Say My Name Page 5

  Liam had so much as said that he had his own problems that led to his frequent bouts of insomnia. Though Elle wondered what they were, she knew that he wouldn't tell, at least not until she spilled her guts as well. And she was getting close to that as well, surprisingly.

  Slowly, Elle made up her mind and she smiled at Colleen, nodding her head.

  "That's great!" Colleen said, jumping up from the side of the bed and scurrying toward Elle to grab her hand.

  "We have to tell Liam you want to stay!"

  With a sharp tug, Colleen pulled Elle toward the stairs by her arm, clutching at her and chattering the whole time as they walked.

  "...and we should get you some makeup. When you're feeling better anyway," Collen said. "Something nice and soft. Light, because you totally don't need to overdo it. You're pretty enough without it, and..."

  Colleen's words faded in and out, clogging Elle's muddled mind. Something about makeup and soft. Whatever that meant. A bonfire and dancing. Elle hadn't danced in forever. She loved music, but she hadn't been able to let it take over her body since before she went to live with Jeremiah. She had loved to sing, but he always commanded her to stop cawing at him like some damned mynah bird. He had told her he hated whatever she was singing, and that it was giving him a headache. So, she only hummed to herself in the middle of the day when she was cooking, cleaning or doing some other domestic chore. And never when Jeremiah was supposed to be around. She was almost mute around him, even before the damage had been done to her vocal cords.

  "Lee! Guess what!"

  Colleen took the last of the steps two by two, forcing Elle to run down after her. She skidded to a stop in front of both men, an out of breath Elle behind her.

  Both men's gazes snapped over to the women, Liam's eyes bugging out a bit before schooling his features and averting his eyes.

  He honestly didn't know whether to curse or praise Colleen for that dress. Though Elle was still too slender to fill it out properly, he could only imagine what it would look like once she was a normal weight for her size. Hell, even if she was a little over the norm, that dress would have looked fabulous – as it did now.

  The dress was a dark navy blue, setting off her crystalline eyes and lily-white complexion. Dipping down between her bosom just a touch, it made Elle look more mature and – paired with her wide blue eyes – sexier.

  It also seemed to want to test the fabric of Liam's boxers and the sleep pants that he was wearing. Thank God he was sitting down and his lap could not be seen clearly.

  Shifting in his seat, Liam fought hard not to completely ogle the young girl and settled for clearing his throat.

  "What?" he was finally able to rasp out at Colleen.

  "Elle says she wants to stay at Plumbrook," Colleen announced with a dazzling smile.

  "Really?" Blake asked, sounding surprised himself.

  "Yes," the girl affirmed, looking for approval from Liam, who simply nodded and forced himself to look over at Elle again. Without giving her the once over. It almost worked.

  "You do know what that means, Elle?" he asked. "And remember – you tell, I tell."

  Liam watched as Elle gulped loudly and slowly nodded her head. He saw that she had visibly paled a bit, but looked resolute in her decision.

  She cleans up good, eh? Colleen shot to Liam through the mindlink.

  You did this on purpose, didn't you? Liam asked, voice accusatory.

  Maybe, Colleen admitted.

  Why?

  Liam could hear the sigh in Colleen's voice even before she spoke to him.

  She trusts you, and having her around has been eye-opening to say the least, she told him.

  How so?

  Colleen glanced over at Blake who was saying something out loud to Elle. She was too engrossed in her chat with Liam to give a second thought as to what they were discussing.

  You have a soft spot for her, Colleen told him. I haven't seen you this tender in years. Not since...

  She let that thought peter out, not wanting to finish the sentence. Not when she knew it would hurt Liam. And knowing that he would understand what she meant anyway.

  She could have a mate somewhere out there, Liam told her.

  Colleen wanted to snort, his voice sounded so stiff. It seemed that Liam didn't like that idea – not one bit.

  I'm not saying you have to do anything about this. But that girl needs some confidence, and if a few men flirting and telling her she looks pretty helps with that, my job's been done.

