Sarai's Fortune by Abigail Owen

he wanted to be. Bet he moves in bed. Sarai pushed the errant thought right out of her head. What the hell was wrong with her?
    She released a dramatic, put-upon sigh. “I promise I won’t try to run off.” Nope, she’d succeed when she found the right opportunity. Like Yoda once said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” So, technically that wouldn’t be breaking her promise. Right? Sarai cringed inwardly. She hated lying. Protecting Zac from his fate, even at the cost of her own life, was a goal that filled her with righteous purpose. She’d do whatever she had to.
    Somehow .

CHAPTER 9
    “No, I don’t know where they took her.” Kyle opened his mouth in a silent hiss of frustration, his cougar’s teeth dropping down, giving him a fearsome appearance. Mick, the only person in the room with him, cringed as he listened to Kyle’s side of the conversation.
    “Well, if I’d known they’d give their most powerful Kuharte to a group of mangy polar bear shifters, I’d have—”
    He cut off as he listened to the person on the other end of the line.
    “What are they saying?” Mick asked.
    Kyle made a slashing motion with his hand, irritated at being interrupted.
    Mick, a large and brawny man, shut his mouth and watched in silence. A fact Kyle appreciated in a backward way. He expected nothing less. Mick was one of the cougar shifters from Kyle’s old dare who’d remained loyal, following him when he’d left so precipitously.
    “No.” Kyle spoke into the phone. “There was no opportunity to get her at the wedding. The place was too heavily guarded, and I was just getting close enough to the compound when she left.”
    He listened some more.
    As the tirade pummeling his ears continued, Kyle’s eyes glazed over. He stared, unseeing, at the rough log walls of the cabin where he’d holed up deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Or been exiled to, was more accurate. They’d really found him a shack to stay in this time. The log siding was raw cut, making the whole place reek of pine. He never could stand that smell, but he wasn’t focused on that. No, his mind was on how he’d come to be here at all.
    If that bitch, Andie, hadn’t run away, he wouldn’t be here right now. Instead, he should be leading his own dare, preferably the Keller dare. That had been the plan. Then the woman he’d deemed worthy to be his mate had gone traitor on him, bringing Jaxon Keller’s attention down on them before they were ready.
    Suddenly what was being said sank in to his consciousness.
    “You want me to go where?”
    He ignored Mick’s raised eyebrows, just happy the guy stayed silent, probably not willing to risk Kyle’s ire.
    “Fine,” Kyle barked.
    He listened to the rest of the instructions.
    “We’ll leave tomorrow then.”
    With leashed violence, he slammed the satellite phone back down onto its charger.
    Mick wisely waited a long couple of minutes as Kyle did nothing—there was no tantrum throwing or punching through walls. That wasn’t his style. Instead he leaned his knuckles against the single table in the room and breathed, holding back his cougar.
    “They want us to change locations,” he eventually gritted between clenched teeth. “Go to eastern Canada.”
    “Why?”
    “They’ve got some kind of base already established close to the polar bear Timik.”
    At Mick’s confused frown, Kyle expanded. “Seems they were aware of some treaty between the Timik and the Keller Dare. Sarai’s part of it. She’s been assigned to live with those damn bears as some kind of sign of good faith in the treaty.”
    “What’s the Coalition’s plan?” Mick asked.
    The Coalition to which he was referring were Kyle’s partners, and, these days, his protectors. With their help, one day Kyle would be the one and only Alpha of the Shadowcat Nation. No more Alpha Council. Each dare would report directly to him or they would be eliminated. That’s what he’d been promised.
    Kyle shook his head, still dissatisfied with