Chapter 30: Theodore - Marked By Love

Swaying.

A harsh jostle.

Cursing and screaming …

Theodore forced his eyes open. It was dim, and everything past the point of his nose was out of focus. The familiar weight of his glasses was gone. No wonder he couldn’t see anything.

Squinting, he tried hard to make out basic shapes. Everything was dark and confined, but he could determine there were four people in front of him. One of them was the source of cursing, and Theodore took a hard sniff, the source of the blood.

“He fucking shot me!”

“Shut up, keep the pressure.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up, I got shot in the chest!”

“How long until we get there?”

The scent of blood increased, followed by, “Fuck!”

“You should have stayed in bear form!”

The thing Theodore was confined in jerked beneath him, throwing his body to the side and into another object. The object was warm and grunted indignantly, if not feebly.

Turning his attention from the yelling group of four, Theodore studied the blurry shape he was now lying on. He deduced it was an unconscious woman, from the scent of her, a fellow omega. But something was off … If his hands were free, he’d run them along her body, searching for the source of distress scent emanating from her.

Another jostle and he fell face first onto her unconscious body. Instead of hitting soft flesh, he collided with cold, biting metal. Angling his face, he inspected it. Copper.

Oh no, if this omega was bound with copper, that could only mean one thing. A witch.

Was that how these alphas had found Theodore? If so, how come it had taken them this long to catch up with him? That is assuming they were Gage’s goons. It would be just his luck to have some other pack of alpha-holes kidnap him.

Theodore wanted to groan dramatically at the ridiculousness of it all, but thus far the alphas were too distracted by their injured companion to notice he was awake, so he didn’t. The movement jerked more violently, then started a constant rumbling bounce, and Theodore wanted to groan in protest for a whole other reason.

His head was pounding, and his lack of glasses wasn’t helping the situation. Theodore could only guess they were all jammed inside some sort of car. Probably a paneled van like every villain on TV. Couldn’t his kidnappers be a little more imaginative?

Then again, if they were, Theodore would probably have been found a lot sooner. Did he care at this point?

For more than three years he’d had a nagging worm of a thought, boring its way through his brain: he wasn’t going to survive. Despite continuing to run, to change his identity, Theodore had, in a way, resolved to the fact that one day Gage’s goons would catch up to him and he’d be dead.

Of course Theodore would still put up a fight when they eventually arrived. Just because he’d made peace with dying at their hands didn’t mean Theodore didn’t want to inflict as much damage as he could before going out. But now the moment was here, he wasn’t resolved. Instead, he desperately didn’t want to disappear from the face of the earth.

It was no secret to him why. Now, for the first time in a long time, he had something to go home to. He had a reason to live, a reason to look forward to dawn’s new light and the brilliance of the moon from another day passing. Royce had changed Theodore’s life in ways he hadn’t understood or admitted to himself, until now.

He’d been so stubborn, so blinded. If only he’d allowed himself the privilege of emotion, of being human, he’d have let Royce mate mark him. Then he’d know exactly where Theodore was and be storming in to save the day.

Even without the mate mark, Theodore had no doubts Royce was currently tearing through the woods to save him. He’d made his alpha’s life so much harder than it needed to be … His alpha. His mate.

Oh fate, what had Theodore’s stubbornness done?

He faded in and out as the car rumbled onward, taking him further and further away from Royce. They must have hit him hard because his head was still pounding when the car jerked to a stop, and the doors flew open, faded light flooding into the once dark enclosure.

The bear, the one Theodore had shot, was pale and slow to respond as two alphas carried him. Theodore couldn’t help the satisfied grin at the chaos he’d wrought on his kidnappers. Honestly, getting shot by your prey was what you deserved if you were in the business of trafficking, in his not-so-humble opinion.

Theodore and the witch were left in the van. Shimmying upward, intense and shooting pricks up his appendages told Theodore his legs had gone numb from the prolonged stillness in the cramped space. And the zip ties holding his hands behind his back were biting into him, making his fingers heavy and unresponsive from lack of circulation.

Still, Theodore tried to angle himself just right so his hand behind his back could grab the door handle … No luck. The only things he could find purchase on wouldn’t open the door. The alphas must have put the child locks on. If he could wiggle into the driver’s seat, then maybe he’d have a chance.

Trying to move his pinprick numb legs in the small space, he ultimately fell flat on his face. Theodore let himself crash to the van floor in a huff. Next he turned his attention to the witch.

She was unconscious by the looks of it. When he tried to call out to her, his mouth was too dry to get much volume.

“Hey, are you going to be okay? Can you hear me?”

His attempts were most likely futile, but still, if the witch was bound in the back of the same van as him, they should be allies, no? And if he could ever use an ally, it was now.

