Shax snorted. “Setting up your own clan, boy?”
“Why not?”
“Tell me, what will happen to those you’ve named, those you’re offering this amazing opportunity to, when your bitch dies and you follow? They won’t be welcome back here. Will you release them from this ‘hell’ and throw them into another of your making?”
Daxon bristled. “They are free to make their own choices. I’m not demanding they come with me, just opening the door. My death would be worth it to see every last soul freed from beneath your cruelty.”
Delia made a mournful sound in her throat. “Stop it, both of you. Shax, please, just let them leave. I’ll stay.”
Daxon studied his father, the look in his eyes, the stony set of his mouth, and knew the decision had been made. He braced, readying for the fight that would kill them all.
“The bitch can stay until she’s fit enough to travel. No longer. I want you on the road the moment she’s cleared or she’s dead. I’ll extend your generous offer to the population,” he said with a sneer. “Those who go with you get everything they ask for. But if they want to die, let them. As for you,” he continued, turning to Delia, “get out of my sight. Go with your son, go far away and don’t—any of you—come back. I’ll eviscerate you myself if you dare try.”
His stand made transparently clear, Shax turned and stalked away. A lonely old man, not yet hunching or stiff with arthritis, but weighed down with stress.
Relief swamped Daxon. The opportunity was too good to pass up, even though he didn’t trust his father. Animated now, Daxon turned to Caleb. “We don’t have long. Go home, pack what you need. Mother’s stuff and the girls as well. You’ll need one of the trucks; I’ll give you directions to where you need to go. Find a woman named Brenna, you’ll know her when you meet her. Ask her to take you to the clearing.”
“Clearing?”
“It’s a special place.” More special than Daxon could give words to. Their place, his and Baylee’s. “You’ll all be safe there if you use your common sense. There’s plenty of deer, just watch for hunters.”
Caleb reached out and gripped Dax’s forearm with bruising fingers. “The way you’re talking sounds like you’re not coming, big brother.”
Daxon sighed, patted his brother on the shoulder. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he was feeling...off. Like something vital inside him was failing, dying, and he knew Baylee was losing her battle. They would go together, as it should be, and they would be together again. But he would see his family safe first.
“I don’t think I am, Cal. I can only be honest with you. Chances are you’ve just been promoted to leader of a new clan. Congratulations.”
“Daxon, I can’t...Jesus, I’m a financial whizz, not a leader.”
“You are my brother. You can be anything you want to be. You’ll be this because you need to be. I’m putting the future of our family in your hands, Cal.” Thinking of family broke Dax’s heart. Losing Baylee meant the end of his world, a world his unborn cubs would never see. A broken family, relegated to the ground. “Do this for me. Do it while you still can. Shax is not above going back on his word.”
Eyes a little too bright, Caleb nodded and pulled his brother into a hug. They slapped each other’s backs in a manly show of affection before they pulled apart and Caleb took off toward the other cabins.
“Mother, I need you to do the same. Help Caleb. He’ll need you where you’re going. He needs a support system in place, someone with experience and wisdom to keep him on the right track while he learns the ropes. He’s capable,” he muttered to himself. “More than capable.”
“Daxon.” Delia sniffled, and by the severity of it, Dax knew his mother held herself stoically on the edge of tears.
“It has to be this way,” he said gently, touching her cheek softly. “This is how our cards have fallen, mine and Baylee’s, and it’s okay. I’ve had the good luck to find my mate, to love her, to imagine a future with her. We won’t die alone.”
He drew her into his arms, held her as memories of his childhood flicked through his mind. In every one, his mother shone like a silver beacon, bright eternal light in the darkest of times. He told her where they needed to go, gave her all the details he could think of. Told her he loved her and that there was no mother who compared to her. He meant it.
Then he let her go.
“Dax, what will you do?” Delia asked quietly, wiping at tears as she stopped and turned back to face him.
