Ava When Braiden returns, I can tell something is wrong. He is lost in thought and doesn’t join in the conversation or eat. Whatever Alpha Nial said to him must not have been good. Minutes before he returned, Samuel left, claiming he was off on official royal business. He entered one of his mind-linking trances, and now I suspect it was with Braiden. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Braiden snaps out of his trance and forces a smile, making me frown. “Really? That is the worst fake smile I have ever seen. Look at this, Nick.” I bump his leg, pointing to Braiden. “My King. It is not very good.” Braiden's smile fades, and I can tell he is battling something. It makes me wish I could feel him like he could feel me through the one-sided bond. I still don’t know what I was thinking doing that. It left me vulnerable, having all my feelings out there, practically giving him a map of my every mood, thought, and state. It was frustrating and unfair. He could hide things while I could not. “Don’t start ke eping secrets from me. We have always been honest with one another. Let's not stop now.” Braiden's grey eyes regard me for a long time, perhaps looking for a sign that I can handle whatever he says. Whatever he sees there must satisfy him. “The wolf that was in the room with you during your heat. He is not from Alpha Nial’s pack or any neighboring packs.” He lets his words settle in while my mind returns to that medium-brown wolf with the brown eyes. While I told Braiden he must not ke ep secrets from me, I k ept one from him. When that brown wolf touched me, a memory came back to me. A memory of a small boy with similar brown eyes. I can’t remember where I saw him, but I suspect it was at The Underground. Perhaps he was one of the abused wolves, a fellow cellmate, a victim like us. But I couldn’t be sure. The memory wouldn’t solidify. “Alpha Nial’s team tracked him as far as The Underground building we visited. It could mean nothing.” Braiden hesitates and then pulls out his phone. “But while they were there, they found a message written in blood on your old cell wall. I don’t want you to be scared, Ava. Samuel is there with a team, swe eping the place from top to bottom. And there are additional guards here.” My heart races, but I don’t want my fear to drive Braiden to ke ep me in the dark. So I try to compose myself, forcing my heart rate to return to normal and my emotions to settle before I hold my hand out. Nick is right beside me, peering over my shoulder as Braiden hands me his phone. The picture with the writing sends me straight back into the state I had tried pulling myself from. “You are looking for me, but I will find you first. You are mine, Ava. Soon, we will be together again.” Together again. This message gives away more than the previous one.
Whoever this was, I had met them before. They knew me, and I must know them. “Has your mom and Selene’s whereabouts been accounted for when this was done?” Nick asks, his dislike for those two women and their actions towards me rubbing him up the wrong way. “Yes. Samuel already checked. Whoever did this was not someone from our pack. Though we still haven’t ruled them out as suspects in Ava’s poisoning.” I still couldn’t imagine one of them was responsible for doing that. I know they both disliked me. But poison? That seemed a little extreme. Especially at the risk of someone else picking up that bottle at the table. We needed to find whoever was behind this before this message became a reality, and they found me. Braiden's reassurances about my safety make my following words easy. “Let’s go back there. Now.” Braiden frowns, definitely unhappy with this. “That was the plan. So let's stick to it. Memories came back to me when I saw my cell. Maybe more will return as we explore the rest of the building. It is worth a shot. We need to find out who is behind all of this.” Braiden is sk eptical, and I can see his hesitation comes from caring for me. He doesn’t want something to happen to me. “Besides, you will be with me, so I’ll definitely be safe. You won’t let anything happen to me.” I smile at the brooding hulk of a man while he stares at me, trying to think up an excuse. He has none. We have no leads. This is the best plan. I know it. He knows it. “Fine. But you will stay by my side at all times. If even a sliver of unease passes through your bond, we leave.” My smile gets triumphantly bigger as Braiden talks, and then I lean forward and kiss him long and hard, silencing him. “Excellent!” I jump up, then run upstairs to get my phone and change into more suitable clothing while Braiden arranges the transport with his royal guards. When I return downstairs, he and Nick are waiting for me, looking nervous and uncertain. “It will be fine,” I say, dragging the last word out as I pass them and head to one of the waiting cars. While we drive, I practice blocking the bond. Nick told me how he does it with Samuel, though less so now than when they first got together. Apparently, in the beginning, he was so horny for Samuel, it became embarrassing how often that would be communicated down the bond. “You’re trying to block the bond.” Braiden's words beside me make me jump. “Is it working?” I ask, smiling when he frowns. “I don’t want you doing that with me. I want to feel you all the time.” He pulls me close, wrapping me in his strong arms and kissing my head. “So while you are having a meeting with your royal guards, you want to feel how horny that makes me, how your dominance turns me on?” I ask, throwing out a scenario I deem embarrassing. For him. For me.
“Yes. Definitely. They can wait while I satisfy My Queen. While I get on my knees for you and eat that sweet pussy until you are coming all over my face. Content. Then, I will continue with them. If you block it, that scenario cannot happen.” Braiden’s dirty words and the visuals he gives me immediately make me wet. “See, I want to know how turned on my words make you,” he grumbles in my ear, making me tremble. Before we act on the impulse that I know we both share, of me acting out that very scenario he described, the car comes to a halt. “We will definitely be doing that later,” I say as he releases me and exits the vehicle. The grey abandoned building stares back at me. But unlike when I first saw it in person, no memories rise. And the terror I felt before is gone. Braiden refuses to let me return to my cell, so we move to the following building levels. Some levels have big open rooms with nothing in them. Others contain yet more cells, the numbers edging closer to the seven hundred mark the higher we go until we reach the top floor. As soon as I st ep onto this floor, memories start coming back. Flashes of a lady. The lady who I saw in the memory that surfaced when Dr. Lewis hypnotized me. “Are you okay?” Braiden asks, rubbing my back comfortingly. “I’m fine,” I r eply, smiling at him to reassure him. We walk around the area, Braiden stopping to rifle through a filing cabinet containing some documents while Nick starts opening and closing drawers. This looks like it was the administration level. Dusty placement marks on tables are all that is left behind where computers once stood. I approach a door. The door. The one from my memory. “I don’t want to go in there,” I say to the lady, taking a st ep back. I look at the ground, remembering where I stood, looking up and pleading with the woman. “No, please! I don’t want to!” People are looking at us now, and as I pull my hand free, I fall backward onto the floor, hurting my bottom. The carpet is stained. Not like I remember it when I fell. It was much cleaner back then. I turn around and crawl away, the door behind me opening with force. I look now at the door from that memory. Plain. Simple. Nothing remotely scary. My hand touches wood, and I must push hard to open it. I take a de ep breath and then another before I finally have the guts to st ep into the room. One st ep, two st eps. And then I hear it—the words from my memory and written on the body in blood. And the scent. The one from the mansion bedroom earlier. The brown wolf with brown eyes. “You’re mine, Ava.”
Exc ept this isn’t a memory. Before I can run, the door clicks shut behind me. “I told you I would find you. You’re mine, Ava. Only mine.”