,” I answer, my voice shaking as memories start to rise to the surface.

“So you were trapped there for ten years?” Hunter asks, and I nod once. His arms move up to wrap around my front as he whispers into my neck, “I’m so fucking sorry they did that to you.”

My eyes fill with tears, and I spin around and throw my arms around his neck, feeling the urge to hug him properly. It lasts two seconds before I feel my body shift back to my wolf form. But I don’t move, I keep my nose pressed to his neck as he runs a hand up and down my back.

“Shit, sorry. She pulled away too fast,” Gage says with a sigh.

“I think that’s probably enough for today anyway,” Maddox tells him.

I feel raw, not just from so much talking after years of silence, but from bringing up bad memories, ones that consumed my life up until a few weeks ago. Sometimes when I wake up, late at night, I panic, thinking I’m still back there. It’s why I love to sleep with them. Their scents are always the first thing I notice, reminding me where I am and that I’m safe now.

My body starts to sink further into Hunter as I grow tired. Maybe from shifting, or maybe from the emotional toll of what I just told them. Either way, it has me inhaling Hunter’s pine and citrus scent and letting that lull me into a deep sleep.

Chapter 3

Hunter

“We need to find that facility,” Chase says as he paces the room, his hands on his hips as his gaze bounces between the ground in front of him and the sleeping wolf in my lap.

“Even if she knew where it was, it’s probably already gone,” Gage says as he fills five glasses with whiskey and passes them out. I take mine, grateful for the bite of hard liquor as I swallow down half the glass in several large gulps.

It takes a lot of alcohol to make shifters drunk, but if a glass helps to take off the edge, I’m willing to try. Hearing about what happened to her is worse than I had imagined. I can’t even begin to understand what she’s been through.

“All the ones I’ve found online that shifters escaped from were long gone by the time anyone got back there. And Cherry’s been gone for at least a month. We don’t even know how long she was running for.” He nods his head before pulling out his phone and adding, “I’m adding that to the list.”

“What list?” Maddox asks.