End of Lies

by Sara Dailey

  “But I didn’t know that they were going to try to kill you. When I thought you were dead…” Noel broke off crying. She sniffled away the sobs and continued, this time looking directly into his eyes. “When I thought you were dead, it nearly killed me. You have to believe that. You are my only son. My baby boy.”

  Cade held his mother’s eyes for an uncomfortable amount of time. What passed between mother and son was just too personal to watch; I had to look away. I squeezed Cami’s hand and tugged her closer to me. I only looked back up when I heard Cade finally speak. “I’m not your son. Not anymore.”

  A small gasp escaped Noel’s lips as she closed her eyes and bowed her head in acceptance. I could see the grief and regret on her face, but that look was nothing compared to the hatred and disgust on Cade’s. Nothing more was said between the two of them before Cade turned and left the room.

  “Someone should go talk to him. Don’t you think?” Cami asked looking up at me.

  “It’s probably best to give him a minute,” I offered.

  I hadn’t even noticed Luke and Scarlett standing behind us until Luke spoke up. “I’ll give him a minute, but only a minute. We still only have two guys guarding Clayton’s men. We need to move them, or at least send some more reinforcements,” Luke said in a calm and matter-of-fact tone. He had slipped into his role as enforcer seamlessly.

  The hands on the clock slowed as Luke anxiously watched them. When we had finally been standing there in silence for two full minutes, Luke decided that Cade had enough time alone to cool down.

  “Mind if I tag along?” I asked Luke as he turned to go find Cade. I wasn’t sure if it was the best time, but at some point, I wanted to talk to Cade. It was my father that his mother was with. I needed to make sure Cade knew that my allegiance was to him and to his pack, to Red Ridge and to Cami. Cade needed to know that I would never return to Crescent Hills, and that as far as I was concerned, I was no longer my father’s son either.

  Luke just nodded and motioned for me to follow. Cade wasn’t difficult to find. He was standing by the front door to the lodge looking out into the darkness. He turned to face us as soon as we approached.

  “You okay?” Luke asked.

  Cade nodded his head and asked, “What’s up? I know you didn’t just come out here to check on me.”

  Luke smiled. They must know each other pretty well, contrary to what Cami had told me about them. “Logan and Nick are still over at the guest house with Clayton’s men. I’m sure the guards are still unconscious and tied up, but we can’t bring them all here. There is no room left in the cell. Logan and Nick will need a break. And some backup once they start waking up.”

  Cade thought about it for a while before he asked me, “All the men were accounted for, tranqed and tied up?”

  I nodded.

  “Then they should be fine until morning,” Cade stated flatly.

  My eyes darted to Luke to see if he looked as stunned as I felt. Sure enough, he didn’t like that idea any more than I did.

  “It wouldn’t be a big deal to find a few more volunteers to help out over there,” Luke added.

  “Logan and Nick have weapons, correct?” Cade snapped.

  “Yes, but they have been up—”

  “Then they’ll be fine,” Cade interrupted.

  Visibly stiffening, Luke asked, “You sure about that, man?”

  Cade stepped closer to Luke, not intimidated by the big guy at all. “Are you questioning my judgment, Luke?”

  I backed away from those two, suddenly regretting my decision to tag along. Definitely not the time to have a heart to heart. Luke held his hands up in surrender, but the look in his eyes said it all. He was most definitely questioning Cade’s decision. So was I, but I wasn’t about to say anything.

  “You’re the boss,” Luke said as he turned and walked out leaving me standing there like an idiot. Shoving my hands into my jean pockets, I turned and hurried to catch up with him.

  Luke went immediately to his father, and I went back to Cami and Scarlett. I walked up behind Cami and wrapped my arms around her waist. Scarlett smiled. “So, you two are together then, huh?”

  I squeezed Cami tighter, knowing that Scarlett’s comment had made her uncomfortable. “I like it,” Scarlett said smiling.

