“I need to examine him.”
Whipping my head toward the voice, I barely restrained myself from snapping at the man’s hands, which were raised in a nonthreatening pose that still managed to piss off my inner she-wolf who wasn’t so inner at the moment. At some point I had fully shifted to my warg aspect, and I was salivating at the taste of violence in the air.
“He’ll die unless you let me help,” the man said.
A whimper got caught in my throat, and then Dell was there, wrapping me in her arms and holding me steady while the man approached. His sweat stank with fear, of me or for Graeson, I wasn’t sure.
“This is Abram.” Dell tightened her grip as the steady rumbling in my throat revved louder. “He’s our healer, the best in the Chandler pack. Bessemer was pissed as hell to lose him.”
Breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, I hung on to sanity by my pinky nail.
There was so much blood, too much blood, and Graeson’s lungs made a wet noise when he drew in air.
Competent hands made quick work of the examination. Abram finished testing the entry and exit wounds with light fingers and made a ticking noise behind his teeth. “This has to come out, and all I’ve got in my bag is the contents of my medicine cabinet from home. Bessemer kept the rest. My supplies, equipment, all of it.”
“Can you save him?” My voice came out raw but steady.
“Yes,” he said earnestly. “It won’t be pretty, and I can’t trust your wolf to behave herself while I work. Getting that dagger out of him will hurt, and she may not trust that I mean her mate no harm.” A kind smile curved his lips. “She almost maimed me for looking at him while he’s wounded. While I admire the depth of her commitment, I’d also like to keep my hands attached if you don’t mind.”
I tossed my head against Dell’s shoulder. “I can’t leave him.”
“Hon, listen to Abram.” She stroked my back with her fingertips. “He’s treated Meemaw for years. She says he’s got magic hands.”
“Save him if you can.” I swallowed the lump clogging my throat. “Run and don’t look back if you can’t.”
Failure was not an option. The feral awareness growing in my middle, warped by sorrow, vowed blood would answer for blood.
“Understood.” His rough hand clapped me on the back as he shared a deep look with Dell. “Get her out of here and don’t let her peek until I give the all clear, okay?”
“You got it, Doc.” Dell’s hands bruised my arms with the strength she used to contain me while helping me to my feet, as though not quite trusting I would leave in peace. She was wise to doubt. Her iron grip was all that kept me from snapping my teeth at Abram before she turned me on my heel and marched me in the direction of the RV park. “Focus, and you can keep tabs on Graeson through the bond.” She urged me past two men wobbling to their feet while more wolves struggled to find their human skins. “For now you’ve got to keep calm, or your panic will seep into the pack bond. If Graeson picks up on your distress, he’ll fight Abram’s healing to get to you. Right now you need to send him peaceful vibes, okay? Let him know you’re okay. Can you do that?”
Several steps into the cool darkness of the woods, I faltered at the keening wail of a heart shattering into a million infinitesimal pieces.
“Jensen,” Bianca screamed until her voice quit. “Jensen.”
“Oh gods,” I murmured. “He stayed behind with her. I couldn’t locate him through the bond and then—” She’d attacked Graeson, and Jensen became the least of my worries. “We have to find him.”
“Are you up for this?” Dell’s fingers dug into the meat of my upper arms. “Tell me the truth.”
“I can do this.” I owed it to Bianca to find her mate. “I need to do this.”
The hunt for Jensen lasted all of five minutes.
We found him, what was left of him, behind a moss-covered boulder. He had been ripped into glistening strips of meat with the apparent ease of a child shredding tissue paper. Teeth and claw marks, most interchangeable on such a devastating scale, left no doubt he had met his end at the jaws of a fellow warg.
Part of me mourned that I had seen so much death that more didn’t gut me the way I wanted it too. The way this should have. I hated being able to analyze the scene when a normal person would have fallen to their knees weeping and retching as Dell had beside me.
“Alpha?” Haden’s voice rang in my head. “Are you all right? The bond feels…wrong.”
