Say My Name

by R K Knightly

  Elle ignored the implication of Jeremiah as her mate and plowed on.

  "So, you blame my father for getting your family kicked out a second time? Is that why you agreed to kidnap me for Jeremiah?" Elle asked.

  "Of course, that was part of it," he said. "The money helped as well. You see, I found own my mate at age 19. I knew I might not make it out of this alive. I wanted the money for her, so she could start a new life somewhere else if I were to be killed."

  "Noble, but you are still a despicable creature," Elle told him bluntly. "I pity the female that got paired with you. To think she chose life as a rogue over rejection of you and a stable family life. Does she know of your proclivities towards young females?"

  The man shrugged.

  "She may have an inkling," Jackson simply said.

  Disgust tasted like bile in the back of Elle's throat. It was rancid and heavy. Acidic.

  "And yet...she stays with you," Elle responded with shock.

  "Females will believe what they want to believe," he told her. "From the look on your face when you walked in here, I would say you had blocked quite a few memories yourself. If Ellen wishes to look past some of my foibles, it is because she cannot imagine a man she loves to be capable of such atrocities. Or at least she believes that I have changed my ways. For her."

  She didn't want to admit to the shock of seeing him again, the visions, the memories. She didn't even want to acknowledge them to herself right now. She could do that later, on her own. When she was alone, preferably.

  "Jackson Kincaid," Elle said stiffly. "Your crimes are indeed atrocious, and you show no sign of regret or remorse for your victims. You are hereby found guilty of the following crimes: conspiracy to kidnap, attempted kidnap, two counts molestation of a minor, and assault of a minor."

  "Playing judge and jury, little wolf?" Jackson asked, snickering. "Will you be my executioner as well? It's only fitting. One generation to the next. Your father certainly condemned us."

  Elle hesitated. Could she execute the man before her? Lord knew he deserved it. The things he had done, the easy way he had talked about them. Abominable. Deplorable.

  Before she could think, she laid the last blow on him.

  "I, Giselle Stark, Luna of Plumbrook, find you guilty of the above charges," she told him firmly and took a deep breath.

  "I sentence you to death by Blood Eagle," she decreed and, before she could see the shock register on his face, did a quick 180 and walked out toward the stairs leading to clean air and freedom.

  ∞∞∞

  Alpha. We have lost your mate.

  It was one of the wolves he had set to guard Elle, and Liam immediately growled at their incompetence.

  What the fuck happened? he snarled back through their link.

  She went to visit the Beta's female. We were invited in and she fled while we were...busy.

  Liam would figure out what "busy" meant later. He had to find Elle first and demand to know why she slipped away from her guards.

  Go and search the grounds, Liam demanded. I will head back to the house and try to pick up her scent from there, if she hasn't already made it back to the house.

  He got a reply of, Yes, Alpha, and cut the link, standing up from his work desk and moving towards the door. He knew that if she was sneaking around, she would most likely ignore any attempt at him linking with her. Liam’s hand met with the cold metal of the doorknob and turned it. He found Trace on the other side, about to knock on the door of his office, and Liam pushed him aside as he walked right past the man, heading toward the Packhouse's front entrance.

  "Liam!" Trace called.

  "Not now," Liam said shortly, huffing his displeasure at being waylaid by his own Delta.

  "But it's about Elle," Trace told him. Liam immediately stopped and did an about-face back to him, grabbing him by the cuff of his shirt and lifting him from the ground.

  "What about her?" Liam growled as his eyes shifted to the amber orbs of his wolf.

  "She was seen in the cells with the rogue. Jackson," Trace told him, cowering under his Alpha's fierce presence.

  Liam let him go and immediately turned around.

  "But she's not there anymore," Trace told him before Liam could walk three steps. "She left a few minutes ago. One of the guards there linked me and said she had left. He...he said she...she laid down a death sentence on the rogue." Trace paused. "By Blood Eagle."

  The fuck?