  Liam's jaw flexed angrily as his eyes flashed. Colleen's widened in triumph.

  I knew it! she practically hooted with delight through the mindlink. You like her! You want her to-

  Enough, Colleen, Liam snapped, shooting daggers at her with his eyes. No matter what, Elle is not ready to trust anyone, intimately or otherwise.

  Liam could see the question in her eyes before she spoke it.

  Later, he told her. I'll tell you later what I mean. It's...disturbing to say the least.

  ∞∞∞

  As soon as Elle went back up to her room to put away the rest of her clothing, Liam jerked his chin at Blake and Colleen.

  Study. He needed them in his study, which was soundproofed for security reasons.

  Once the two had followed Liam into the study in the back of the home, Blake closed the door and walked up to the desk, joining Liam and Colleen.

  "What is it?" Colleen asked, voice small and unsure.

  "Liam, what's going on?" Blake asked, as he hadn't been privy to the conversation between Colleen and his Alpha.

  "Blake, I need you to do something for me," Liam told him, voice controlled and cold. "This is to be of the utmost importance and cannot be mentioned to anyone outside of this room." Liam shot Colleen a glance. The girl was a bit of a gossip, but could keep a secret when she had to. And this time she would have to.

  "What is it, boss?" Blake asked, going into second-in-command mode immediately.

  "I need you to get me a list of all registered male wolves with the initials J.B. from the surrounding areas," Liam told him. "New York, New Jersey, Canada, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsy. All male J.B.'s above the age of say...16."

  "What? Why?" Blake asked, confusion etched on his face.

  "Before leaving her pack, Elle was...branded," Liam said before taking a deep, cleansing breath and closing his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, sifting the black strands through his fingers.

  "Branded...wait – what?"

  "Someone...someone with the initials of J.B. branded Elle on her lower back," Liam told them both, his mouth a thin, straight line. "With silver."

  Colleen gasped at the same time that Blake uttered a string of curses.

  "Sh-she told you this?" Blake asked when he had finally calmed down enough to speak.

  "She showed me," Liam told him, shaking his head. "After you told me about the ruckus here this afternoon, I came back to the house and found her tossing about and shrieking in her sleep. When I asked her what the dream was about, she answered it by showing me the mark on her back."

  "It's silver. It'll never go away," Colleen said, awed and shocked. "Someone – some asshole – branded her like cattle. Like she was a piece of property."

  "A mate?" Blake asked, wary.

  "Possibly," Liam said, shaking his head. If he had been anyone else but Liam Stark, he would have had a hard time believing a mate could do that, but he knew better. "Or possibly someone else. Someone that wanted her for himself only. He branded her and treated her like shit to keep her in line and afraid. Afraid to run. Afraid to talk back. Just...afraid in general."

  "I have a hard time believing a true mate would do that to his woman," Colleen said, voice watery and eyes red-rimmed and glassy.

  Liam shook himself. He was starting to get angry, livid again. Looking over at Blake, he locked eyes with him.

  "I want you to make me a list of all J.B.'s and bring it to me as soon as possible," Liam told him. "If she won'
t tell me who he is, I'll confront her with the list and get her to tell me which one is the bastard."

  ∞∞∞

  It took Elle another hour and a half to sort out all of her clothing. Colleen had started to mix and match some sets, and Elle picked up where she had left off, sorting, then hanging them up together in the closet. After that, she placed the shoes away on the shoe rack and packed up all of Liam's sister's items so as to not get them mixed up with hers.

  Finally done, she saw it was nearly 10 PM and wondered if Liam was asleep yet. She wanted to thank him again and let him know a few things about her.

  Walking over to the notepad on the desk in the corner of the room, she took a few moments to think and then wrote down a message.

  After completing the note, she opened the door to the hallway and walked to Liam's bedroom door. There was a faint shuffling inside, so she knew he was still awake.

