Wild: Hangman's Haunt Book 1

by Kay Elle Parker

  This is our doing. Let me do this for you, Baylee. I promise you, you won’t die alone but you don’t have to suffer in the final moments.

  Baylee screeched as teeth attacked her exposed belly. Instinctively she used her back feet to kick and claw, heard the sharp yelp as her assailant fell away. She tasted blood, her own, and knew they’d reached the end.

  Closing her eyes to the savage faces of the wolves, she surrendered.

  WITH HIS MOTHER, THREE sisters and his brother Caleb, Daxon tore through the forest. He caught the sound of feral battle, the roars and screeches of grizzly bears and a lone panther, along with the cries of his father’s wolf pack.

  Scents mingled, twining through each other. He had no trouble picking up Baylee’s, even beneath the almost-canine odor of the wolves. They’d chased her into here, which meant she’d run into Tristan and his brothers deeper in the trees; he couldn’t catch any fresh scent of the bears.

  Vex had woken him, the panther throwing himself against his chains in desperation and vicious despair. He hadn’t needed to read the note Baylee left on the kitchen table; Sheba had conveyed everything to Vex once the women had found themselves in trouble.

  Big fucking trouble.

  His father’s wolves were highly-trained. Gathered from the most vicious and unstable members of the pack—men and women alike—they were trained to do one thing: track and kill. Same went for Tristan, Ajax and Pheta. They were Shax’s bodyguards when he deigned to leave the safety of the Hall. Otherwise, they were just assassins posing as security.

  Naked, Dax had sprinted to Zara’s house, and roused her from sleep. She’d declined to come into the forest, instead choosing to prepare for the injured and the dead. Daxon hadn’t needed her to say the words but he knew she meant Baylee. She expected Baylee to die out there, and he couldn’t blame her for it.

  Leaving her, he’d run for the family home. He’d barged through the front door, met his father who told him the bitch got what she deserved. No one left the pack alive. Daxon could only give thanks his mother had intervened before he lost his shit and knocked Shax out.

  The voice of reason, Delia had shut her husband’s ramblings down and stood by her son. He hated to think what his father would do to her once this was over, but his fear for Baylee outweighed everything else.

  By then, disturbed by the shouting, his sisters and brothers had joined the fray. Saxa and Pagan, his eldest sisters, ranged beside Shax, along with Efran, Eli, Folt and Bansh. They’d given him looks of pity and disgust, no doubt thinking along Zara’s lines of Baylee would be dead before they reached her.

  To his surprise, Caleb had patted him on the shoulder and stood by his side. A good-looking man, only twenty-six, with the family’s dark hair and Shax’s eyes, he wore the face of their mother and carried the twin of her heart.

  Reena, Thalia and Bekka dismissed their father’s threats—threats against them all, of treason and execution, of exile and the hunt—and walked out the door behind Daxon.

  He hadn’t chosen the panther for the change. With his father’s wolves in play, they’d laugh at him. Instead, he chose a form he hadn’t used often. One the community often forgot he had the power to utilize.

  Eleven feet in length, weighing almost seven hundred pounds, the Siberian Tiger was the most powerful cat he had at his disposal. It was a killing machine, and even a pack of wolves the size his father held under command would have a hard time taking him down.

  He’d barely made the change before he took off into the trees, leaving his family in mid-change behind him. It wasn’t long however, until they caught up. Caleb in his favored lion form, his mother as the silver-maned gray mare she’d become notorious for. And his sisters, in what he could only think of as a flipped-bird to their father, ran as timber wolves.

  His father’s pack were gray wolves—although there wasn’t much distinction between the two, there was enough of a difference to make a statement.

  They followed the unholy racket coming from deep within the forest, a cacophony of screams and howls. The wolves were closing in on their prey, and Daxon pushed the tiger for more.

  Daxon, we’re too late. The sobriety of Vex’s tone nearly stopped Daxon in his tracks. Instead he pushed harder, harder, until the big cat complained. Sheba has taken over to spare Baylee the pain of death. She has succumbed to the wolves.

