Rogue Breed (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  When I caught sight of Artemis, I wasn't surprised to see a gathering of shifters collecting and an already thick crowd of hunters out beyond her, standing at the gates. My mother always had a way of appearing somehow charismatic while at the same time showing such disdain that she could easily have been from some Ptolemaic period. I briefly wondered if that was how far her line went back, and when I caught wind of her voice, and the way it lilted over the breeze, telling her courtiers that she was from and ages old line, so old that she could should be the only one to lead the pack, I found myself hurtling across through the foyer and onto the porch to get at her.

  I was aware of a buzz of whispers as my pack caught sight of me. I heard murmurings of dissension and favourable comments toward my mother. Each one of them set my teeth on edge for various reasons. Before I even managed to get to Artemis, several of the shifters had collected around me, pushing me back in and eddying forward to keep me from making my way through to confront my mother.

  I had to satisfy myself with shouting at her over their heads.

  "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"

  She swung her gaze toward me and caught my eye over the heads of those who even now were pushing me backward into the house again, away from Artemis and what was going on right on my front stoop.

  "My daughter," she said, waving a hand toward me imperialistically, but it was with a squirrelly type of grin. "Behold the alpha who couldn't save you from these men you see littered in front of me."

  For the first time, I noticed the bodies of all of the huntsmen that her mystic had somehow flattened during the battle. They lay spread out on the grass between the shifters who had gathered and Artemis who was even then pacing in front of them the way a general might. I felt my stomach clench. She would use a battle she had brought upon us to set my pack against me? I'd kill her. I surged against those bodies that wanted to keep me from getting to her. Someone stepped on my foot and I struck out blindly, recoiling my elbow and lashing it forward so the heel of my hand connected someone's chest. It didn't matter if it was the foot stomper or not.

  Artemis had paused square in the middle of the line up and waved her arm over the line of bodies. "She rescues the deformed, putting us at risk, she puts a human on the council, even takes him as mate and diluting the bloodline." She then jerked her chin in the direction of the hunter zombies outside the gates. "We have had to resort to magic to protect ourselves and now we are nothing but sitting ducks waiting to be harvested."

  A roar went up over the crowd.

  She waved her arm again, but this time it was over a separate line up of bodies--those who had been taken out by the huntsmen as they had hurtled themselves through the gates. I felt my eyes burn as I looked at them. Artemis didn't seem to care.

  "This is what comes from abandoning the old lines." Artemis said. "This is the danger that comes from having an alpha who has a pure human male for a companion instead of a wolf, thinking he can rule at her side as an equal."

  This time the roar sounded vicious, and I had the sense that those who were even now pushing me backwards, had been ready for me and were all too eager to attack me. Someone struck out at me and I felt the contact on my cheekbone. It made my ears ring. Someone else stabbed out at me with the pointed end of a stick. Another, already transformed, growled at me low in his throat.

  I tasted my own fear in that moment.

  Swarmed as I was, I found it difficult to extricate myself, but I let my fists fly out wherever they might. I too was growling and I knocked three of them flat into the clash within ten heartbeats. Trouble was, there were too many of them. They surged toward me, forcing me backwards.

  I couldn't really blame them. My mother was a charismatic speaker. Paranoia be damned, she had a way of making people believe what she said. The way she had made me believe in her for all those years.

  I realized she had been waiting for this moment all along. She had squirreled the key away from Lynden and had used this hunter attack to reclaim what she thought of as her throne. She must have lain in wait for decades for my father to be deposed.

  "Lock her in the cell," I heard my mother say and in the next instant, a dozen strong arms had hold of me.

  DROWNING IN ECSTASY

  Locked in the panic room again, this time by my mother. It smacked of my childhood so strongly that for a long while, I couldn't do more than sit forlorn in the big arm chair by the bed. I hung over my knees, watching the chain I wore hang down between my breasts underneath my T-shirt. Nestled in the cleavage rested that key copy I had made when I had first took over from Caleb. I could find my way out easily. Slip the key in the lock, find my way down my father's back stairs the same way Lynden had fled with the gardener, but what would be the point. My pack had decided. They wanted my mother and they wanted Check. Never mind that he wasn't a shifter. He wasn't human, though, and that seemed to be all that mattered. They had had enough of my rule. My mother knew it as I did. I suspected it was just a matter of time before she let me out again. But for now she would want me where she could control me. She would settle matters with the pack, and then god knew what she would do then. No doubt stroke my hair and tell me what a good girl I was.

  I cursed as I stared down at the key.

  I had done everything I could for my pack members. Hell, I'd almost died for them, not once but twice. Even so, I knew it wasn't my lack of loyalty that turned them against me. That was as plain as the tattoos on Check's face. It was their prejudice against Jeb and Alma that cemented their decision, and my mother used it well like she used everything. Maybe they deserved my mother. Maybe my mother deserved them.

  Maybe they deserved to meet the hunters and see what their fate was with Artemis and Check. They had it all under control after all. The barrier's hum was discernible even here. It vibrated in my chest as though it originated there. See how long it took for them to starve to death because they couldn't pass the line of huntsmen or before they decided to go all out and attack only to find my mother making a run for it, abandoning them as she'd done to me decades earlier.

