by Haley Weir
I had no idea what was coming, and I only had the vaguest idea of what I was. I felt like a child all over again with no clue how to access my abilities and no concept of what answers I needed because I didn’t even know what questions to ask. But I did have a very strong feeling that having Jasper by my side was the only thing I would need in order to figure it all out. After we saved my father, I would ask him why he never let me discover my shifter side, and then we would all move on. There was a threat coming, according to Jasper, and it sounded bad.
When we got to the outside of the building that Jasper said my father was being kept in, we hunched down in the shadows and waited.
“The only way we’re going to be able to do this, is if I can take them by surprise,” he whispered. “You need to stay here and stay out of sight.”
“But don’t you need my help?”
“No. You don’t know how to access your wolf side yet. You’ll be no match against even a single one of my packmates. I can’t save your father and protect you at the same time.”
I guess that made sense.
“Okay,” I said, feeling uncomfortable with letting him go in there to fight his former friends alone. “But how are you going to be able to take them all on by yourself?”
“There will only be a few pack members in there guarding your father,” he answered. “The rest of the pack will still be with our alpha until he arrives here to execute your father.”
I cringed at the word “execute”.
“Besides,” Jasper continued with a smirk. I’m stronger than I look.”
Actually, he already looked massively strong. But still the idea that he could take on several wolf shifters at once without seeming to blink an eye, made me wonder just how strong Jasper really was.
“Why aren’t you an alpha?” I asked as the random curiosity hit me. “And why does your alpha want to kill my father so badly instead of just asking for his help against the shadow world?”
Jasper sighed and looked as if he was trying to stay focused on the task at hand.
“It’s all a long story,” he said. “One that I will tell you after we make it out of this.”
I nodded my head. That was definitely a better idea than loitering outside this place and getting caught. But the moment I thought it, that’s exactly what happened. Before Jasper was even able to sneak inside, we were spotted.
“Hey!” one of his pack members called as he walked up to us with two other men. “Jasper? What are you—”
As soon as the man saw me there, he looked around a bit and put our hunched stance, and the fact that Jasper had his hand on my back, together.
“What are you doing?” the man asked with a stunned look on his face. “How could you betray your own pack?”
Jasper didn’t answer. I guess he knew that no words of false explanation were going to make any difference here. He stood up and readied to fight against his own packmates, but then another half dozen of them rounded the corner of the building and immediately seemed to sense that the situation here was a volatile one. Jasper’s first lunge at them was brought down by five of the other men in his pack—all of them growling low in their throats, and all of them with a stunned look of betrayal on their faces. A rough hand grabbed my arm, and then a second one grabbed my other arm and pulled me up to my feet.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked the two men who were holding onto me as I watched Jasper get swiftly knocked against the head and rendered unconscious.
“To the alpha.”
Chapter Eight
Jasper
When I came to, I was instantly angry at myself for letting us be taken. Had I not been distracted by Peyton and her continuous chain of questions; I would have sensed the guys coming and I would have been able to take them down. I wasn’t mad at her though. The blame rested squarely on my own shoulders.
I rubbed my head where one of the guys had so gloriously smashed his fist against my skull to knock me out and tried to make the aching subside enough to be able to think clearly. I looked around the room that we were in to see if there was a way out, which there wasn’t.
“You okay?” I asked as I looked over to see Peyton sitting with her knees pulled up against her chest next to me.
I reached my hand out and touched the side of her arm. As soon as my fingers touched her skin, she threw her arms around me and pulled herself against my chest. She didn’t cry, or even say a word. She just held me and breathed as if she was trying to calm herself.
“You’ve been asleep for a long time,” she said quietly. “I was worried that you might not wake up at all.”
She was braver than I thought. Going through all of this and still being able to speak in a steady voice.
“You don’t ever need to worry about that,” I said as I held her tightly against my body and buried my face in her hair. “I’ll never leave you. Never.”
“Well isn’t that touching.” The voice was immediately recognizable, and the tone was predictably taunting. “I must say that you’ve surprised me, Jasper. Of all the members in my pack, you were the one that I least expected to betray me.”
“It wasn’t necessarily planned, Addicus,” I said as I slowly let go of Peyton and rose to my feet.
“Yes, I can see that,” Addicus said as he glanced down at Peyton with disdain. “You’ve claimed her I suppose?”
“Yes. She will be my mate, and you know that means I cannot let anything happen to her,” I said without fear of him.
Addicus may have been strong, but I was stronger. I wasn’t scared of him. I was, however, scared of what he and the rest of the pack would do to Peyton if they were able to get their hands on her. And I was drastically outnumbered.
“I acknowledge that it is the way of the packs to claim a mate to whom your allegiance and devotion will triumph above all else—even your allegiance to this pack,” Addicus said. “I know there’s nothing that we can do to convince you otherwise.”
