“You must have seen her. Where did she go?” Aldrich called out.
“I didn’t see her. She must have come by during the shift change. I didn’t see anyone,” the guard lied.
Cara gained another foot, but it was still too dark to see where the floor below began. If she let go she might suffer bruised feet, or worse broken bones.
Just keep climbing.
“What is this?” Aldrich’s voice sounded victorious.
Cara looked up, certain that he’d climbed the tower and was looking down at her. Her hold slipped and she slid down the wall, her nails scraping against the rock, and tearing away. She caught herself with her right hand, her arm jerking hard.
Biting her lip, she stifled a cry of pain as her feet searched out holds and grooves in between the stones.
“This is hers.” Aldrich accused. His voice sounded like it came from the tower. He must have climbed up while she was sliding down the wall. If he looked down, he might see her. It was still dark but the sun was continuing to rise.
“It’s the same shawl that all the girls wear. It’s the standard you yourself issue out to the women.”
“Are you saying it’s not hers? That this couldn’t be Cara’s?”
A muffled sound drew her eyes upward. Aldrich was smashing the shawl against the guard’s face. Cara watched in horror. She didn’t know what to do.
The guard fought his way free of Aldrich, he gasped for air as he leaned over the wall. His eyes were searching the darkness. He was looking for Cara, but he couldn’t see her even though she was only a dozen or so feet down the wall.
He mouthed the word, “Run.”
Aldrich slipped the shawl around his neck and shoved him over the wall. His pointed face leaned over the wall after he’d tied off the shawl to the tower. “You lied to me. You saw her. My Cara.”
The guard’s feet kicked, his heels scraping on the wall but they weren’t catching. He was choking. Aldrich wasn’t going to release him.
Cara reached up, climbing upward as fast as she could. The light caught her hand as she took hold of his shoe and pushed, trying to help him.
“No,” the guard gurgled out kicking her hand away.
I can’t let you die.
She reached up again as Aldrich pressed his face into the dying man’s neck. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to fuck her? To break her?”
He kicked her hand away again, only this time she lost her grasp on the wall. Cara pushed off from the wall with her feet, hoping to land on the other side of the mote around the outer wall.
Aldrich straightened away from the dead guard, blood dripped down his chin as he cut the shawl and turned away.
Water enveloped her into freezing cold darkness. The dim light from above cast a silhouette of the guard who saved her life and gave his own. He was floating on the surface.
Cara choked on water as she tried to crawl up from the depths of the murky liquid. She didn’t know how to swim, but her frantic movements seemed to be working though too slow to do her much good.
She kicked her feet harder, climbing faster. When she reached him, Cara pulled until her head broke through the surface. A deep breath of air filled her lungs. She coughed.
It was so loud, her coughing in the silence. Aldrich would hear her. Someone would hear her. The quaking of her body was so violent she knew her thrashing around in the water would draw notice.
Sharp rocks stabbed into her back expressing what little air she’d managed to get. The force pushed her back under the surface but she didn’t let go of her hero. She reached up again. This time her hand caught hold of a boulder.
Cara pulled herself above the surface again. She tried to climb, out but she couldn’t do it holding onto the dead guard’s shirt. With a silent sob, she let go and climbed out of the still water. Its slimy texture increased the difficulty of climbing out.
Cara’s body was still shaking too hard. Her teeth chattering like drums. The boots she’d kicked off were long gone, probably at the bottom of the mote.
She should go, run even, but Cara couldn’t leave him like he was. This man who saved her was floating face down in the filthy, still water. It was foul smelling, and with the sun continuing to rise Cara could see human waste floating along the surface.
Cara bent down and took hold of his jacket. She braced herself with her feet flat on the huge boulder and pulled. It was slow going pulling him up the rocky, muddy slope. When she stopped to rest, he started sliding back in.
No. No. Please, no.
Her arms shook with the strain to hold his head above the water. Using all the muscle in her legs she pushed against the boulder gaining another two feet of his body onto the slope. Cara climbed a step higher. She began pulling the dead weight from the water. It didn’t matter how many times she had to do it. Cara wasn’t leaving him to rot in filth. He deserved a hero’s burial.
I don’t even know his name.
CHAPTER THREE
The wind carried a new scent, waking Darian from a deep sleep. It was a delicious, sweet smell. It was strange because it didn’t just appeal to his wolf, he found the scent alluring in his human form as well.
Darian walked to the open window and looked out, trying to locate the source of the scent that called to him.
It’s coming from Aldrich Town? Nothing good ever comes out of that place. Hunters looking to kill my pack. The stench of desperation all over them.
I won’t stand by and let another one of them try and weed out my pack. Aldrich’s men won’t take another.
Darian, the alpha of his pack usually kept good control of his temper and the wolf spirit that shared his shifter body. This time he didn’t want to stay in control, he wanted to teach the hunters a lesson. He let the wolf spirit surge forward feeding on Darian’s anger.
His body began to shift from Darian’s human form to that of his wolf. His muscles stretched and grew. The pants stretched and ripped around his legs as they too grew and shifted. Bones cracking and extending his human body changed into that of an oversized white wolf.