  It was unlike his little Elle's sweet nature to hand down such a punishment as that. He certainly wouldn't have even handed it down. It was bound to end up as weeks of unbearable pain until the man succumbed to his significant injuries.

  Blood Eagle. He never would have thought to use that. It was more of a torture device and slow death for a wolf.

  Used first by the Vikings, Blood Eagle was a sacrifice they used where the condemned person was laid naked on his stomach before each of his ribs was broken. The bones were then pulled through the skin and bent up towards the sky, resembling bloody wings. Even with a wolf's swift healing capabilities, it was difficult to generate enough energy to fix it themselves. Even the stamina of a rogue wolf – who was sometimes used to getting by on little sustenance – wouldn't stand a chance.

  Blood Eagle? What was Elle thinking?

  So, Liam left his Delta in the Packhouse and went searching for his mate, hoping to find her in the first spot he looked.

  Their home.

  ∞∞∞

  Liam seethed. He'd yell at Colleen and the guards later. All he could focus on was the sound of weeping coming from somewhere inside his home.

  Once Liam had stepped over the threshold of his house, he heard it. The soft wails of his mate. The sound tore at his heart, and he followed her scent to the second floor, down the hallway, and into their bedroom.

  He eventually found Elle in a lump of blankets on the bed. They almost swaddled her like a baby. The shock about her surprise death sentence took a backseat as he moved over to the side of the bed to sit down.

  "Elle," Liam called softly to her. "Angel."

  She continued to sob under innumerable layers of comforter until Liam had to dig her out, pick her up, and place her on his lap. His shirt was instantly saturated as she sobbed into it, smearing tears and snot all over it.

  "What happened?" he asked quietly as he rocked her back and forth gently. He had let her calm a bit before speaking, and she was down to sniffles and the occasional hiccoughing sob.

  "He is my cousin," she said through her watery voice. "He...he..."

  She couldn't verbalize it, so she told him through their mindlink. Monosyllables. Visions. Liam shuddered against her.

  And as she spoke to him in his mind, anger flushed crimson on Liam's face, and if Elle hadn't been on his lap he would have stood and stomped off to the cells to exact justice on the scum. Elle's style of justice. He was less surprised by her death sentence now than he was before.

  "That fucking..." Liam couldn't find words in his vocabulary that would be close enough to what he was feeling for the rogue. He only wished the man had died before this. It was painfully obvious that remembering her abuse had stirred up long dormant emotions again.

  First Jackson. Then Jeremiah.

  The poor woman had been through enough.

  Liam was determined, now more than ever, that she would never be hurt. Not ever again.

  Chapter 35

  "Blood Eagle, baby? What were you thinking?" Liam asked when Elle had finally calmed down long enough to verbalize words out loud again. The shock of her meeting with Jackson had her almost reverting back to her mute state. It had scared the Alpha for a bit.

  "I was thinking of the cruelest ways for a person to die," Elle told him softly, shrugging. "I used to watch a lot of the History Channel, and I remembered seeing a special on Vikings and the sacrificial customs of them. It just...popped into my head."

  Liam shook his head again, in awe of his tiny mate. Death by guillotine would have been more her
style, if she could even be thought as having one. It was quick. Painless. Easy. Set a basket on the ground, sharpen the blade, thunk, and you're done. Blood Eagle – for lack of a better word – was inhumane.

  "Can I take it back? Do something else? He's already dead anyway." There was no way Liam was letting the man go, and he had forfeited his life by trying to abduct his woman and the pack's Luna.

  "You can," Liam said as he nodded to her. Then he shook his head again, smiling slightly. "But you gave the guards something to talk about, I'm sure. It'll be all over Plumbrook by nightfall how unforgiving and unyielding you are. You'll be a legend." She grimaced at him, pained.

  "But as Luna, shouldn't I be fair and unwaveringly kind?" It's not like there was a fucking handbook on the role.

