The trio hadn’t come into pack territory at the same entrance as the other humans, so Shaya could only guess that they had taken advantage of the pack being preoccupied during the attack to force their way through the gap Tao hadn’t yet had the chance to fully secure. Humans wouldn’t have stood a chance against it, but another shifter could.

“So, I was just wondering,” she began in a flat tone, “what’s the plan?”

Eyes the color of a dark storm landed on her, twinkling with malice. “Logan wants Nick to find you. He wants him to watch you die. After what Nick did to me, I like that plan.”

“What did Nick do to you?” He didn’t answer. She cocked her head at him, noticing he had a very chimp-like face. “Why do you hate shifters so much?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like for me.”

God, he sounded like her mother. “Then tell me.” And keep your mind away from Nick.

His upper lip curled. “Imagine how it feels to have to share your own soul. Share it with an animal, no less—an animal that selfishly pushes its wants and instincts on you. You have to live in a pack with an Alpha for a dad—someone everyone looks up to, while they look down on you for not being as good as he is. Imagine how it feels to find that fate has dumped you with a true mate who is nothing but a slut. Yeah, that’s right, she imprinted on someone else, even had pups with him.

“The only good thing about this life is the power and strength. I told my father to step down and give me his position, but would he? No. He said I didn’t have what it took to be an Alpha. So I did what had to be done—I killed him in his sleep. Did the pack accept me as their Alpha? No. They threw me out. As I had no place to go and no money, it was no wonder that I soon found myself in juvie. That was a hell like no other.”

“And that’s where you met Nick,” she surmised. She couldn’t recall Nick speaking of anyone he’d severely pissed off in juvie, though. Or anyone who resembled a chimp, for that matter.

“Speaking of Nick, he should be here soon. He’ll definitely come for you. I know that much.” He turned to the humans. “Where the hell is Logan?” They merely shrugged. “I’m going to take a look outside, see what’s going on.” To Shaya’s frustration, he disappeared out of the hut, closing the door behind him.

“What’s his problem with Nick?” she asked the two humans.

“That’s his business,” said the chubby compulsive spitter who would look right at home on a porch swing with a banjo.

Shaya released a sigh of frustration and turned to the gangly guy beside Chubby. “What did Nick do to him?”

Without moving his eyes from her br**sts, Gangly absentmindedly replied, “Merrick just wants to make Nick suffer—it’s like a tit-for-tat thing.”

Merrick? That name certainly rang a bell. “But…Merrick’s dead. Nick challenged him in juvie; he killed him.” And he’d spent most of his life feeling bad about it.

“Obviously, he didn’t. I’m pretty sure Merrick would have left Nick alone if the game preserve hadn’t been found and Logan hadn’t been goading him.” Gangly shrugged carelessly. “In any case, he intends to make your mate suffer.”

“If you want Nick to suffer,” began Amber, “all you have to do is kill her. Let me go, and I’ll heal you.”

“You hadn’t really healed Nick at all, had you?” Shaya somehow knew. Amber’s shocked expression told her it was true. “I have to admit, it didn’t occur to me at first. You looked so genuinely devastated when he told his mom and Roni about the memory lapse. You even asked for the chance to heal him again. But you wouldn’t have truly healed him. No. Keeping him sick meant that you could keep him coming back to you, didn’t it?”

Amber’s expression turned somber. “It was the only time he’d really let me touch him. The only way to make him—the guy I love—need me.”

“That’s not exactly an excuse, sweetie. You kept my mate ill to the point that he thought he couldn’t claim me. But that was the whole idea, wasn’t it?” Before Amber could answer, Logan came bursting into the cabin, hobbling and bleeding, with Merrick close behind him.

“Nick’s unconscious,” Logan told them all. “I managed to get away while the shifters were concentrating on helping and healing each other. But it won’t be long before he wakes up. We need to be ready.”

Merrick retrieved a can of kerosene—kerosene?—from the floor.

“Remember,” said Logan, “don’t splash the hut. We don’t want the place to blow up or burn too quickly. Just dribble it around the perimeter of the hut. It’ll spread to the hut quick enough, but not so fast that Nick doesn’t get to hear, feel, and smell her burning to death.” With that, Logan followed Merrick outside, closing the door behind him.

Motherfuckers. Logan would know a lot about Nick’s past through his juvie records; he would know about the accident that killed his father and forced Nick’s wolf to surface prematurely. Yeah, if there was anything that would make Nick suffer, it was this. Fuck. That. It really was time to go. One half-shifter against two humans was much better odds than if Merrick and Logan had been standing there too.

“I’ll give you only one warning,” she told the two humans in her gravest voice. “Release me, or I will kill you.” Instead of heeding her warning, they both laughed. In fact, so did Amber. How dumb. Seeing that Gangly was still ogling her br**sts, Shaya sneered at him. “Must you be a perv?”

He gave her another of his creepy smiles. “I’m just wondering what color your ni**les are.”

She raised a brow tauntingly. “Why don’t you come over here and find out for yourself?”

“You know what, I think I will.”

If she had been calling his bluff, Shaya would have been panicking right about then. But she hadn’t been calling his bluff. She in fact wanted him to come to her, because what he didn’t know was that her wrists were no longer bound.

Fueled by her rage at what had happened to her mate, Shaya waited until he was close before supporting her weight on one hand as she sharply whipped up one of her legs and kicked the rifle out of his hands. Before he could react, she whipped up her leg again and booted him in the balls; he made a strange choking sound and fell to his knees. Abruptly, she snatched the knife her father had long ago given her that was tucked into her boot and speared it into his chest.