Apparently, Reynolds was very good at trapping things.
****
“Rise and shine, Ms. Clayton. I have big plans for you.”
Danielle cracked open her eyes as something stinging rang across her cheek, but everything in front of her was out of focus, as if she’d taken a shot the size of a fifth of whiskey. Pain burned down her arm and throbbed through her temple as she tried desperately to figure out where she was.
Reynolds was taking off his jacket in front of the opened back door of the SUV she was lying in. Her mouth dry as cotton, she struggled to prop herself up on her good arm.
“Faster, love. We don’t have all day.” Reynolds grabbed her shredded shoulder, blasting agony down her arm as he yanked her from the vehicle.
Her ears rang, and belatedly, she realized that awful screeching sound was her own screaming.
“Danielle!” Denison yelled, pulling her from the loop of confused anguish she’d been stuck in.
The scene before her would haunt her for the rest of her life, however short that might be. The machinery of the Ashe Crew’s jobsite hadn’t even been turned off, and it rumbled, drowning out any wood song from the forest beyond. A bear lay motionless except for the ragged rise and fall of his stomach in front of the processor. Denison and the others had been lined up along the edge of the landing with men dressed in black uniforms holding guns against the backs of their heads as they knelt in the dirt. Skyler was nowhere to be seen, but Brooke was crouched on her knees at the end with a bleeding gash across her temple. Tagan wouldn’t look at Danielle, but something was wrong with his face. A constant stream of blood flowed from his chin. Kellen was beside him, eyes on his alpha as if awaiting an order Tagan didn’t seem able to give.
And Denison… Half of his face was covered in red, and his jeans were stained dark on one leg. When he laid eyes on Reynolds, who was shoving Danielle toward them from behind, he went white as a sheet, and his pupils dilated to pinpoints. From here, his eyes looked completely silver. When he turned to Brighton, who was kneeling beside him, his brother wore a similar expression of horror and recognition.
Danielle wanted to kill Reynolds. She wanted him to pay for what he’d done to her bears. She burned to avenge them. Her anger mixed with the pain in her shoulder as he jerked her to a halt.
She struggled against him, yanking her ruined arm from his grasp, but cold metal pressed against her temple, and the crack of a gun cocking was deafening so close to her ear.
She bit her lip hard to stifle the oncoming tears and dragged her gaze to Denison’s. He shook his head slightly in a silent order to stop fighting.
“So this is about revenge,” Denison said, blinking slowly and bringing his hate-filled gaze to land over her shoulder on Reynolds.
“Oh, it’s more than revenge. It’s the end of a long, satisfying hunt. I was happy to drag it on. To let you feel like you were safe up here in these mountains surrounded by people you thought could protect you from your fate, but I’m afraid my timetable has changed in recent months. I’m sick, you see. My disease is chronic and debilitating, and my doctor says I have only a few months to live. I need your bite, so killing you wouldn’t reward me. It would doom me. And I’d like to think I’m a much savvier hunter than that. I studied the tissue samples we took from you and from Brighton. The regenerative properties were astounding. You baffled my team, and that’s not an easy feat. We tried to sicken your tissue with every disease known to man, and nothing weakened it. So,” Reynolds ground out, shoving the gun harder against Danielle’s head as his fingers wrapped around her throat. “Who wants to do the honors?”
Danielle shook her head at Denison. “Don’t. Don’t give him a bear. He doesn’t deserve one.”
Reynold’s grip tightened, cutting off her air completely, and she scrabbled against his hands with her fingertips.
“How about I count to three. I’d really like Denison or Brighton to do it, for old time’s sake. You’ll all die for what Denison did to my wife, but if you are good little animals and give me what I want, I’ll let this one go.”
“He won’t!” she gasped out. She was going to pass out again soon, but she’d be damned if the last thing Denison did was give this man what he wanted. Not for her. Reynolds had taken way too much from him already.
“One,” Reynolds said.
Denison looked at his brother, and Brighton’s shoulders sagged in defeat. His eyes had gone dead as he looked off into the woods behind them.
“Two.”
Denison struggled to his feet, favoring his bloodied leg.
“Don’t,” she pleaded, struggling to drag air molecules to her suffocating lungs.