He looked at the cabin, then met his mother’s eyes. “Baylee fought to get away from here, from a place I brought her with the best intentions. She didn’t want to die here, so I’ll make sure she won’t. I’m going to do my damnedest to get her home before that moment comes. If I fail, well, at least she won’t die in a place she hated. I’m taking her home.”
WITH HIS MOTHER AND brother sent on their way, Daxon stared at the cabin. He could’ve avoided this whole fucking mess if he’d just listened to Baylee’s concerns, read her body language. His dream turned into her nightmare, and now they were both trapped in it.
Time to get moving, to put an end to this before Shax changed his mind and massacred the lot of them. Baylee had fought, and she had won the battle but they’d lost the war.
He stopped outside the door, knocked. He heard frantic whispers, and felt his stomach plummet at the thought that his friend, his sisters, were losing Baylee and he wasn’t there for her. He’d hold her hand when the time came. Hold her hand, kiss her, weep bloody tears for the mistakes he’d made and the years they’d lost. But he would be there.
Prepared to put his shoulder into the door, he hammered on the wood and counted to three. Before he could move, it swung open slowly and Zara—pale, bloody and exhausted—blocked the doorway. Her petite shoulders slumped as though the world had collapsed on top of them.
“Shax has gone?” was all she asked.
Daxon nodded. “We’ve been given permission to leave; whomever wants to leave, can. I’m sending Caleb to Montana with whatever numbers we end up with.”
Something flickered in her eyes. “Got room for one more?”
“Zara, no one would turn you away.” He tried to look into the shack, but she thwarted him. “What’s going on in there? Are you going to let me in?”
She sighed and stepped aside, allowing him access. He heard the door close behind them as he studied the room, and the volume of blood on the floor. His heart gave a vicious thump before it stopped mid-beat. “Baylee?”
She lay where he’d put her, but she was no longer in feline form. Daxon couldn’t figure that out, not at first, but when it dawned on him, he nearly dropped to his knees.
Death or unconsciousness were the only things capable of resetting a shifter in form back to its human identity. But unconsciousness shouldn’t give her skin that waxy gleam and gray cast. Only death leeched a body of its natural glow that way.
He staggered, almost fell, and wondered when she’d passed, why he hadn’t. Why they hadn’t told him. Grief enveloped him, and he couldn’t feel anything, not even the impact of his knees on the wooden floor.
Reena rushed to his side, her eyes bright with unshed tears so the green became a holy sight. He’d always though there was more to his baby sister, additional magic in her veins. Her clothes were streaked with dark slashes of blood, as well as her hands and face.
Baylee’s blood.
“It’s okay, Daxon. It’s okay.” She wrapped her arms around him, sinking to the floor to hold him close. She rocked him gently; he felt the motion but all his awareness focused on one thing—the blood. “We lost her ten minutes ago. We couldn’t do anything for her while she remained in panther form.”
The sound that escaped his mouth tore him apart from the inside out, an animalistic scream of rage and fear and grief. He wanted to cover his ears, to block out the unholy sound, but found he couldn’t lift his hands. Couldn’t tune out the cry of a Dominant male mourning his mate.
Couldn’t deny himself
the release.
“Daxon, she’s alive. We got her back. Baylee’s alive.”
The words couldn’t penetrate his anguish, not completely. He heard Reena’s earnestness, the sincerity of her tone, and struggled to balance what she said against what he felt. “What?”
Reena blew out a breath. “She’s alive, for the moment. Not out of the woods yet so we can’t promise anything, but we stand a better chance now she’s in human form. Do you understand me?”
Dax shook his head, tried to separate his sorrow and shut it down. “Give me a moment, will you?” He knew he should be embarrassed by his meltdown, yet discovered he didn’t care. His emotions were ruled by man and beast, and he saw no need to apologize for either.
Death was part of life, and there was no shame in voicing pain. Not when that pain came from the heart, ricocheted from the soul, became a reality where pain was all that existed.
His legs were uncharacteristically weak when he rose; he held onto Reena as she stood with him. Thalia came and slipped her arm around his waist; his sister was almost as tall as him, dark hair tamed into a practical bob that suited her busy life running after her three cubs.
