“If you’re nearly finished with this very entertaining spectacle, I think we should be going,” Devin said, stretching out a hand to me. A test. To see if I would comply.
“Go,” I commanded my pack, and I swear the earth beneath my feet trembled at the power behind the command.
“Fuck…” Clay gritted out between his clenched teeth, his veins popping as he fought me tooth and nail. Jared didn’t budge, either, but I could see how his body trembled.
The others moved back, bowing at my authority as they sunk further back into the trees as the last dregs of sunlight left the sky and they were all cloaked in shadow.
“I said go,” I repeated, raising my voice until it was a shrill awful thing that hurt my own ears to hear.
“I won’t…” Clay managed as he dragged his half-wolf claws in the ground to try and stop himself from leaving. “...forgive you for this.”
“Good,” I blurted before I could stop myself. “Be angry. Blame me. Hate me.”
Anything would be easier for them than admitting this was the only way. Anything would be easier than living with the pain of my loss. Hate was easier. Hate would keep them going.
I shoved Jared back first before moving to Clay until they were both forced to standing—to moving two steps back.
But instead of snarling at me like I wanted them too. Instead of looking spiteful and angry, they just looked like a beautiful tragedy. My heart clenched painfully in my chest until I couldn’t look at them anymore for fear of looking permanently undone.
“Never,” Clay promised.
Jared winced as my command finally won out, and he began to be absorbed into the shadows of the trees. “We couldn’t hate you. Not for this. Not for anything.”
25
I couldn’t be sure how long I stood there as my pack, family, retreated from the barrens. It might’ve been hours, but more likely it was only minutes.
I didn’t move so much as an inch until their howls of anguish echoed over the valley and I knew that they were outside of his reach. At least for now. At least for as long as I kept up my end of our deal.
That was my hope, but Devin could just as easily decide he’d rather I kept on trying to fight him. Hell, maybe it turned the psycho on.
Once even the echoes of my pack’s call faded, I crossed the barrens. Each step felt like another nail in my coffin, but I reminded myself that this wouldn’t be forever. He wouldn’t always have the upper hand, and as soon as that power shifted, I would be ready.
My wolf went dormant as I approached Devin, his hand still outstretched, waiting for me to take it. I silently thanked my inner beast for allowing me to do this, whether she would bear witness to it or not.
Even that primal, reactive part of myself knew this was the right thing, for now. To save the ones we loved.
Devin had always been taller than me, but the bulk he’d added to his once slender frame made him absolutely dwarf me in all ways now. Though we both knew who was the stronger wolf here, I sensed that in human form, I may have more difficulty fighting him off than I originally thought.
I grimaced, slipping my fingers over his callused palm. He gripped me tightly, hauling me in until his face was level with mine. “There,” he said. “Was that so hard?”
My gut instinct was to strike, my fist clenched and ready at my side, but I held myself back.
Devin lifted two fingers to caress the tender flesh beneath my chin. “So much fire,” he said, gazing into my eyes in a way that made my stomach turn. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
He snapped his fingers, and Forrest tugged a small sack from a leather cord around his neck and dumped its contents into Devin’s waiting palm.
Four white pills.
“Open,” Devin said with a grin, his gaze slipping to my lips.
“What are they?”
He pursed his lips for a moment, considering me before he replied. “A paralytic. Can’t have you running off or trying anything before I can even get you home.”
Fear spiked my blood with a fresh wave of adrenaline, and my heart began to pound anew.
As though he knew exactly where my thoughts had wandered, he let his predatory gaze slip down the length of my body and licked his lips. “Don’t worry, my pet. I won’t touch you. Not until you want me to.”
My brow furrowed, confused at the easy way he spoke. Like he really expected me to crave the touch of a narcissistic psychopath like him.
I glanced at Forrest and the coward let down his gaze and stepped away. It was one thing to stand by an asshole like Ryland, a man Forrest had known and befriended for upward of twenty years, even after his truth came out. It was why I’d let him and a few others go free instead of forcing them to bow.
I understood misplaced loyalty.
Once, I’d placed that same faith in the man standing before me now.
But this. Standing with Devin. Helping him crush a pack that he once defended. I shook my head, and even though he wasn’t looking at me, I knew he could feel my disgust radiating from me in waves. He would die for this, too.
I would make sure of it.
I flinched away as Devin leaned in, his warm breath fanning over my ear. “I might let you kill him if you want,” he whispered conspiratorially. “Call it a wedding gift.”
“You’re insane.”
My head jerked back as the sharp rap of the back of his hand found my cheek. The tang of blood bloomed over my tongue, and I blinked the dark spots from my eyes.
“You will not speak to me that way,” he hissed, looking every bit the crazed lunatic I knew he was, but only for a beat before he slicked his dark hair back from his face and sighed.
“Now. Open wide.”
I groaned as I resurfaced from the drug, my head heavy and ears filled with cotton. My fingers twitched over something smooth, like velvet or suede, and I worked hard to peel back my eyelids, but they wouldn’t cooperate.
It was dark wherever we were. A suffused orange glow was the only light that flickered behind my shuttered eyelids.
