Forever Mine

FORTY FOUR

Roxy's body landed with a thud. Sharp points stabbed into her skin. Gravel. Every inch of her body ached. Her head throbbed with an intensity she'd never felt before. Another thump sounded next to her. Cleo. Her mind screamed to her body to move but she felt as though her limbs were buried in set concrete. Her wolf was nowhere to be found, leaving her feeling chillingly isolated. A heaviness and lightness circulated her body at once, confusing her mind and making her stomach nauseated. Muffled voices and a whooshing in her ears made her feel as if she was under water. There was the masculine voice again, his words blurring into a continuous rumble and the woman's wails had diluted to choked sobs.

With as much strength as she could muster, Roxy managed to pry her eyes open. The brightness made her head spin faster, but she fought on. Her vision was incredibly blurred, the world around her shadows of colours. There was a lump of a figure next to her, the paint of blonde the only thing she could recognise of her sister.

'Cleo.' Roxy coughed and spluttered at the dryness of her throat, which felt as though she'd swallowed ten glasses of sand from the Sahara.

There was no response, and if she couldn't hear the two dull heartbeats close by, one quicker than the other, she'd have thought both her sister and unborn baby were dead. They were both alive – just.

Roxy gave out a cry when she was yanked up to her feet by a rope binding her raw wrists. She was like a puppet, her useless body resting against her captor as he made her body move at his command. To her left she could make out an open boot of a vehicle. The mirage of purple and green filled it. It was then that a wet and woodsy scent assaulted her smell. Wolfsbane. They'd been lying in a coffin of it. It was no surprise as to why her wolf was AWOL and why her usually powerful body hadn't been able to recover from the crash injuries.

Roxy suddenly gave a large heave, her body trying its best to rid itself from the toxic wolfsbane. The masculine voice chuckled, causing the hairs on the back of Roxy's neck to rise.

'Why are you doing this, Levi?' There was a tremble to her voice. The feminine sobs had to belong to Abigail. 'Abi, it's okay. I know this isn't your choice.'

'I promise you, I didn't want to be a part of this.' Her figure loomed in front of Roxy, a blur of olive skin and brown. There was a dash of pink.

Roxy swallowed against her drying mouth. 'I know. It's the bracelet. He – they – are controlling you with it. It's okay.'

In her scattered peripheral she could see four large figures looming closer. Roxy tried to fight against Levi's grasp on her as they dragged Cleo to her feet, but his swift action of swiping out her legs had her hanging like a ragdoll. The hulky men each took an arm of Cleo's and dragged her towards a building a short distance away, her feet dragging in the gravel. Roxy gasped when Levi shoved her to the ground, the gravel cutting into her palms as she tried to break her fall. Two iron-like grips wrapped around her biceps, dragging her in Cleo's tracks.

Roxy managed to lift her heavy head, straining her eyes into focus so she could see where their kidnappers had taken them. The place was a dive compared to the natural beauty and luxury of the Moonlight Ridge territory. Instead of the impressive mountains and paddocks laden with thick grass, the land around her was vast and bare. The remaining blades of grass were brown and dry, the trees keeling over with their dead branches. The only sign of greenery were tall reeds in the distance. The smell of a stagnant swamp lingered.

They were in Swamp Lands Region – far away to the east from Mountainous Region and north of Coastal Region.

They continued to be dragged towards a gothic-looking manor. The large house was made of dark grey bricks, the windows surrounded by a dark trim and covered with bars. In the centre was a casement window, the paint on the doors faded and peeled. At the bottom to the right a single room jutted out from the main building. To its side was a set of stairs – a cellar. On all four corners of the house were turrets with wolf heads sitting atop of each one. It reminded Roxy of the one from the mausoleum, but even from here she could see these wolf heads looked down at their guests with evil eyes. The entire manor was rundown with peeling paint, dirty windows and dried leaves accumulating around its walls. The driveway she was being marched down was lined with raised walls of concrete garden beds. What Roxy imagined to have once been beautiful flowers were now dead stems and weeds. In the centre of the gardens was a tall water feature. The resin which hadn't yet been smashed in large chunks, was being suffocated by a thick moss.