War of Hearts

by S. Young

  Anger burned in his gut. “I dinnae care about your immortality. Maybe I should but I dinnae. Life is short anyway, Thea, and we should be grateful that we share something few people ever get to have in this life. And if I must leave the pack to protect them, I will. What I willnae do, ever, is choose them over my mate. End of fucking story. I willnae say it again.”

  “I don’t know if I can live with that.”

  “Then you must, because I cannae live without you.” He cradled her face in his hands. “Right now, we all need each other to get Callie and James back. So I need to know before we walk in there if you’re willing to help me share your story about Ashforth. Not everything,” he promised, “just enough so they understand the danger Callie is in.”

  Thea studied him a moment and then nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make this harder for you.”

  Love for her ached in his chest. “Thea, you’ve spent six years burying your feelings. No more. No matter what they are. You tell me. I dinnae want you to hide from me ever.”

  She relaxed into him and Conall felt much of his own tension drain away. “Okay,” she whispered.

  The wait in the empty dining hall for the Canids seemed to stretch forever but it was probably only a few minutes before Peter, Sienna, and Richard strode into the room.

  Conall and Thea stood from the table where they were seated as Peter led his children. Before he even reached them, Peter’s stoic expression faltered.

  He drew to a halt, his son and daughter following suit with twin expressions of confusion.

  Peter sniffed the air and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “Well, this is unexpected.”

  “What?” Richard scowled. “What’s going on?”

  Conall, realizing Peter knew, stepped forward. “We have much to discuss.”

  “Not really.” Peter gave him a disappointed smile. “When you meet your true mate, you meet your true mate, Conall. Nothing anyone can do about that.”

  He flicked a look at Sienna, but her expression never wavered.

  Richard, however, blew. “What the fuck? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Peter held up a hand to quiet his son. “Conall has found his true mate. Rare,” Peter said to Conall, his eyes flickering to Thea, “but ours is a large pack. My beta and his mate are true mates and I recognize the mingle of scents.” He took a step forward, his countenance hardening. “I must ask, however, if you knew about this before our agreement.”

  Conall reached for Thea’s hand and she took it, drawing into his side, her eyes on Sienna Canid. He couldn’t read his mate’s expression. “This is Thea Quinn.”

  Sienna frowned. “The woman you were hired to find for that businessman?”

  “Aye.”

  “She’s not even a werewolf.” Richard stared at Thea in disgust and Conall had to tamp down the urge to punch him. “How can she possibly be your mate?”

  Ignoring him, Conall spoke to Sienna. “I am sorry to break the betrothal, but I hope you understand.”

  She shrugged, as if she didn’t care. “I think it’s better you meet your mate now than it happen after we were married, don’t you?”

  He felt Thea tense and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Nodding at Sienna, pleased by her pragmatism, Conall turned to her father. “I still think our packs could form a worthy alliance.”

  Peter nodded slowly. “Let’s discuss.”

  “First, Thea and I have to speak with the pack. My sister and my beta are in trouble. I could come to Colorado, after everything is well here, to meet with you so we can discuss?”

  The alpha studied Conall and Thea, then surprised Conall by replying, “If this is to be a worthy alliance, then it should be from the beginning. If your sister is in trouble, Conall, let us offer our services to you.”

  In that moment Conall knew it would not be a mistake to form an alliance with this wolf. “That’s decent of you, Peter. Thank you. I’ve called my pack. They’ll be here in a few hours and then I’ll explain all. You’re welcome to attend that meeting.”

  “This is bullshit,” Richard snarled. “We’ve been waiting here for fucking days and now he’s throwing my sister over for a fucking non-wolf.” He bared his teeth at Thea. “But she’s something. I can feel it.”

  The growl burrowed up from Conall’s chest, but it was Thea who stepped forward, energy crackling from every part of her as her eyes bled gold. The air became almost suffocating with the pressure of the power emitting from his mate. “You’ll show respect to Alpha MacLennan while you’re in his territory or I’ll make you show respect.”

