Callin took a moment to process what Valerie was telling him. If she was telling him the truth, and he thought she was—his senses would have picked up on it if she was lying—then that meant Brianne carried the Sanmere protein and she could be turned into a dragon. They could have eternity together.
He swallowed down his excitement and kept his focus on Valerie.
“Right,” he said. “And what does that have to do with Brianne and where she is?”
Valerie held his gaze as she spoke.
“Well, Brianne broke the agreement we made all of those years ago, didn’t she? She stopped being loyal to me the moment she slept with you. So, like I said, I sold her. Riley Morgan picked her up about an hour ago,” Valerie said casually, like she was just telling Callin it might rain that afternoon.
Her face was the picture of calm but Callin knew she was gloating inside. Riley Morgan was one of the most well-known dragon Matchmakers in the district and if he had Brianne, then Callin knew she would be sold quickly.
“Are you fucking insane?” he demanded. “What the hell made you pull that stunt?”
He jumped to his feet and Valerie calmly got to hers. She closed the gap between herself and Callin.
“I know you’re upset so I’m going to excuse your tone this one time,” she said. “You might call the shots around here, but this is nothing to do with the movie. This is pack business and you know it. I got a pretty hefty fee for Brianne and that money will be funneled back into the pack. Let this go, Callin, I’m warning you.”
“Yeah?” Callin said, shoving Valerie away from him. “And I’m warning you. Watch your fucking back, Valerie, because this is far from over.”
He left the trailer, Valerie’s laughter echoing in his ears, and ran toward his car. He could hear the director calling after him, but he didn’t stop. If he got fired, fine, he’d live with that. He didn’t care about the movie. In that moment, he didn’t care about his career at all. All he cared about was getting Brianne back.
12
Brianne was still trying to make sense of what had happened to her. She had left the set to go out and get Valerie a steak and cheese sub from her favorite place. As she left the sandwich shop, a man had grabbed her and pulled her into his car. She had no idea who he was or why he had taken her. All she knew was that he was damned strong and all of her kicking and fighting him had no effect whatsoever. Someone had stepped forward and tried to intervene and the man had punched him in the face, knocking him clean out with one swing. After that, no one else tried to help Brianne and she had found herself forced into the back seat of the man’s car. He had smashed her head against the window until she fell unconscious, and that was the last thing she remembered until now.
She had woken up a few minutes ago to find herself tied up in a room she didn’t recognize. The room looked like a dining room. She was tied to a hard, straight-backed chair, and in front of her was a dining table and three chairs with a gap for a fourth chair—the chair Brianne believed she was currently sitting on.
She struggled, trying to pull her wrists or her ankles loose, but the rope that held her was too tight. It was so tight she could feel the rope cutting into her skin, and every time she tugged on it, she felt it getting tighter.
She screamed, shouting for help, but as she had expected, no one came. She tried to work out if she had seen the man’s face before, but she knew she hadn’t. He was a stranger to her and she figured she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She felt hot tears rolling down her face as panic seized her once more. If she ever got out of here alive, she was sure to lose her job now. Valerie was never going to believe she had been snatched off the streets this way. There was very little chance of her getting out of here alive, though, she knew that much. Whoever the man was, why would he have taken her if he didn’t have some sort of a plan for her? People generally didn’t snatch other people off the streets and then just let them walk away from that. The best-case scenario here was that he killed her quickly rather than torturing her and raping her first.
She thought of Callin, how he had promised to keep her safe. She had no doubt he had meant it, and if he knew where she was, she knew he would come for her. But he would have no way of knowing where she was. To him, it would look like she went out to get Valerie her lunch and just didn’t bother coming back. She knew how it would look, especially after this morning. He would assume she had lied to him this morning, that really, she had been sneaking away and had made up a story to prevent the awkwardness of him catching her, and now, she had completed her plan to run away from him.
Dammit, she thought to herself. I have to find a way out of here.
She tried pulling her wrists free again, but again, all she succeeded in doing was tightening the bonds that held her. She screamed again, yelling and shouting until her throat was hoarse. It was no use.