The wolf spirit, his wolf, was ready for the kill. He was ready to defend the pack and their home. Darian leapt out the second story window, landing in a run.
Limbs stretching, he charged down the mountainside and into the forest below. Animals raced to get clear of his path. He was all predator. Darian pulled his humanity back allowing his wolf, the alpha of the Rizer pack, to take the lead.
He knew he could trust his wolf’s instincts. If it was another hunter, he would die like all the others. No one would hurt his pack, not without going through him first.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but that didn’t matter. Darian could see well in the dark. He knew these woods so well he could traverse them with his eyes shut.
At full speed, he crossed the sixty acres of overgrown forest in just under ten minutes. Darian slowed as he reached the edge of the forest that opened into the clearing that led to the filthy water surrounding Aldrich’s Town.
His wolf found the movement right away.
The hair on the back of his neck and all down his spine raised up as a feral growl vibrated through his entire frame and into the earth under his feet. Darian left the shelter of the trees. He moved along the boulders and rocks staying low to the ground. The hunter was breathing hard, coughing.
Disgust turned his stomach. The hunter bathed in the infested sewage.
Is everyone who comes out of Aldrich Town so detestable?
He knew that he’d taste what the hunter had been swimming in when he killed him. It made Darian hate the hunter all the more.
The path he was taking put him on higher ground than the hunter. Every step he took was silent. Darian was intent on getting right over head of the hunter.
The murderer won’t even see me coming.
There was blood in the air. He’d already made a kill and from the smell of the blood, it was one of his own kind. A human. Darian wasn’t surprised. He was one of Aldrich’s people, why w
ouldn’t they be every bit as blood thirsty as their leader?
He leapt onto the white rock that leaned in toward the water. The hunter had his back to Darian. He was small. In fact, he was very small. A teen boy, most likely. At first Darian thought the boy was drowning the man in his arms the way he kept dropping him in the water. As the boy struggled, grunting, and praying, Darian realized the boy was trying to pull the dead man from the water.
He must have to show Aldrich proof of his kill.
Darian wasn’t going to like having to kill a human boy who was still so young. Even his wolf pulled back to watch the boy instead of striking while he was otherwise distracted. Taking a life was no small matter.
Why does it have to be a young boy?
“Thank you,” the boy said to the dead man as he finally managed to get his top half out of the water. He was younger than Darian first believed. His voice had not even begun to develop into manhood. His clothes and most of his face was caked in mud and filth from the mote.
Darian grabbed onto the new wave of derision the boy provided.
Is thanking your victim for giving his life supposed to make it okay that you took it in the first place?
Aldrich’s signature bite mark on his victim was present on the corpse. This boy was clearly Aldrich’s protégé.
Crouching, Darian readied himself to launch. Killing the protégé of Aldrich would hit closer to the heart of Aldrich than Darian and his pack had ever had the chance to strike before.
The boy bent down closing the dead man’s eyes. Darian could smell the salty tears leaking from the boy’s eyes, and mixing in the grime smeared over his heart-shaped face. Darian continued to watch the boy, too confused as to what to make of the young killer.
His hair is misshapen.
The blond strands were hanging in a diagonal slant from the back of his right ear to the top of his left shoulder. His heart beat frantically in his chest, as though he was afraid the dead man might wake and take revenge. The boy returned to the thin ledge and dragged the legs of the dead man out of the water. He kept looking back up toward the wall. No one was watching the boy who was clearly guilty.
This boy deserves to die. Darian repeated to himself trying to get his wolf to sit right with it, to get himself to accept what must be done.
His wolf pushed, ready to leap. Darian exhaled, beginning to draw back. He didn’t want to remember killing a boy this young, even if he was a murderer.
The boy wept heavily as he removed the shoes from the dead man and put them on his own tiny feet. Darian cursed himself an idiot for waiting when he saw the boy pull a silver blade from the belt of the man who was dead.
Shit. I should have taken him before he robbed his victim of his blade. Now I will have to be more careful.
The people inside were rustling about. It was early for them to be up and running around. Something was stirring inside the walled off town. Darian could see from the way the boy tensed that he heard it too.
The wet and shivering bag of bones ducked his head and began to climb the rocky incline. He never once checked his surroundings.
He doesn’t even walk right. What is he wearing?
The boy’s hurried steps made him clumsy. His clothes clung to him strangely, was he wearing a cape or night shirt? He ran away from Aldrich’s Town. Darian could smell the boy’s fresh blood as he crashed into a jagged edge on a rock.
He’s pathetic. The boy won’t last in the forest for more than a few hours. If the forest doesn’t take him, then I will
CHAPTER FOUR
The shouts coming from Aldrich Town grew louder. People called her name, others shouted orders, telling each other where to search. They were trying to keep Aldrich happy, to keep him from punishing them.
He’s a monster, a murderer. We all saw what he was doing to Paulina. I should have done something. I should have tried to break her out.
Tears blurred her vision as she started up the incline toward the dark forest. Her chin was the only spot on her body that wasn’t freezing. The blood from the cut was warm as it ran down her neck.
