by May Dawson
The howl started near me, shattering the air and making me jump. Logan steadied me with a hand on my elbow.
We’d known we were walking into a trap, but here it was; the man who stumbled into the center of the room from the shadows, dropping his gun to the floor as he began to shift. He was howling as he dropped to the floor, and the sound of his muscles ripping was almost inaudible over the joyous howling.
The other men melted out of the shadows. I recognized one or two from the Atlantic pack, men I’d seen training out in the yard or working down at the dock. The rest were Shenandoah pack, and no matter what had happened before, they hesitated now as they stared at each other, having heard the call.
“Where’s Rippedthroat?” I started to ask.
Two of the men didn’t hesitate.
One of them had a rifle in his shoulder and he pointed it toward Logan, firing off a burst of rounds, the sound explosive in the confines of the kitchen. Logan was already rolling to one side, escaping the line of fire, and he slammed into the shooter.
The shifters turned in confusion, as if they didn’t know what to do. Then two of them suddenly moved against the mercenaries, along with my men. Even though the two mercs had automatic weapons, they were soon buried under angry wolf bodies, their weapons wrenched away.
I looked around desperately for Rippedthroat, but he wasn’t here. He didn’t like to get his hands dirty unless he knew he had a helpless victim.
I ran through the chaos of the kitchen. Josh and Logan were right behind me.
Suddenly, a mercenary slammed into me, his hand on my throat. Angry, desperate eyes met mine. Almost as soon as it happened, he was wrenched away from me and thrown into a wall. His face was replaced by Arthur’s.
“You freed the cubs,” I said.
“I never break a promise,” he said, and the look he gave me was inappropriately suggestive for the middle of a fight.
But I still liked it.
“We’ve got to find Maddie,” I said, and we ran down the hall, all of us searching desperately. Wolves were fighting with mercs. Wild howls filled the air.
“Tuck came through,” Arthur said. “The Shenandoah pack is fighting with us. We’re not alone in this battle anymore.”
Down the hall, Rippedthroat had Maddie in his arms. His eyes met mine for a second, and then he rushed out the front door.
I turned the corner after him. Suddenly, I was desperately cold, like I’d just stumbled into an arctic winter.
Rippedthroat stood before me, his hands flung out as if he’d just sealed me in with him. Maddie and Joan were to his side. Translucent darkness shimmered around us, like the bubble he’d thrown up at the whipping post.
Arthur and the others were gone, now longer behind me.
“You’re alone, though,” my father said. “As always.”
I barely looked at him. Joan had her arms around Maddie as if she was holding her back.
Fear and anger was written across Maddie’s face, and she called out, “Piper!”
“It’s okay, Maddie,” I told her. I’d said that a lot in the past few years together, and sometimes it had been a lie, but I’d tried my best. I tried to give her an encouraging smile as if my heart wasn’t pounding in my chest, as if I didn’t feel wild and desperate and frightened.
There was something about my father’s cool blue eyes and the amused smile on his face—like he was always in control—that made me feel like a scared little girl all over again.
“Let Maddie go,” I told him. At least my voice came out strong. “Let her go with Joan. You don’t need her when you have me.”
“Joan and Maddie want to stay with me where I can keep them safe,” he said, and he sounded so confident, like he always did. “And I don’t have any reason to let her go, Piper. I’ve always got you.”
He crossed the room to me, and he looked strangely affectionate. “You’ve turned for the first time. That must have been scary. Do you want me to fix you again?”
Outside in the hall, there was a roar of voices and a thump as if the battle was still raging, but none of it seemed to perturb my father at all.
“I was never broken,” I assured him.
It wasn’t broken to be a shifter.
But he had also never broken me, no matter how hard he had tried.
I was going to teach him that.
I slammed into him, full of fury. My fingers were on his throat. There was splitting agony in my fingertips, and it was long, deadly claws that sunk into his skin. I slammed him into the ground, and he threw back his head and laughed. The sound was unsettling, but he’d always known how to get the upper hand.
“I learned when you tried to kill me at the cabin, Piper,” he promised me, his voice still full of laughter and delight. “I made sure you’d never be able to disobey me again.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“I poisoned you and your sister both,” he said. “A sword hanging above the head of any disobedient child. While you slept in the cell. While your sister’s memories were freed.” His smiled widened. “She knows your relationship is a lie now.”
“What are you talking about, poison?” I slammed him against the ground again. I hadn’t realized how strong I was until I felt how flimsy his shoulders were in my grip. I was coming fully into all my powers, including my strength.
But none of that mattered if he poisoned my little sister. I looked up frantically, hoping my guys would break the spells and come charging in, but they were pacing impatiently around the edges of the bubble, trying to find a way in. It was up to me.
Maddie’s eyes had gone wide. She put her hand to her throat, as if she were drowning, and I thought of Caroline’s pain when she tried to go against his magic.
“I’m keeping you, Piper,” he said. “But if you want to save your little sister, you’ll have to be a good girl. You’ll have to earn your little sister’s anecdote.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I said. “You’ve never wanted to hurt her.”
