Bay nodded. “Yeah, he’ll be all right. Their bond is stronger now, which has eased the Mate Pain a lot. And I think anything he feels will only make him angrier and deadlier.”
Bay was trying to be funny, but nothing about what we were doing was funny to me. I hadn’t been hungry all day, and the only reason I ate was because I had to keep my strength up.
Dare handed out ruebane sparingly. We had enough for the trip there and back, and the rest would be planted at our compound while we were gone. When I glanced back to Reese, Pace had joined him, the two wolves standing shoulder to shoulder. Jude stood silently off to the side, tears streaming down his face while G clutched him to his chest.
What if we lost a Were? What if we didn’t all come back? I wasn’t sure I’d be able to face the broken mates left behind. Mav stood next to his mother, Cati, who I’d met once. The slight breeze blew her ankle-length skirt around her legs, and her long hair wrapped around her arms. She held onto Mav with a hand on his shoulder, her gaze searching the crowd before landing on one spot and staying there.
I followed her line of sight to Vaughn.
He was looking at her as he rubbed himself with oil. His expression was grim, the smirking tilt of his lips absent. He nodded at her, and her eyes quickly dropped.
“Hey, Vaughn,” Pace called out.
The Were braced his hands on his hips. “Yeah, wolf?”
Pace licked at the corner of his mouth before calling back. “Over-under on how many Blanks you’re gonna take out?”
Vaughn threw back his head on a laugh. “How about a baker’s dozen?”
“What do you wanna bet?”
Vaughn jerked his head with a lift of his eyebrows. “Depends what I’m in the mood for when I get back. Can you handle surprises?”
“Psh.” Pace waved his hand. “Surprises are fun. Come back with some Blanks’ blood on your hands and we’ll talk.”
“It’s a date,” Vaughn said.
With a whistle, Dare twirled his fingers in the air. “Everyone ready to go?”
Murmurs of assent rippled through the gathered team. With a nod and a final look at Reese, Dare called out, “Then shift and let’s get it done.”
With rallying shouts, we dropped to all fours. The front gate opened, and we were sprinting out into the forest.
We stopped once to get some rest, but Dare quickly urged us on. The longer we took, the greater chance there was of being detected.
I pushed my body, panting as we galloped as a united pack toward the place where I’d been imprisoned for almost half of my life. Since they’d forced me out, I hadn’t ventured within miles of the walls. The terrain grew rougher, hillier, the longer we drove on.
Even with Dare’s hulking form in front of me and Bay’s steady presence beside me, I was a mess of nerves worrying about how I’d react once I was among the Blanks. The memory of Hannah and the promise of a bright future with my mate were like carrots in front of my nose. Or rather, nice hunks of raw meat.
Getting into the Blanks’ compound was complicated. There were no secret passages to enter and only one heavily fortified front gate. The compound walls were not built of stone or brick like most. They’d painstakingly gathered scraps of metal, so the walls were a twisted, ugly mass of steel. They couldn’t be climbed, as they’d built two-foot long spikes across the top. Half of the compound was open air, and the rest was built into the cliff, where they’d dug out tunnels both into the rock and into the ground, creating a web of tunnels, rooms, and dark dungeons.
The only way inside, aside from the front gate, was to scale the cliff behind the compound and rappel in. The first task was to kill the guards at the bottom of the hill so we could begin our climb. All this had to be completed on a specific time schedule before the next shift of guards.
We’d had plenty of meetings, and everyone knew their specific tasks on this mission. Vaughn was a loud whirlwind and he fought from a bottomless pit of anger with amazing skill. But as the stealthiest fighter, Rua had been the one selected to take out the four guards single-handedly. I’d sat down with her and explained their positions, how they held their weapons, where they were trained to look. I had seen the gears turning in her head, and with a toss of her braids and a glint in her brown eyes, she’d told me it would be no problem.
I wanted to believe her. But so much could go wrong. So much.