  I laughed in the cold comfort of the cell and ran my gaze over the interior. Silk sheets. A luxurious bathroom suite. If I stayed, perhaps someone to feed and water me three times a day. Imprisonment was different than it had been with Caleb. Caleb had used the threat of my brother's life to bend me to his will. He had tortured me some, yes, but nothing like my mother had done. I knew she was only holding me until she made me into that good and meek daughter again. Someone who would rollover for her just like I had done as a child. It was no different than the torture she had imposed on me. Pain and suffering first, and then coddling and love after. We were in the first stage, now. And once my mother in all her paranoia began to believe that members of the pack might be conspiring against her, she would all of a sudden turn loving and want me back in her good graces. She would coddle me then. Murmur words of devotion and love.

  I gripped the key in my fingers, halting its swing between my breasts. A dozen decades from my mother's tutelage and here I was again. I ripped the key from my neck and threw it at the cell door.

  I expected it to clang against the bars, but instead it made a thunking noise. I looked up through my hair to see Rena standing on the other side. She crouched, reached for the key through the bars. I watched her inspect it and then slip it into the lock and twist.

  "No guards?" she said as she entered.

  I shrugged. "Everyone is busy I guess, regaling Artemis and lauding the barrier."

  She made a sound deep in her throat as she held up the key for me to see.

  "And you're still here."

  I made a timeout sign with my hands. "It's not like I begged to be locked away."

  "But you have a key."

  I pushed myself from the chair and made my way over to the bed instead. I fell down on it, palms facing backwards as they caught me. "What's the point of trying?" I said. "Artemis has the pack. She has Check. They don't need me. No doubt he
can magic up a killer potion for the hunters."

  "She doesn't have the whole pack."

  I looked her up and down, taking in the fact that she had a gun holster and side arm on her right hip to companion the knife I'd seen earlier.

  "So I have you," I said. "That makes two of us, and what would we be, exactly?" I asked. "Two wolf shifters gone rogue from their pack and stuck behind a barrier lined by dozens of hunters ready to kill us if we left. Waiting to exterminate my entire bloodline."

  "Still," she said. "We have to try."

  "I did try. You saw what happened. We lost too many shifters in the first attack. If it wasn't for Check, we might've lost everyone."

  She came over to sit next to me on the bed and although she was close enough to touch me, she kept her distance. I had the feeling she was sorting through something and was searching for a way to say it.

  "If Check is so powerful," she said. "Why do you think he hasn't used his power to just kill all those hunters? Why do you think he uses his power to put up a barrier instead?"

  "His power isn't limitless," I said, thinking. "Even Alma said that in order to truly beat the huntsman, they had to find the alpha and in order to do that, they needed a lot of power." Even saying it tweaked a thought. Check had used her power before; why didn't he now? I tried to remember if I'd even seen them together here at the manse since Artemis and Check had arrived. No doubt Alma was keeping out of harm's way. Still. It was strange.

  "He's probably using all he has to keep them out while we gather and regroup," I heard myself saying, and wondered why I would bother to rationalize it at all. Rena seemed to think the same way.

  "For such domicile hunters?" she said with a snort. "If they're all hunters."

  I heard my neck snap as I whipped my head around to look at her. That tone had been too conspiratorial, too knowing. "What do you mean?"

  She gave a slow exhale before she spoke again. "I mean I'm pretty sure they're not all hunters. Human, yes, but not from the warbrood family like Artemis says they are."

  "I don't understand."

  She lifted her hand, twisting it so that I could see the tattoo on her wrist. "These are the markings of the warbroods," she said and looked sidelong at me. She seemed to be expecting me to show either shock or rage, and her shoulders were rigid with it. My lip twitched, because I couldn't keep all emotion from my face the way Jeb managed to, but I was proud that was all that escaped my control. I could have flogged her in that second.

  "You're the one who brought them here," I said, easing myself carefully to my feet. I thought back to the day at Dara's and wished I had thought to check the wrists of those hunters we had neutralized. But I had seen only the tattoos on their cheeks. Some of the cheeks, I corrected myself. A couple of them remained masked.

  She shook her head. "I fled them months ago when a werewolf turned me and the warbrood turned on me. They let the virus have free reign in my blood until I became what they hated. They tested things on me." She looked away as she said it. "And now my lover is out there. At those gates. A regular human man somehow marked with a hunter's tattoo, and yet it's not the right tattoo."

  I felt my "Not right?"

  She shook her head. "I've had mine augmented, but it was once a rune that meant victory over evil." She twisted her arm so I could squint down at it. She pointed with her index finger at a spot very close to the pulse. "See? There."

  "I don't see it." Maybe I didn't want to see it. I wanted this woman to be what I'd thought she was, despite my few flaggings of suspicion.

  She chuckled low in her throat. "Yes, you do. You've seen it before."

  Even my neck felt clammy as I studied the markings. I was keenly aware that I was baring my back to her. She could make a move to kill me if she wanted. I waited, barely looking at the marks, my heart hammering in my chest as I prepared for the strike and the kill I'd have to make after it.