  Knocking a few times, Liam told her to come in immediately.

  Upon opening the door, she saw him sifting through his sock drawer before closing it and looking over at her.

  Struggling with her reluctance, Elle walked in and gave the notepad to Liam, who looked at her for a moment before reading the note.

  I just wanted to thank you again. It's much too much, but it is appreciated. I promise to earn my keep.

  I know that you want to know who I am and where I come from, but I would like to tell you bits and pieces first. I don't know how much I can share before I fall apart. It's difficult for me to speak about it since I was forbidden to before this, but I would like to try.

  Liam looked at her and took a deep, steadying breath. Though he did want to hear what had happened to her, he knew that his anger was close to the surface. He didn't know how much of her tale he could handle before wanting to break something in his anger at whomever had broken the girl's spirit and body.

  Nodding, Liam walked over to the bed and sat down on it before patting the space next to him and gesturing to it with a hand.

  Taking one step forward, Elle understood that not only was she going to be giving, but also receiving.

  You tell, I tell.

  Chapter 7

  Elle gripped the pad of paper so hard that her knuckles turned white before looking over at Liam and nodding her head, resolute.

  Smoothing out the creases she made on the yellow notebook, she started to write slowly.

  Though she started at a snail’s pace, it was like watching a snowball rolling down an increasingly steep hill. An avalanche of words seemed to take up page after page, Elle's slim hand moving faster and faster until she read over what she had written and handed it over to Liam.

  I met my mate six months ago. I could smell him on the training grounds of our pack lands, but couldn't tell which one he was. Every male was there practically. I had recently turned 18 and was an Omega. I was not ashamed of my status because I know it takes all kinds of people or...well, wolves in this case, to make up a pack or community. At least I wasn't ashamed at the time I met him.

  I was heading home because a storm was coming when I heard a noise behind me. Once I turned around, I saw him. My mate. It was the Alpha of our pack. I was so shocked that I was paired with the Alpha that I just said yes to everything he said at first. It was easier then. Saying no only proved to be a problem when I realized what type of person he truly was.

  He took me away from my parents, but that was not the issue. It was to be expected, especially with an Alpha. He swore them, and my siblings, to secrecy, as well as his Beta and the Beta's female. No one but my family, the Beta, and his mate knew about me. He didn't want anyone to know that he was mated to an Omega, but he couldn't seem to be able to reject me outright either. I was housebound in his home, only allowed to do menial, domestic chores, and then please him with my mouth or body when he came home from...doing whatever it was he was doing during the day.

  At first, I just went with whatever he said, but when he began to beat me, I started to retaliate. One time he almost killed me because I was not allowed to go to the Pack hospital. The doctor or Beta or his mate would always tend to my wounds. After a while, I just stopped fighting back. I was wounded, bruised in my soul, and barely given enough to eat daily. My mate told me I was too fat, too small, too weak to be his mate, and that he deserved more in his female. I begged him to reject me and he broke my jaw when he punched me in the face. That night he branded me with silver and told me that even if he was stuck with a weak female like me, I belonged to him and to no one else.

  The Beta, Carter, and his mate were kind to me and wanted to help. Carter came up with a plan, a plan to save me.

  They had me break something in the house just before my mate came home. It was the urn that held his mother's ashes. I felt bad for doing it, but it was the only way that he would get angry enough to think he had killed me when he beat me this time.

  You see, he had been trying to be gentler when the one doctor came by a week before the urn incident. I had suffered some serious wounds over a six month period and the doctor warned him I was headed for a brain injury and...well, the doctor didn't outright say that my mate was beating me, but he said that if I had any more serious 'mishaps', it could spell my death. Ironically enough, it kept my mate from beating me too hard for a short while. He would hit, but never too hard. Cut, but never too deep. I tried doing other things to make him beat me, but he was able to keep his temper under control for the most part. I don't know how; I just know that when he got too angry, he would leave the house for a few hours. He could have been fucking someone, I don't know, but I didn't honestly care. I was too broken to honestly give a shit anymore.