  Conall sighed. They really needed to work on her temper when it came to him. She was worse than he was.

  Despite the wary fear now scenting from the Canids, Conall couldn’t help the smug affection he felt watching Thea’s display of power.

  Just like that the pressure in the room disappeared and Thea’s eyes returned to cognac.

  Richard was pale.

  Sienna’s eyes were wide, the first show of emotion she’d ever displayed.

  And Peter was glowering at him.

  Fuck.

  Conall cleared his throat. “Like I said, we’ve got a lot to explain.”

  Pack MacLennan gathered in the dining room of the Coach House, while Conall stood before them with Thea.

  Sitting nearest to him on his right was Grace, Angus, and his delta Mhairi Ferguson and her husband Brodie, who had taken over as lead warrior when Callie got sick. At the back of the room stood the Canids.

  He’d just finished telling them as much of his and Thea’s story as he could without getting too personal. He also didn’t mention that Thea was fae. Instead he explained she was different, of unknown origin, and powerful. He loved his pack but the fewer people who knew what Thea was, the better. Conall watched the way his clan studied Thea, wary, almost hostile, despite the true mating bond between her and him.

  The way she stared coldly back at them wasn’t helping matters.

  His mate had defenses a mile high and apparently, he was the only one she was willing to lower them for.

  He couldn’t blame her.

  “So, you know enough now to understand that Callie and James are in the hands of a ruthless bastard. We need to get them back.”

  “What we dinnae know,” Grace spoke up, her voice loud and clear, “is what this lass is. Why he so desperately wants her?”

  There were murmurings around the pack.

  Conall spoke out to the room. “We dinnae know what Thea is. It doesnae matter. What matters is that Ashforth wants to exploit her particular gifts. He held her captive for years. He hurt her”—the growl burrowed out of his chest—“and he will not do the same to Callie or James.”

  “Conall.”

  His eyes flew toward the voice. Hugh MacLennan rose behind a table in the middle of the room. He was an older wolf and first cousin to Grace. “I’ve seen the mating bond several times now. With your parents it was a wonder. But I’ve also seen how a true mating can blind a wolf to the faults of his mate.” Hugh’s gaze flicked to Thea and then back to Conall. “The bond can interfere with your rational thinking. Who is to say that this Mr. Ashforth is the one in the wrong here? Your mate may have lied to you, Conall, and you wouldnae know it for the bond confuses things. If her gifts are as dangerous as they sound, perhaps Ashforth is right. Perhaps you’ve been manipulated.”

  Fury flamed in his gut and swelled in his chest. The pack grew still as they felt the mounting energy building from their alpha. How dare they! How dare they question his rational thinking and mistrust his opinion. How dare they look at Thea as others had her whole life.

  Bastards.

  His own pack.

  “Conall.” He felt Thea’s grip on his arm. “Conall.”

  Her touch soothed him enough to bring him out of the haze of rage. Discomfort pinched his gums as his canines shortened. His fingertips tingled as his claws slowly retracted.

  The room was eerily still.

 
; And then Thea’s clear, melodic voice filled the room. “I know you’re just trying to protect your alpha and your pack, but I’m not lying about Jasper Ashforth. Caledonia and James are in danger. He … Ashforth experimented upon me until he finally found a way to hurt me.” She turned back to Conall, anxiety in her eyes. “I need to show them.”

  No.

  Shaking his head, Conall refused to let her. “You dinnae owe them that.”

  “But you do. And we’re a team now.” Her smile was weak. “They’ll never believe us otherwise.”

  “I dinnae care.” He stepped toward her. Conall remembered how she’d run from him when he saw the truth. This was too much to ask of her.

  “I care. It’s time to stop hiding. They have to know.” She gestured to the pack. “They need to know what a monster Ashforth is. They have to understand the magnitude of trouble your sister and beta are in.” She faced the waiting pack, whose eyes had never left her. “But first I need a sharp knife.”

  There were a few murmurings, but it was Hugh who stood up and walked around the tables toward her. He pulled a penknife out of his back pocket and held it out to her.

