Vonn slammed on the brakes, and she was thrown forward. The seat belt had likely left a hell of a bruise, but she said nothing as the truck's wheels skidded on the wet ground in front of his cabin before coming to a stop mere inches from one of the stone posts anchoring the patio.
He hadn't meant to do that, and the reaction that zapped through him was overwhelming. She could have been hurt. Killed, even, if he'd hit the stone hard enough to crumple the front end.
The near miss left him breathless with rage—at himself. If he killed his own omega, even by accident—
Vonn threw open the door of the truck hard enough to test the hinges. He reached across the bench seat and grabbed her arm too hard, trying to mask the fact that his hand was shaking. He pulled her across the seat and onto the ground, releasing her only after she'd found her footing in the mud.
She was tall for a beta, but he was tall for an alpha, so he figured they canceled each other out. She scowled at him with her chin held high as if he hadn't nearly crashed, as if he hadn't just manhandled her, as if she planned to make good on her threat and kill him where he stood.
"You're going to tell me why you've been sent to the Boundarylands," he roared, too frustrated and shaken to play games any longer. "You're going to give me everything, now."
"Stacy Clarke, Sergeant, Fort Blanchard." She punctuated each syllable like a curse.
"I already know your fucking name." Vonn grabbed her by the shoulders. "What I want is the damn truth."
She sighed, some of the rigidity going out of her stance. "Stacy Clarke, Sergeant, Fort Blanchard."
"Stop saying that." Vonn growled in frustration, and when she stayed silent, he let out a roar.
It wasn't something he'd planned to do, any more than he'd planned to come home with an omega today. Vonn had always been one to act first and think later. For the most part, it worked out.
And this time was no exception, at least as far as getting her attention. She jumped, then almost seemed to cower before forcing herself to stand once again at her full height—but some of the light had left her eyes as her gaze fell to the ground.
"Why do you keep repeating that?" Vonn asked quietly, some part of him wanting to mollify her.
But she sensed his fleeting weakness and seized on it, not only coming right back to attention but moving fractionally closer, almost daring him to react. "It's my name, rank, and assigned station. That's the only information a prisoner of war has to share with their captor."
Vonn couldn't take any more of this back and forth, his temper at a breaking point. He grabbed her arm again and pulled her toward his front door.
"You think you're a prisoner? Then I guess it's time to start treating you like one."
Chapter Seven
Stacy had to jog to keep up as Vonn dragged her by the arm across the patio to the front door. It wasn't locked, which momentarily confused Stacy. The dossier had emphasized over and over that she must never underestimate alphas' territoriality, which led her to assume they'd take every opportunity to protect what they owned.
Then she remembered a couple other relevant facts: no alpha could be stopped by a lock, no matter how strong, and they simply killed anyone stupid enough to come onto their property without an invitation. Which made the idea of a deadbolt kind of irrelevant.
Try harder, Clarke. The voice of her long-ago training officer, a hardass West Virginian named Hugo Aston—known among the scrubs as Sgt. Huge Asshole—came back as it always did when Stacy had underperformed. She had to think faster, be sharper if she was going to survive this.
Little light reached inside the cabin despite the large square windows, owing to the moonless sky and the dense forest that came almost to the edge of the place on three sides. That didn't stop Stacy from taking a thorough inventory. Nearly every set of surroundings offered ample clues if you knew how to suss them out.
Stacy counted her steps from the door until Vonn abruptly stopped. Nine—twice as many as he had taken—which she calculated to be about twenty feet, or nearly the width of the place from what she'd seen outside.
She'd taken note of what light there was glinting dully off surfaces around the room, indicating metal. Metal could be many things—cabinet hardware, pots and pans, furniture legs—but it could also sometimes be a potential weapon. A knife, a pair of scissors, a fireplace poker—Stacy wasn't in a position to be picky.
By now, Stacy's eyes had adjusted sufficiently that she could make out the dim outlines of walls and furniture. She made mental notes of the location of the flashes—one on the wall at 3 o'clock from the entrance, another at nine o'clock and four paces. The floorboards made no sound as she and Vonn trod on them, which suggested that they were solidly joined on a reinforced subfloor, and prying them loose was out of the question. Assuming the construction of the walls was of the same high standard, if she was going to escape, it would have to be through a door or window.
Not a bad amount of intel, considering she'd only been in the place for a matter of seconds. Stacy felt a much-needed boost of her confidence—until, in the next moment, Vonn seized her hand and yanked her into another room, this one even darker than the last. If this room had a window, it was completely blocked, and when Vonn shut the door behind him, she couldn't even make out his shadow.
Stacy couldn't help but be impressed. When she'd read in the dossier that alphas built nearly everything they owned, including their own houses, she'd expected shanties and huts. But