  I was about to tell her thanks, when Cade walked in the room and addressed us all. “I want everyone to go home and get some sleep. You deserve it. We will meet back here at 7:00 a.m. for a pack meeting. I want the rest of our family to see what we were able to accomplish tonight. I want to thank you all for your help and commitment to your pack. We did a good thing here tonight.”

  He didn’t stand around and wait for any comments or suggestions that would have surely come. He just walked over to Alli, took her hand, and left the room.

  CHAPTER 57

  Kendall

  I’d spent the night zip-tied to a cell bar while sitting on a wooden bench and leaning up against a concrete wall. Needless to say, I didn’t get much beauty sleep. I hadn’t been here long when my favorite frenemy Natalie and her father were hauled in. Natalie was still awake, but her dad was out cold. Apparently, Red Ridge either didn’t know they were here or had forgotten about them, but when they tried to escape, somebody out there must have seen them. Poor Natalie. Not.

  Red Ridge members took shifts watching us like hawks even though Drew, Noel, Natalie, and I were the only ones awake for most of the night. I couldn’t be sure of the time, but I would have guessed it had been four or five hours when a couple of the CH lackeys started waking up.

  The guards on shift at the time, Ryder and Sammy, ensured that we didn’t speak by threatening us with tranq guns, which was actually quite brilliant on their part being that we all knew they wouldn’t actually kill any of us, but they wouldn’t hesitate to knock any of us out, some of us for a second time. Of course, Drew made sure to let them know that the only reason he was choosing to stay quiet was because he wanted to be awake for whatever their pack had in store for us.

  After four of the CH guards were awake, Sammy called Cade, and it wasn’t long before the whole damn crew was back. There was a cold, calculated look in Cade’s eyes that I’d never seen before, and for the first time, I was actually nervous about what was to come. Maybe he wasn’t just going to give us all a firm talking to and send us on our way after all. Was Cade Walker actually capable of more drastic measures? The scary thing was that after what had happened to his father combined with his mother’s betrayal, he might just be.

  Cade stood in front of the cell, and though he was looking at his prisoners, he addressed his pack. “Sammy, Ryder, keep your guns trained on the men who are awake. The rest of you, get in there and zip-tie everyone’s hands behind their backs. We will be moving them soon.”

  Obeying orders, they got to work, and within a few minutes, everyone in the cell was restrained. “Now we need some water. Buckets full. A little cold water should wake the rest of these guys right up,” Cade instructed, as if he did this kind of thing every day.

  Fortunately, I was already awake, so when Luke, Aiden, and the rest of the guys started dousing the sleeping CH members with ice-cold water, I did my best to stay out of the way. Drew, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. Luke made damn sure that a bucket of water was left solely for him.

  After a great deal of confusion, warnings, and threats, we, the prisoners of Red Ridge, were all lined up and herded up the stairs and into the lodge’s great room like cattle, just as we had done to them not so long ago. Even I had to admit, it seemed fitting. The other shoe had dropped, and Crescent Hills was finally going to get what was coming to them. Now, all I could do was hope that Cade hadn’t completely lost his mind and didn’t plan on slaughtering us all.

  Cade ordered us to line up along the front wall of the lodge, strategically placing Nathaniel in the middle, with Brian and Clayton on each side of him. Drew stood next to Clayton and I next to Drew, and then Noel was placed next to Brian with Natalie and her fath
er on the other side of him. While the Red Ridge members all had real weapons in their possession, they still had their tranq guns aimed at the lot of us while we stood there in a line as if they were preparing to gun us down at any moment.

  Cade stood directly in front of Nathaniel and said, “Instruct your pack to get down on their knees.”

  Nathaniel’s steely gaze hardened as he glared at Cade, refusing to comply with his request. “Nathaniel Barnes, if you want any chance, any chance at all, to walk out of this place alive, I highly suggest you order your people to get down on their knees. After what’s been done to me and my pack, a smart man wouldn’t test me right now.”