Brushing both of them off gently, he moved toward the table where Baylee rested. Bekka waited by his lover’s head, her fingers pressed to the pulse point in Baylee’s throat.
The wolves had done their best to destroy her. It amazed him that they hadn’t simply ripped her limb from limb; she’d been horrendously outnumbered, weakened from fighting the triplets, and suffering from who knew what injuries before the wolves swarmed her.
If she lived, she would scar. Her gorgeous, soft skin would bear the marks of her bravery, of this day, for the rest of her life. From her shoulders down, she had teeth marks and slices from claws adorning her flesh. A landscape of brutality, of suffering, of determination. They hadn’t touched her face or neck and Daxon could only assume the wolves hadn’t dared risk getting too close to those lethal jaws.
“The femoral artery was nicked, most likely by a tooth.” Zara stepped up beside him, pointed to a burn mark on the tender flesh of Baylee’s inner thigh. “I cauterized, but there’s risk of infection. Infection is pretty much a given,” she added, taking his hand. “We’ve sewn the deeper wounds, cauterized others. Her back is just as bad.”
“Can she travel?” Dax asked gruffly.
“I wouldn’t advise it. Most of the blood in her body is now on the floor, Daxon. There could be internal bleeding, I can’t be sure yet. Traveling her would be a huge roll of the dice. You’re likely to lose that bet.”
Vex? Daxon called his entity. Anything from Sheba?
She is still here. Weak, struggling, dying. But still with us.
Baylee?
Sheba has locked her away, where it is peaceful. There can be no pain, no suffering, no fear where Baylee now rests. It was the last thing Sheba could do for her.
Daxon moved to Baylee’s head, cupped her face in his hands. The eyes he loved so much were closed, her expression slack. “Is blood loss the only thing keeping her like this?”
He caught a look passed from Bekka over his head to Zara, and turned to his friend. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Blood loss is a main factor,” Zara admitted reluctantly. “By the time we stopped the femoral bleed, tended to the other wounds, she barely had enough to keep her heart beating. I’ve given her something to encourage her system to begin replenishing her supply, but that takes more time than she has. I’ve put her in a medically-induced coma to help with the healing. But Dax...everything we’ve done could be futile.”
He ground his teeth. “Our cubs?”
Reena wiped away a tear, and Thalia sniffled. It was all the answer he needed.
“They were too young to survive this. The amount of stress and trauma would have caused Baylee’s body to reabsorb the fetuses; even if they’d survived the fight, it would be beyond a miracle for them to survive the blood loss. I’m afraid...”
Gone. Their little bundles of life extinguished, just like that. Dax squeezed his eyes shut. “We need to hit the road, all of us who are going. Can you give her a transfusion, Zara?”
She blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Blood transfusion,” he repeated. “She needs blood, I have plenty of it. Give her as much as you can. At the end of it, we’re both likely to die before we hit the Montana state line anyway, so might as well give it a try.”
Zara stuttered. “I-I guess we could give it a go. If you’re sure.”
“I am. Just tell me what you want me to do. Are you definitely coming with us?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation and hurried to her cabinets. She took out equipment, began setting it up on a table beside Baylee. “This might not work. I’ve never done a transfusion, and your blood types may not match.”
Daxon simply said, “We are one heart, one body, one soul. The blood running in our veins is our blood, belonging not to one but both. So sayeth the law of the bond.”
“If you say so, big guy.”
“Reena, you and Thalia and Bekka are coming to Montana. Caleb is packing your things, along with Mother’s. I need you all to start boxing up everything in here. We’ll take as much as we can.”
“In what?” Thalia asked with a roll of her eyes. “We have no vehicles, Dax; the clan is self-sufficient for the most part and only Tristan, Efran and Shax have access to the truck.”
Good point, he mused, wincing as Zara dabbed at a spot on his arm and stuck a needle in. “Get me my phone. I’ve got some calls to make. Hurry up and get things sorted in here; I need to know how many from the valley are joining us.”