“I’ve never cared about hurting her,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“Please.” I didn’t care if I begged him, or how desperate and weak I sounded now. I could kill him later when Maddie’s life didn’t hang in the balance. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Let go of me,” he said, his voice a slow, lazy drawl, as if I was an idiot.
I stepped back, wiping my palms on my jeans. Touching him made me feel dirty. He rose to his feet, straightening the scarves around his neck with dignity.
“Say you’re sorry,” he prompted me.
I looked to Maddie again. She was on her knees, as if they had buckled underneath her. Joan looked up at me with wide, panic-stricken eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“Things are going to go back to the way they were,” he said.
He took my chin in his fingertips, forcing my face up to meet his eyes. The glimmer in his eyes was full of gloating. “It doesn’t matter what’s happening out there. It doesn’t matter if your men kill my mercs or my coven. I already wanted to leave them behind. All I need is you, and your magic, and your suffering. And I have so much suffering in store for you, little girl.”
“Whatever,” I said, as if that didn’t make my guts go cold. “How do I save Maddie?”
“You don’t,” he said. “I do. If I choose.”
His eyes alit on Joan, and a cruel smile lifted his lips. “How much do you love her, still, knowing that she hates you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Joan said, her voice choked.
“There’s not exactly an anecdote to the poison,” he said. “It’s more of an…ability to transfer.”
Joan stared at him without understanding, in her panic, but I knew that cruel look on his face and I understood exactly what he intended.
“Transfer it to me,” I said.
“I want to hurt you, not kill you,” he reminded me. “No, there’s only one way to save little Maddie. One
person.”
“I thought you wanted me to go with you,” she said, bewildered. “To take care of Maddie.”
“That was a lie,” he admitted. “Sorry to say.”
He drew the knife from his belt and tossed it on the floor beside Joan. She looked from it to him, and the look in her eyes suggested she would kill him with that knife in a heartbeat if it weren’t for Maddie.
“If you want to save your daughter,” he said, “you’ll have to cut her palm and yours. That’s the only way I can transfer the poison.”
“Why would I trust you?” she asked. “You were supposed to be lifting the spells blocking her memories and you did this…”
“I did both.” He sounded offended. “I kept the bargain you made with me. Don’t be angry because you’re a fool.” His usual arrogance returned as he gazed down at her, his eyes glittering. “This is the only way to save your daughter.”
“Don’t,” I warned her.
She had already grabbed the knife and, looking as if she wanted to charge across the room and slam it into him, she wrapped her hand around it. She took a split-second to steel herself. Then she tightened her fingers in a fist. Blood dripped between her fingers.
Without hesitating, she opened her bloody hand and ran the tip of the blade more carefully over Maddie’s palm. The knife fell to the floor with a clatter, splattering blood drops across the library floor. She pressed their hands together. Her eyes closed and her lips moved silently, as if she was praying.
My father began to incant.
I’d learned enough about magic in the past few weeks to understand the words he was saying. I’d learned enough to commit them frantically to memory.
When he had finished, silence hung in the room. Then Maddie drew a ragged, desperate gasp of a breath.
Suddenly, a look of horror, of agony, was written across Joan’s face.
I wasn’t going to let him take one of our parents away again.
In an instant, I grabbed for the knife. My father raised his hand, beginning to incant, his voice almost casual.
But I was already repeating the words of his last spell. Instead of turning on him with the weapon, I raked the blade across Joan’s naked forearm. Her lips parted in pain, and she staggered before the poison made her fall to her knees.
But I was already twisting to slam the knife home into my father’s side.
And with it went the poisoned magic.
He let out a scream as he fell to his knees, before his airway closed, and then he began to frantically rake at his throat.
It’s hard to incant when you’ve just poisoned yourself.
Joan was on her knees as I knelt next to her, putting my hand on her shoulder. Her shoulders and chest heaved with the effort of breathing, but she already looked better, the color beginning to come back into her face.
“Maddie,” I said, “will you take care of her?”
Maddie pulled a face, as if she understood exactly what I was trying to do, but she still knelt with her back to me, as if she were shielding her mother. I didn’t care about Joan, except for Maddie’s sake. But I didn’t want Maddie to see this part.
“You’ve always taken so much joy in watching me suffer,” I told him. “But I’d rather not watch you suffer.”
I stepped forward with the knife. “I just need to make sure that you die.”
His eyes widened, and he held his hand out to me, as if he could stop me.
I hesitated. Memories flashed through my mind. Some of them had been remembered so recently that it felt like they had just happened to me, even though I’d been a little girl: My bloodied, bruised face in the mirror when I was small; my tears dripping into my little sister’s hair after he kidnapped her; my father’s distant, cruel face as he pressed my head underwater, drowning me to save another child.
“I don’t take any joy in hurting you, not like you enjoyed hurting me,” I told him, and then my fingers were in his hair and my fingers were so tight on the hilt of the knife that it felt like it cut me too.
Chapter 43
As soon as Rippedthroat fell dead at my feet, the walls of shimmering magic fell around us. My men tumbled in around me.
I still had the knife in my hand.
“Piper!” Callum touched my arm. “Is this your blood?”
