Shifted Scars: A Wolves of Forest Grove Novel

by Lawson, Elena

  No, he replied, and I could hear the worry in the inflection of his voice even though he was trying to hide it. Nothing.

  Goddamn it.

  Devin shifted along with the two wolves to either side of him and I gasped, recognizing one of them.

  Is that…? Clay asked, and I felt the tension radiating off him in waves.

  It’s Forrest, Jared confirmed.

  He was at Ryland’s right hand four years ago, before I became the twin soul wolf and everything changed. I’d let him go along with a small group of others who couldn’t bear to stay under my command.

  So it seemed Sam wasn’t the only one who came back to bite me.

  Forrest wanted his revenge, too.

  “Come,” Devin called across the clearing. “Let’s talk.”

  I stifled a growl and my wolf retreated, letting me take the reins for a minute. I shifted, and though I’d gotten used to being naked in shitty situations, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so exposed.

  Once, Devin had proclaimed my body his.

  Once, I’d had to wonder if he’d touched me while I was drugged in that cave.

  I clenched my fists and stood taller.

  “You really filled out,” he called appreciatively, and I ground my teeth, trying not to pay any more attention than I needed to his naked body.

  Jared and Clay bent low at my sides, their tails going rigid as they growled at him.

  Devin fixed his cutting stare on my mates next.

  “It seems my intel was mistaken,” he said, his brows lowering, and I wondered at how he could possibly tell whether I’d rejected them or not. Being an outsider of this pack, there was no way he could know for certain.

  He lifted a hand, beckoning to someone further back in his three line formation.

  I turned briefly to find Callum several yards behind me. He shook his head, and I stiffened.

  Where the fuck were they?

  Barely a second later, I sensed Clay’s alarm and heard Hazel’s low whine before I spotted her. Two shifters in their human form held a struggling, naked Sam between them as they pressed through the rest of their pack, dragging her to Devin’s side.

  She bucked against their hold, and despite the piece of silvery tape covering her mouth, I still heard her muffled pleas.

  A pitched keen came from down the line, and I found Hazel stepping out ahead of the others. Her silvery gray wolf tilting its head to better hear what she could not see.

  “Hazel,” I called, drawing her attention.

  Don’t, I implored her, and she fell silent as she slipped back into line.

  My first thought was that she’d betrayed us and my wolf nearly stole back the reins. But then if she’d told Devin everything, why did she look so much like a prisoner between the bodies of the two shifters holding her. Why did she look so afraid?

  “I thought it a bit suspicious,” Devin said as the two men came to a stop next to their alpha, and Sam’s panicked gaze found me across the barren field.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what I found suspicious?” Devin called, tipping his head to one side as he steepled his fingers.

  How had I ever thought he was anything less than a total psychopath?

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me whether I give a shit or not.”

  He grinned, flashing two rows of shining white teeth in an angular jaw. “I found it suspicious that Samantha returned to me even after I told her to remain with your pack.”

  I realized that his offhanded admission should have shocked me. I wasn’t supposed to know that Sam was working with Devin to destroy us, but it was too late now, and he only grinned wider.

  “Where’s he going with this shit?” Clay whispered harshly, having shifted in the span of a single breath.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, keeping my voice low. “But I don’t like it.”

  “So, like any rational person would, I questioned it. I thought her loyalty knew no bounds, but it seems I was mistaken there, too.”

  Devin’s appraising green eyes passed over Sam, and she looked away, her shoulders curling in defensively.

  He reached out to trail a hand down her cheek, and she bucked, trying to escape his touch. Despite my fury at Clay’s sister, I seriously considered how I might bite off that hand for daring to lay a finger on her. On any woman who didn’t want it.

  “Without my little Piper, I might never have known the truth.”

  As though on command, a girl of no more than eighteen stepped forward, her mousy brown hair a mess of mats and tangles down her chest to her belly button.

  She stepped around Sam and lightly touched her cheeks.

  “Does Samantha have anything she’d like to say?” Devin asked, and I glanced to Clay for clarity. What exactly was happening right now?

  The girl called Piper dropped her fingers a moment later and turned to face her alpha with a bowed head and a pronounced tightness in her jaw.

  Her hands moved in a sequence of patterns, and I realized after a second that she was signing something.

  “She’s deaf,” Clay said, confirming my suspicion, and my mind began to race.

  Hazel was blind and could see a person’s past experiences and feelings through touch.

  I had a twin soul and mated to two shifters instead of one.

  This girl, it seemed, was deaf to the world around her, but could hear the inner thoughts of those she touched.

  Devin had used her to read Sam’s thoughts. Fuck.

  This was it. She was it. The secret weapon he’d used to get the upper hand and takeover five other fucking packs. The thing Sam couldn’t tell us about.

  Sam knew this could happen. She tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen.

  Jared shifted at my side.

  “What did she say?” Clay asked.

  Jared visibly paled. “Sam’s asking for you to forgive her.”

  Devin nodded to the girl, and she moved back to her place in the line behind him.

  “Such a shame,” Devin said, and my mouth opened in shocked horror as he stabbed into Sam’s stomach with partially shifted claws. Her body sagged as he lifted her heart to shine in what remained of the dying light as though it were a trophy to be placed on a mantle and admired.

