Without warning, he stopped, stood, and nodded his head toward Crawley. The pack fell silent, and Travis spoke slowly.
“There will not be another death tonight. If Victor withdraws his challenge, he may remain part of the pack. As well as those of you that stood with him.”
The silence grew until the only thing any of us could hear was the wind in the grass and everyone’s pounding heartbeat—including Victor’s.
“I withdraw,” moaned the beaten man on the ground.
A few people moved forward to pick up Victor, and several others offered clean towels to Travis, but he ignored them, making his way straight to us.
“Thank you,” Charlotte whispered.
“This one pass was for you, my love,” he said.
She squeezed my hand and nodded, understanding that while he would keep his word, he would not grant a second pardon to the man who had likely orchestrated the attack on our bedroom as well as Dean’s personal attempt on her life.
The bright lights were switched off, and the field faded into the blackness of the moonless night. Clouds blocked out any natural moonlight. We could see without it, but Lycans drew comfort from the moon. Our shifting had nothing to do with its rise and fall like many human stories claimed, but we revered it as a memorial to the gate home into the Veil. It was a reminder that a place existed where we didn’t have to hide our true nature, where we had once been a powerful and free people.
When we chose to shift during a full moon, it was to grieve. Our joined howls on those nights were a chorus lamenting our lost home. At least that’s how I remembered my parents explaining our pack’s tradition before the Riots.
No one at Sanctuary observed it, but then… Travis and I were the only remaining descendants of the McLennon pack. Even though I couldn’t see it, the full moon behind the thick black clouds called to my soul.
For me, over the years it’d changed into a memorial of my lost parents. Of the pack family I grew up without.
“Wait.” I pulled Charlotte backward, and she glanced at me with confusion. Travis halted his steps and turned to face me. “The moon is full.”
Her brows scrunched together, but Travis nodded, understanding.
“Everyone return to the field,” he called out, his voice booming with the authority and power of an alpha. Everyone hurried to follow his direction, and someone flipped the switch on the bright porch lights. “No, turn those off,” he bellowed out. They complied immediately, and the field once again fell into a thick darkness.
“Garrett, you speak for us,” Travis said, loud enough for everyone hear so they would know it was me speaking.
“Lycans, like all other supernaturals, came from the Veil. We were chased into this dimension by the Incanti Drakonae. They slaughtered thousands. When my father’s clan came here, they would shift and howl every full moon to remember their home. To cry for those who were lost and didn’t make it through the portal to safety. This pack has suffered such loss. Such pain. To honor those who are no longer with us, I ask that you shift with me and remember them.”
I took a deep breath and continued. “It is not shameful to miss our loved ones. I know Travis and I are strangers to you. I know we came in suddenly and claimed Charlotte as our Fated mate and, with it, alpha status in your lives, but you are not alone in your losses. My brother and I lost our whole pack shortly after the Riots started. No one but us remain of the McLennons. But you… you still have many loved ones left to treasure. You still have a pack. Don’t forget that.”
Charlotte squeezed my hand before releasing it. A moment later, she’d stripped every stitch of clothing from her body, and I watched in awe as she shifted into a beautiful silver wolf. Travis was seconds behind her. Within minutes, everyone had stripped and shifted into their wolf form, even the children who had been hiding behind their parents.
Even Victor.
Peeling off my clothes again, I joined them, feeling a sense of peace as a cloud moved aside, showing the full and stunningly beautiful white moon hanging above us.
My howl started the chorus, and I hoped it was the first step toward repairing the wounds that were tearing this pack apart, but the realist inside me knew the fight for this pack wasn’t nearly over.
Chapter 16
XERXES
The screen on the wall beeped, signaling that my handprint had been confirmed. The whole Whitemarsh Mansion had been outfitted in the most state-of-the-art security system money could buy. Each section and hallway had security checkpoints that required biometric scans to unlock doors and enter. And the laboratory I’d had custom built beneath the mansion was more secure than an army base.
The upper levels where I lived, along with Sochi and her infant daughter, could be accessed by any of my Lycan soldiers and Djinn slaves. But the lab was only accessible by me and a select few. Most of the scientists I’d abducted to run the project ate, slept, and worked around the clock, reminded that they would never see their home or family again if they didn’t succeed.
Of course I never shared that I had no intention of ever returning them to their homes alive or that I had killed their families so that no one on the outside was looking for them –would ever look for them.
Loose strings weren’t tidy. And I liked my world to be very tidy. Another reason I’d sent Martin to try and lure in the crippled Mason pack. If I could get a few soldiers from them, killing the rest wouldn’t be as wasteful, though I was perfectly willing to allow Martin to kill them all. He’d taken most of his pack with him—all trained soldiers. All good killers. All loyal to me.
Martin called his group ‘the shadow unit.’ They took care of anything I asked without being seen or heard.
Which was good. The less humans looked into the shadows to explain strange events, the better. The shadows were mine, but I wouldn’t be staying in them for much longer.
