by Haley Weir
“So,” Cerise said as she walked behind me. “Do you trust me yet?”
“No,” I answered plainly. “Should I?”
“Nope,” she said. “You shouldn’t. I was just wondering how smart you were.”
I heard Peyton giggle next to me.
“I thought you didn’t like this girl,” I looked over and said to her.
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“The way that you looked like you wanted to kill her when she was staring at my cock.”
Peyton frowned. “Well, I do want to kill anyone who stares at your cock.”
Now it was my turn to laugh.
“What’s so funny about that?” she asked.
“It just amazes me, albeit also brings me great joy, how quickly you acclimated to being mine.”
“Yeah,” Peyton said. “I was going to try to make you work for it a little harder, but then I realized that I couldn’t resist you either.”
She reached over and took my hand as we walked, with the rest of our pack following closely behind us. I was filled with happiness having Peyton by my side, but I was also filled with dread. I would feel a lot better once I took Addicus down. The shadow beings were a formidable force, and we were nowhere near close to being out of the woods with them yet, but there was a different kind of threat with Addicus. He was the only one who knew how much Peyton meant to me. And at the moment, that made him the greatest danger to me of all.
When we got to Rye, I instructed everyone to stay quiet and stay out of sight. We would attempt a sneak attack, and hopefully it would go better than the last time I tried to sneak up on my old alpha.
“Stay close to me,” I whispered to Peyton. “I need to be sure that you’re safe.”
She nodded and I was happy that she wasn’t going to argue about how she could fend for herself. There were too many uncertainties right now—who was controlling the town, whether or not my pack could stand up against them, and how loyal Cerise actually was. I didn’t like any of it.
We were able to sneak into the town under the cloak of darkness, which meant that it wasn’t the shadow beings who were controlling Rye; it was Addicus. Shadow beings can see right through the darkness. In fact, they can see better in darkness. One by one, we found and snuck up on my old pack members. And one by one, we were able to take them down. I could tell that Addicus had large number of his pack because there weren’t nearly as many men guarding the town as there should have been. It was much easier than I had expected to re-take the town, and soon there was no one left to confront except for the alpha and his new second-in-command, which I assumed was inside one of the main buildings downtown in the center of Rye.
We snuck through the narrow downtown streets, heading toward the pub and then canvasing the surrounding buildings in search of the last remaining shifters and their weakening alpha. I led the way, with Peyton right behind me, and Cerise right behind her. The rest of our pack fanned out to search for them.
“Do you think they’re still here in the town?” Peyton asked quietly.
“Yes,” I answered. “Where else would they be?” Addicus wouldn’t run again. His pride was too bruised from his last defeat. This time, he will stay until it is finished one way or the other.”
“I just thought that maybe since his pack has been torn down that maybe he would—”
When Peyton’s sentence got cut off by her sudden shriek, I whipped around to see what had happened. There standing before me, was Addicus, with his extended claw just barely pressing against Peyton’s neck. Cerise was nowhere in sight.
“Let her go,” I growled, not making a move because I knew that he would be able to puncture her jugular even before I could strike him.
“Now where would the fun in that be?” he grinned.
Addicus turned and ran, snatching Peyton in his arm as he fled speedily over the ground. I shifted to follow and catch him, but his last remaining followers appeared from nowhere and threw a thorned net in front of me, scraping my eye and tangling my feet together until I tripped over myself and landed on top of the web of thorns. I watched and growled as they ran off in the same direction as Addicus and tried to tear my way out of the net as the thorns tore open my flesh. Within a moment’s time, my pack along with Cerise, appeared and helped to pull the net off me.
“Where the hell were you?” I snarled at Cerise as I shifted back into a man.
“They grabbed me and threw me on the other side of the street,” she said. “I ran to get the others to come and help.”
“Well you were too late,” I shouted in anger.
As soon as I was freed from the net, I was so infuriated and beside myself that Addicus had taken Peyton, that I couldn’t see past my fury to think straight.
“Take charge of the town,” I said to my pack. “The other pack is gone, and the shadow world will be here again soon I am sure. See that the town remains under your control until I get back.”
“Where are you going?” one of the men asked.
“To get back my mate.”
When I found Peyton in an old warehouse on the other side of town, she was half-clothed, restrained, and her neck was still inside the fatal grip of my former alpha. Now, Addicus was an opposing alpha, and I was his equal. In fact, I was his better, and I intended to make him wallow in that realization for the rest of his pathetic life. The only thing stopping me from killing him, was his hold on Peyton that he tightened as he clenched his fingers together. I heard her try to breathe through his constricting grasp and every drop of blood in my body was boiling with rage and fueled by vengeance. Addicus’ two remaining shifters tried to come at me to restrain me, but instead of simply knocking them away from me as I would have normally done, I ripped their necks open and tossed them across the room to bleed-out. I was done playing games, and I wasn’t leaving any further opportunity for Addicus to retain any followers.
“Well, I guess now it’s just you and me,” he said with an aloof expression. “And your mate.”