  "Yes, but you also should be able to make tough decisions when you are able to," Liam told her. "It shows your strength. Once word gets out as to what sort of wolf the man is and what he has done, you'll endear the pack to you even more. If there is one thing they cannot abide, it's causing harm to a child, no matter what the circumstances. It's well within your rights to go about your original terms, though." He doubted she would.

  "No," she said quickly. "I spoke without thinking. I don't regret finding him guilty. He as much as admitted to everything he did and he showed no remorse for the things he has done. I think we should make it quick, painless. Once he is gone, his mate will feel it, may even try to come after us. If we make it quick, she may not try to take us all down in her rage. She is already...somewhat aware of his past misdeeds."

  "I doubt, after the severance of the bond, she will be able to do much of anything," Liam said. After all, he would know. The cutting of the mating bond was painful to the extreme.

  "Sorry," Elle said, wincing.

  "No, you are right," he told her. "I'm – I'm over what happened years ago, and I'm happy with my life now. I...I don't think I ever would have been this happy with my true mate." His admission tasted like guilt, like shame in his mouth.

  "But you would have loved her just the same," Elle said, certain. Liam nodded.

  "I would have, but I would have been a weaker leader," he admitted. "An Alpha's mate is meant to be just as strong, even if not physically, as the Alpha. Cecilia was weak, both emotionally and physically."

  Elle let that thought linger, and paused before clearing her throat.

  "What do you suggest?" Elle asked, getting back down to brass tacks.

  "Guillotine," Liam said in a low rumble. "Quick. Easy. Relatively painless. Then we send Jackson's head back to Jeremiah as a message."

  "And that message?"

  Liam looked at her, catching her azure gaze with his steely one.

  "He's not getting you back. Anything he throws at me gets tossed back into his court dead, or damned close to it."

  ∞∞∞

  "Holy shit," Conley breathed as Liam caught him up to speed later that day. His father had been visiting the Shadecreek Pack, the Alpha being an old friend of his from diaper days.

  "Yeah," Liam said softly.

  "That little mate of yours is tougher than nails," his father said admiringly. "And she'll make one hell of a mother to my grandkids."

  It was back to that. All Liam needed now was his father asking how progress on that front was going.

  "How is the sex life? Plentiful?"

  Oh, God.

  "Jesus Christ," Liam muttered. It was his worst nightmares come true.

  "What? Be fruitful and multiply and...however the saying goes after that," Conley told his son. "Your sister is on her second. You should at least be halfway done with your first."

  "We're...we’re working on it," Liam said vaguely.

  "Morning, noon, and night?" Conley asked. "When your mother and I were trying we-"

  "Good God! Don't finish that sentence!" Liam exclaimed, eyes bulging in his panic.

  "What?" Conley asked, feigning innocence. "It's not like you don't know where you came from, boy. Your mother and I may have only had the two of you, but we were pretty fucking active otherwise."

  "This...is a fucking nightmare," Liam voiced out loud as he groaned. He needed to hear about his parents' active sex life as badly as he needed a frontal lobotomy or a penectomy. "Okay, old man, any more sex talk out of you and I'll stop trying for pups."

  "Probably too late to stop now anyway with the way you two go at it," Conley said. "Anyways, your old man will be out of your hair relatively soon."

  "Why? What's up?" Liam asked, thankful for a reprieve from sex talk with his father.

  "Your mother's been bothering me since I left," Conley said. "She says she misses me, but I really know just what she misses." He gestured pointedly down to his crotch before Liam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “The D.” As if he had needed to say it.

  And they had been so close to getting past the sex talk.

  "Elle is asleep, so I'm going to hit some take-out joint for dinner," Liam said after a beat. "Will you be okay here with her, or should I ask Caleb to babysit your ass so you don't try and bully her into a quick pregnancy with your horrible sex stories?"

  His father blew out a quick gust of air.

  "We'll be fine. Stop worrying," Conley told him. "I promise not to bring up sex and babies, and the two of you doing whatever nastiness you get up to in your bedroom there when you think I'm not around."

