Feral Obsession

Chapter Twelve

"His clan?"

Ryan grabbed her arm roughly, yanking her away from the door and down a hallway to their left. She let him, her brain trying to figure out what was happening. What was going on. Where she was in the first place.

Ryan opened a door in the hallway and shoved her inside of it. Not quite expecting the change in events, Ruby tripped over her feet and fell hard. She laid there for a moment, head spinning.

This was a dream. It had to be. First, she had found a too-good-to-be-true apartment. And then, she saw a man turn into a wolf. And now, Ryan was kidnapping her.

Ryan! He was supposed to be her harmless friend.

"Come on. I know you're not this stupid. I really didn't think much about you moving into the building, but the night at the rink? I knew something was going on with you and Atlas. You're working with him, right?"

Her body was trembling. Tears gathered in her eyes as her mind was screaming at her to run.

A sob broke free from her lips. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Ryan grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her onto her back so he could look into her eyes. He wore an expression she had never seen before on his face, and suddenly she realized that this was it: she was about to be killed.

Ryan was a serial killer, and he was taking her next.

"Lying to me is going to get you nowhere," he snarled. "Do you know how fucking long we've waited to find a weak link in his pack? And now we have one-"

"Weak link in his pack? What does that even mean? Are you insinuating that Atlas and Brody are-"

"Werewolves, yes." Ryan shoved her back on the ground. "Which you know, so drop the act."

She laid there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, her brain working overtime. This had to be a dream. A scary nightmare that she would wake up from any moment now. A nightmare that she would forget as soon as her alarm went off.

She would go to work like nothing was wrong.

She must have been too silent, because Ryan kicked her hard in the ribs. It had her yelping in pain, and then turning over to sob into the carpet, hand on her now bruised ribs. She let herself wallow in the pain before crawling up to her knees, shaking like a leaf.

"It'll only get harder, Ruby. You better tell us right now what he's been doing with those rogue wolves."

Her brain was screaming at her to fight back, but she couldn't. She didn't know the first thing about fighting. Her ribs ached, and she wondered if Ryan had kicked hard enough to crack them. She was so afraid, so terrified, she felt frozen.

She was suddenly, viciously transported back to her childhood. She tried to stop the onslaught of memories, of her father yelling at her and her mother, and she focused on Ryan. Saw him glaring down at her, a shadow of the man she'd once known.

She'd never known Ryan. Not really.

"Ryan," she hiccuped. "I'm serious, I don't know what you're asking. That man, that man-wolf, that's the first time I've ever seen something like this-"

"Fine. Choose the hard way, be my guest." Ryan reached out and grabbed Ruby, fisting her hair and yanking her to stand. With his other hand, he grabbed her phone from her back pocket. "You won't be needing this," he grunted. His grip burned her scalp, and she tried to pry his hand out of her hair, but he held tightly as he yanked her from the room.