“Working with Aedar, I had to perform in front of a group of chatters. Each day I prepared myself, as well as the others. We put on makeup, dressed in revealing clothes. Taught what to say, how to act.” She licked her lips.
“Then we flirted until we could get them into a chat room. That was when they ‘asked’ us to perform certain tasks. Mostly removing clothes, touching…ourselves.” She closed her eyes, tightening them. “We had to use implements, dildos, or fingers to get ourselves off. Had to say their name as we came.”
I saw red. I wanted to bring Aedar back to life and kill him all over again.
As the group looked at her, she gulped. Her face was aflame. I wanted nothing more than to take her discomfort away from her. But we had to find out more about these stolen shifters, and it sounded like they were experimenting with humans.
“And how did you come into this call-girl facility? Where were you before?” Locke asked.
“I was blindfolded from my previous…place,” she gulped. “Shoved in a van with my hands and feet bound. I didn’t know if it was night or day. When we arrived, they injected me in the neck, and when I woke up, I was in the same room you all found me in. I couldn’t really tell you how many days I was there. Often, I felt like I was in a fog with some of the things I did. I just counted the training or work cycles they gave me.” She let out her breath, balling her fists into her knit pants.
“They taught me things to please the customers on the other side of the screen. Basic cam girl stuff that I didn’t know about. The worst was when Aedar would be in the room, telling me what to do to myself. When I couldn’t see the other person on the other side of the screen, I could pretend they weren’t there. But Aedar liked to watch the girls, sometimes doing things in the corner while we performed. That was the hardest.”
A growl left my throat when I smelled her salty tear fall down her cheek. She hung her head in shame, not watching the others in the room.
My brothers and sister were not disgusted with Journey. They were disgusted by the evil monsters who forced these innocent women to perform as cam girls. No one should have their choices taken away, forced into an industry they didn’t want to be a part of.
She wiped away the tear with the base of her palm, her heart pounding in her chest.
“Sometimes, if they offered to pay enough, there would be meetings. I was drugged though, so usually I don’t remember.”
“Oh fuck.” Hawke ran his hair through his mohawk. “Don’t let the girl say any more than she has to. This is fucking terrible!”
Journey’s lips pursed, her eyes not meeting anyone’s gaze. Locke raised his hand, silencing the room.
I knew that look, he wanted to probe further, ask her deeper questions like if she knew where she was taken, or if the customers came to her. If she saw anything fantasy, like if she knew of our kind.
I snarled. I couldn’t hold back any longer. My wolf was drawn to her. Journey gave him life, gave him meaning to survive. Slowly, he was pushing through, becoming different from what he was. No longer the rabid animal, but the wolf that shared a body with a man.
I pulled Journey’s chair away from the table. My brothers stood up with my quick movements, fearing that I had lost myself. They drew weapons from their belts. Beretta already had her Glock in her hand, pointing it straight at me. The red dot danced across my chest.
I pulled Journey to my body and sat down on the chair where she sat. My body encompassed her as I settled her on my lap as I tried to keep the stares away from her. She gasped, but I held her tighter in my embrace.
My wolf needed her touch, to hold her. He was howling at me, growling because old wounds were being ripped open again for this poor woman who had already endured much in her time.
My purr heightened, rumbling into the back of her body. She melted into me, her fingers gripping my jacket.
Fucking heaven.
“Don’t hurt him,” Journey mumbled. That was all she could say because I had her too tight against my chest.
“He saved me. I owe him everything.”
My fangs lengthened, elongating longer than they had in years. My wolf was still uncontrollable and most of all, unpredictable. And somehow, he had pulled down the barriers I’d kept up for years and showed his displeasure, warning our brothers to stay back.
My brothers did not stand down until Locke lowered his hand slowly and touched the table. “Were you taken to one of these clients? Did you see their faces? Maybe we could—”
I cut off Locke abruptly. “SILENCE!”
The room shuddered.
Journey gripped my jacket. My wolf stood up in all his glory, radiating more power than I’d felt since our prime as a warrior. My vision sharpened, my smell heightened, and my strength made Journey feel like nothing but a feather in our arms. The desire to keep her safe, to protect her from anyone, even if that meant I denied my close brother, trumped all. I would not have her become more upset.
“You don’t have a right to ask her that,” I barked.
“You can’t make her decisions for her, Grim,” Locke curtly said. “She needs to be with her own kind, get a new life, start over.”
There was a hidden message behind those words—that she needed to stay away from the club, stay away from me.