I nodded my head in silence. At least Addicus was recognizing the old ways that have guided shifters for countless generations. Even he, as an alpha, couldn’t disregard the act of claiming a mate. That being said, it all seemed too easy. Addicus was not the kind of alpha that backed down without a fight, and he certainly didn’t like to see his pride bruised or marred by betrayal of his second in command. If it had been anyone else, they might have gotten off with a banishment from the pack, but I knew I wouldn’t be that lucky.
“However,” he continued. “You have still betrayed us. You intended to steal Ryland from our grasp, knowing that we need him in order to take over this town. You have done more than simply claim a mate, you have become a traitor to your own pack, and for that—the consequences are severe. You are now an enemy of this pack. Both you and the girl will need to be executed, along with her father.”
I felt the seething rage start to boil over as I launched at Addicus with an intent no less than to take him down where he stood. But he knew me too well. After all of my time serving under him, Addicus knew that I was a formidable threat, and that if he and I were ever to go head-to-head—I would beat him. So he took no chances and was well fortified. Before the claws breaking through the skin of my knuckles could even reach him, I was tackled down to the ground by a pile of former pack mates.
“Throw them in with the former alpha of Rye,” Addicus growled. “We’ll give them a moment to say their goodbyes.”
It took a dozen men this time to hold me down and carry me to the room that Ryland was being held. As soon as they tossed Peyton and I into the room, I scrambled to my feet to rush the door and take down as many of them as I could. But the heavy door promptly closed in my face, followed by the clicking and turning sounds of several locks latching. I turned around to face the room and saw Peyton cradling her father’s head in her lap.
Ryland was in rough shape. He looked as though he had received a solid beating and was barely clinging to life. I saw Peyton’s eyes well with tears, and her father’s once s
trong and steady hand reach feebly up to touch his daughter’s cheek. I was awash with incertitude as I saw everything crumbling around me. In a day’s time, I had become an enemy of my own pack, and a target of the alpha I had served for years. The woman that I had given it all up for was falling apart before my eyes while her father—a once great alpha—was dying in her arms.
What the hell am I going to do?
I stood there stupefied as I watched the time dwindle between Peyton and her father. Ryland turned his head gingerly to glance over at me.
“Is he a good man?” he asked her, already seeming to know that I was there to try and protect her.
“Yes,” she said through a cracking voice and watery eyes. “I think he is.”
“Good,” Ryland smiled weakly. “Peyton, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I kept everything from you for this long. I was just trying to protect you. After what happened to your mother—”
His voice broke off as he coughed, and droplets of blood seeped out from the corners of his mouth.
“Shh, it’s okay dad,” Peyton whimpered. “It doesn’t matter. It’s okay, everything is going to be okay.”
No it’s not, I thought to myself.
“I need you to know,” Ryland continued. “How proud I am of you. You are much, much stronger than you think. You will be able to continue where I have failed.”
I hated to interrupt their last few moments together, but I could see that Peyton was too overwrought with emotion to ask all of the questions that she wanted, and needed, answers to.
“Ryland,” I asked as I stepped forward and then kneeled down beside him. “Why can’t your daughter access her wolf side? Is there something preventing her from shifting, and from feeling all of her instinctual abilities?”
“No,” he answered. “The only thing that has been preventing her from discovering what she can do, has been me.”
“Then how—”
My question was cut off when the door opened, and pack members came in and tried to grab all three of us to proceed to execution. But this time, there were only four of them, and I wasn’t going to let them take us. I leapt up and attacked two of them at once, not letting them get far enough into the room to even get near Peyton or her father. I grabbed each of them by the side of the head and smashed their skulls together as easily as if I was crushing the pulp of fruit between my hands. I heard Peyton’s scream behind me and realized that she might never look at me the same after the brutal display that I was putting on in front of them now. But it didn’t matter. It had to be done if we were going to survive.
After I was able to overpower the other two shifters, I went to reach for Peyton with one bloodied hand that dripped from my fingernails. I was surprised when she didn’t hesitate to take it. I hoisted Ryland up onto my other shoulder and led them out of this place and toward our escape. Unfortunately, we only made it as far as seeing the door which opened to the outside, but couldn’t make it through the door, thanks to the rest of the pack standing in our way. Addicus stood in front of them, blocking our path to escape.
“You are much, much stronger than anyone ever expected,” Addicus snarled. There was a mix of both rage and fear in his eyes.
“To be honest,” I snarled at him. “I’m even stronger than I knew. Strong enough to beat you.”
The fear that framed his eyes a moment ago, gave way to a pure rage as Addicus lunged at me. The rest of the pack followed his lead, and I quickly pushed Ryland off my shoulder and into Peyton’s arms as I shoved them both backward away from the mounting conflict.
Everything seemed to leave my vision, except for the shifters that I honed-in on to fight. One by one, I took each of them down, and by the time it was obvious that my victory over them was inevitable—Addicus grabbed the few shifters that still stood beside him and fled.