  Clay’s anguish hit me only a moment after the sinking realization that Sam was dead. He fell to his knees, catching himself with two fists pressed flat against the earth as he roared his pain. The heart-wrenching sound of it echoed back to us as the two men holding Sam discarded her onto the ground. Her limp body bent at an odd angle, but her face...her face was clear as day. Two familiar blue eyes wide with fear. A mouth sealed forever.

  Clay bellowed again, and Hazel’s canine cries almost undid me.

  “Clay,” I whispered, holding back bile as I bent to touch him.

  Jared snatched me back before I could, and I gasped as Clay ripped free of his human form. He let loose a haunting howl filled with everything he never said. Every hope he’d had for his sister to be redeemed. To return home. For real.

  Hazel’s cracked howl rose to join Clay’s, and their raw melody seeped into my bones. Would stay there forever.

  Clay looked ready to charge, and I felt an unimaginable amount of pride in him for holding his ground even though I could feel every fiber of his being screaming kill.

  Once I was certain he wasn’t going to budge, I flicked my hate-filled gaze back to Devin. “You’re going to die,” I promised him, glancing back at Callum for confirmation that our missing shifters were almost here.

  But he shook his head again, a low whine on his lips.

  “Not waiting for your packmates, I hope?”

  I spun back around, a pounding so loud in my ears I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. I better have not fucking heard him correctly.

  “You know, poor Samantha might not have known your plan, but once Piper was able to figure out that she told you where I was keeping your pals...well, it was easy to figure out. It’s what I would hav
e done: distract your enemy while you steal from right under their nose. You and I are so similar.”

  “I am nothing like you.”

  The unease from my mates and my pack ramped up to the point it felt like every inch of my skin was crawling.

  Layla shifted. “What have you done with them?” she demanded, shaking, her small fists clenched so tight I knew her painted black nails would be carving half-moons into her palms. “Where’s Vivian? Where’s Seth?”

  Devin’s eyes narrowed on Layla, alight with malice. “My men got there just in time to stop them.”

  “Where are they?” Jared echoed.

  “Allie didn’t honor our agreement…”

  My stomach turned.

  “So, they’re dead, of course. All but a few. I’ll let you guess which lives I spared.”

  My vision narrowed until all I could see was a pinprick of light in a dark tunnel of naked horror. Layla screamed somewhere in the distance, but all I could see was the tunnel. And at the end of it: his face. Laughing. Cold. Victorious.

  “Allie,” Jared was saying, and my body shook. I wasn’t sure if he was the one shaking it or if it was doing it all on its own. I had no awareness of my limbs. No sense of the moments passing.

  Callum’s mate wasn’t dead. He would have felt it.

  Callum’s mate was the one of the ones he spared. His last bargaining chips.

  Which meant…

  Which meant…

  My mind rejected the thought. Refused it.

  No.

  If Vivian was…

  And Seth…

  Destiny…

  Charity...

  No. No.

  “You’re lying,” I hissed, finding my voice again as my vision returned and Jared helped me up from the ground.

  Devin tossed Sam’s heart onto her corpse with a shrug of indifference. “Afraid not.”

  “Shit,” Jared said, and he left my side to tend to Layla, who was sitting mutely on the ground, her face a mask of shocked terror. “Layla, come on, snap out of it.”

  But even Jared’s voice was watery with emotion. He was just better at keeping his pain inside.

  I stepped forward with purpose, my wolf on the brink of absolute feral combustion. If only I could catch my breath. If only I could breathe. But each short sharp inhale scarred my lungs, making me dizzy with dread so potent that it blotted out fury. Replaced it with a hollowness that ate at me from the inside out.

  My fault.

  This is all my fault.

  No.

  His fault.

  I took another purposeful stride forward, my skin hot and bristling with the urge to shift.

  “Uh uh,” Devin called in a sing-song voice, wagging his finger back and forth as though scolding a child. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  He gestured to the pack behind him. The pack that was now easily double our current size. There was no need for him to say it. If I attacked, we’d all be slaughtered.

  The guy to his right held up a cell phone and Devin pointed to the illuminated screen. “And if you get any funny ideas, then the shifters I have guarding the remaining hostages will know. They have orders to finish them off if anything should happen to me or anyone else here today.”

  If I challenged him, the rest of them would die.

  In a twisted, rage-fueled place in my mind, doing it anyway almost made sense. A sacrifice in exchange for tearing his head from his shoulders...but the idea of even one more innocent life being taken cut me to my core. I couldn’t do it.

  What if one of the still-surviving ones was Vivian?

  Could I sacrifice her to ensure the safety of the rest of my pack?

  Maybe a better alpha would have said yes, but I could never do something like that. Not while I still had one card left to play.

  Clay pressed into my side, his lupine body vibrating with a visceral need to protect his pack. To protect me. Perhaps sensing my intent.

  “This ends now,” Jared said, leaving Layla to return to my side. “This madness needs to stop. We attack. Now.”

  Callum broke out into a panicked whine, and I looked to find a few others attempting to console him.

