Equilibrium: MM Gay Shifter Romance (Kingdom of Night Book 3) Read online

  "Aren't you?" he challenged. "You certainly enjoyed playing the role. Granted, it was for a purpose, but there's no point in pretending like you didn't enjoy being the Lodge fuckboy."

  The accusation stung even though it was true. "I went there to gather information. I did my job."

  "And then some," he said pointedly, clearing his throat. "It's no matter now, is it? You've gotten your way, your cover has been blown. How did you sleep?"

  The sudden change of subject gave me whiplash but I didn't dare steer him back onto that topic. "Fine, I guess. I'm a little jumpy, but I feel rested."

  "Good," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. One sugar, no cream.

  "So, have you figured out what you're going to do with me?"

  "Today? Not much. I'll be out until the early evening, but I'll be watching you through surveillance so mind yourself."

  "What am I supposed to do while you're gone, count logs?"

  "There are magazines in the chest," he said. "I think you'll find a way to survive without constant stimulation."

  "You sound like mom," I muttered.

  "Good," he said, opening the door again. When it shut, I heard him bolting me in from the outside. He must have made that renovation when I was out. I glanced around, wondering if he really had placed cameras in the cabin. It wasn't like I could get far with my leg in a cast, so I thought he was probably just bluffing but decided to play it cool just in case.

  My first task was to hobble over to the chest and pull out the magazines inside. What I noticed first was the sheer variety of topics, from muscle cars to parenting. The dates were even more intriguing. All of them were dated within the past couple of months, as if Prentice had cleaned out the entire display of a convenience store. When he'd had the time to collect them or why he had them at all was beyond my ability to guess. Prentice had always been every bit as much of a weirdo as me or Clive. He was just better at keeping it under wraps.

  There was even a bodybuilding magazine buried in the assortment. I couldn't help but laugh a little, waving it around for the hidden cameras. "Is this a test?" I taunted, tossing the magazine back in the chest. I picked up a home and garden magazine instead, which was admittedly an even gayer choice, but it had lots of pictures of food in it and I was starving.

  That got old after about five minutes and the pictures were only making me hungrier. Glancing around, I started to get a foolish idea. Maybe there was something lying around--an old phone or an abandoned PDA even--that I could somehow salvage and use to get a message to Remus. He undoubtedly hated me by now that he knew what I was, but once the shock of my failed death had worn off, I at least wanted to know if he was still alive.

  I kept flipping through the magazine for appearance's sake and rubbed my head. Gradually, I progressed to cradling it and hoped the cameras were picking up my stellar acting performance. After a respectable length of time, I opened the bedside table drawer and groped around for imaginary painkillers. There was nothing in the drawer, so I hobbled over to the kitchen and looked through the cabinets.

  At least he would have no trouble believing that I was rummaging around for food. One of the kitchen drawers was completely cleared out, and I could only imagine it had once housed the cutlery. Of course. Next, I opened the refrigerator and grabbed an apple.

  As I snacked, I pretended to be surveying the rest of the fridge. Towards the back, barely noticeable behind the produce, there was a small brown bag. I reached in and carefully examined it within the protection of the fridge. It was a large vial of morphine but it was almost empty. Why did he have it if he hadn't offered it to me?

  There was another bag behind it and my heart pounded. It was full of mostly empty vials and only some of them were morphine. Some of them were sedatives and others I didn't recognize, but I knew damn well that none of them were intended for a simple headache.

  I shoved the bags back inside the refrigerator and collapsed on the couch, struggling to process what I had just found. Prentice had obviously been drugging me, but why? And how? There were enough drugs in there to kill a horse and keep a human doped up for a few weeks, at the very least. More importantly, why couldn't I remember him giving them to me?

  By the time the morning had faded into night, I was still struggling to piece it all together. I was so lost in my thoughts as I lounged on the couch and studied the logs in the wall that I didn't even hear Prentice unbolt the door and I jolted when he walked in.

  "Where were you?"