Taking stock, I realized there was something brushing against my chest and shoulders. I could feel it against my flesh, and yet I couldn’t move to touch it.
It took more effort than I ever would have thought possible to get my eyelids even a fraction open, but I did. Grunting like a rabid animal.
Where was I?
A smooth carpet coated the earthen floor beneath me. Propped behind my back was a small mountain of suede pillows. An old kerosene lantern hung in one corner of what looked like a really big tent. The dark tactical style canvas of it at odds with the plush interior.
I rocked my head to one side, gaining back another modicum of movement and found a bed. What looked like a real mattress on top of some kind of cot-like structure to keep it up off the floor. A rumpled green blanket hung half on and half off, and my nose wrinkled as the smell hit me.
Devin’s scent. That strange combination of smooth musk and sharp pine that I’d once loved, but now thought smelled like a bog in the forest. The kind that housed algae and toads and smelled absolutely rank when it got too hot out.
Yeah. I didn’t know how I’d ever actually enjoyed that smell.
As though on cue, Devin swept into the tent, pushing through a flap opposite me. He was still full naked, his body glistening with sweat in the lamplight.
Judging by how dark it was outside, I had to guess it’d been at least a few hours since the barrens, which meant I could be literally anywhere within a two-hundred mile radius. Not a comforting thought.
“You’re awake.”
No shit, I wanted to reply, but my tongue wasn’t ready to work yet and sat uselessly on the floor of my mouth.
He turned back and lifted the flap, calling out into the night, to where I could hear the distant sounds of people and animals milling about, setting up camp.
“Bring him,” he demanded, and the shadow of a tall man moved from beside the entrance, his footsteps fading as he moved
away.
Devin moved to the corner of the tent where a basin was placed high on a collapsible camp table. He splashed the water on his face, scrubbing away the last splatters of what I had to assume was Sam’s blood from his cheeks.
He took a cloth from the top of a stack next to the basin and soaked it in the water, wringing out the excess before coming to me.
I cringed inwardly as he knelt at my side, cocking his head, considering my face, my neck, and then lower, to where someone had mercifully dressed me in what looked like a white nightgown.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered,” he told me, lifting a finger to twirl it in my long silvery hair, making my blood pump faster. The spark of fear doing enough to burn off some more of the paralytic from my blood, enabling me to twitch my hand into a loose fist and close my gaping mouth.
Devin lifted the cloth to my cheek, scrubbing away what felt like a mat of blood even though I couldn’t remember being hurt. When the cloth came away brown instead of red, I sighed inwardly, glad to see it was only dirt.
“I didn’t touch you,” he said, and I wanted desperately to believe him.
“W-what…” I tried, the word coming out as if I had a ball in my mouth.
“Hush,” Devin chided me, dragging the cool cloth down to my collarbone. “It’ll be a while yet before your strength returns. Be patient.”
I narrowed my eyes on him, wondering what the fuck he was playing at with this bullshit nice guy act.
“The alchemist,” someone announced from outside as the feeling returned to my toes.
“Let him in.”
A man entered a moment later. Tall, with broad shoulders and silver strands in his dark hair that caught the light as he moved through the tent.
“This is the bitch?”
“Don’t call her that,” Devin snapped at the man, whirling on him with a warning in his stare and muscle coiled to strike.
The man, to his credit, didn’t so much as flinch at Devin’s threat, instead surveying him as one might survey a specimen beneath a microscope. Finding it particularly lacking.
When he looked at me, though, the same disinterest was not present in his cutting stare.
“Shall I proceed then?” the alchemist asked Devin, not bothering to pay him any mind as he brushed past to stand before me.
“This...this spell you’re casting, how long will it last?”
“It is permanent.”
A spell?
Devin was having this fucking alchemist prick cast a spell on me?
I had to clench my jaw as tightly as I could to stop myself from smiling. Being the twin soul wolf allowed me to mate to two shifters, but it had also allowed me to be somehow impervious to the magic of other immortal races. And that ability hadn’t only extended to me, but to my entire pack when I became alpha.
It was a secret I knew wasn’t safe if shared. People like this alchemist, with his clear status in the witching community, apparent in his dress and confidence, wouldn’t allow shifters like me to live if they knew the truth.
And this one, clearly, didn’t.
The alchemist inhaled sharply through his nose and tipped his head to one side, cracking his neck and flexing his fingers until each one popped.
“I’ll need a moment in private,” he said, closing his eyes and spreading his hands at his sides, palms down to draw magic up from the earth.
“No.”
The alchemist’s eyes flew back open to glare at Devin.
“Either you leave, or you will not get what you’ve asked for. This magic is ancient. Forbidden. Known only to a handful of my kind. Its knowledge cannot be—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your magic. Besides, I’m not in the business of leaking information that could harm my kind.”
The alchemist seemed to consider this and then nodded. “Very well, but if you tell a soul, I’ll have to kill you.”
The corner of Devin’s mouth lifted into a grin as though he welcomed the challenge, and he was even more the fool than I thought he was. Too cocky. That cockiness would be the very thing that killed him.
