"I've got quite the little wolf pup detector here,” Faust said, “and her little nose is saying there's one awfully close by."
Wolf pup. Ronin. That was who I was seeing through while she dangled from the scruff of her neck in Faust's hand.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he continued. “She detected yours in Margin when you were at that inn. Wiggled something fierce then while she eyed your second-story window, and like a moth to a flame, we found you. If my math is correct, that makes three wolves the little girl with balls can play my game with.”
"Fucking bastard, let her go!" Archer shouted from right behind me. Through Ronin, I saw a string of blood pouring down his chin and drenching the snow in crimson. He was hurt so badly, but the torture in his gaze was all for Ronin.
"Quiet," Faust snapped. "And let your little girl hear the rules of the game."
I shook my head hard. I didn’t need to hear because the rules had been drilled into my head when Grady had told me everything. How could I forget something so twisted, so devastatingly cruel. This couldn't be happening. Playing Faust's game would crack me wide open and chew through my will until there was nothing left. I couldn't choose. I wouldn’t.
"I don't play games," I said evenly.
"No, see, that's where you're wrong. One of your wolves…Thomas, Archer, the wolf pup in the back of your sleigh there… I'm gonna need you to choose one of them to catch like you would a ball."
One of his men snorted. "Do blind girls know how to catch?"
A fierce tremble raged underneath the surface of my skin because he had a goddamn point. I didn't know how to play catch. That required sight.
"I won't play your ridiculous game," I insisted.
Without a word, Faust marched forward, and a click sounded, followed by the unmistakable press of a gun into my forehead.
"NO," Thomas shouted, "Leave her alone!"
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Archer yelled.
One of Faust’s men clocked him hard in the head with the butt of his gun. Another shot Thomas in the thigh. Thomas fell to his knees and bellowed, more enraged than pained. Archer stumbled backward but somehow stayed standing, his everlasting supply of inner strength surely the only thing fueling him.
My stomach shifted higher to my throat. Tears froze to my face, but I swiped them away the best I could so my eyelashes wouldn’t stick together and prevent me from seeing through Ronin.
"Play now,” Faust said, “or a bullet through your pretty little head is the last thing you'll ever feel."
He angled Ronin away toward Archer who vibrated with desperation to reach for the both of us.
All of this—ever single action Faust did—was all part of his sick game to torture us and prove he was the more powerful by force. But as he pushed the gun harder into my forehead, I realized it was a game I'd have to play. If I didn’t, Faust would kill my wolves, slowly, until I cracked.
"Sasha," I gritted out. It shattered me to say her name, ground me into dust that the sweet, innocent pup had been dragged into this game yet again.
"Do it." Faust tipped his chin toward one of his men.
Through Ronin, I memorized every detail about the man opening Sasha’s box. Dark scruffy beard half hidden by a red scarf, a beaked, crooked nose, a large mole atop his right eyebrow—I would kill him for laying his hands on Sasha next time I saw him. I would kill every single one of them.
He brought her out of her box and held her up, and my vision flicked between the two wolf sisters. They squirmed desperately to get to each other, because the last time they saw each other was—
I blew out a slow breath. They’d been divided by trauma then. I only hoped they were too young to relive it over and over like my wolves, last time…or this time.
The bearded man took a few steps away from the sleigh. Without warning, he turned and threw Sasha as hard as he could.
Her vision blurred, but Ronin tracked her. Sasha was barreling far to my right. I raced toward her. Even without several feet of snow, even with sight, I doubt I could've gotten there in time. I tried though. I tried with all my broken heart.
Sasha dropped to the hard-packed snow, then released a pained, high-pitched cry. Oh god. Oh shit. Had she landed wrong?
Another of Faust's men grabbed my arm before I got to her. "Awe, listen to the little runt scream."
I froze, my nerves shuddering at her pitiful cries, and I couldn't take it. I slapped my hand over my mouth to trap my sob, but a terrible retching sound came out instead. She was hurt because of me, and I would never, ever forgive myself.