  Daxon threw his head back and roared. In comparison, the panther sounded pathetic, a weakling against the monster of big cats. The sound shook the trees, sent birds erupting into the sky in a black mass of squawks and blurred feathers.

  She will not succumb. She is strong. We’re almost there.

  Blood filled the air, a potent fragrance as sweet as a bouquet of flowers. It was everywhere, pooled on the ground, sprayed liberally over bushes and up tree trunks like careless graffiti.

  Tristan lay on the ground, eyes blank and staring, his neck ripped open. Not far from him, Pheta almost mirrored his brother’s position. He sported cuts and rips over his cooling body, and puncture wounds in his throat. Blood covered him like a blanket, spread around him in a gory red halo.

  Daxon’s eyes homed in on the pile of wolves slowly disentangling themselves. They’d heard him roar, he assumed, as they looked spooked. His gaze dropped briefly to Ajax and the look of frozen horror on his dead face, the gaping bloody crater where his cock should have been.

  Pride in Baylee consumed him. She’d taken out his father’s three best bodyguards, something many of Shax’s enemies had tried and failed to do.

  As one, his family bounded into the fray. Caleb leaped, landing on a hapless wolf and ripping its head from its body with a single bite. Gleeful as a child maiming his sister’s Barbie dolls, he pounced from one to another. Daxon couldn’t blame him; as a geeky young boy, more than half the wolves present had tortured him for being what he was.

  Daxon strode into the chaos, taking wolves by the nearest appendage and tossing them aside as he bulled his way to the long, dark shape stretched out on the ground. He ignored the yelps and howls; as much as he wanted to spill blood, his priority lay in front of him, barely breathing.

  Not dead, he assured himself as he crouched and nudged her with his nose. She hadn’t returned to her human form, and that meant her heart still beat. But they’d torn her apart, the bastards. Torn her down to bone and muscle. The earth beneath her was dark, saturated with her blood.

  Vex, tell Sheba we’re here. Tell her we’re going to take them for help. They just need to hang on, a little bit longer, and they’re going to be just fine.

  There was silence. Daxon nudged again, saw those haunted blue eyes flick toward him. Haunted, empty blue eyes. Beyond pain, he realized. Body shutting down, pain a distant memory, the animal protected itself to the last.

  Sheba cannot reach Baylee.

  Tell her to get her ass up and find her! Daxon demanded furiously, using his paw now to pad gently at the broken body.

  A wolf landed on his back, followed by another two. Teeth latched into his hide through his fur. Infuriated, he whipped around and sank his own lethal fangs into the side of a petite wolf. Female, he knew and couldn’t bring himself to care. He yanked her down, slamming her into the ground, and ripped her in two as she screamed.

  The second wolf hung off his shoulder, leaning precariously to reach the vulnerable point on Daxon’s neck. Dax dropped his shoulder, sent the wolf tumbling to the earth, and hit him hard enough with a paw the size of a frying pan to snap its neck.

  Wolf number three jumped clear, whirling on impact to lunge for Daxon’s belly. Daxon bared his teeth and grabbed it by the neck, tossing it onto its back. With his mouth clamped on its throat, he used his back paw to rake it from chest to cock, his wicked claws slicing it open effortlessly.

  He saw the shock and terror in its eyes, watched as the life slowly died. Before that spark extinguished completely, he ripped its throat out. With one long look around him, he saw his family had decimated the army, leaving a trail of corp
ses.

  He changed, dropping to his knees beside Baylee. He stroked a hand over her, and his hand came away wet with blood. “Caleb, I need you to carry us back to Zara. We need to go now. There isn’t much time.”

  Caleb shimmered back into a man and looked at his brother with sorrowful eyes. “Daxon, brother, she’s not going to make it. The wolves did their job.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Daxon gestured wildly at the bear brothers. “You see them? She fought them, Cal, and she fucking won. I’m not going to stop fighting for her now. I’ll fight for her until her last breath, and I won’t be far behind her. Bonded,” he reminded them all as his mother and sisters came to stand with them, a little bloody but all safe. “She dies, I die.”

  “For fuck’s sake, this is why I don’t want to find my mate. Fine,” Caleb huffed. The look on his face was one of sadness, and said simply he thought it was a waste of time. “Moving her may be the end of her.”