“I’ll go,” Bekka volunteered. Out of everyone in the room—Baylee excluded—she was the palest, looking a little green as she stared at her hands. He saw the shock of realization hit her. “I need some air.”
“Go,” he said gently. “Bring me my phone and then go help Cal and Mother.”
She was gone before he’d finished his sentence. He looked down at his arm, following the clear tubing leading from his arm to Baylee’s, wincing slightly as Zara inserted another needle into his lover’s dead-like flesh. “How long does this take?”
She stuck a strip of tape over the needle to hold it in place, then fiddled with what looked like a miniature clamp. The tubing immediately filled with vibrantly red blood, coursing its way toward Baylee. “I’m not sure. Like I said, I’ve never done one before—never had anyone this grievously injured to try it on.”
“Wonderful,” he sighed, then flashed a smile at Thalia as she shoved a chair under him on her way to the shelves at his back. He sat gratefully and watched his sisters and Zara as they piled medicines into boxes, bags, whatever they could find to carry it all.
Ten minutes later, Bekka burst into the shack and shoved his phone at him. He took it with an unsteady hand, blinked to clear his vision. He felt a bit light-headed, nothing too overt, not yet, but enough to warn him of his limits.
“Shax kept his word and informed the clan that whomever wants to leave is permitted to do so.” Bekka said in a rush.
Dax forced himself to focus on her. “No one’s coming.”
She flashed a grin at him as she shot back to the door. “Damn near everyone’s coming, Daxon. No one wants to be held under Father’s iron-handed rule anymore.” And off she went again.
He studied Baylee’s face, thought she looked more alive now with a slight flush on her pale cheeks. An improvement, he thought blearily. She had a long way to go before she returned to her vividly-alive self, but any improvement was better than none.
He flipped clumsily through his phone contacts, found the one he wanted and dialed. After a few long, frustrating moments where he lost control of his speech, he finally had things in place.
“That’s enough, Dax. You’ve given her enough now.” Zara marched over, peeled his eyelid back. “Too damn much. That’s okay, you’ll be fine.” She deftly disconnected everything between Baylee a
nd him, cutting the transfusion off. She took the equipment to the bin, dumped it and came back—what seemed like an eternity later—and jabbed him with something. “That’ll boost your system. Sit there and rest while I get you some juice.”
“Reena,” he managed around his thick tongue.
“Dax?”
“Get everyone and everything to the entrance of the valley. As few journeys as possible. Transport will be here within thirty minutes so you have enough time to get there. When one vehicle is full, ask Mother to give the driver the destination, and get it out of here. We’ll all meet in Montana.” He felt his head droop toward his chest.
A small hand tapped his chin up and a glass pressed to his lips. He drank the sweet, cold orange juice gratefully. “Drink up, big guy. You’ll feel better soon.”
There was the vaguest sense of the sea washing onto shore, getting louder and louder. He watched as boxes were carried out the door, but as if from a great distance. Feeling nauseous, he rested his head on the bed beside Baylee’s hand and decided to rest his eyes for a few moments until the sugar from the juice kicked in.
He had a desire to move, to burst into action and get the people who wanted out away, free and clear. His father would not take kindly to losing most of his clan, that was for sure, and Daxon couldn’t be sure if that would flip his father’s temper into homicidal rage.
Although without his bears, without his wolves, he’d lost much of his firepower, his intimidation. That didn’t mean—and Daxon knew this from experience—that Shax was not a powerful, intimidating man in his own right when he took a form.
As he passed out, Daxon thought he’d deal with it when it came.
Chapter Nineteen
Daxon once again found himself riding on his brother’s back through the woods when he came around. Someone had strapped him on firmly, ensuring he didn’t slip off as Caleb bounded along the paths.
Looking around them, he noted all manner of creatures running with them, some loaded with bags—horse forms were ideal for hauling heavy loads, while others dragged makeshift sleds piled with boxes.
Wild: Hangman's Haunt Book 1 Page 27