His panther impressed by the group’s ingenuity and huffing in laughter at their very cublike behavior right then, Lucas took the small bottle one of the other teens held out. He could see why it had caught their attention. The bottle was crafted of lime green glass and partially covered by barnacles. Bobbing on the water under the piercing sunlight, it would’ve sparkled like a jewel. “You boys opened it?”
Again, Jon was the one who spoke. Definitely a dominant and one Lucas was certain would grow up to become a cornerstone member of the pack. Lucas wouldn’t hesitate to leave Naya in Jon’s care; that said everything about his trust and faith in the boy.
“Yes, sir.” Jon’s voice was as clear as a bell. “We saw the stopper and were joking about finding a message in a bottle. And then . . .” Lifting a hand, he passed a thin, curling piece of paper to Clay. “I didn’t want to try and put it back, maybe tear it.”
“You did the right thing.” Unrolling it with care, Clay held the flimsy paper so he and Lucas could both read it.
My name is Leila Savea and I’m a marine biologist. I was kidnapped while working alone in the Pacific Ocean a mile off the coast of Samoa and I’ve been held in a cold, gray prison since. They scarred my face, cut it up, said it was so a teleporter who uses faces to go places couldn’t find me. I don’t know if that’s true or if they just wanted to hurt me.
I’m often drugged but they’re late with the dose today. I can write today.
A week, maybe ten days ago, they took me out of this room to test drugs on me and when they weren’t looking, I stole a bottle that was on the shelves outside. There were lots of bottles. Like it was someone’s collection once, but they’re all covered with dust now.
I took the paper and pen another time, when one of them forgot his lab coat in my room.
I’m going to hide this letter in the bottle and if they ever take me outside this place, I’m going to look for water. Water will carry it somewhere. Carry it to my people.
They won’t break me.
There was a subtle change in the ink on the following line, possibly indicating that the next part had been written some time after the first. The words, the tone, it too implied enough of a passage of time that the writer’s defiant spirit had begun to crumple under the pressure.
Miane, please help me. I’m so far from home and I hurt. It’s cold here. There’s snow everywhere but no ocean to feed my soul. I listen so hard for it, but all I hear is the wind and the trees and my captors. The sea doesn’t speak here.
Even if I escape this prison, I won’t get far before my body gives up. I’m not meant for this kind of cold. They want me to swim to places, do bad things. They think no one will miss me because I prefer to swim alone.
Please miss me. I miss you.
They’re trying to break me, turn me into an automaton, a slave.
I don’t know where I am. But I saw things when they first brought me here. They miscalculated the drug and I was almost awake. It’s a square concrete building in the middle of snow and trees. So much snow that it hurts my eyes when I look out the narrow strip of window at the top of my prison.
The building has this symbol on the side, faded and old.
A painstakingly hand-drawn symbol followed. A triangle with the letters CCE on the inside, the font blocky and squat.
I hear ducks sometimes. As if there’s a river or a stream or a lake nearby. I can’t see anything but I hear them. And—
The letter just ended, as if the writer had run out of time or been interrupted. What Leila Savea had written was chilling enough.
Lucas’s eyes met Clay’s before they both looked at the bottle in Lucas’s hand. Barnacles crawled up over a quarter of the bottle’s surface, betraying a long sojourn in the ocean. The chances of Leila Savea still being alive were low to negligible.
That didn’t matter.
His anger a cold, icy thing that burned, Lucas turned to the teenagers who’d had the intelligence and heart to understand what they’d found. “I’m proud of you,” he said because cubs needed to hear that from their alpha. “We’ll take care of it now.” He’d get the bottle and the message to the BlackSea water changelings, to the people Leila Savea had hoped to reach.
“Will we find her?” Jon’s fingers were bone white on the edge of his hoverboard.
Lucas gripped the side of the boy’s neck, anchoring him in pack skin privileges. Jon might’ve been born Forgotten, but he was DarkRiver now. And Lucas didn’t lie to his packmates. “I don’t know, but we’re sure as hell going to try.”
No one deserved to be tortured and tormented and trapped in the Consortium’s clutches.
Chapter 3
MIANE LEVÈQUE, ALPHA of BlackSea, ended her comm conversation with Lucas Hunter with rage in her blood and determination in her bones. Leila, sweet, happily nerdy Leila, who loved the sun and the ocean and who was never more contented than when she was swimming with the tropical fish she studied, was caged in a cold box, drugged and hurting.
Dying.
She jerked as Malachai closed his hand over her shoulder, squeezed. The big male had stayed out of sight of the screen, but he’d been privy to her entire conversation with the leopard alpha. “She gave us clues,” he reminded her. “The bottle itself may be a clue.”
Miane had asked that DarkRiver give the bottle to a trusted member of BlackSea who’d be able to run tests the cats wouldn’t even think to run. They didn’t understand water, didn’t know all the moods and tastes of it. Not simply salt and fresh. Each ocean had its own complexities. Different parts of an ocean had different personalities.