  “No,” I replied, lifting a hand absently to stroke the line of his jaw. He really was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Would ever see again. “No one else is going to die today.”

  He caught my hand as I pulled away, his brows lowering. “Allie?”

  Clay growled next to me, and I hushed him, delving my fingers into his fur until I felt his warm body against my palm. “It’s all right.”

  Jared jerked me back to face him, his amber eyes wild in a face set of stone.

  “We aren’t going to let you do this.”

  “Yes,” I told him, gently prying his fingers from my wrist. “You are.”

  “What guarantee do I have that you won’t harm any of my pack if I agree to go with you?” I called, squinting into the twilight as Clay thrashed against my side, turning to snarl at me.

  Devin licked his lips. “My word.”

  “Because that’s always been so trustworthy in the past…”

  “Allie, you really don’t have any other choice.”

  My stomach iced over at the reality of the situation. We’d walked right into this trap. I thought we’d been the ones holding all the cards. That we’d play him to our advantage and take him for all he was worth.

  That’s not what happened here.

  We were the ones who got played.

  And now it was time to pay the price for that mistake.

  Already my mind raced with possibility. Maybe I didn’t have to be his captive for long. I was stronger than him. I could kill him. I just needed an opening. A split second where he let his guard down and I could take him out.

  But I remembered his vague threat on the phone before. You’ll have to be neutralized. What had he meant? Did he mean to...what? Lobotomize me? Drug me?

  Fucking hypnotize me or some shit? Would that work?

  “My mates,” I called, shuddering as I felt their accusing eyes turn on me. “If you harm either of them, I will never stop fighting you. I will live and breathe for the sole purpose of making you suffer.”

  “No, Allie…”

  “But, if you let them live...and if you release your hostages...and let my pack go free to live in peace—”

  “That’s an awful lot of conditions for a woman without anything to bargain with.”

  It was my turn to smirk now, because there was one thing I still had, and my mates were the only two souls on this earth I would trade it for.

  “If you do as I’ve asked, I won’t fight you. I’ll go willingly. I’ll be yours.”

  “But never truly mine until they are dead,” Devin argued, a muscle ticking in his cheek.

  “And if I don’t mate to you once they’re dead? Which I won’t. Then you will have me at my worst forever. Your choice.”

  Devin fell silent as though considering this new variable very carefully while I fended off every sort of awful emotion from my mates.

  “Very well,” he said, finally. “We’ll try it your way.”

  “If you do this…” Jared said, his amber eyes aglow with his wolf as he searched mine. “We’ll never stop coming for you.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking, because if I did, he’d stop me. They both would, because I didn’t intend to give them a choice.

  “I won’t let you do this,” Clay growled, his voice still half wolf as his fur vanished from beneath my fingertips, replaced with hard, sweat-slicked naked flesh. “We can take them. We can—”

  “And let his pack kill whoever he still has at the mill? Or wherever the fuck they are now?”

  “What if he’s lying? What if he’s already killed them all?”

  “Allie,” Vivian’s choked voice came over the cell phone across the barrens, the guy holding it having put it on speaker.

  My heart leapt into my throat and I had to throw out an arm to stop Layla fro
m rushing forward.

  “Vivian!” she cried.

  “Kill him!” Vivian’s rough voice called down the line. “Kill the fuckin—”

  Her voice was cut off by a thud and a shuffling sound before the buff guy holding the phone jammed the screen to deactivate the speaker.

  “She’s still alive…” I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud until Layla’s fingernails dug sharply into my forearm, making me release her.

  My best friend stared at me in horror, looking between me and the phone across the field with clear desperation in her eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I assured her, gripping her by the shoulders to stop her shaking. “It’s okay. She’s going to be fine.”

  I hugged her to me. “I promise.”

  And then lower, for only her to hear. “I’m going to kill him. I don’t know how. But I promise you I will do it. Take care of them. Don’t let them do anything stupid.”

  “Just come back,” she sobbed against my shoulder. “You have to come back.”

  I nodded as I pulled away.

  “You can’t ask me to sacrifice Vivian,” I told Clay, sniffling as I swiped angry tears from my eyes, and he looked at me like a man staring down the barrel of a gun.

  “I’ll kill him,” he promised, and I gave him a sad smile.

  “You won’t come after me,” I said, lacing the words with the absolute authority of an alpha wolf.

  “No, Allie, don’t you fucking dare—”

  “You will take care of our pack.”

  “You can’t do this to us,” Jared grunted, already bending to the weight of my will until he was forced to take a knee, his head bowing.

  It was only seconds before Clay followed, pure hate burrowing from his eyes directly into my soul as he fought my command. Every muscle flexing and bulging.

  “Lead them together.”

  Hazel whined, coming forward to press her cold nose into my stomach. At least she wasn’t fighting me.

  “Take care of them for me?”

  She rubbed her forehead against my belly before bending to nuzzle against her grandson’s side, making him flinch.

  The rest of the pack watched me with canine eyes, sad, but unwavering. It was a salute, I realized, a show of unity. Of thanks. My throat burned at the sight of them, and I had to turn around before I showed them my weakness. In the face of their strength, I felt like the biggest impostor of us all.