When calling out to her didn’t work, he resorted to trying to nudge her awake. Being tied up though, his movements weren’t as suave as he would have liked. The end result was him jabbing her harshly in the ribs.

One bloodshot eye flew open, and a deep, emerald-green gaze pierced Theodore. The witch took in a rattling breath, her lips cracked and dry, her mouth bleeding into her mess of black hair. She hissed at him.

Theodore froze. Perhaps jabbing a witch in the ribs while she was bound in copper was not the best way to make her acquaintance. Now he considered it, the hiss was warranted.

“Do you know who these people are? The ones who took us?” he asked her. “They left us in this van, maybe if we work together, we can—”

He didn’t get to tell her his grand plan for escape because two alphas had slid open the van’s side door.

Theodore startled, then tried to launch himself at one of the alphas. She grabbed him around the waist and slammed him into the side of the van.

“Can’t we just kill him now and take the body to Gage? This one is proving to be a lot more trouble than he’s worth.” It was the woman who knocked him out at the vet clinic.

“No,” the second alpha said lazily as he reached around Theodore to drag the witch out by her hair. “Gage gave specific instructions; he wants to meet with the omega first.”

The woman grumbled, then punched Theodore in the face. “So you don’t get any more ideas,” she said before tucking him under her arm and carrying him.

As it was, Theodore was disoriented without his glasses, but now he had repeated head trauma and his stomach rolled and filled with acid. He was about to vomit everywhere if they didn’t stop tossing him around and hitting him. Yeah, he wouldn’t be causing anyone any trouble until he could see straight. He wished he could see well enough to know where they were, some sort of landmark to tell him which direction to run when he escaped these brutes. If he escaped these brutes.

The female alpha carried him into a building, past the injured bear alpha passed out on a sofa, then down a flight of stairs. He was unceremoniously tossed into a corner. The witch was kicked down the stairs after him. When she finally landed on the floor, her body instinctively curled in on itself as she trembled.

One of the alphas slammed the door at the top of the stairs, and a grinding click sounded. Theodore’s best guess was they were locked inside. Good, he thought. The less attention from these imbeciles, the better.

Struggling to his feet, Theodore inspected the basement as best he could—there was little light coming in from a small bay window. The only furnishing was a stained and derelict mattress in one corner, stuffing spilling out the side. The room was made of packed dirt, the scent of mud, mildew, and worms overwhelming—a cellar perhaps. When he found nothing that could be used to his advantage, he paced for something to do. Meanwhile, the witch clawed at the ground until her fingers found purchase on the mattress and her frail body collapsed onto it.

Even without the aid of his glasses, he could tell she was in bad shape. Her elbows too boney, her legs sickly thin, her clothes too large. He wondered how long she’d been their prisoner.

“I’m Theodore,” he said, trying to repair their relationship after he jabbed her in the ribs.

“I know who you are.” Her voice sounded as if it were being torn from a bloody throat with barbed wire. Her startling green eyes opened and fixed on Theodore. “They’ve had me searching for you, every day for one thousand and ninety-nine days.”

A chill ran up Theodore’s spine. If they’d been using a witch to search for him, how had it taken this long?

“My scent,” he whispered. “I’ve been suppressing it with alpha birth control.” Her green eyes narrowed, and Theodore knew he was right. “But then how did they know I was at the clinic or that I would be outside?”

The witch rolled until she was facing the wall, effectively ending the conversation. Her hair pooled behind her and the dip in the neck of her dress revealed her spine and shoulder blades. They were dangerously close to poking out from her sallow skin.

Theodore frowned. This omega didn’t need to be bombarded with questions right now, what she needed was something to eat and probably a bath. And to have that blasted copper removed.

“I might be able to—to get that copper off you,” he offered.

Her head inclined minutely. He took that as encouragement and crept closer to her. Turning around, his bound hands searched behind him for the cold metal. Fingertips finding purchase, he ran along it to find an end. It bumped her bare skin. Blood-curdling screams pierced Theodore’s ears, and the metal became hot to the touch. Startled, he fell forward onto his face.

“Okay, I won’t do that again,” he said.

When the witch didn’t respond, he adjusted to sit against the wall next to her.

“I have a mate, he should be coming for me,” Theodore said. It was meant to comfort the witch, but who was he kidding? Theodore needed to hear it himself to make it real. “Royce. Royce is coming. He’ll bring his friends. I’ll make sure they get you out too.”

He wanted to believe it … He wanted to believe in fairytale endings and knights in shining armor, in good triumphing over evil. But sitting in this dank cellar with the beaten and starved omega, he was finding it hard to believe anything good could survive this world.