Page 27 of Eternally Bound
Nathan closed his eyes; he should have considered that. Kadence would never willingly disclose any information about them, but the strongest man could crack under torture. The gate code had been changed and men stood guard outside, watching for her in case she came back and couldn’t get in. However, even with their numerous security measures, there was still a chance the vamps could get in if Kadence was coerced into disclosing their location.
“Double the guard for tonight and increase the electricity on the wall. Day break tomorrow, we’ll move the women to the mission to be on the safe side.”
“I will have them start preparing for the move,” Logan said.
He wasn’t concerned that Kadence would reveal the location of the mission; she didn’t know where it was. All the history of the hunters was housed within the mission, an underground bunker in the center of the stronghold. There were enough supplies within for the women and children to live there for at least a month, but they would be blindfolded before they were taken to it.
None of their enemies could ever know where the mission was. It had been designed to provide shelter in times of a crises as well as protect the documentation of the hunters’ history. Only four people knew its location, himself and three of the eldest hunter men. All of them would kill themselves before ever revealing where it was.
Nathan resumed pacing as Logan turned back toward the numerous cabins laid out in a circular pattern around the large brick house in the middle. The brick house had been home to his family since they’d owned this property. It had also been the original building here. The cabins were all added over the years.
Over three hundred hunters lived on the grounds. At one time there had been nearly four hundred, but some had left to work with other strongholds or marry women there, and others were killed. They were in a drought of sorts when it came to children with only a handful of them being under ten.
There were fifteen more strongholds such as this throughout the world. Some of them had more hunters, others less. All of them were run by hunters who were nominated by the elders within that stronghold and who his father had agreed to appoint. When the next new leader was required in one of those strongholds, Nathan would have to travel there in order to agree or disagree with the nomination. It was not something he looked forward to, but it was his role now.
He stopped pacing when his gaze fell on the archway the women had recently been decorating for Kadence’s wedding. The white ribbon covering it stood out starkly against the growing dusk.
No one had asked Kadence if this was what she wanted, he realized. But they’d never asked any of the women or men who were paired together when the time came. It was simply accepted that it would happen, as it had always happened over the years.
He spent enough time in the human world to know it was an archaic tradition. He’d never questioned if things should be different though. When a woman was ready to breed, they were to be married off as soon as possible, with the hopes that within the next seventy years, while she was still capable of doing so, she would conceive a child.
Some did not.
Nathan knew the elder men and women of the stronghold would choose a woman for him soon. Mostly, it was elder women who made the choice as few men lived to a hundred, never mind the two hundred that gave one the lauded status of an elder. If there were no acceptable women here, they would choose one from another location, but he suspected his wife would be Kadence’s friend Simone.
He would be happy with Simone. She was beautiful and docile. She excelled in her classes and would make a suitable mother and wife. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman.
He told himself this, but he could feel the noose cinching around his neck and he realized what Kadence was going through. When he married, he would at least be able to keep hunting and have freedom beyond these walls. Kadence would simply be locked away here for the rest of her life.
No wonder Kadence had rebelled; he certainly would have. However, none of that mattered right now. The most important thing was getting her back, and he was hell-bent on doing that.
CHAPTER 14
Emerging from the bathroom after her shower, Kadence tied the belt of the robe she’d discovered hanging over the back of the chair around her waist. Not only had someone left the robe for her, but they’d also brought her a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
She didn’t know who the clothes belonged to, and she didn’t care. Her clothes weren’t so ruined she couldn’t wear them again, but the idea of climbing back into them after Joseph’s attack made her skin crawl.
She glanced at the bedroom door before retreating to the bathroom again. Ronan had been gone when she’d woken. She didn’t know when he’d come back, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught naked. Releasing the towel, she slipped on the white bra set out for her. The bra was a little too big on her, but fit well enough. Opening the package of underwear, she removed a white, cotton pair and pulled them on before sliding the yellow sundress over her head.
Wandering over to the sink, she lifted her wet hair to inspect the wound on her neck. It was mostly healed with only the two original puncture marks from Joseph’s fangs remaining. Her stomach turned at the reminder of the degradation she’d endured from his attack. She didn’t care what they all believed, female hunters should be trained better.
She discovered a hairbrush amongst the sparse toiletries set beside the sink. Her fingers trembled as she ran her fingers over the brush before the shaving cream can and a disposable razor that wouldn’t be much of a weapon. These wereRonan’spersonal things. Standing here, touching his things, seemed almost as intimate as sleeping beside him all night had been—something she’d known he’d done, judging by the still warm dent in his pillow she discovered upon waking.
Her fingers settled on the hairbrush. She turned it over in her hand, admiring the fine ivory handle before using it to work out the tangles in her hair. Placing the brush down, she left the bathroom again.
Her stomach grumbled, but she ignored the food on the platter as she inspected the room. From its gray walls to the large armoire and chestnut head and footboard of the bed, there was no sign of any softness in the personality of the man who slept in this room or of anything personal.
She had more signs of her personality on her small nightstand at home—with its ever-present Shasta daisy from the greenhouses and the only photo she had of her entire family together, taken when she was five, before her mother had died from a fall off a horse—than this entire room possessed. Looking around, she would assume the man who slept here was cold and stern, that he was nothing like the man who had talked with her during the day and who stared at her with such heat in his gaze.Which side is the real him?
It didn’t matter; she wouldn’t get to know him well enough to learn the answer to that.
Padding over to the window, she ran her hands over the metal shutters covering them before spotting the button beside them. Pushing it, she stepped back as the shutters rolled up and folded themselves neatly above the picture window. Bars covered the outside of the glass.
Kadence stepped closer to the window to stare down at the large pool below. The puddles on the pool cover were frozen, and the shrubs encircling it were all weighed down with a layer of ice. It had rained sometime last night and frozen over again. Even the black, wrought iron fence surrounding the pool was covered in a sheet of ice.
The fence was high enough that it blocked her view of what lay beyond the pool area. Frustration filled her as she stepped back to survey the room once more. Nothing about the room or the outdoors gave any indication as to where she was, other than she hadn’t been transported to a tropical climate while she’d been unconscious.
Inspecting the walls, she frowned as she noted the patches of darker gray paint on them. It took her a minute to realize the patches with their outlines were where photos or paintings had once hung. Now that she was looking for them, she also saw the holes in the walls from the nails that had been removed. There were at least ten places where something had been taken off the walls.