  Cade pulled the handgun from the back waistband of his pants and pressed the barrel against Nathaniel’s forehead. Luke and Aiden moved in to back him up just as Nathaniel relented. “Okay, okay. Do what he says. Down on your knees everyone.”

  Taking a step back, Cade tilted his head to the side and said, “See? Now how hard was that?” Then he turned to Luke and ordered, “Sound the alarm.”

  It wasn’t long before the rest of the Red Ridge Pack began filing into the lodge, and as expected, upon seeing us all lined up along the wall, they cheered and chattered, and hugged and celebrated until Cade stood up in front of his pack, banged his gavel, and for the first time, called his pack to order.

  As if he’d been in control for years, silence fell over the room and his people took their seats. With more confidence than I’d ever seen him possess, Cade addressed his pack. “Members of Red Ridge, this is a day to rejoice, a day to celebrate, a day to remember because today is the day that we are taking back what is rightfully ours.”

  Applause erupted throughout the room, masking the sound of the door at the back of the room opening, but Cade saw it. And all the members of Crescent Hills saw it too. Old Man Larson, Jake’s grandfather, entered the lodge and marched down the center aisle with murderous rage brewing in his eyes. Cade stepped out from behind the podium to stop him, but it was too late. Larson came to a halt halfway down the aisle, pulled a shotgun from his trench coat, and blew a hole through Nathaniel’s chest.

  Almost immediately, another shot was fired from somewhere in the room. While everyone was distracted by his grandfather, Jake had pulled his gun too, his real gun, and shot Brian right between the eyes. The two men fell face first to the ground while the rest of the room was shocked into silence.

  CHAPTER 58

  Cami

  The moment the shots were fired, both Jake and his grandfather placed their weapons on the ground in front of them and got down on their knees as a sign of submission. No one had time to react, much less recover from their shock, because the back door flew back open once again. This time, it wasn’t one of our own entering the premises.

  A Crescent Hills guard, carrying the bloody shirts of whom I could only assume belonged to Logan and Nick, who had been left to watch the CH guards, stood in the doorway and shouted, “You didn’t really think it would be that easy, did you? Let’s do this right this time!”

  He tossed the shirts aside and held the door open as the room flooded with the rest of the guards, now in wolf form, before he shifted as well. I glanced back to the front of the room, realizing in horror that at some point the CH leaders had all shifted too, but just as quickly, the majority of my own pack was no longer in their human form either. Crescent Hills had given us no other option. The fight was on.

  I was just about to shift when I noticed Teagan, her body flattened against a nearby wall, and Aiden, in wolf form, trying his damnedest to protect her from the chaos surrounding them. Somehow in the midst of our own little Werewolf Armageddon, I managed to grab Teagan’s arm, and despite Aiden growling at me, I pulled her out of there and down the stairs. We couldn’t have been luckier than to have been standing near the hallway leading down to the room that housed the jail cell.

  Pulling her down the stairs, I shouted, “Come on! We have to get you somewhere safe. I’m sorry, but right now, there is only one place I can think of.”

  “What?” she asked, clearly panicked.

  By then, we’d made it down to the jail, so I turn to her and calmly explained, “I promise as soon as this is over, I’ll be back. I won’t even lock it, but if anyone else comes down here, you shut this door and stay away from the bars. Got it?”

  Teagan, with tears in her eyes, nodded her head and got inside the cell. I pulled the door of bars almost shut, but as agreed, I didn’t close it all the way. Then I turned around and headed for battle. Before I made it to the stairs, I heard Teagan over the growing noise from above.

  “Hey, Cami. Thanks.”

  I smiled before I shifted and took off up the stairs.

  Peering around the corner, I surveyed the lodge. To say that all hell had broken loose would have been an understatement. I’d never seen anything like it. Wolves had no other way to fight than to rip each other to shreds or to submit but that tactic didn’t really work during a freaking Battle Royale. I considered shifting back and trying to tranq as many of them as I could, but in this form, I had a hard time telling who was who.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do. From this vantage point, I couldn’t even tell if we were winning or losing. It just looked like one big-ass wolf fight. Growling, baring of teeth, and clawing, all I could see all around me was a massive collision of beast against beast. It was brutal and bloody and like nothing I could have ever imagined happening here on our land.