Suddenly I realized I was covered in Rippedthroat’s blood. I dropped the knife. I stared at Callum, uncertain what to do in the moment after Rippedthroat was dead.
Arthur turned and said roughly, “Burn him.”
Within a few seconds, sheets were thrown over Rippedthroat’s body and his head and I didn’t have to see him anymore. He was bundled out and away as Callum drew me into his arms.
There was still the crackle of gunfire and magic, and the sound of wolves howling, in the distance. The last of the witches and mercs were fighting back.
“Where’s Sebastian?” I asked.
John stumbled toward us, out of the dark. “One of the witches has him in Arthur’s office. I tried to get back to him—”
“I’ve got it,” Logan said, turning to run for his brother. “The pack needs you, Arthur.”
Arthur nodded. “Go.”
Sebastian might need me. Together, Logan and I sprinted for the house.
Two Shenandoah pack shifters were in the hallway outside Arthur’s office, and they started toward us, already beginning to transform.
“We’re on the same side,” Logan barked at them, holding out his hand.
But as the shifter in front dropped to his hands, already beginning to snarl, Logan’s fingers split, his claws emerging, and his jaw cracked as he began to shift.
“Stop,” I said, and my voice seemed to echo in the narrow hallway. I frowned, perplexed, and the two shifters’ heads snapped up to me.
For some reason, a memory rose of the painting in the house back at Blissford: the woman in the snow, surrounded by tranquil wolves. Arthur had teased me about the command in my voice, as if I could compel wolves. As if I was more than a shifter princess.
“Stand down,” I told the wolves. “I’m on your side. We’re friends.”
The wolf in front whined. Then he turned and raced away, down the hall. The one behind him was still a man, just beginning to shift, and he snapped back, his face transforming. He fell to his knees in front of me, and confusion was written across his face, like he didn’t understand.
“You were guarding the witch?” I asked.
“I wasn’t…” He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”
“He compelled you,” I said softly. “It’s all right.”
“Do you want me to kill him?” he asked.
That was an awkward question, and I felt guilty answering it.
“Yes,” Logan said. “He’s got one of ours in there.”
The shifter nodded, and then threw himself into the door. The door burst off its hinges, flying into the room, and he and Logan bounded in.
I caught a glimpse of the witch’s surprised face, and Sebastian’s bowed, bloody head.
The snarl I heard was my own, as I followed them into the room. They dealt with the witch as I ran to Sebastian’s side.
He was tied to a chair, and he cracked open bruised eyes when he saw me. One eye was bloodshot bright red, but his lips still flickered in the faintest smile when he saw me. “Knew you’d come.”
“Nothing could keep me away,” I told him, kneeling beside him. My fingers trembled in my rush to get the cuffs off his wrists. Finally, with the sound of the witch screaming in the background, I saw the glint of the keys on the desk. I unlocked his cuffs, then found a knife and cut away the duct tape that bound his chest and his ankles to the chair.
He shook out his arms. He was moving jerkily, his movements awkward, as if he was still badly hurt.
Even if he wasn’t hurt, I still wanted to kiss him. I hadn’t seen him since the docks, and I had missed him terribly. I’d been afraid that I would never see him again.
I rested my hand lightly on
his shoulder as I leaned in. But I didn’t surprise him. His head tilted back, welcoming him in, as my lips brushed over his. Our first kiss was sweet, full of affection.
Then that kiss deepened. His hand slid up my arm, and his warm fingers still raised goosebumps on my skin.
“I’ll just get rid of this,” Logan grumbled, slinging the witch’s limp body over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your reunion.”
“Good,” I murmured, barely breaking away from Sebastian’s lips.
Logan grunted as he carried the witch past us. The witch’s feet stuck out over Logan’s shoulder, almost clobbering me in the head, as he turned into the hall. I leaned forward to avoid the witch’s boots and protect Sebastian, and accidentally pressed my chest against his face.
“Funny,” Seb mused from between my breasts. “This is almost exactly what I was fantasizing about to distract myself while I was being tortured.”
“What did you fantasize about exactly?” I straddled him on the chair, my knees on either side of the hard wooden seat. “Because I want to make sure you’re healed.”
“Probably a good idea,” he said, leaning back in the chair and touching his side reactively, as if it ached.
I drew his t-shirt up, revealing his chiseled abs and tattooed pecs. He might have been the geek of the group, but he was still muscular and athletic. There were deep bruises, mottled purple and blue and black, across his sides.
I pulled my shirt over my head, and his breath caught in his chest.
“I’ll just close the door,” Logan grumbled, leaning in to pull it shut. “And I’ll stand watch.”
“Thank you,” I called sweetly. He had to deal with his jealousy sooner or later. The only way out was through—and I had no intention of giving up any of these men. I needed them all.
I lost myself in Sebastian’s kisses. His arm tightened around my waist, holding me close to his body. I took his face in my hands as I kissed him. I was so grateful to have the hard planes of his cheeks and jaw against my palms again.
I hadn’t let myself feel the fear I’d lose them, when I had to keep moving and keep fighting. But now I could feel it, and I could’ve cried.