Black Wolf's Revenge by Tera Shanley Page A

wall to her right was covered in boxes of what smelled like moldy books or magazines. That was the direction the smell of mildewed paper was coming from as she took account of several boxes on the bottom with dark stains to their midsections with whatever fluids they had absorbed from the floor. Was it blood? She sniffed but couldn’t make anything out over the smell of urine. Quietly, and as sensation would allow, she sat up and stretched her stiff neck. Her vision still took on the haze of three tequila shots too many, but at least she could move again.
    Her head throbbed and she lifted careful fingers to a clotted wound and dry blood where her forehead met her hairline. How long had she been out? She ran her hand down the stream of crackling blood and followed it until it hit the hollow in her throat where it had pooled and dried. Her hand shook when she pulled it away and the sickly sweet scent of her fear filled her senses. She was dressed in a T-shirt that swallowed her. She sniffed the shirt’s collar but it held an unfamiliar scent.
    She had lost her bladder while she was unconscious and was sitting in the puddle. The floor was filthy and damp, covered in a layer of grime and soaked with so many smells it was repulsive.
    She stood, desperate to escape the disgusting floor. Wobbling dangerously, she lost her balance and threw her hand back to catch herself, wrenching her wrist painfully. She froze, listening for the man outside to get up from his noisy seat. Silence. She squatted, pulling her hand off the floor and crossing her arms over her knees. The only light source in the room was two light bulbs on strings hanging about ten feet from each other and attached to the ceiling. If only she could turn them on without attracting attention so she could find a weapon. A dirty twin-sized mattress lay on the ground behind her. Even the darkness didn’t hide the unidentifiable stains on it. The other wall was bare, with cracks snaking from concrete floor to concrete wall to dilapidated ceiling. They must be holding her in a basement of some kind.
    She was exposed in only the shirt and stood again, this time swaying, but remaining upright. If she tried to walk, she wouldn’t be able to do much more than shuffle her feet, making noise in the process. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to walk to anyway, so she stood there, frightened and alone and worried about her mate and Lana.
    Her mate?
    Regret was her only company in this damp prison. She was so sorry and she’d never be able to tell him in person.
    She had messed up. How could she have been so naïve? She’d thought she could do this on her own, that she could keep Lana safe without the pack’s help, but she’d been wrong. She had become fast friends with the pack, but there was still a small part of her that blamed them for what had happened to her. She hadn’t been there an entire night before one of their own had tried to kill her, and failing at that, they’d managed to ruin her life instead. She hadn’t wanted any more help from them. She would be forever tied to their pack for hunts, socialization, and support for herself and her child. She had wanted one area of her life to stay the same so she could have something to call her own. She wanted a small semblance of the independence she had found and relished in. Something to be proud of. And her house in the city was it for her.
    Marianna was dead because of a werewolf. Now Morgan’s life was upside down because of a werewolf, and the person she was supposed to be with was out of reach because of werewolves. And now she was sitting in this filthy stinking dungeon at the hands of a deranged, masochistic werewolf. How could she not want to live in her little house that she worked hard to pay her monthly rent on? To have a tiny corner of her life that was still normal for her and Lana? She knew the time had long passed where she was supposed to gracefully accept this new life and all of its consequences.