Without warning, the alchemist raised his hands and sparks of blue-hued light flew from his fingertips, forming a blazing symbol in the air. Intricate with lines and curves and runic symbols twisting and locking into place as though he was playing a puzzle game with electricity and the universe was the game board.
I’d seen magic before. But not like this. Never like this.
Someone gasped, and it took me a moment to realize it was me as I shied away from the blazing glow of the alchemist’s spell.
It won’t work on me, I told myself. The words a mantra on repeat in my skull. It won’t work. It won’t work.
“Liraveris Bestiam,” he said, and the blue hued light splintered into a thousand tiny pieces, shooting straight for me. They stabbed into my flesh, sinking down through muscle, sinew, and eventually, bone.
My stomach roiled at the attack. His magic filled me until I was near bursting. My insides feeling too big to be contained by my outsides until my eyes were bulging. Until I was choking on it.
“What’s happening?” Devin demanded, and as I vomited, he caught me, turning me onto my side to prevent me from choking as putrid bile flowed from my lips and bright spots of light crowded my vision.
“Her twin soul, I imagine,” the alchemist said without feeling. “It’ll be harder to contain than a normal shifter. The magic will do its work, though, you can be certain of that.”
Hot tears pricked my eyes as my sides stopped squeezing and the horrible sensation of the magic invading my body seemed to leech away back to the earth.
“There, see? She’s just fine.”
Devin’s hands left me, and I let my tensed muscles sag against the carpet, focusing on breathing. On getting air into my lungs and the light bursts out of my eyes so I could see.
“What…” I hissed, finding that the alchemist’s magic had burned off even more of the drug still lingering in my bloodstream. “What did you...do...to me?”
The alchemist knelt, careful to avoid the pool of bile, until I could see his face. “I’ve bound your wolf,” he told me with a grin, lifting his gaze back to Devin.
“She won’t be able to access the strength of her inner beast. Nor will she be able to shift...though I’m afraid nothing will stop her from shifting during a full moon. However, she will be feral during a moon-triggered shift. Acting on instinct alone. Like a wild animal. Best to have her chained.”
Devin nodded, his face falling as though he didn’t relish the thought of taking a part of me away. Like he didn’t just try to hack off part of my soul.
But I could already sense it, the last of the witch’s magic leaving my body and returning to the earth. And though she was muted, hampered by all the drugs still lingering in my system, I found I could still feel her. I couldn’t be certain, but it was enough to hope that whatever magic this bastard had tried to use on me hadn’t worked.
Even if I needed them both to think it had.
“How much?” Devin asked, going to retrieve a stack of bills from a low table next to his bed.
The alchemist shook his head, standing. “She killed my nephew,” he said. “We’ll call it even.”
A river of ice flooded my veins as I considered the alchemist for a second time. Recognizing the sloping nose and wide jaw. They were features he shared with his kin: the witch we captured, tortured, and killed.
The one we’d found to be innocent of the crimes we accused him of, but guilty of so many others committed at the behest of his master. His uncle.
I committed his face to memory, vowing to kill him too if I ever saw his ugly face again.
“Fucking bastard,” I spat, my voice still softer than I would’ve liked but growing in strength all the same.
“It goes without saying,” the alchemist said as he made to depart, holding open the tent flap to cast one more disdainful glance in my direction. “I was never here.”
> Devin didn’t bother replying as the man left, bending to lift me from the ground instead, setting me back against the pillows while he tugged the dirtied carpet out from under me and tossed it outside.
“Get rid of that,” he barked. “And bring me the girl.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now what?” I asked, wiggling my toes and flexing my shoulders. Hoping he didn’t notice just how much feeling was returning to my limbs while his back was turned to me. I rolled my ankles, stopping as he came back to me.
“We live happily ever after?” I asked, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “You the mad king and me, the chained bitch at your side?”
His brows lowered, confused.
“No, Allie. I won’t have to keep you chained. That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? The council member was only the first visitor. There will be another. One who will make you irrevocably mine. Forever. Unless you hold up your end of the bargain.”
“Let me guess? A vampire?”
So predictable. Also, so so fucking perfect.
Devin took hold of my jaw, forcing my still-rolling eyes to focus on him instead. His rough touch sent shivers of disgust rolling through me, and I had to stop myself from spitting in his face.
“You made me a promise,” he said, neglecting to respond. “You swore to be mine if I allowed your mates to live.”
He cast my face to the side with a sharp jerk of my chin, leaning in to inhale deeply beneath my jaw. “That smell…”
“Fuck off,” I growled.
His fist came around my throat, squeezing just enough to prove what he could do if he wished. “We can do it my way if you prefer? I have a crew ready to go after them. And I wouldn’t stop at your mates, Allie. I’ll kill them all.”
My breath wheezed through the pinhole of my throat, and he relaxed his hold just enough for me to respond. “No,” I croaked, testing my arms while he was distracted. I could lift them, but I was afraid they’d still be of little use.
“Then show me you mean it,” he demanded, his eyes falling to my lips while he licked his own. “Don’t fight me. Just give in to it. I know you can feel it, too. We’re the same, Allie.”
Shifted Scars: A Wolves of Forest Grove Novel Page 23