  “Leaving her here will be the end of her.”

  Caleb nodded. “Get on and hold on. Mother, can you go ahead, warn Zara she’ll have her hands full.” Without waiting for her agreement, he transformed back into the broad-backed lion.

  Delia spun, galloping through the forest with her daughters at her heels. They were gone in moments, even the faintest sound of them disappearing.

  Daxon bent, struggled with the dead weight of the she-panther. He knew he risked doing more damage to her shattered body but he didn’t have a choice. As his brother dropped to his knees, Daxon slung Baylee over his back and climbed on behind. He gripped with his knees, used his hands to hold her still. “Run Caleb. Just run.”

  The lion got to his feet and loped along the path, covering ground easily. The rhythm was surprisingly smooth, Daxon discovered as he held on to Baylee in a death grip.

  Vex, anything?

  No. I’m struggling to stay in contact with Sheba now. She’s holding on by the skin of her teeth but I fear...if Baylee has already passed, Sheba cannot hold on for long. It’s a partnership, and when one partner is lost, the other has too much to hold together. The system collapses.

  His brother was panting by the time they reached Zara’s shack and the waiting party outside. His sisters were washing up, cleaning off the blood they’d spilled and shed themselves. His mother sat on the ground, dabbing at several long cuts down her side.

  Zara rushed toward them. She paused briefly when she saw Baylee, then burst into frenzied action. She helped Daxon get the panther into his arms, supporting Baylee’s dangling head as they staggered toward the shack. He laid her on the table for the second time in only a day and stepped back when Zara pushed him aside.

  “You’ve done well getting her here alive. You need to go outside now, Daxon. This is no place for you now. Send Reena in, Thalia if she feels able. I need all the hands I can get; small, capable hands,” she corrected when he tried to protest. “You need to replenish, and rest while I do what I can for her.”

  He swallowed back a lump of grief sticking in his throat. “Prognosis?”

  Zara sighed as she studied the body, her hands fussing with equipment as her eyes measured the damage inflicted. “Dire. I’m sorry, Dax, I really am but I can’t give you any hope. Not right now. If she lives the next ten minutes, it’ll be a miracle. Ten more after that? An even bigger one. She should be dead right now.”

  “She’s not. She’s not dead so let’s keep it that way.”

  “I’ll try, I promise. Now get out and send your sisters in here.”

  He touched the soft black head tenderly. Those blue eyes fluttered a little but stayed closed. He bent and kissed her nose, breathing into her nostrils like a cowboy with his horse, and felt the barest response. “I love you, Baylee. One way or another, I’ll see you again.”

  “Out!” Zara snapped as she plunged a needle into Baylee’s neck and pumped something into her system.

  “What the hell is that?”

  She growled. “Adrenaline. I’m trying to keep her heart going. Now get the fuck out!” She jabbed the needle toward him until he stepped out of the door. He hailed his sisters, who rushed inside, then sat beside his mother and put his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, my son.” She set her bloodied hand on his arm.

  Daxon grabbed it, held it. He’d never forget the sacrifice his family had made for him, for Baylee. They’d gone into battle with him, gone against the clan leader. God knew what the repercussions would be, but no doubt his father would reach deep into his vault of cruelty. “Save the condolences until the worst happens, Mother. Thank you, for this.”

  “It had to be done,” she said simply and rested her head on his shoulder. “You are my eldest son, and the weight of this place falls on your shoulders. You are not your father, Daxon; you have too many morals to lead the clan on its current path.”

  “I have changes I want to make,” he admitted.

  She sighed deeply. “No. I want you to leave. You and Caleb and the girls. If you, and they, stay here...your father has no mercy. He’ll find ways to punish you, to kill you if he’s in the mood. I know him too well. So I’ll ask this of you, Daxon: if there is a safe place you can go where there is room for all of you, go. Take your siblings and leave. You are the finest of what your father and I created between us, and the ones untouched by his corruption.”

  He blinked. “What about you?”

  Regret touched her eyes as he pulled away and studied her face. “I’d come with you if I could. But I’m as chained to this place as effectively as your father.”