The door ahead of me buzzed and slid to the side. I walked into a quiet laboratory. No one made eye contact as I strolled up and down the counters. Several Lycan guards stood stoically against the far wall of the room, making sure the humans behaved themselves.
The door at the far end of the room buzzed and opened. I glanced that way and smiled when Manda entered.
Her eyes widened as they settled on me, and her feet stalled. But my attention was only on the red folder clutched in her white-knuckled hands.
“Well?” I asked after she stood there a few seconds past shocked.
“The scanning equipment is fully functional again, and the test subjects are all scanning positive for human DNA only.”
My chest swelled, and I nearly grinned from ear to ear. “Excellent. Show me,” I said, waving toward the door she’d entered through.
She nodded and turned quickly, pivoting on a heel and pressing her hand against the biometric screen next to the door. A red line moved from top to bottom, and it beeped, authorizing her entry into the second part of the laboratory.
The fluorescent lights buzzed in the background, but my focus was only on the man in the white lab coat holding one of the WR’s portable biometric scanners. The Lycan in front of him stood patiently as the device scanned and mapped his eye. Humans learned shortly after the Riots that all “Others”, as they like to call us, had anomalies within their irises that humans didn’t possess. Mostly because our eyes often changed when we accessed our powers or abilities. In the case of Lycans, glowing and color change were definite anomalies that would trigger a negative scan, whether the ability was actively in use or not.
“Has the serum only been tested on Lycans?”
“Yes,” Manda answered, careful to stay just outside of arm’s length.
Not that it would save her if I wanted to grab her, but psychologically, people felt safer if they thought you couldn’t reach them. At this moment, she was off the hook. I had no interest in her. Only in moving forward with the tests.
I turned to the man in the lab coat holding the scanner. “Dose her,” I ordered, gesturing to Manda.
Although, she may have hightailed it back to the Middle East. It would make sense for her to go home. Nothing in North America would be familiar to her. But technology was everywhere, as well as back in the lands she would call home. Ultimately, my people would locate her.
Only a matter of time. Then I just had to trap her.
The lab coat walked to a refrigerated storage locker across the room and pulled out a small vial. He picked up a syringe from a counter on his way back and approached me and Manda. His pulse was erratic, but he didn’t question me. None of them did.
He filled the syringe with the pink liquid from the vial. Then he tugged the shoulder of Manda’s sweater down, exposing her upper arm, and jabbed.
Manda jerked and winced as he shot the large dose of serum into her body.
“How long does it take?” I asked the man.
“Not long.” He held up the scanner and took a quick reading of one of her eyes. The scanner buzzed, and the screen turned red, alerting to her non-human status. He showed me the negative screen, and I glared.
“How long?”
“Sorry, sir. Should be nearly immediate.” A light sheen of sweat had broken out across the lab tech’s forehead. His heart raced in his chest, thumping rather loudly against his ribs. He held up the scanner again. This time it chirped, and the screen flashed green. POSITIVE.
Manda scanned as a human.
“It’s permanent?”
“As far as we can tell. The serum has not degraded inside the Lycans in the first test group. Their DNA is stable and permanently mutated to include the Kitsune strands from the serum. It shows no signs of destabilizing.”
“Excellent.” This was the best news I’d had in years. “Monitor them over the next twenty-four hours. And, Manda, bring in twenty more Lycans and that many Djinn by the end of the day to be injected. I want at least a hundred soldiers passing that scan by the end of the week.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 17
CHARLIE
Waking up next to my mates? Best feeling in the world. Even after everything that happened the night before, these two men stood by me, fought for me, and cried with me for the atrocities and losses my pack family had endured. The speech Garrett made after the challenge fight eliminated any inkling of doubt that may have lingered in my mind about them wanting me to leave Ada and move to Sanctuary with them.
They were here for me. For the pack. It was their pack now, too.
I slithered out from between their arms and legs and rummaged through my dresser until I found a pair of panties, shorts, and a tank top. Hopefully, today would be a new beginning.
And the first thing I wanted to start with was some breakfast.
“Charlotte…” Garrett growled from the bed, stretching his long legs past the foot of my queen-sized bed. It was amazing that the three of us managed to stay on the bed at all. A bigger bed definitely needed to move to the top of the shopping list.
“I’m going down to make some breakfast. I’ll be back in a few. Just stay here,” I said, walking toward him. I leaned down and gave him a quick peck on the lips before leaving the room and heading for the kitchen.
Soon I had a tray heaped with food—eggs, bacon, buttered toast, and three glasses of juice. Plenty of food for all of us.
Footsteps caught my attention, and I glanced behind me. Kara entered the kitchen and leaned against the counter a few feet away.
“Morning,” I said.
She scoffed and moved, blocking me as I tried to maneuver around the island with my tray.
“I don’t want to argue again, Kara. Please move.”
“Bitch,” she hissed.
My hackles raised, but she was still blocking my exit, and I’d rather not have a knockdown, drag out fight in the middle of the lodge kitchen. Actually, I’d rather not fight with Kara at all, but she seemed to be pushing for one.