My mind fixated more on Hannah the closer we got to the compound. Her big brown eyes and the way we’d hold each other through a particularly brutal day. She’d meant everything to me for so many years, and leaving her had been one of the worst things I’d ever had to do in my life. They’d known it too. They’d seen us getting close, and I’d been forced out without the chance to even say goodbye. I wondered if they’d told her what happened to me. Maybe she thought they’d killed me? My fear was they’d told her I’d escaped and that I’d left her. But there was nothing I could do about it.
At about a mile out, I nipped Dare’s flank to signal him to slow down and by a half mile out, we pulled to a stop, panting heavily. Dare shifted, his fur giving way to human flesh on the forest floor. From a crouch, he rose to his full height, facing away from us. A sheen of sweat coated his skin, glistening in the moonlight, and his shoulders heaved as he sought to catch his breath. He’d shorn his head recently, his hair only a half-inch long, and he looked every bit the alpha he was.
He turned his head, his profile backlit by the moon high in the sky, and I was struck with a pang of pride. This was my pack, my alpha, and unequivocally we were fighting for what was right, for justice in a world that that was full of danger and rage. What was the point if we didn’t fight for humanity?
Dare nodded to Rua, who padded forward on four feet, her black head bent in reverence. Dare placed his hand on her furred head, and whispered something in her ear. After a small nudge to his thigh, she took off into the dark.
The rest of us shifted and dressed. Then we waited.
I’d informed Rua that the guards stood one hundred feet apart at the base of the hill in their human forms, crossbows in hand. She could theoretically kill one without the other seeing, because of the curve of the bottom of the hill. But it would take a lot of skill.
Dare crouched in front of us, the leader of our raiding party, his head bowed. We all followed suit, barely breathing as we waited for Rua to return. She’d been allotted two minutes to do her duty, ten seconds to kill the guards and twenty seconds to make it to the next one.
She had a mate at home, a werewolf named Gail who they’d saved from the Bluefoot pack. I wanted Rua to make it home to her.
One minute went by, the only sound a soft crack of a rock or something hard hitting the ground. By a minute and thirty, Bay was trembling. A bead of sweat rolled down my forehead and dripped off my nose, but I didn’t move. Two minutes went by, and Dare’s head went up. He stared straight ahead, his human nose in the air, body poised.
A figure on two feet loped toward us. Rua. She was naked and in her hand was a knife with dark liquid dripping off the end, sparkling in the moonlight. When she reached her alpha, she handed him the knife and whispered, “It’s done.”
Dare slipped it into a pocket in his pack and clasped the back of her head. He drew her forward and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Thank you.” Rua dressed quickly in a pair of pants and a shirt.
Then with a wave of Dare’s hand, we continued forward. We all wore packs with climbing gear and unpacked them when we reached the base of the cliff. The face was nearly ninety degrees, but doable. We stayed in our human forms, as our paws didn’t have the right grip, and our Were forms were too heavy.
With axes and ropes, we picked our way up the rocky cliff. Dare led the way, with Bay and I following, and the other members of the pack fanning out behind us. Vaughn climbed quickly, eventually surpassing Bay and I. Bay hissed at him. “Slow down and take your time.”
Vaughn bared his teeth and kept going. Bay looked at me and shook his head as he speared his
axe in a crevice. “He’s so itching to fight, he can’t help himself.”
“Well, I hope he saves his energy.”
Bay laughed low. “When it comes to killing, he’s got infinite energy.”
Vaughn had been an angry teen, and I saw he hadn’t grown out of it. When he tried to pass Dare above us, Dare’s hand lashed out, gripping Vaughn’s bicep. The Were froze, and although we couldn’t hear what Dare said to him in a low growl, it was enough to cow Vaughn. He slowed down and hung back at Dare’s flank, his face a mask of determination.
It took us two and a half hours to reach the top, and by the time we were there, my arms felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. My shoulders could barely hold up my axe, and I dropped it on the ground and turned to Bay.