  “No, you’re not. If we leave, you’re coming with us. He’ll take the brunt of his anger out on you if you don’t, for standing with me this morning and for letting us leave the clan. I’d rather fight him to the death and claim the leadership than allow him to beat you bloody.”

  She gave a sad little laugh and kissed his cheek. “Oh, my boy. You can’t protect everyone you love, no matter how much you wish you could. Lucky for me, I can take care of myself. For all his faults, your father loves me.”

  “Do you love him?” Dax couldn’t help himself, he needed to know.

  “Yes, Delia.” Shax’s voice echoed behind them. “Do you love me?”

  Daxon snarled and leaped to his feet, prepared to defend the cabin and its precious contents at all costs. He faced his father with ferocious derision, ready to peel the skin from his bones. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “My clan. My land. I can go where I please.” Shax replied but his dark eyes refused to leave his wife’s pale face. “I asked you a question, Delia.”

  “You doubt what I feel for you?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and looking completely unperturbed by the grimness of his face.

  Shax bared his teeth. “After this morning’s events, I find myself doubting a lot of things. The loyalty of my heir and his siblings; the love of my wife. Their feasance to the haven that’s protected them for so long.”

  “I’ve stood by you for almost forty years, Shax. By your side, through the best and worst we’ve faced. I’ve loved you despite the fact you lead this clan, not because you do. But the choices you’ve made in the past day have torn my loyalties between you and our son,” she admitted easily, spreading her hands wide. “Daxon finally found his mate, a mate carrying our next in line, and you do this—” she gestured to the cabin. “If she dies, Shax, and our son succumbs to the bond, I will hate you for the rest of my time on earth.”

  Daxon blinked as his father’s lip trembled. A split second and the tiny weakness disappeared, leaving the older man as Dax always remembered him; an ornery, aging bastard.

  “The girl lives?”

  “Barely,” Dax snapped. “She doesn’t need you to finish the job.”

  “Stronger than I gave her credit for. Survivors?”

  Daxon thought of the bear brothers, and the pack of wolves. Of blood and gore and entrails scattered among the leaves with limbs and heads. Blind, staring eyes and death screams. “None.”
>
  Shax’s attention fixed fully on his son. “What do you mean, none?”

  Unfazed by the eerie stare, Daxon stared his father down. “Baylee took care of Tristan, Ajax and Pheta. They were dead before we reached her.” When sorrow flickered briefly in those dark eyes, Daxon drove the knife home and twisted it. “Ripped out Tristan’s throat, punctured Pheta’s jugular, and bit Ajax’s cock clean off his body. Horrific deaths. They’re on your head, Shax, not hers.”

  “They were the elite,” his father said in disbelief. “My finest.”

  “Your finest trio couldn’t hold a fucking candle to her.”

  Shax’s fists clenched; Daxon dared him silently to take a swing, to start the fight that ended this nightmare once and for all. “And my wolves?”

  Caleb rose and stepped beside Daxon, head held high. “We put them down, every last one. Most fun I’ve had in years.”

  Shax stepped forward, his intent clear, but Daxon simply sidestepped into his path. “Impudent cub.”

  “An impudent cub who has made this clan very wealthy in the past few years,” Caleb retorted, folding his arms across his broad chest. “Folt and Bansh are quite as capable, but they don’t have the flair I do for making money. I won’t do it for you anymore, Father. And I can quite easily make the bulk of the clan’s resources magically disappear where even my brothers can’t find it.”

  “Traitors. Fucking traitors, all of you.” Shax spat on the ground, shook his head in disgust. “What do you want?”

  Caleb simply looked at Daxon and waited. Daxon realized his brother now saw him as his leader, as the one he would follow. He knew what he had to do, after all he’d been raised to do it, but he never thought it would happen this way.

  “We want to leave. No,” Daxon corrected firmly. There could be no want, that gave too much room for his father to play with. “We are leaving. Caleb, Reena, Thalia, and Bekka. Mother. Anyone else who wants to leave this hell. We’re leaving and you’re going to let us, without repercussions.”