“Leave Bianca with Nathalie.” For the sake of her baby, and her own mental health, she could never see this free of the blinding fog of Charybdis’s influence. “Bring the others, and come find us.”
We had kin to mourn and defenses to ready.
Chapter 7
I did what I could to minimize the trauma by organizing the pack meeting on the far side of the boulder. It wasn’t much, but it kept a barrier between the pack and Jensen’s remains so that those unable to face the horror of his brutal murder were protected from carrying gruesome mental pictures that would haunt them.
Either my disquiet as I struggled for the appropriate words attracted the wargs to me, or they were in need of physical comfort after the events of the night. By the time I’d mentally exhausted myself with openings, the pack had drifted into my orbit. Nathalie leaned her weight against my left side and Haden brushed his right elbow against mine. The remaining three men I hadn’t met milled around, heads down and shoulders hunched.
Instinct told me they were waiting for my acknowledgment. We had been tiptoeing around one another for long enough. That ended tonight. Starting with the shortest and least intimidating of the three.
“We haven’t been introduced.” I used the loud, clear voice Graeson adapted when addressing the pack. The slight man with his feathered bangs and sprinkling of freckles sensed my attention and lifted his head. “Please, call me Cam.”
“I’m Job.” His blue-gray eyes flicked to mine then back to the ground. “I’m an accountant.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Job.” I stuck out my hand, and he hesitated before accepting. The zing of feral magic in his blood sang to mine, and I released him. “I’m glad you chose us.”
A quick jerk of his head, and he eased nearer Nathalie. The tension left his shoulders, and his chin lifted a fraction. Touch was concern, approval, affection to wargs. As they huddled around me, skin to skin, it sank in that not only would Graeson and Dell—and others I considered friends—crave platonic contact, but the entire pack required physical reassurance from one another, and especially from their alphas.
“You caught a chipmunk earlier,” I said to the quiet wall of muscle with his feet planted shoulder’s width apart. “You didn’t even slow down.”
One of his shoulders rose and then fell. “I was hungry.”
Shifting drained their strength at the best of times, and Graeson had ran them until their tongues lolled. Not to mention the magic of the ceremony, which had siphoned energy from them as well. Wargs required calories, lots of them, to fuel their hypermetabolism. The unexpected attack had derailed our celebration, but the food was already bought and the wolves would have to be fed soon. Even heartsick, they had no choice but to sate the cravings of their wilder halves.
Shuffling over, he stuck out his hand, fingers splayed. “I’m Moore.” He grunted. “Mechanic.”
Strong magic brushed my palm, and he went to stand beside Haden. That left one man apart, and he was as thin as he was tall. I counted ribs when he unfolded his arms from across his chest.
The rangiest wolf of the pack was easy to identify. “You were the one who hung back to make sure the pack didn’t leave anyone behind.”
“I’m Zed.” He thrust out his hand, bent so far over that his forehead almost brushed his upper arm. “I run a salvage yard. Or I used to. Guess I’ll be buying a new place now. At the rate Moore busts up cars, it shouldn’t take long to get a parts yard fully stocked again.”
Moore growled at him without heat, and Zed s
huffled between me and Haden until our upper arms were plastered together from the perspiration sheening his skin. With a shuddering exhale, he leaned harder against me, his heft knocking me into Nathalie, who rested her head on my shoulder.
“Jensen is gone.” A profound sadness swept through me via the bond, but not a shred of shock. Their noses had already told them all they needed to know. “We need to see to his remains.” A tear leaked down my arm from Nathalie’s cheek. “Bianca is an innocent in this. We can’t hold her responsible for what happened here tonight.”
No, that blame rested squarely at my feet.
“Bessemer warned us about the fae hunting you. Graeson explained the rest.” Moore shifted his weight. “We all knew the dangers. We all have our reasons for taking the risk.” His large palm eclipsed my shoulder. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“We never imagined this, though.” Zed dragged a hand over his mouth. “God knows we never imagined this.”
“The thing that did this—” Job asked under his breath. “It’s the same monster that killed Marie?”