  Thea reached out slowly for it. “Thank you.”

  The older wolf nodded cautiously and stepped back.

  “First, I need to demonstrate my healing abilities. It’s the reason Ashforth wants me. And it’s the reason Conall came after me for my blood—to give to Callie.” Thea flicked the knife and lifted her wrist that wasn’t scarred from the iron blade. Conall flinched as she sliced it open, but Thea didn’t move a facial muscle.

  Gasps, disbelief, and curse words filled the room as Thea’s wrist didn’t even have time to drip blood before it healed over.

  The noise level in the room grew and grew until Conall shouted, “Enough!”

  His mate wiped the blood from the knife on her shirt and returned it to Hugh, his own expression slackened with shock.

  “There’s not much that can hurt me,” Thea announced to the quieting room. “But Ashforth found a way.”

  Conall’s stomach knotted as Thea turned her back to the gathering. She looked at him and he wished like hell she didn’t have to do this. Not for him. “Thea,” he begged. “This is too much.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “Even then,” he said, his voice gruff, “I dinnae … I dinnae want you to look back and resent me for this moment.”

  Her smile was sad, weary, far too weary. “Never, Chief MacLennan. Never.”

  Then she drew her shirt over her head, exposing her bare back.

  There was an inhale of breath and then utter silence.

  Conall knew what they were seeing.

  The crisscross of raised scars that covered the entirety of her back was evidence of not just a lashing, but of a brutality that horrified. It was obvious that the whipping she’d taken had torn her apart.

  Conall saw tears in some pack members’ eyes, anger in others, horror in the rest.

  Finally, Conall could take it no more and he covered Thea with his body and gently helped her pull her shirt back on.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered as he turned her in his arms and pulled her into his side to face the pack. Still, there was a brittleness to her expression as she looked around the room, and her fingers dug into his waist she was holding on so tight. “I was thirteen years old when Ashforth took me in after my parents died. Not long after he realized I was … different. By the time I was fifteen, he was holding me captive in the basement level of one of his properties, guarded around the clock by armed supernaturals. Every now and then he’d pull me out of that room to be examined by his lab rats, and some days he’d force me to fight supernaturals to see how much of a beating I could take and how much of a beating I could give.

  “I tried to escape a few times, unsuccessfully, mostly because the property was on an island. But one night, a few months before I turned nineteen, while I was under the effects of a drug Ashforth used to weaken me, one of his men tried to violate me.”

  Conall pressed his fingers into Thea’s hip. He felt his energy expand outside of himself at the mere idea of any man touching Thea against her will. Thea froze in his arms, bringing him out of himself, and he realized the whole room was crackling with the pack’s collective energy.

  They were unwittingly affected when their alpha projected.

  Pulling himself together, he watched the pack relax marginally.

  “I had to kill him.” Thea was blunt. “And I knew that I had to escape. Unfortunately, I was caught and to break me, Ashforth had a vampire take a cat-o’-nine-tails to my back.”

  There were murmurings, gasps, horror as Conall saw the wariness on his pack’s faces give way. It was hard not to believe Thea and not just because she was his mate.

  No one could look into her eyes and not see the terror she’d experienced. Not one of them could look at her back and say she was lying.

  “Ashforth’s wife, Amanda, cared about me, but she had her son to protect and she feared her husband. But … the whipping was the last straw for her. She arranged my escape.” Conall looked down at Thea’s face and saw her eyes were bright with emotion. “One of his men shot her as I was getting away. There was nothing I could do. I didn’t kill her. I loved her.” Her gaze dropped to the floor and silence filled the room. Conall was about to speak when Thea continued, “I’ve killed humans and supernaturals he’s sent to kill me. It was kill or be killed.” She looked back up at them now, defiant. “I won’t apologize for that.

  “And I never usually explain myself. As Conall will attest to.”

  He gave her a grim smile.