  He ignored me, stepping inside. He was holding another brown bag in his hand and I had my answer. My heart skipped a beat as he walked past me and put the bag in the refrigerator. He walked over to the couch and I could see that he had a fast food bag, too, which he dropped into my lap along with a fresh stack of magazines.

  "Reading material for tomorrow. Eat and then you're going to bed," he said matter-of-factly. "In the morning, I'm taking you to the hospital to have your cast removed."

  "Tomorrow?" I sat forward. "But I just got discharged, won't they think that's weird?"

  "Dr. Burns will handle it," he said, muttering something else under his breath. He nodded to the bag. "Aren't you hungry?"

  "Yeah," I lied, fumbling with the wrapper. As I stared down at the food, a horrible idea occurred to me. I hoped my glance was subtle enough to avoid detection, but when I looked up his attention was already fixed on me.

  "What's wrong?" he asked slowly. "Don't tell me you spoiled your appetite on that apple."

  I jumped to my feet as quickly as the cast would allow and the burger hit the floor. "You've been drugging me."

  "Such waste," he scolded.

  "How long?" The question stuck in my throat.

  "Nine weeks, give or take."

  "Why?"

  He sighed. "You think you were bored reading about curtains and soufflés all day? Try hearing the same unoriginal questions day in and day out. 'Where were you?' 'What's in the brown bags?' 'Why do you have all these magazines?' 'Why are you drugging me?'" His mocking tone revealed exactly what he thought of me and I cringed.

  "Sorry for the redundancy," I said with a dry laugh. "You'll have to excuse me since someone has been drugging my food or the past two fucking months!"

  "You should be grateful I let you forget," he hissed.

  My heart sank. "What have you been doing to me?"

  "Torture, to put it simply," he said, his tone sharp. He had all but come unhinged. "Oh, that's right. I forget, you prefer to have everything sugarcoated." His gaze flickered over me judgmentally. He crouched in front of me and leaned in. "Here it is, for the umpteenth and last time. I've been spiking your food so I can wear down your resolve with different tactics without driving you insane or letting you build up resistance. It's a fine line, you know."

  He frowned and watched as I broke down, my shoulders heaving in sobs. "I'm sorry, that wasn't sugarcoated at all, was it? Oh, well. I never was good at pandering to weakness."

  "Why?" I gasped, struggling to face him through the tears. "What do you want from me?"

  "The same thing I've been trying to get out of you every night since we got here," he growled, clutching my face in his palm. "A fucking answer. You think I enjoy doing this?" He laughed almost maniacally. "You think I like doing this to you, of all people? Good God, if you had any idea the things I've done to you. I've tarnished my very soul trying to save yours."

  His eyes refocused on me suddenly with renewed purpose. "You don't understand now, you couldn't, but it's worth it. Every scream of anguish, every ounce of poison, every line carved into your flesh, my sweet boy, is penance." He took on a tone of grotesque reverence as he cupped my face in his hands to force me to look into his empty eyes. "I'm purifying your soul. Can't you see that? You can hate me all you want, but it will never compare to the ferocity with which I would hate myself if I let your soul pass into the next life in this condition."

  "You're insane," I said with a curt laugh. "I don't know how I never noticed it before--maybe i
t's just the rose-colored goggles I've always seen you through--but you're out of your fucking mind, even for a hunter."

  His eyes narrowed as fury replaced gentleness, yet another of the mood swings that were so common to him those days. "I'm glad you find the subject of your own damnation so amusing. Fortunately, I'm strong enough to bear the weight of both of our souls, even if I have to drag yours into the fires of sanctification. And I will," he said, his last words a seething whisper.

  His words sobered me, saving me from the hysterics I could feel myself on the verge of. "What are you going to do?"

  "Tonight, I'm going to give you one last chance to answer my question," he replied.

  I gulped. It was hard to imagine a question I wouldn't answer now under the mad force of his gaze, never mind the influence of torture. If he had really done to me all that he claimed he had, how had I resisted for so long? "What question is that?"