“Yes, it is.” Braced for them to turn on me, for the accusations to start flying, I was stunned to silence when not one bitter word was hurled in my direction. “He’s got my aunt and my cousin,” I told them. “He’s going after my family. After tonight, that means the pack too. He’s punishing me for hunting him.”
“I pledged to my alphas.” Haden jostled me with his elbow as he twisted to face the others. “This doesn’t change that for me or my wolf.”
“Or me,” Dell called.
“Or me,” rippled around the cluster of warm bodies. Each of them, every single one, supported Graeson…and me.
Awkward was one word to describe standing there sandwiched between near-strangers without a stitch of clothing between them, whose inner beasts were soothed by my presence. Humbling was another. The trust they extended to me hadn’t been earned. Yet. The pack bond hummed quietly in the back of my mind, utterly silent but present in a way that warmed me to my bones. Our lives were connected, our fates intertwined now, and I was done playing this game by Charybdis’s rules. I was finished waiting, fed up with him striking first.
He had come after the people I loved, the people who were mine to protect. He had awakened my inner she-wolf by attacking my pack, by hurting my family. As she bared her teeth in a mental snarl, I read her intent and agreed wholeheartedly.
For these crimes, Charybdis would die with our teeth buried in his throat.
Chapter 8
Graeson’s ragged breathing was as shallow now as it had been two hours ago. Warg healing ought to have sealed the jagged wound made when Abram was forced to saw the blade back and forth in tiny increments to work the serrated edge free of Graeson’s chest, but his fever-hot skin told a different story. His body was fighting, but he wasn’t winning any ground that I could tell.
“Do you think magic could be involved?” I voiced my worst fear to Abram.
“It crossed my mind.” He rubbed behind his ear. “It would explain a lot.”
I caressed the ridge of Graeson’s slick brow with my fingertip. “Would the Garzas help?”
“No.” He shook his head. “They’re bound to the Chandler pack, and Bessemer made certain the witches got the memo about the pack separation. They can’t aid us without endangering their accord.” He cut me a weary look. “Enzo called me at the clinic and informed me he could no longer supply me with some of the rarer herbs his people specialize in growing. He’s good people, for a witch, but he’s loyal to Miguel. We can’t expect help on that front.”
The Garzas were the only witches I trusted in the area. I doubted I had anything left of value to barter with them, but I’d had to ask.
“Your five minutes are up,” he said gently. “Come back in thirty, and you can visit him again.”
A rumble in my chest proved his caution wise. Any longer and my wolf got snarly and overprotective. Already I’d had to scour layers of skin to cleanse the overwhelming scent of Graeson’s blood off me. The fresh change of clothes helped smooth my hackles too. I was back in jeans, sneakers, a fitted T-shirt, and I was ready to get down to business.
Picking up the reins as alpha, I went to check on Bianca, who I had isolated in my trailer after asking Haden to move it to an even more remote corner of the RV lot at the cost of losing the use of hookups for utilities. Charybdis had broken parts of her I didn’t understand well enough to guess at how to fix them.
Jensen, her mate, the man she loved more than anything outside of the child she carried, and she had killed him while under Charybdis’s toxic influence. Was there a sliver of hope for recovery from that?
“This isn’t your fault.” Dell leaned a shoulder against mine. “You know that, right?”
The broken record played on… “Sure.” Agreeing with Dell was easier than fighting her for my portion of the blame. “Did you get the others settled for the night?”
“Yeah.” She jerked her head toward the direction of my trailer. “Bianca is resting in there, and Nathalie is clearing out your bedroom to protect your things.” Her gaze slid to Theo’s trailer. As the home with the fewest possessions and most room to spare, it would act as home base for now. “Haden, Job, Moore and Zed are settled there.” Isaac’s trailer caught her eye next. “Isaac said I could stay with him, so I’m going to keep his place safe until he gets back.” Her voice went scratchy at the end. “That leaves you, Graeson and Abram at Aunt Dot’s place. Unless the rain they’re predicting comes in, Abram doesn’t want to move Graeson for a few more hours. So Moore and Job have gone into town to purchase a tarp large enough to accommodate them. We need this area contained by sunrise when the humans start waking.”