  "A squashed sort of circle and three slicing lines. Like clawmarks," she said and I felt her breath on my neck.

  I peered up at her. "Like the insignias at Dara's."

  She nodded. "Exactly."

  I squinted at her, not sure why she was here now. What it was she wanted from me. "And I can trust you now?" It was hard to say the words, trust didn't come easy.

  She sighed. "You're going to have to trust me. Do you think I would have come here if I thought you were a lost cause? You're the kind of alpha shifters need. You do the hard things and you do them because they are the right things."

  "So what are you?" I demanded. "Shifter or hunter?"

  "I was never a hunter. I was born into it, and I was marked for it, but it never fit me. What I am now is the right thing for me. And you are my alpha."

  I was almost ashamed to hear those words in light of the fact that I had sat here brooding for the better part of three hours, sulking over pack members who had chosen old blood over good blood. But those words inspired me. It made me believe in myself. They made me realize that I couldn't just leave these people here waiting to be attacked by the hunters. We needed to take action and whether or not my mother knew it, that action was going to come from me. Let her and Check ascend their throne for the time being. Once I had these hunters under control, I would go for them. And they would fall beneath my command.

  "There are still some vulnerables outside the barrier," I said, crouching at her feet and whispering. The effort to be heard made my throat hoarse, but what I had to say, I couldn't have heard by anyone else. "We need to get them safe and then we need to fight."

  "Tell me what to do."

  "I need you to send Alma to me. And then I need you to gather all the kids and the sick from within and without the barrier. Pack them into the RV. Get them out of here. The rest of us fight."

  She nodded curtly. I knew she wanted to ask more of me, but I only knew in that moment that I would do what Check had not. And if it took everything from me to do so, then so be it.

  I watched her leave and close the cell door carefully, making sure to kick the key back over to me when she did so. She had left the door unlocked as she had been bid, and I settled down into the chair to wait for Alma.

  I wasn't sure how Rena managed to find her so fast, but it wasn't more than twenty minutes before Alma came hitching up the steps and limping over to my cell. I looked at her for a long time without speaking, so long that she began to squirm as she stood there. It was characteristic of her to say nothing, the submissive in her waiting for the invitation to speak. She was timid, but she was not weak. I knew that now. She had risked her life time and again to get to this moment, and I would use that resilience.

  "You told me that you could have joined with Check before and with the others to find the alpha but you let them come instead."

  A blush crept up her neck. "So I could escape."

  I couldn't certainly understand and empathize with that. I remembered planning to do anything I could to escape when Caleb had caged me, and as a woman, I had yet to manage to extricate myself from the memories of the things Artemis had done to me. This poor thing couldn't be blamed for doing what she needed to for survival. That she would feel guilty for her own sense of self-preservation made me even more furious at Artemis.

  "It's alright," I cooed. "I understand. It's something else you said that interests me."

  She cocked her head.

  "You said joining with Check would help you find the leader?" I asked. I was thinking of Franco as I asked it. It had been obvious the girl could do more than simply see things. "How?"

  "There's magic in shifter blood," she said. "And there's magic in blood. Much power. The magic that I'm able to wield, the visions that come to me, they're all bound in blood. You saw it with Jeb. Although he's not shifter, you are and we are blood. I used that to help him."

  "So there's power in my blood as well?"

  "In all shifters."

  "And you're able to tap into it?"

  Her answer came hesitantly. "I am."

  Now
was the moment I had to ask it. "Do you think we have enough connection?" I said. "I mean through your magic and the magic of my blood? Can you tap into that to help locate the hunter's alpha?"

  She chewed her lip. I can do it," she said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I can. It's simple magic." She shifted on her feet as though her crooked foot was tired. "Maybe if the barrier is down, then I can locate the alpha."

  "How? Through Check?"

  She squinted at me, obviously wondering where I was going with the questioning. "I might be able to access Check's power through Artemis's blood. Yes. But there's no way that I can push past that barrier he has made. It will take a lot of power."

  "Use my blood," I said, already slapping the crook of my elbow the way an addict might. "Take what you need."

  "I'm not sure what it will do to you."

  She stared across at me, and I realized it wasn't just me she was worried about. I saw in her eyes the extent of the fear she had for her mother and father. I had to remind myself that she had been held hostage in a cage for most of her years. Stunted there like a flower unable to find the sun. Going against her father and mother would've been a very foreign thing for her. Even if she had managed to let her entire pack die at the hands of hunter's hands, she felt an incredible amount of guilt over it.

  I looked at the timid girl who before this I had believed too frightened to do anything, and it brought to mind the thought of her letting her entire pack die so that she could escape. She had tenacity, the kind that alphas were made of. The ability to do the hard thing. I both admired it and feared it. If she was willing to do those things, what might she be willing to do now.

  "Do what you have to," I said. "I'm asking you sister to sister."

  Her hands twisted together, but she nodded and I let go a sigh of relief. We could do this. Together.

  "I'm glad you're on my side," I said laying my hand on her shoulder. I wanted to hug her in the moment, but I wasn't sure how much emotion she could take right then.