  He leaned in. "For the very last time, Arthur, what is it that keeps you clinging to mortal life? There is something, one thing you long for more than any other. Only once it is achieved can you receive the Patriarch's blessing and ascend to glory. What more do you need before your soul can be cleansed?"

  My heart writhed in my chest as if it had been pierced. So that was it. Now I understood why I had been able to withstand his torment. Nothing he could do to me was worth giving him the answer to that question.

  I shook my head slowly. It felt like he was telling me something I already knew and his words sparked a sense of urgency in me even if I couldn't remember them. Don't tell him.

  "I'll never tell you, Prentice. You can torture me all you want, but it would be easier for both of us if you just killed me."

  His fist clenched at his side and he turned the instant before I was sure he was going to hit me, instead putting his fist clear through the thick wooden coffee table. He raised it over his head and threw it to the ground with a cry of rage like I'd never heard before, not even from a dying beast. The wood splintered but he was already across the cabin. He gave the front door a hard shove and it flew off its hinges, landing against something hard that I could only assume was his SUV.

  I sat there, still trembling from shock as the sounds of his rage tearing through the forest continued. Hunters didn't fly off the handle. We weren't like the other supernaturals. We didn't go berserk like wolves or feral like vampires. Whatever was happening to him, it had no precedent. All I knew was that it couldn't end well.

  Even though the door to my prison was no longer even there, freedom held no allure. In my current state, all I could do was remain huddled on the couch, one of the only things that hadn't been destroyed in his war path. Running wasn't something that occurred to me, but even if it had, it would have done me little good.

  In that moment, I was sure of only one thing. There was absolutely no place, not in this world or the next, where Prentice couldn't find me.

  Chapter 5

  ARTHUR

  I spent that night shivering in the cabin, motionless and barely daring to breathe. I remained in that state until Prentice walked through the door in the early morning. His clothes were tattered and his hair was uncharacteristically tousled, but he looked downright peppy. In fact, he was whistling a lighthearted tune.

  He came to a stop in the threshold and first looked at me, then surveyed the damage he had done. "I see you didn't bother to clean up." He shrugged it off a moment later. "No matter. I'll have Clive take care of it when we get back."

  "W-we're going back?" I stammered.

  "Of course. First, we'll have to get those casts off."

  "But why? Last night --"

  "Like I said," he interrupted, his tone oddly pleasant as he lifted me into his arms and unceremoniously carried me to the SUV, "we're going home."

  I didn't argue, afraid that the monster that had been unleashed the night before would return if I triggered him. He went back into the cabin and returned a few minutes later, freshly dressed. He seemed to notice the giant dent the front door had made on the side of his SUV and winced before getting inside. "That's not going to buff out. I was thinking of trading it in soon anyway," he prattled. Once we found something resembling a main road, he started fiddling with the radio until an oldies station came on.

  "Oh, I love this song," he said, turning it up. When he started humming along to the peppy melody, I began wondering if he really had killed me before and I was just experiencing a strange post-mortem hallucination. When he started singing along, I was sure of it.

  "In the middle of the night," he sang along half-heartedly. Even though he wasn't putting in much effort, he hit all the right notes. I stared at him, at once mesmerized and terrified. "Through the river of dreams--"

  He cut himself off to glance at me once he caught me staring. "What, you don't like Billy? Kids these days," he said with a deprecating snort.

  I kept my gaze fixed on the road ahead, suddenly afraid that he was planning to run us off the road. Prentice had always been a bit erratic underneath his pristine outer shell, but never to this extent. This episode went beyond typical hunter psychosis. He was downright manic, and I would know. Not that I dared to say a word for the rest of the three-hour ride.

  When we finally arrived at the hospital, Prentice carried me into the trauma ward, blowing past security and a couple of doctors. His boldness was the least of my concerns. In fact, part of me hoped we would be stopped. Instead, it was almost like the hospital staff couldn't even see us.

  "Remember," he said in an easy tone, not even bothering to whisper. "if you try anything, I'll only punish them."