  So, Carter told me I had to do something unforgivable to get my mate to beat me to the edge of death. He would think that I was dying and Carter would convince him to have me dropped off outside of pack lands, pretend a rogue or something had gotten to me, or just let the elements do their work on my corpse. Carter said he would be the one to drop my body off since so few people knew I was the Alpha's mate. And my mate wouldn't trust just anyone with the disposal of a corpse.

  In a nutshell, the plan worked. I “dropped” the urn while cleaning, and he went ape shit. Beat me and even shifted – hence the claw marks you saw on me. Carter took me away in a car to 'get rid of me' and dropped me on the edge of your border. I was in and out of consciousness so I didn't actually know where I was until I woke up in the hospital and heard some of the nurses talking about Plumbrook. I had heard of it before, of course, but my pack never strayed far from home. By the Alpha's orders.

  The whole point was to get me off pack lands and hope that someone – anyone – would come along to save me.

  I think Carter knew what he was doing and I thank God for him. He knew just where to drop me off so that someone would come along and find me when they went looking for the interlopers.

  Honestly, I didn't even care at that point whether or not someone found me. I was free of my mate, even if it had killed me. I think I even preferred death over the pain I felt – both the emotional and physical.

  Liam read the words again and again. It was clear-cut, concise, but it was still hard to understand that it had been this poor creature's reality. A reality she had borne for six months. Six excruciating fucking months.

  Anger welled up, hot and heavy in Liam, and his bright blue eyes blazed with a fury he tried to keep hidden from Elle. He didn't want to frighten her with misplaced fear of him. Liam, at least, would never hurt her.

  "Who?"

  Elle blinked back at him, the single word being the hardest single question she'd had to answer, ever.

  "If you think I cannot find out who this Alpha shit is by myself, just remember that you mentioned the Beta's name," Liam told her, not unkindly. "There aren't too many Betas with the name Carter, I'm sure. If there's more than one in the whole tri-state area, I'll eat nothing but leafy greens for a week."

  He was right. Carter was not necessarily an uncommon name, but pair it with hi
s rank, and it would take less time to find out which Alpha had a second-in-command named Carter than it took for Elle to write out her little tale of woe.

  Nodding her head, Elle gestured to the notepad so she could tell this Alpha. This time when she wrote, it was methodical and slow, as if writing the name would cause the man to appear out of thin air.

  His name is Jeremiah. Jeremiah Bluth. Blackriver Pack.

  As soon as Liam read the words, his face darkened, his brows knitting together in the middle as if in concentration or...disbelief.

  When he looked back up at her, there was a strange look on his face. It was one of recognition, and Elle wondered if she had spelled her own doom by admitting her origins.

  ∞∞∞

  "Alpha, we have looked along every border and there is no sign of a body."

  The head warrior of Blackriver, Jack, was giving his briefing to Jeremiah, who was sitting behind his desk, fiddling with papers, but not getting much done.

  "No scent of her either?" Jeremiah's robust and gravelly voice grunted out.

  "None," Jack stated with a firm nod. "We even went as far as foreign pack borders on all sides. Artemis thought he smelled something, but it was days old and very faint."

  "In which direction?"

  "West of here, but the scent was so fleeting, he said he couldn't be sure," Jack explained.

  "Keep looking," Jeremiah told him, lacing his hands through his long, blond hair in irritation. "There has to be something, even if it's just a body. Animals would have left most of the bones, and the elements wouldn't have made them deteriorate this quickly – if there were any."

  "Yes, Sir," Jack acknowledged, and left the office in a hurry.

  Sitting back in his seat, Jeremiah couldn't think what had happened. When he had beat his little mate nearly to death, he thought that it had been a good idea to get rid of the body on foreign lands so that it would be assumed she had been killed by rogues. But now that certain people were starting to ask questions, he was bound by duty to look for something he had made go missing himself.