Behind me, Faust and his men laughed. In front of me, Thomas and Archer seethed, the very air around them quaking with rage.
"Now, little girl,” Faust said, coming closer with Ronin, “if you want to walk away from here, it's time for the second part of the game."
I squeezed my eyes shut, did my best to block out Sasha's cries, and willed myself not to buckle under the guilt.
Slowly, I turned to face him. "Kill," I said, my voice dripping with the type of violent poison I only wanted to use on him.
"Well, well." He cocked his head as he handed off Ronin to another man. "So you do know the rules of the game."
"I don't have a weapon."
"It must be your lucky day." He pulled out a bloody arrow from inside his coat. One of mine. "Got this out of Caro's head, the oldest, wisest shifter in my pack. And you killed him." He slapped the arrow against his leather glove. "Choose one of your wolves to kill with this arrow."
I would rather die. Part of me did when I looked at Archer, his perfect face a mass of bruises and the snow in front of him drenched in crimson. Haunted sorrow filled his eyes, and he looked seconds away from passing out, but he didn't. He couldn't, because broken as he was, the strength he kept hidden held him upright. That's what I loved about him—his eternal strength that allowed him to laugh and play after all he'd been through.
And Thomas… Even though he'd been shot in both legs, he'd refused to stay down too. He knelt on his knees, his fists so tight that he shook all the way up his arms to his wide shoulders. His messy light brown hair tossed against the scars on his face and stuck to his beard, and his fierce gaze swept shudders across my shoulders. He was the most wolfish out of all of them, a real feral beast.
He cut a look toward Archer out of the corner of his eyes, then returned them to me and shook his head a fraction, barely imperceptible. Not Archer, he was saying. Him.
"Now, little—"
"Thomas," I blurted. "I choose Thomas."
"Well, then. That’ll save me from having to do it because of the whole Gabriel situation." Faust flipped my arrow into the air and caught it. "You need to put it straight through his heart. But let's roll it around in the snow over here first, get it nice and dirty with some of your poison." He strolled over to the sleigh and the knelt next to it, then stabbed the tip deep into the slightly bluish snow.
Thomas kept his gaze connected to mine as an understanding passed between us. He knew how I felt about Archer, but Thomas also had to know that if I killed him, Archer would never forgive me. Grady too. He was their alpha, the most important wolf in their lives other than Sasha and Ronin. I couldn't kill a member of their pack when they had so few left, and I tried to convey all this and more wordlessly to him as Faust tromped forward with the poisoned arrow in his hand.
Archer swayed on his feet as he aimed his swollen eyes on his alpha. His tortured expression shifted to me, but I suspected his thoughts changed as I took the arrow from Faust. Murderer. That had to be what Archer was thinking.
He was right.
I stood frozen, shaking, bewildered, unable to stop the tears. It took me five tries to nock the arrow correctly. Three hard swallows to be almost certain I wouldn't throw up. Then I pulled the string back, feeling my coat cinch inward, and aimed straight at Thomas's heart. He watched me closely, and I hoped he saw exactly what I needed him to see. His eyes narrowed.
Faust stalked up to me an
d leaned in to say, "You better not fucking miss."
My stomach hardened into a painful knot. I closed my eyes so I could see better, and after my heart felt like it had quit beating, I released the arrow.
Chapter 14
My shot was true.
Thomas went down, struck backward with the blow of my arrow, but I was the one who cried out in pain. I held to my chest as my lungs seized. I didn’t dare open my eyes to look at him, or Archer.
“The great thing about this game,” Faust said, a victorious smile in his tone, “is that there’s really no need for you to choose who gets released. It’s been done for you by default.”
I forced a swallow as I backed away from him, away from what I’d done.
“Oh.” Faust clapped his hands. “The Scratching Post is hiring whores, if you happen to survive out here all alone.”
"Good luck with that," one of his men muttered as he passed me.
Luck would have nothing to do with my survival, only my cold, determined will. He would learn that soon enough.
Faust took Ronin from the man's arms and angled her toward Archer as he strode toward him. "You'll release Archer to me. Time to make him pay for helping to burn down Old Man's Den."