  His words only served to confirm the truth I had been fighting off for a long time. This person, this creature, might be inhabiting my cousin's body and mimicking his mannerisms and speech almost perfectly, but he was not Prentice. Prentice would never threaten innocents and he certainly wouldn't torture me for answers.

  The realization only made me take his words more seriously. We finally reached the end of a long hall and he carried me into an empty room and placed me on the bed. "Wait here," he instructed, leaving the room.

  I didn't dare disobey. A few minutes later, he returned with Dr. Burns. He wasn't touching her at all but she seemed stiff like someone had a gun to her back. "How are we feeling?" she asked, eerily pleasant in comparison to her snippy disposition the first time I had met her.

  "Fine," I said warily. "Just fine."

  "That's good," she said. Years ago I had seen an episode of "The Twilight Zone" where an entire town was held hostage by a precocious boy psychic, tiptoeing around in fear of his childish wrath. Now I knew how they felt. The doctor opened her bag and took out an item that probably had a fancy medical name but looked just like a circular saw to my untrained eyes. "Let's get those casts off."

  "Don't you need to perform an X-Ray first?" I asked, as much as I wanted out of the bondage.

  "Not today," she said simply. Half an hour later, my limbs were freed from the plaster and my leg felt as weak and wobbly as a toothpick. It was hard to tell whether it was poorly healed or just atrophied from months of inactivity.

  The tiny shred of hope I had been clinging to that I hadn't really been a hostage in the cabin for a couple of months was gone to the wind now. Even Prentice's blood couldn't have knit bone back together in a day.

  "Anything else I can do for you, Prentice?" Dr. Burns asked, her voice frail and cracking.

  "No, that should do it, Elaine," he said, flashing her a smile. "Oh, but if I could see you in your office for just one second..."

  "Of course," she said, disappearing from the room. Prentice turned back to me and tossed me a change of clothes. "Get dressed and stay put," he ordered before leaving.

  I stared at the closed door for a moment in bewilderment. If another hunter was scared of Prentice, maybe his condition was even worse than I thought. I changed into the fresh pair of jeans and button-down he had chosen for me. The outfit was new. The fact that he had gone shopping for me would have
been embarrassing if I wasn't already numb. I might not have remembered the months of torture I had endured, but I was beginning to realize that it had left an imprint on my mind, despite Prentice's best efforts to make me forget.

  According to the clock in the room, ten minutes had elapsed since he and Dr. Burns had left me alone, which seemed a bit long for him to be gone. Just when I was entertaining the idea of looking for him, he appeared wearing a smile that would have been out of place anywhere, never mind in a trauma ward.

  "Shall we?" he asked, propping the door open. He glanced down at my leg. "Or do you need me to carry you again?"

  "I can walk," I insisted. It was actually a lot harder than it had been with the cast, but for once I didn't want him anywhere near me.

  The entire ride back to the compound was surreal. Prentice was either dead silent or he couldn't seem to stop talking. Fortunately, he didn't seem to care that I didn't have anything to add to the conversation.

  It was evening by the time we made it back to the homestead. My relief that the car ride was over lasted only moments before a new kind of dread set in. "What's going to happen now?" I had been too afraid to ask him on the road--hell, I had been afraid to breathe.

  "Nothing for you to worry about," he said, which made me think it was something for me to worry about a lot.

  "Mom and Uncle Ezra are going to kill me."

  "No, they won't."

  With those compelling words of reassurance, he pulled me out of the SUV since I wasn't about to get out willingly. As I feared, my mother, two of my sisters, Uncle Ezra, and Emily were all gathered to meet us. I was expecting glares, spiteful comments and a few choice epithets, but it was like I wasn't even there. They all gathered around Prentice and I was pushed to the side, as usual. For once, it was a relief.

  "Thank you for everything," said my mother, hugging him tightly. "Everything is all set up for you downstairs."

  There was no time to process what she meant before Emily intercepted Prentice, flinging her arms around his neck dramatically and hanging off of him so he had no choice but to pick her up. "I missed you!" she cried, smashing her lips against his.