  The only thing I did know was that I needed to find Gavin, and this time luck was not on my side. In the short time we’d been together, I’d never seen him in wolf form, so I had only one thing I could rely on. My nose.

  Fighting through the crowd, I sought out the scent I’d grown to love in such a short period of time. Despite my best efforts to ignore it, fear crawled its way up my spine as all-consuming panic settled into my gut when I couldn’t find him at first. I knew how pack wolves worked. Revenge would be on the forefront of their mind, and Gavin, being that he had been working with us, would be considered the ultimate traitor. There was no doubt in my mind that they would hunt him down and make him pay for his betrayal. Without help, there would be no way he could make it out of here alive.

  CHAPTER 59

  Gavin

  From the second the shit hit the fan, I was fighting off assholes right and left. I’d taken my eyes off of Cami for just enough time to shift, and leave it to her to up and disappear on me. I wanted nothing more than to find her to make sure she was safe, but my old friends from Crescent Hills were making damn sure that I didn’t go anywhere, including the current dickhead, apparently dead-set on killing me.

  By thrashing my head as hard as I could to the right, I was able to throw the attacking wolf off balance long enough to get the advantage. Once he was off of me, I snapped my jaws down on the wolf’s neck, not hard enough to cause any permanent damage, but enough to get him to stop trying to bite my head off.

  It was only then that I realized who the wolf was: Clayton. Instantly, rage flowed throughout my body. But along with that rage came a certain amount of confidence. I had just taken down an enforcer, a man that brought fear to nearly everyone who met him. Knowing full well he was the most dangerous man left in the room, I had to do something, so I grabbed him by the neck again and slammed his head as hard as I could into a nearby metal pole. Watching as his eyes rolled back in his head, I felt better knowing that he would be unconscious, at least for a short while.

  Then I raised my head and bared my teeth ready to take on the next opponent, but my newfound confidence quickly waned when I became aware of my grim situation. I looked from one pair of narrowed eyes to the next, from one set of sharp, white teeth to the next, from one growling wolf to the next. I was surrounded by five wolves, and they were closing in. I took a step back, and then another, but with every inch that I put between us, they tightened their circle and stepped even closer to me.

  These wolves were crazed and full of bloodlust. No doubt that
they saw me as the traitor to their pack, a turncoat, and they wanted me dead. It was clear they were ready to tear me limb from limb for what I’d done.

  They walked slowly in a circle around me as they took turns snapping their jaws at my legs, teasing me, testing my resolve. They wanted me to fight them. They wanted me to give them one more reason to rip me apart.

  As their circle grew smaller and tighter by the second, my life flashed before my eyes. Somehow, I saw the shock on my own face as my father was shot right in front of me and felt the mixed emotions I had experienced pass through me again. No one could argue that the man had done maliciously evil things and probably deserved everything he got, but he was my father, and it hurt like hell to see him fall like that, though I’d never admit it aloud.

  Then, I saw Scarlett when she was a little girl looking up at me like I was her favorite person in the entire world. I saw my mother standing in the laundry room of our old house laughing at my lame jokes while she folded our never-ending piles of laundry.

  The last face I saw belonged to the only other woman who ever held my heart. Cami’s fierce attitude and soft smile, the perfect combination of fire and ice, was forever seared into my brain. Seeing her face gave me all the courage I needed to go out fighting.

  I let out a growl that was so loud and fierce that it sounded more like a roar as I reared back onto my hind legs and attacked with more force than I knew I was capable of. There was no way in hell I could fight all five of them, but dammit, I would die trying.

  I swiped at the first one and ducked down low to escape the bite of another. I didn’t know if I was too slow, or there were just too many of them, but I couldn’t stop the yowl of pain when I felt his jaws clamp down on my arm.