“Leave her out of this,” I threatened.
“Why would I do that? She’s the most powerful weapon against you that I have right now. You make a move, and I crush her airway. She can’t shift either, which I find amusing. I had forgotten that she was a new shifter. New shifters can’t shift when they are terrified. They haven’t mastered the calm and control needed to do it yet. Considering that she’s still dangling here in my hand in human form, I’d wager to say that your beautiful woman is quite terrified.
Addicus smiled at me so widely that I could see his teeth. I wanted to tear each and every tooth from his mouth and make him choke on them. I could see the fear in Peyton’s eyes as she wrestled against him and tried to speak but couldn’t get a word out past his tight grip.
“What do you want?” I asked. It killed me to bargain with him, but there was no other way for me to save Peyton. And saving her was all that mattered to me right now.
“You.”
“What do you mean, me? The very first chance I get, I’m going to kill you.”
“You can try,” he laughed. “But you won’t be able. To. I want my second-in-command back.”
“You can get a new one,” I growled.
“I had a new one,” Addicus said as he tilted his head toward one of the dead shifters on the floor. “You just killed him.”
“Don’t expect an apology.”
“I don’t want an apology,” he said. “What I want, is your loyalty again. I want your allegiance, and I want you to join me. Together, you and I can rebuild my pack.”
“Why would you want me to come back to you?” I asked. Addicus was nuts. He knew that I despised him for threatening my mate. It was foolish of him to want me anywhere near him. “You were ready to kill me for treason not too long ago, remember?”
“Ah yes, I remember. But then I realized you were worth more to me dead than alive, as long as you were working for me instead of against me.”
“Not a chance in hell,” I said v
ehemently.
“We don’t have time to play games with this,” Addicus sneered. “You agree to return and serve me, or I kill her right now in front of you. Decide quickly.”
I thought instantly about what I could do to get Peyton out of this mess, and there was no easy answer. Addicus wasn’t playing around, and his grip tightened around her neck every second that I hesitated.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll come back.”
The moment that I agreed to his terms, he loosened his grip on her just enough for her to breathe and speak, but not enough for her to escape.
“No, Jasper, don’t agree to anything this tyrant says,” she shouted with tears in her eyes.
Addicus took one of his claws and swiped it across his forearm. “Blood oath,” he said. “Or no deal.”
I reluctantly did the same and sliced a clean line into my arm. Then he took a step forward, dragging Peyton along with him as her eyes bulged in fear and confusion. As soon as Addicus and I grasped hands, the blood between us mingled. The agreement was sealed. A blood oath could only be broken if the initiating party was killed. And as much as I wanted to kill Addicus right this very minute, he somehow managed to have more pack members that crawled out of the woodwork. He let Peyton go, and for a minute she ran to me and threw her arms around me as I held her in silence beneath the sad weight of what I had just done. Then, he had his shifters pull her away and take her back to our pack.
As I was left behind to stand with Addicus, Peyton struggled against the shifters who were taking her away and screamed. There was nothing that I could do. Trying to kill Addicus now and fight off the shifters he had here, would only result in Peyton being captured again, or possibly even worse. For now, all that I could do was stay behind and know that she was being taken safely back to our pack as was the agreement. For now, there was only one thing on my mind, and that was how to kill Addicus and get back to Peyton.
Chapter Fifteen
Peyton
“Let me go!” I screamed.
I kicked, and clawed, and tried to bite the men that were carrying me away from Jasper.
Damn it, why can’t I shift? What good was being a wolf shifter if you couldn’t shift when you needed to?
I had no problem shifting before, but now it seemed like the whole ability was broken. I heard what Addicus had said about being terrified, but I was no longer afraid. At least not for myself. I was still afraid about leaving Jasper behind with that wretched alpha though. Perhaps that was an even greater fear that was disabling my ability to shift. I really wished that my father was still alive. He would be able to help me figure out what to do.
Addicus’ henchmen delivered me to where Cerise and the rest of the pack was gathered, and after throwing me onto the ground in front of our pack, they took off back to Addicus before anyone had a chance to do anything to them.
“Are you alright?” Cerise asked as she helped me to my feet.
“No,” I said angrily. “I am an absolute wreck and need to get back to where Addicus is holding Jasper.”
“Has he been taken prisoner?” one of the men asked.
“Not exactly,” I said.
I explained the situation as best as I could, but I was impatient and ready to run back to where he was.
“You need to calm down and think clearly,” Cerise said as she tried to talk some sense into me. “You can’t just go charging in there and demanding Jasper be returned. That was the whole point of what he did—to save you. You’ll ruin the sacrifice that he made in order to keep you safe, if you go back there and pick a fight with Addicus that you cannot win.”
“Ugh! I don’t understand why Jasper doesn’t just leave,” I shouted in frustration. “He’s strong enough to overpower them again and get out by himself.”
“That’s because you don’t know what a blood oath is,” one of the shifters said to me.
That was true, I didn’t. But I also didn’t want to waste time hearing some stupid explanation when Jasper was there with Addicus. God only knows what Addicus was trying to force him to do.