“It’s your fault my mate is dead. It’s your fault Dean is dead. And your fault everything in this pack is falling to pieces. Victor is trying to save what little is left, and you just want to keep pulling us down until we all drown with you.”
Shit. The wild look in her eyes made my heart thump hard against my ribcage. She was a loaded side of crazy.
“We need to be on the winning side. Not the losing side. Do you want all of us to die?”
I put the breakfast tray down on the counter. “Look, Kara—”
She lunged, taking me by surprise and knocking me to the floor. A second later, a flash of metal passed through my peripheral vision, and an intense burn shot through my side.
“Kara!” I coughed, finding it difficult to draw a breath.
I yanked her hand back, and the bloody knife came with it. The woman had stabbed me with a fucking steak knife. “Why?”
She screamed and growled and thrust her weight at me again. I narrowly dodged another stab, and we rolled on the floor. She gasped, and I heard a gurgle in her breath.
Where was the knife?
Tension melted out of her body, and she became nothing more than a limp corpse. Her heart had slowed considerably, and blood poured from a wound in her neck, quickly coating every inch of the tile floor around us. She wasn’t dead yet, but she would be. Neither of my mates would let her regenerate.
Footsteps pounded through the lodge. Garrett and Travis burst through the open doorway, yanking her semi-lifeless body from atop me. I sucked in a painful breath. Before I could speak, Travis had already snapped her neck.
Garrett lifted me from the floor and shoved his way through the people who’d heard the fight and come running. I coughed, desperately gasping for air. My wound was bad, but it would start to heal in a few minutes. Right now, I was choking on my own blood.
I could hear Travis’ booming, angry voice downstairs as Garrett carried me up. Besides my pain, all I could think about was that another pack member was dead. Xerxes had cost our pack another life. In less than twenty-four hours, two people had tried to kill me and two people had lost their lives because of it.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I was doing everything my parents would want me to do, but nothing was going as it should. It was Xerxes and Victor and that bastard of an emissary. He was in on this whole thing somehow. I just didn’t know how yet.
“We can’t let you out of our sight for even a moment, can we?” Garrett whispered into my ear as he laid me down gently on my bed.
“I was just cooking breakfast. It-I-she…”
“Shhh. It’s okay, Charlotte. We are going to get through this with you. I promise.”
“She’s dead,” I sobbed as the shock of what happened finally wore off. “How many of my people have to die?”
“Packs survive because they are united, Charlie,” Travis said, entering the bedroom and closing the door behind him. “This pack is divided. Hopefully, there will be no more deaths, but I think an ultimatum should be given. Those who wish to leave Ada should be given that option. Perhaps all of the problems will walk out the door.”
“They’ll die. I can’t let them go to their deaths. I don’t understand. Why. Can’t. They. See. It’s. A. Lie?” My sobs chopped my sentences into single word chunks.
“Some people refuse to see. Grief blinds them to the obvious,” Garrett answered.
I breathed slowly. The pain was fading a little at a time, but at least I didn’t feel as though I was drowning any longer. Garrett wiped my face with a washcloth, hopefully removing the last traces of the blood I’d been coughing up.
“You and I know Xerxes is a liar. That that Martin guy has no intention of letting the pack live in peace. They are looking for recruits. It’s why we’ve
been sneaking into the SECR and other Republics for decades. We are helping people get away from Xerxes. How did they forget that?”
“Pain makes you consider things as options that were unthinkable before,” Travis stated, making me wonder how many unthinkable things he and his brother had suffered through or committed themselves. The more I learned about them both, the more my heart broke for them. For the life they led without a family. Without each other. My life hadn’t been perfect, but at least I hadn’t lost my parents and pack. I truly had been one of the lucky ones.
“What’s going on downstairs?”
“Surprisingly, Crawley is maintaining decent order. We may have had a rocky start with him the other night, but I think he might be decent beta material.”
I nodded. Crawley was a pain in the ass, but once you had his loyalty, you had it. If he was helping keep everyone calm downstairs, he was most certainly on our side now.
“He’s a good man. Just likes to know he’s backing the right horse, so to speak,” I said softly. “He must’ve made his choice.”
“What?” Travis asked. “That we’re the right horse?”
I nodded. “He’s very loyal once he’s chosen sides. If he’s on ours, he won’t switch. I can guarantee it. Your fight, Travis, and your speech, Garrett, turned a lot of heads. They might not be showing it in front of Victor, but you both made a huge difference. As much as I hated the challenge fight, it was the right move to make.”
“At least they are taking our claim seriously,” Travis added.
His brother grunted and then turned his attention back to me. “Do you feel up to going back downstairs?” Garrett asked, holding out a fresh t-shirt he’d snagged from the dresser.
I nodded. He wasn’t the only one who could hear the rumblings from the angry pack members who had yet to be swayed to our side. Just because Victor had withdrawn his challenge didn’t mean the unrest he’d caused had vanished.
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