  "Hey!"

  "I said I'd not talk to her about it," Conley told him. "You're fair game as far as I'm concerned. It's a father's God-given right to make his children supremely uncomfortable. I'm just executing my authority as sperm donor."

  "I regret inviting you into my territory," Liam told him as he picked up his keys from the bowl near the doorway.

  "Hey, it used to be my territory too," his father told him accurately. "Without your mother and I, you wouldn't have a pack to control."

  "Chinese?" Liam asked, ignoring him.

  Conley nodded.

  "You know what I like, kid."

  ∞∞∞

  The Norfolk Tavern was crowded when Liam took Elle there next. They didn't see any sign of the owner's son, but that was just as well. He would probably have bothered Elle about joining him on Piano Night, and Liam wasn't ready for her to spread her wings – in that sense – just yet.

  At least not until the problem of Jeremiah went away. For good.

  And Liam didn't know how to do that without creating an all-out war between the two packs. Not something one took to lightly.

  After his father's departure back to the mountains in the west, Elle had been bored staying at home. Liam decided to take a few guards with them to the Norfolk Tavern this time to guard the perimeter. He wanted the time alone with Elle outside of being at home with her when he could.

  And he had a few surprises in store for her as well. One he knew she would like, and one he hoped she would.

  David, the owner's son, suddenly appeared on the stage to a smattering of applause. Most of the people in attendance seemed to take his presence at the piano for granted, and David nodded toward Elle after his eyes lit up a bit when he saw her. As there was no lust in them and only interest, Liam would let the man live. For now. After all, he was human and there were laws against such things.

  David gestured her over with a twitch of his head and Liam followed Elle as they made their way past the tables surrounding the stage.

  "Elle, have you thought of what I had to say last time you were here?" David asked quietly as the crowd around them murmured a bit.

  "I-" she began.

  "It's been a bit...hectic at home right now," Liam told the man. "We've talked about it, and she would be willing to consider it after we have some personal matters squared away."

  Well, Liam said that in a more diplomatic way than Elle ever could have. She nodded in agreement with Liam. David's face fell, but he brightened after a moment as he thought of an idea.

  "Well, why don't we try a song or two now? Just to see how an audience takes to you
on Piano Night?" David asked.

  Liam nodded at him and looked over at Elle. "You want to give it a try?"

  "Sure," she said, sounding anything but confident. "I don't have a lot memorized, but I have a few things I keep in my back pocket."

  At that, Liam stepped back to his table, and David and Elle talked a few minutes before he brought out a microphone and placed it in front of the baby grand piano that took up much of the stage. He stood behind it and spoke to the audience.

  "I know this is Piano Night, but I thought we'd try something different this week. I hope you like it," he said.

  He stepped back to the piano and started a slow, melancholy tune.

  I’m With You by Avril Lavigne lacked something in the acoustic version, but it was still damned good and the audience appreciated the talent. Elle sang with a raw edginess as the last several stanzas faded away into applause. Wolf whistles soon followed with loud requests for an encore.

  Elle smiled softly and David said something that even Liam couldn't hear over the din of the crowd. Once the applause died down, however, it was apparent that the requests for an encore had gotten through and they were starting a new song. This one was better suited to the piano. It was another song by Avril Lavigne. When You’re Gone.

  Somewhere during the applause for the second song, Elle's head turned to the side of the stage as if she saw something. Shock registered before Liam realized what she must have seen. A small smile tipped his own lips and he watched Elle’s mouth form the word Mom before he walked to the stage to escort her down. Instead of walking her back toward their table, Liam moved them toward the newcomers.

  Roger and Mary Ellen Kincaid.

  Sneakily, he had used Elle's phone late one night to contact her parents to try to set up a rendezvous on neutral territory. Norfolk Tavern was the first place he thought of as it was far enough away from both packs to garner the least amount of attention.