Aidan found his mind wandering back to his Luna throughout the Alpha meeting. He had watched her relax and enjoy herself while back with her family and friends for the wedding. Alex's smile was breathtaking. Her lips were full and pink and he longed to feel them on his own again. Aidan's trousers became tighter as he recalled her naked body. She was insatiable.

The desire to mark her was all-consuming but he couldn't see an easy way through their drama. He was ashamed of himself for how he had treated her, not allowing her the opportunity to tell him about Kit and just barrelling ahead with admonishing her. And yet, when it came to it, he had asked Kit to bring her safely back to the pack, knowing that he could trust the life of his Luna to him. He didn't have any answers on how to fix any of this mess.

Ronan stood now to present the updates they had received from some of the other packs. Everyone knew by now that Alpha Dax Stevens was behind the attack. The captured rogues had been broken, spilling the little information they had. Dax had staged the massive assault on East River so he could move operatives into position elsewhere. Thorough sweeps were underway in all the neighbouring packs to ensure that they hadn't been infiltrated. This was a call to war. It would be difficult to undermine Dax's network, however, and take a battle to him. Instead of having pack territory, they seemed to have assimilated themselves across the entire country from Mexico to Canada with no known headquarters or pack house. Although the allied packs had struck various buildings and operations throughout the country over the last number of years and killed many of Dax's pack members in the process, there was no end in sight. They needed to be stopped but it would take support from all the packs across the country to do so. And that would take time and resources.

The attendees spoke back and forth for a while on the best way forward and setting up teams across the packs whose purpose it would be to uncover any and all details of the workings of Dax's network.

Talks were just coming to a close when Aidan noticed the Black Mountain pack members at the table were mind linking. Whatever the topic was, it looked serious based on the anger that started to burn on their faces.

Ronan came out of the mind link and looked directly at Aidan.

'Alex has been taken'.

_____________

The floor was cold beneath her when she started to wake. She could hear noises but they seemed far away. Alex tried to open her eyes but the lids were heavy and non compliant. She was freezing now and her body felt battered and bruised. She remembered the crash and the circumstances that had landed her here. She forced her eyes to open as the noise around her came into more focus. It was a man screaming. She sat up abruptly, her head swimming again from the motion. A concussion perhaps. She was on the floor of a cell. There were three stone walls, with bars making up the fourth wall. There was a tiny window on the back wall. Night had fallen. The man screamed again. It sounded like Kit. She felt sick. It sounded like the noise of a whip right before the scream. They were torturing him.

Alex called to her wolf. The presence was weak. She tried to shift but found that she couldn't. Alex looked at her legs and arms, quickly finding a puncture mark on her left arm. She smelled it. Someone had given her a dose of wolfsbane. She was suddenly more afraid. She had no wolf to help her.

Questions suddenly started coming into her mind. Who were these people? What did they want? How was she going to get out of here. They had called her 'Princess' when they took her and before she had passed out. Perhaps they didn't know that she had been the Gamma in Black Mountain but they seemed to know she was a Luna. Maybe there was an advantage there for her to exploit.

The tortured screams of Kit continued for few more painful minutes until silence fell. There were men laughing now and the sound of doors clanging open and closed, keys in a lock. Loud footsteps brought them outside her cell. She made herself look as meek as possible.

'What do you want?' she almost whispered.

The tallest of the three men let out a bark like laugh and stepped closer to the bars.

'I'm looking to have a nice sit down with your bastard of a brother. Him and his 'taskforce' been making trouble for me and my businesses and I would like to straighten things out with them. Plus my sources tell me that you're he new Luna over at Alpha Aidan's. He might be more willing to talk to me about some boundary issues now that I have his mate'.

He smirked. He was white with a shaved head, in his mid-forties if she had to guess, and some terrible scarring slashed across his face. He smelled like cigarettes and blood.

'Do you know who I am?' he asked.

'Alpha Dax Stevens'. She looked down at the ground as she answered him, trying hard to hide the disgust she felt at being so close to him.

'Ah my reputation precedes me', his smile was twisted, his teeth sharp and yellowing. He gave an ironic bow and the lackeys either side of him laughed.

'Well little lady, you just sit pretty there while the men sort out the issues at hand. Keep nice and quiet or we'll have to start giving you the same treatment as your friend next door. Your wolf should be asleep now for the night with the dose I gave you. No need to bring her out to play while you're here'.

They all laughed again as they left the cells, exiting through a door a short way from Alex's cell. She listened to see if she could hear anything useful. Their footsteps sounded in a corridor but almost immediately, she could hear them outside the tiny window behind her. She stood awkwardly, her brain still slow at giving her body commands. If she stood on her tip toes, she could just make out shapes of men in discussion. Eight or nine perhaps. Alpha Dax was giving orders before he climbed into one of the jeeps with another man. They drove away and the assembled men dispersed in various directions. She leaned around to try and see as much as she could out the small opening. It looked as though the cells curved around from where she was standing and continued into other rooms on the other side of the curve. There were men going into the area almost directly across from her. It was odd - it looked as though the buildings were cut into part of a hill. There were bushes and trees on top of what would be the roof. Clever, she thought, this would be hard to see from any angle. She couldn't see that far but she imagined that they were surrounded by small hills or earth high enough to provide coverage in every direction. No wonder these guys are so hard to catch. They could literally disappear into the woods into a bunker if they were being followed and it would be so difficult to tell where they had gone.

That would also mean that even if there were people out looking for her, this area could be camouflaged and passed by.

Alex would have to get out of here by herself. She called out to Kit a few times at intervals to see if he was waking or stirring. Every now and then she would hear a low groan but he wasn't waking up yet. She started running scenarios through her head while she felt every wall and bar in her cell to assess whether there were any weaknesses she could exploit. The bars were covered in points with silver which burned her skin. She steadied herself. She needed to calm her mind and ready herself for whatever would come. She had fought her way out of terrible situations in the past. Granted she had been at her full strength in most of those scenarios but she needed to approach this in the same way. She sat back onto the floor and started breathing deeply and slowly. She needed to get her brain back on board and working fully. She had to start somewhere.