  “But I explained myself to him when I realized”—she looked up at him, the love in her expression making his heart pound—“what he meant to me.” Thea reluctantly turned her head toward the room. “Normally I wouldn’t care if you believed me. I know the truth. I know what a sick son of a bitch Ashforth is. I’ve been on the run from him for six years. He stole my life from me.” The air thickened a little as her anger filled the room. “But I need you to believe for Callie’s and James’s sake. You have to understand you’re dealing with a man who will do anything in his pursuit of power.”

  When she finished, Conall looked around the room, saw partners exchanging questioning looks, other pack members staring at Thea in concern.

  “I’m sorry, lass.” Hugh was the first to speak, his expression haggard. “For not believing and for what has been done to you.”

  “Thank you,” Thea answered graciously. “I appreciate that.”

  The older man turned to Conall. “What do you need, Alpha?”

  Conall responded to the entire room. “We need a plan. Ashforth is holding Callie and James in Castle Cara. I was supposed to take Thea there, Ashforth would use her blood to heal Callie, and then we’d leave … and Thea would be left with Ashforth.” The thought chilled him to the bone. “Ashforth doesnae know we’re in Scotland. As I explained, we had some trouble on the road back and we used it as an excuse to avoid checking in with the bastard. But we must act soon before he gets too suspicious. We must find out what defenses he has in place at Castle Cara. How many guards, their race, and the best strategy to get in. From there we plan our rescue.”

  “Alpha MacLennan,” Peter Canid’s voice rang across the room, drawing everyone’s gaze, “can I offer my services?”

  Conall was grateful but felt he needed to be clear with Canid. “You are under no obligation to do so.”

  Canid’s expression darkened as he looked between Thea and Conall. “I would hope if our situation was reversed, you would offer a helping hand. We may come from different packs, but the world of wolves is one world. Our world. A human doesn’t come into our world and brutalize our mates and kidnap our pack members.”

  “I like him,” Thea murmured under her breath.

  So did Conall. “Then I welcome your help. Thank you.”

  Peter nodded. “A few warrior wolves accompanied my family on this trip. They’re
staying in Inverness. I’ll call them here.”

  Conall nodded his thanks.

  “Or,” Grace said, standing, “we go through with the switch. Give him Thea in exchange for Callie and James.” Her eyes moved to Thea, her fear obvious. “The lass is powerful. We can all feel her energy, humming against our skin. And look what she did with that knife. She can handle Ashforth. Callie cannot.”

  The growl surged out of him before he could stop, long and low, rumbling and dangerous.

  Everyone grew tense as the color drained from Grace’s face.

  He didn’t care if she was like a grandmother to him. How fucking dare she. “Did you not see my mate’s back?”

  Sympathy brightened Grace’s eyes. “Aye, I did. And I’m sorrier for it than I can say. But I cannae bear the thought of Callie in the hands of someone who could do that to a young lass.”

  Mhairi turned on Grace, outraged. “This is Conall’s mate we’re talking about. How can you possibly look at what that bastard did to Thea’s back and ask her to return to him? If she was so fucking powerful, do you think she would have allowed that to happen to herself? Those scars …” Mhairi looked at Thea in horror. “That was no ordinary lashing.”

  Conall tightened his grip on Thea as he felt her grow rigid.

  “I’m sorry.” Grace had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m just … I’m scared for Callie. I’m sorry.”

  Thea stepped out of Conall’s protective hold. “Maybe we should go through with the switch.”

  It was his turn to tense. “What?”

  “If you hand me over, then Callie and James don’t get hurt. Then you can rescue me instead.” She gave him a firm nod.

  Denial flooded him. “We’ve already discussed this, and my answer is no. I willnae send you to face that monstrous bastard alone. We’ll do it together, once Callie and James are safe.”

  She lifted her chin, and he knew she was getting ready to dig in her heels. “Maybe we should put it to a vote.”

  Conall ignored the pack’s sniggers.

  He took a step toward his mate, towering over her. “This isnae a fucking democracy. I’m alpha here and unless you want to go toe-to-toe with me, my decision is law.”