For a moment, I watched through the open door as Addicus ran until he was too far away for me to see anymore. I dropped down to my knees to catch my breath, and the pain of the gashes and broken bones that I had sustained began to set in. It didn’t matter though, because even bruised and battered meant that we were still alive. I stood slowly and turned around to get Ryland and Peyton and get out of here. But when I looked toward the back of the hall, I saw Peyton’s body crumpled over her dead father. Her chest heaved as she sobbed and I ran to hold her, coaxing her to breathe, and clasping my hands around her shaking shoulders.
“What happened?” I asked in bewilderment.
I had taken on the whole group of shifters at the door away from them. There should have been no way any of them had reached Peyton and her father. She gently let Ryland’s body go, and I looked down to see that a dagger was still protruding from his chest. He had been killed in the struggle. One of the shifters had thrown a weapon, and it had hit Ryland with exact precision. I was sure that single move which caused the death of this alpha, was received by Addicus with much delight.
“I don’t know what happened,” she sobbed. “I had him. And then all the sudden he was struck down and he fell to the ground. He died in my arms. I didn’t want him to die, Jasper. I still need him.”
I stood as still as a statue and held Peyton as she sobbed and wailed. I held her and didn’t move until she had no more tears to cry. I didn’t know what to say, and there certainly wasn’t anything that I could do to fix things. So I simply stood there and waited. When she had exhausted herself from crying, I gently tilted her chin upward toward my face and spoke to her in the most tender voice that I could muster.
“You have me now,” I said.
I leaned forward to kiss her lips softly, and then took her hand in mine as we walked out of the building and into the hillside.
Chapter Nine
Peyton
I was numb. I felt nothing but emptiness as Jasper and I walked away from the building that my father’s body remained inside.
We couldn’t go back to his apartment now because the surviving members of his pack would surely find us there. I watched as Jasper surveyed what was around us, looking for a safe place for us to hide while we recovered and figured out what to do next. Since I was void of emotion now, the logical part of my brain kicked in and took over. I guess that was some sort of coping mechanism maybe. Or maybe it was just what happened when you’ve suffered a loss so great that there is nothing left to feel.
“I know a place that we can go,” I said.
The pub owner’s name was Bart. Funny, because after all this time I had never bothered to find out what his name was until now. It was an ordinary name, for a seemingly ordinary guy. But when we showed up at the bar and he saw the utter distress on my face, Bart seemed less ordinary than he used to.
“What happened to your father?” he asked as if he had a sixth sense about the matter.
From the slight golden flickering in his eyes, I was guessing that it was more than a sixth sense. I was guessing that he was a shifter too, and likely a pack member who had served under my father. I burst into tears, unable to answer his question. My emotions were apparently not as emptied as I had thought.
“Ryland is dead,” Jasper answered for me.
Bart lowered his eyes and then hung his head as he stared blankly down at the bar.
“We need a safe place to stay,” Jasper said to him. “Can you help us?”
Bart gave Jasper a once-over, gauging whether or not he should trust him. But when he saw the way that I was clinging to Jasper’s hand, he nodded his head.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Follow me.”
Bart led us upstairs to the small apartment that was nestled above the pub. No one knew this place was even here, so it made the perfect sanctuary—no one except for me. I had a vague memory of having been in this space before, after my mother had died.
“Let me know if you need anything. First aid supplies are in the cabinet above the sink,” Bart said when he saw blood dripping from Jasper’s arm. “You’ll be safe here.”
As soon as Bart left, Jasper plopped down
onto a nearby chair. I hadn’t really noticed how banged up he was before. But now that we were here, and things were quiet and safe, I could see that he was in rough shape. I went to the cabinet and took out the bandages and antiseptic and then came back and knelt down beside the chair.
“You’re going to need to take your shirt off,” I said, noting that the cuts and something that resembled claw marks tore through pieces of his shirt into the flesh underneath.
Jasper lifted his shirt over his head and winced as he did so. His entire chest was covered in gashes and deep cuts that were still bleeding out. I tried to ignore the longing that filled me as I looked at his bare chest. Even marred with cuts and bruises, he was beautiful. I tended his wounds as gently as I could. Jasper’s face contorted when the antiseptic stung his open flesh. Then I wrapped and bandaged him up and thought about how incredible it was that he was able to take down so many shifters singlehandedly—even if he hadn’t been able to save my father.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly as I was affixing the last bandage to his torso. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t save Ryland.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, shaking my head and trying to fight back the tears from coming again.
I was sick of crying. It made me feel weak, and I wanted to feel strong. I wanted to feel as strong as my father believed me to be.
“You were amazing back there,” I said as I looked up at him.
He sat on the chair, still shirtless, as I looked over his body to see if I had missed anything.