He was bent over, hands on his knees, peering up at me with his mouth open and nostrils flared. Even Dare looked winded. His body was a mass of muscle and veins, and I swore he looked bigger. The closer we got to danger, to taking out the Blanks, the bulkier Dare became. He heaved a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and turned to look at us.
“Water, food, then we go in,” he ordered. Everyone dropped their packs, proceeded to chug from canteens of water, and munched on protein-packed jerky.
Knowing we were so close to entering the Blanks’ compound gave me no appetite, but I forced food down anyway. Bay was watching me like he was waiting for me to lose my shit, and I hated that he expected me to, that he knew I was weak.
It was fucked up, but the only reason I didn’t want to sacrifice myself in the compound for the good of the pack was because of Bay. Because I was his. I couldn’t hurt him, couldn’t damage or lose what was his. But when I was in my Were form…I couldn’t be trusted.
I drank my water and stared at the dusty ground until a hand landed on the back of my neck. I turned to look into Bay’s eyes, so bright with the moon reflecting off the green. “I know what you’re thinking.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh yeah?”
“Stay alive because you know your life is worth it. Because the novuses from our pack need you. Because with Dare’s help, maybe we can come up with a cure.”
“What about you?”
He shook his head. “Stay alive for you.”
“I’m staying alive for you.”
He swore under his breath and dropped his hand from me. “You’re stubborn as fuck.”
“You told me this was okay. That I could be yours until I was ready to be mine. I’m not ready yet, Bay. Don’t ask me to be.”
He met my gaze and held it for a long time. Finally, he nodded with a heavy sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry—you’re right.”
I kissed the corner of his mouth, wishing I could do more, that we had time to come together, have a good healthy fuck before we rappelled into hell. But Dare was rising to his feet and Bay could only return my kiss with a press of his lips.
Dare’s eyes were swirling, his claws out as he half-shifted to make himself even larger. He eyed Bay first, then me, then took in the rest of the pack. When he spoke, his voice was guttural. “You all know the plan. Stay alive, rescue the prisoners. We bring them home with us. Show no mercy to the Blanks unless they surrender.”
“They won’t,” I said.
Dare nodded at me. “I suspect not. Rua, you lead the prisoners out with your team. Bay, Nash, Vaughn, and I will stay behind to deal with the alpha.”
I shivered at that. I’d actually never seen the Alpha. I’d heard from those who had though, and apparently his eyes were something straight out of hell.
The cliff we stood on extended partway over the Blanks’ compound. Below our feet, carved into the recesses of the mountain, was where the Blanks’ Alpha and guards lived, and where all the prisoners were kept. The metal walls of the compound extended out from the base of the mountain below in a large half-circle. So there were two ways inside the compound. From the top of the cliff down, which was a sheer drop, or at the front gate of the compound at the top of the half-circle, which was heavily guarded.
Dare lashed his rope around an embedded rock at the edge of the cliff, tested the hold, the grabbed the rope attached to the end. The other was tied around his waist. “You all know your positions. Let’s go.” With one last look at Bay, he slipped over the edge.
G and his crew were to remain at the top of the cliff to make sure the ropes stayed secure and to pull up anyone who needed help. He stood in his hulking human form with a couple of Weres at his back, watching solemnly as the rest of us descended into hell.
We rappelled down the rock face. My heart was in my throat the entire drop, and when Bay’s hand slipped and a spray of dust fell below us, I stopped breathing. He recovered quickly, plastering himself against the wall and shooting me a grin, his teeth nearly fluorescent white in the moonlight.
I shook my head, not amused, but still warmed by that effervescent grin.
I loved him.
Soon we touched foot down on the ground inside the walls and let G and his crew pull the ropes back up. The front section of the compound, enclosed in the half-circle wall, was open to the air. This was where the pack members who I’d never seen lived, raising their families while horrible, fucked-up things happened within the dank confines of the mountain. At this late hour of night, the place was deathly quiet because of the Alpha’s curfew.
Guards would be positioned at the main gate, sitting in towers that faced the terrain in outside the front gate of the compound. They wouldn’t be facing our direction.