“Fine, tell me,” I said as I slumped down onto the ground in a huff to listen. “But tell me quickly. And while you’re at it, maybe one of you can explain why I can’t seem to shift.”
“You can’t shift?” he asked.
“No. My shifting seems to be broken.”
A quiet voice from the group spoke up above the others. It was a woman, one that I had seen Jasper train but had never spoken with myself.
“Your shifting ability is not broken,” she said empathetically. “You just have not yet learned how to conquer fear.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yes, yes, I know. Addicus said the same thing about not being able to shift when you’re afraid.”
“If that is what Addicus said,” she continued. “Then he was wrong. You can shift when you’re afraid. In fact, you can shift very powerfully when you are in the height of fear. Fear doesn’t shut shifters down; it makes you stronger. You just need to know how to use it.”
“Can you show me?” I asked the woman, who looked to be not much older than me. “Can you show me how to channel the fear and use it to be stronger, and to shift faster?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I can.”
I thanked her and turned back around to hear about the blood oath. I imagined it to be something like the blood promises that some of the kids in middle school thought was a cool and risky thing to do. They’d prick their fingertip with a safety pin, make some sort of stupid swear, and then press their fingers together, believing it would create some sort of magical and unbreakable bond. Of course it didn’t. It was just a stupid thing to do considering the risk of infections.
But it turned out that shifter blood oaths were nothing like the trivial games that humans played. Shifter blood oaths were literally binding. Jasper had no choice but to follow through with his end of the agreement, or else his shifter abilities would be rendered useless. The only way out of the blood oath was for him to kill the one who put it there.
“If that is true,” I asked in confusion. “Then why didn’t Jasper just kill Addicus right then and there?”
“He was probably trying to make sure that you were safely returned first,” Cerise said. “Do you understand now why rushing in to try and save him is a bad idea? It would be a futile attempt and he cannot get out of the blood oath without killing Addicus first.”
She was right, and I hated that Jasper gave himself up just to save me. I had to get him back. I just needed to figure out how, and none of the pack seemed willing to rush into a conflict that would likely fail. They agreed with Cerise and didn’t want to launch any sort of rescue effort without an order from Jasper, who was still their alpha even if he had been made to pledge a temporary loyalty to Addicus. With no other options that I could think of, I asked Cerise for help.
“I want you to peacefully go and ask Addicus to come into town and meet with me,” I said.
“What makes you think he would even want to meet with you?” Cerise asked. “I mean, he had you as his prisoner. If there was anything that he wanted from you, he would have taken it already.”
“No,” I said firmly. “I am the daughter of the fallen alpha of Rye, and he wants to re-take this town. He knows he can’t do it without me. Our pack won’t just hand it over to him.”
“You want to give him Rye?” she asked with a wide-eyed confusion. “But I thought that the whole point of us coming back here was to save Rye from Addicus.”
“It was,” I said. “But circumstances have changed. Tell Addicus to come meet with me. Tell him that I want to exchange the territory which we have just reclaimed—for Jasper.”
Waiting for Cerise to return with an answer from Addicus was agonizing. But it was even worse when she finally did return with an answer that I didn’t want to hear.
“Addicus said no deal.”
“What? Why not?”
“He said that he wants to come into town to meet with yo
u still, for some other reasons that he didn’t give,” Cerise explained. “He won’t take your deal, but he might have something else to bargain with.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Addicus could not be trusted.
“He said that he will be here at first light with two of his pack members to meet with you.”
“And what are we supposed to do until then?” I asked dismayed.
“There’s nothing we can do Peyton, except to wait,” she said.
The rest of the shifters heard what was said, and since it was getting late, everyone went to rest until morning.
I couldn’t sleep at all the entire night. How was I supposed to sleep when I was so worried about what might be happening to Jasper? I hoped that he had just found a way to kill Addicus without jeopardizing his shifter abilities with that stupid oath. I just wanted all of this to be over, and I wanted morning to hurry up and get here so that I could hear what Addicus had to say. I was already sure that I wasn’t going to like whatever deal he wanted to offer, but anything was better than just lying here doing nothing.
Instead of continuing to try to force myself to sleep, I got up and went to train during the night. I was so filled with fury and sadness, that my emotions were boiling over as I trained. Then all of a sudden, just as my eyes were swelling with tears as I thought about the slim possibility that something might happen to Jasper and I would never be able to see him again—I shifted. I hadn’t even tried to or wanted to right then for that matter. It just happened. But this time it was different than my other shifts. This time I discovered a powerful new ability that I didn’t even know existed—I was able to half-shift. I looked down at my hands and saw the wolf claws piercing out where my fingernails should be. It was like the moment that happens just before a shift, except this time I was staying right there in that moment. I could feel my senses heighten, and the strands of slight fur prickle on the back of my neck. I felt like I was in-between human and wolf, while being able to access the best qualities of both. I could stand on my two long legs, but yet I could run faster across the training yard than should have been physically possible for merely two feet.