I need to get farther away. I can’t let him find me.
The guard’s shoes were too big. Cara struggled to keep her balance and risked another fall. It was too dangerous. She couldn’t afford any more injuries. Stepping out of the shoes, Cara hugged them against her chest as she continued over the sharp rocks.
She was beginning to lose feeling in her feet. The water was so cold, and the rocks were like sharpened ice cubes. She was almost to the forest. Concentrating on the path in front of her, she pushed aside the pain that was beginning to break through the cold.
Keep moving, keep going.
The horn sounded from the town in three short bursts. Cara hit the ground crawling into the underbrush at the edge of the woods. She looked back toward the town, knowing that the three short bursts meant that there was something outside the walls.
Someone must have seen me.
A guard pointed beyond the mote.
They found the guard.
They hadn’t seen her, but when they came to bury the guard they would discover that someone drug him up onto land from the water. Even if they didn’t figure out he’d been moved, they’d figure out that Cara escaped.
Aldrich will make them look for me. I have to keep moving.
Just as she began to move she saw it. A giant white wolf running over the boulders in her direction. His yellow eyes trained on Cara.
Shit.
Cara pulled out the blade and pointed it at the wolf. It was too big to be just an ordinary wolf. It was one of them.
A shifter.
Anger and hatred hardened the features on her face. They were the reason for the wall, the reason she and everyone else had to agree to be caged. They were prisoners with a man like Aldrich deciding who would live and who would die.
The shifter didn’t slow down. He continued toward her and didn’t stop until he was only a few feet away. The wolf stood just outside her reach. His lips curled back showing her sharp teeth as a growl rumbled from the chest of the beast.
“I will kill you. I’m not afraid of you,” Cara said, ignoring the shaking of the blade in her hand. It was the cold not her fear. She hated the monster too much to have any room for healthy fear. “You stole my freedom.”
His white head turned as he began to pace in a wide circle around Cara. The yellow eyes of the beast were no longer staring into hers. They were running over her body, the head of the wolf lifted smelling the air. He drew closer.
“Not another step,” Cara growled through clenched teeth. The wolf snapped its massive jaws together, the clap of teeth against teeth was like a gun shot. She almost dropped the blade.
The wolf leapt toward her.
Cara swung the blade, catching the beast on the biggest part of his thick, white fur covered front leg. The wolf leapt back, the cry of pain surprising Cara.
It’s true what they say about the silver. The shifters can’t stand to touch it.
A snarl ripped through the air like thunder.
Cara’s legs shook harder. She was scared, there was no denying that now. The wolf snarled and barked at her, his rage clear to see.
This is it.
She held the blade with both hands, pointing the tip toward the enraged shifter.
The wolf came at Cara fast, catching her right arm with his powerful jaws. Cara released the blade with her right hand, taking it into her left.
Pain radiated through her arm, but she was used to pain. It was the sight of the blood and the sharp teeth that made her cry out. The wolf released her arm, his huge head rising. His yellow eyes widened at her.
Cara brought the handle of the blade down hard, catching the wolf on the side of his head. A small yelp of surprise more than pain came out of the beast and he shot away into the forest.
She gripped the weapon and stumbled forward.
I have to get deeper into the woods. Aldrich. He’ll be coming.
D
arian crouched low, watching in disbelief as the wounded human trudged deeper into the forest.
A woman?
He didn’t know, until she screamed. The stench of the water covered her feminine scent. The way she’d acted determined to pull the body from the water, he’d assumed it had to be a young boy. What he’d taken to be cape was not a cape at all. It was a dress.
I attacked a woman.
The guilt that poured through him was overwhelming. It shouldn’t make a difference. If she was a murderer, then she deserved death just like the other hunters that came after Darian’s pack, his family. It did matter though. She was a weak, human woman. The skin discoloration on her face was proof of abuse. The woman was misused. She was mistreated by her own people.
The betrayal of enduring abuse from her people, her family, it must be what drove her to murder.
She continued walking. As she moved chunks of mud and the filth from the mote began to slide away from the material of her dress. It was a blue nightgown. What he’d mistaken for large clumps of mud, he now recognized were the womanly curves of a female. The rip up the side of the ruined nightgown gave Darian glimpses of long lean legs.
How the hell did I ever think she was male?
She should be too exhausted to continue. The amount of blood she was losing wasn’t extreme, but if the wound went untreated, she would suffer infection.
Darian had to give her credit, she wasn’t crying. Most of the hunters cried when they faced him, especially if they managed to fight him off momentarily as she had.
She spotted him a few times as he followed her. The deep frown and scowl she aimed at him should have made him feel resentful.
It didn’t.
The woman had spirit, and a brave heart.
She walked for hours not stopping to rest, or to find food. Darian couldn’t help but wonder what was driving her so hard to continue. With the sun nearing the highest point in the sky, Darian knew his pack would be coming soon to look for him. He should kill the woman and be done with it. She was heading toward their community. Darian couldn’t allow her to find it.
Love Beyond the wall (A Rizer Pack Shifter Series Book 1) Page 2