Through Ronin, our eyes locked, and I almost looked away because I'd taken even more from him, and I wasn't even finished. Instead of devastating pain or blame written all over his face, he smiled. Warm and pure, it was such a gorgeous thing in this frozen hellscape. He aimed it at me with no judgement, no reserve, and I took it as far into my memory as I could so I'd never forget it.
"I love you," I choked out.
"I love you too." Then he nodded, his smile growing impossibly bigger, and it was as though he were telling me it would all be okay. Me, not himself. "So much."
How could he love me after what I'd done though? A sob cracked from my throat as I sank to my knees. My chest squeezed painfully as guilt and torment shoved me into the frozen earth. If my wolves died, I would die too.
"Start walking, lover boy." Faust pushed him, and he stumbled backward.
Archer tore his gaze from mine and looked at Ronin, and as he did, his smile faded. Then he looked to Sasha who squirmed and yelped on the ground, then at his alpha, lying perfectly still in the snow.
As he turned away from me, tears filled his eyes, and then he faced the other direction with Faust, his men, and his wolves. He didn't look back at me, and a part of me was glad he didn't. I wanted to remember that smile. I wanted that to be my last memory of him in case I never saw him again. The blowing snow threw a white veil over their backs and swallowed them up.
As soon as they were out of sight, as soon as it appeared we were out of danger, I raced toward Sasha. Sobs wracked my shoulders as I carefully picked her up.
"My little girl, I'm so, so sorry." I held her close to my chest so she could share my heat, what little of it I had, and gently probed her for any broken bones or gashes. "Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me."
She shuddered and yelped when I touched her back leg, and I jerked my hand back.
“Okay.” I kissed her between the ears and breathed in her sweet, calming scent. “I’ll fix you up.”
Out of the corner of her eye, movement flashed. I whirled. My pulse stampeded as I brought my bow over my head to crush it down on another enemy.
But it was Thomas sitting up and clutching the arrow in his chest. "I'm not dead."
I loosened half a breath, unable to move. “No.”
He turned his head toward me and plucked the arrow out, a small twig in his huge hands. "How am I not dead?"
"Be-because I shot you right below the heart." I swallowed. "I tried to…anyway."
"The poison."
"No." I shook my head to help rattle more words free. "It wasn't. It was moonshine. Just moonshine with purple flowers that looked like wolfsbane. It was in a big jar, a distraction for the very small jar of poison in my pocket. It’s still in my pocket. A great magician I know once told a little girl named Gibby to distract her audience with a huuuge snap of her fingers while her other hand is doing something else.”
“Archer,” he sighed. “The huge distraction was the big jar that wasn’t poison.”
I nodded. Archer had just gone, and already, I missed him like crazy. My tears plinked down into Sasha's fur, and I buried my next few sobs between her ears.
Thomas growled as he tried to push to his feet, but both his pant legs were soaked through with blood. "We'll get them back."
"Yes." I knelt and pulled his arm around me to help.
With great effort, he finally stood. In my other arm, Sasha didn’t try to squirm away from him in fright. She just stared and whimpered. Thomas did his damndest not to stare back.
“But we’re stuck in the middle of winter.” He lifted his gaze to me, hard and determined, and closer than it had ever been before. The powerful connection we’d shared when we first met at the church flared again—one of loss and shared experiences. "I can barely walk, but I can damn well heal."
"I can't see without my wolves, but I can damn well win."
Something flickered behind his normally suspicious eyes. "I'm starting to believe you."
I shifted my bow and Sasha in my left arm and held him tighter with my right. "Good."
Look for Winter’s Rage, The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Book 3, coming July 15, 2020!
About the Author
Lindsey R. Loucks is a former school librarian living in rural Kansas. When she's not discussing books with anyone who will listen, she's dreaming up her own stories. Eventually her brain gives out, and she'll play hide and seek with her cat, put herself in a chocolate-induced coma, or watch scary movies alone in the dark to re-energize.
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Winter's Bite (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 2) Page 11