Over twenty strong Silver Tip pack Weres remained crouched on the ground within the Blanks’ walls. Dare stood and locked eyes with me. He motioned for me to enter the mountain, the darkness that had been my home for fifteen years. This was my time, my moment to return and seek revenge for all they’d done to me and my fellow shifters.
Bay squeezed my hand, and I did my best to gather my courage, to let it swell into my chest, to harden my heart, and I strode down the mountain tunnel lit only by flickering torches.
Chapter Eighteen
Stealth was no longer needed. It was time for battle now that we were inside the walls. We’d take on the guards and secure the prisoners’ release. The Blanks wouldn’t surrender. Never. It would be us or them.
I hoped like hell it was going to be us.
We walked about a hundred yards down a tunnel, and, when we reached the opening at the other side, Dare held up a hand. Just beyond was the main hub, where the guards lived and ate. I’d been there once, when they’d told me I was being cast out. I’d stood in the center of a two-story circular room while guards surrounded me on all sides. A set of winding stairs at the back of the room led up to the Alpha’s quarters. Another set of stairs off to the side headed down to the underground dungeons where the experiments were kept. Where I’d spent fifteen years.
As soon as we passed through the mouth of the tunnel, a shout of alarm went up.
And we shifted.
Our pack of Silver Tip Weres roared with enough force that the entire mountain vibrated. Guards streamed out of their sleeping quarters, grabbing their crossbows and taking aim.
They had superior weapons, but they didn’t have Vaughn and Dal.
As a team, the two leaped onto the second-floor balconies, Vaughn’s saber flashing in his Were fists while Dal, in human form, slashed with her knives and whipped her spiked braid.
The guards had never seen anything like them, and I hadn’t either.
Dare had said to fight offensively, so the guards couldn’t hang back and pick us off with their crossbows. I threw myself into a group of three Blanks, remembering every single one of them, savoring the moment I stuck my claws into their soft bellies and disemboweled them.
Many hadn’t shifted yet, preferring to remain in their human forms to handle their complicated weapons. Bad mistake, because the Silver Tip were on them. Vaughn and Dal were plowing their way through the guards on the balcony, sending many screaming to the floor while the rest of us continu
ed to fight.
Dare blocked off the stairway to the Alpha’s chamber, refusing to let any guards up to defend their leader. Dare was a hulking mass of fur and teeth and claws. He was drenched in blood, but it was easy to see the blood wasn’t his. Bodies littered the ground at his feet.
Several guards took off for the stairway down to the prisoners in a hurry, and panic shot through me when I thought about what they could do. I sprinted after them, forced to change to my human form to slip my body into the tiny stairwell. Bay was at my heels, his scent spurring me on. When I reached the foot of the stairs, a clawed hand shot out, nearly catching my stomach.
I lashed out with my foot, kicking back the Were so that I had enough room to shift. I faced him head on, and a scar on his face let me know who he was.
Head guard, right-hand to the Alpha. Jul, they called him.
I was going to fucking murder Jul.
He must have seen my ear, or recognized me in my Were form, because he gnashed his teeth and growled at me, his lips pulling back to show decaying teeth.
He had an old injury to his right leg, something that caused him to limp. I wasted no time in going right for the weakness, tackling him at the knee.
He screamed, his pained cry like a knife in my eardrums, and I took him to the ground. The screaming didn’t stop and when I let go of his leg, the whole limb was bent at an odd angle. He shifted to human and tried to crawl away from me.
“Please, just let me go.” He had to have known his entire guard was being slaughtered upstairs. “None of this was my idea. It was all the Alpha’s.”
He’d been cruel to me when we were all alone, when no one was watching. Some of the aches in my body were caused by his fists, his weapons. I had a scar across my right side that he’d carved into me while he laughed.
He continued to crawl, unable to walk, and threw his keys at me. “Just leave me alone.”
I shifted back to human. “What’s my name?”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“What’s my name?”
Chasing Destiny (Silver Tip Pack Book 2) Page 16