“You’re doing a great job.” I patted her arm. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She beamed at me with such pride, my chest swelled right alongside hers. Dell’s shoulders hadn’t hunched once since we left Villanow. Her gaze hadn’t touched the ground in submission, except when she’d bumped heads with Graeson at the gas station. Her cocky stride had turned more than one head, and when Moore had dared put a hand on her in a proprietary manner earlier, she had slapped him. Not hard, for a shifter, but he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully after.
All in all, it was a huge and welcome change in the woman who had cowered before her previous alpha and who had once gone willingly to Moore’s lap with empty eyes because a more dominant wolf had patted his thighs in expectation she would obey.
Dell was coming into her own, grabbing life by the tail, and despite the grim circumstances, I was glad to be here to see it.
“The dominance fights start at daybreak.” Anticipation thrummed in her voice. “They would have started tonight if not for all this. The sooner hierarchy is established among our wolves, the sooner they can settle. Having an injured alpha has everyone on edge, and it’s dangerous for us to be so near humans until we’ve bled off some of that aggression.”
What I wanted to ask was “Haven’t we bled enough already?” but the wargs knew their animals’ needs better than I did. I trusted Dell. If she told me they needed this, then I believed her. “Are you fighting?”
“Yes,” she said, voice hard. “Graeson protected me from Bessemer. Our ex-alpha has a thing for dominants, and it almost killed me, but it was worth tucking my tail to keep him off my back. Graeson has told me to bide my time for years.” She clenched her jaw. “Well, I bided and this is the time.”
“I’ll be pulling for you.” I kept my endorsement too quiet for sensitive wolf ears to overhear. “You seem happier now. I’d like that trend to continue.”
“Me too.” Movement caught her eye, and her voice trailed to a whisper. “I hope everything…”
A man dressed in tight jeans, polished boots and a sleeveless T-shirt that somehow managed to look more expensive than the last pantsuit I purchased stepped into the clearing. With his hair cut short and a bottle of chilled water in hand, he looked like a model who had been su
cked through a portal from the nightclub where he had been partying—if the paper neon band around his wrist was any indication—into an enchanted forest.
“Oh my God.” Dell blurred into motion, leapt the creek bed and sprung for him, wrapping her legs around his waist and burying her face at his neck. “You’re back. How are you back?”
Gripping the undersides of her thighs so she didn’t fall, the man picked his way toward me, careful his trendy boots didn’t slip on dry leaves and dump him on his ass.
“Hey, coz.” Ice glazed his voice. His eyes were arctic blue, and clear of Charybdis’s influence. “Long time no see.” Glancing down at Dell, he softened his expression a fraction. “Does she do this for everyone, or am I special?”
Hearing the unexpected snark in his voice, Dell reared back in his arms, and the color drained from her face. “You’re not Isaac.” Her nose wrinkled. “You smelled different, but it was close. So close.” She used her warg strength to break his grip, then backed up to me. “You must be Theo.”
“I am.” He cocked his head. “Who are you? One of Isaac’s girls?”
Arms linking around her middle, she blinked fast. “No.”
“This is Dell.” I hooked my arm around her waist, and Theo’s eyebrows climbed his forehead as my open affection with her stunned him. Had I needed more proof he was untainted, he had just given it to me in spades. “She and Isaac are…” complicated, “…friends.”
“An honest mistake.” He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “You can’t throw a stone without hitting one of his castoffs.”
My jaw popped from the pressure of grinding my teeth. “Ah, there’s the cousin I remember.”
Casual cruelty was as much his style as the artfully tousled hair on his head. How Isaac stomached him, I had no clue. Five minutes with him, and already eager claws pricked the tips of my fingers. “Dell, I’m taking him to Aunt Dot’s trailer to talk.”
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