Clay and I led our small group back to camp. Me just ahead of Clay, and Clay just ahead of Vivian and Jared with the others behind them. It was a study in fucking patience to keep myself from taking off ahead of them all. I could. My legs were ready, willing to push me faster, and I had to tamper them down. Unable to leave anyone behind or without sufficient backup.
I hear them, Clay spoke in my mind and I realized I could hear them, too. As we blew past the first ring and onto the edges of camp, I could hear the sounds of people talking. There was no screaming. No growls or burning buildings. But in my gut, I could feel that something wasn’t right. There was a heaviness in the atmosphere, and it pressed down on me, filling me with dread and making my pulse flutter and spurt.
As we cleared the trees and burst back into camp, my hackles high and body on full alert, we found Layla standing amid a half-naked group of shifters near a slow burning fire in the pit.
As soon as her eyes locked on to me, she shoved through the others in her path to get to us. I shifted back, shivering despite the warmth in the early evening air at the loss of my fur.
Her eyes roved over my dirt and blood streaked skin for an instant before lifting back to my face as the others entered camp and shifted back, too, all of them coming to flank me.
“I’m so sorry,” Layla said, her chin quivering in a way that made my heart leap into my throat.
“What happened?” Jared demanded while Clay’s piercing gaze roamed over the rest of camp, searching for attackers. For something, anything amiss.
“They just didn’t come back,” she said in a watery voice, holding back tears with a faraway look in her eyes.
Vivian shouldered past me and grabbed onto Layla’s shoulders, giving her a little shake to get her to snap out of it. “Who?” she demanded. “Who didn’t come back?”
“The search party,” she said, finding her strength and shucking off Vivian’s hands as she lifted her chin and pushed her long dark hair back from her face. “They were supposed to be back an hour ago, but they haven’t returned. I sent a small scout party as far as the third ring, but they just got back.”
One of what I presumed was the small scout party of four stepped up behind Allie. A guy named Dillon. “There was no sign of them,” he confirmed. But near the outer edge of the third ring near Glenwood we, uh, we think we picked up the scent of some foreign shifters.”
“Fuck,” Clay groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Who was it?”
Dillon filled us in on the names. There had been six of them.
We were down another six shifters.
My stomach turned sour, and I hunched as it twisted, seeing stars.
“Someone bring me Sam,” I hissed before spinning on my heel and taking off toward our cabin.
Distantly, I registered them calling after me, but I needed to get away. I needed…
Oh shit.
I forced myself not to hunch any more as I took the stairs two at a time and blew through the front door, making for the main floor bathroom at a near-sprint. The instant I crossed the threshold, I kicked the door closed and fell to my knees, spewing bile into the toilet until there was nothing left.
Until the hot tears staining my eyes from retching turned to fat droplets of pure fury, fear, and frustration.
Devin motherfucking Wright.
This was my fault after all.
All of it was.
I should’ve known. I’d had too many years of peace. Too many years of good things. Now it wouldn’t be only me who paid for my happiness, it would be my pack, too. Just like Mom. Just like Dad. Just like Vivian and Layla. Clay and Jared. No one close to me was safe from the havoc my life wreaked on others.
The door creaked as it opened, and I glanced up from the porcelain goddess to see Jared quietly pushing himself inside.
“You don’t want to see this,” I groaned, heat crawling up my neck as I closed the toilet lid and flushed, sagging against the vanity. “I just need a minute.”
He sat next to me, closing the door behind him and pulling me into his arms. My chest tightened at the immediate sense of comfort and fresh tears spilled onto my cheeks. “I’ve got you,” he said in a low whisper, tugging a towel down from the rod to wrap around my naked, shuddering body.
I clutched on to him, allowing myself just a moment to feel all the pent up emotions roiling within. I’d hardly slept in weeks. And even though I was forcing down food on the regular and I knew my wolf was strong and swift, I felt empty inside. Hollow and frail. Like a strong breeze might blow me away.
“What do we do?” I croaked, trying unsuccessfully to stop the deluge of tears as I allowed the warmth of his body to seep into my icy bones.
“We do what we always do,” Jared said in a soft, reassuring voice, squeezing me tighter. “We figure it out. One step at a time. Clay’s already gone to town—”
I stiffened.
“With a large amount of backup,” he added and some of the new tension eased. “To pick up a burner phone. It’s supposed to rain overnight tonight and that’ll make it hard for anyone to find or track them in case Devin gets cocky enough to attack us on our own turf. He’ll go with a crew to plant the phone beneath the bleachers like you said and come straight back.”
There were still two days until Saturday. Forty-eight hours. Why did it feel more like a decade to have to wait.
As the fluttering behind my ribcage quieted, I was finally able to take a full breath and rid the dark edges from my vision and the dizziness from my head.
“You’re doing so amazing, you know that?” Jared said, surprising me.
No I fucking wasn’t.
I’d gotten, what? Ten wolf shifters captured. I’d killed an innocent witch. I’d gotten Sal’s butcher shop burned to the ground and Jared’s Jeep smashed almost beyond repair now.
Which reminded me, we still needed to get that towed back to the garage. Ugh.
“I don’t mean what you’re doing or what’s happened,” he said, pressing a soft kiss to the knot between my brows. “I mean in here.”
He tapped my forehead.
“You haven’t had any real panic attacks. I can feel your anxiety every day, but you keep pushing through. You keep putting on a brave face. You’ve come so far. I’m proud of you.”
Well, that’s just fucking rude. Now I want to cry again.
“Why’d you have to go and say that?” I croaked.
“Love you, too.”
I nuzzled back into him for a moment before remembering my last order to them before I gave in to my anxiety. Shit. We really didn’t have time for this. I straightened, coming out of Jared’s arms and letting the towel fall to pool around my waist.
“Where’s Sam? We need to find out what she knows. She might be able to tell us where Devin is keeping the others. We could get them back. We could—”
Jared’s amber eyes darkened, and he bowed his head, his hair shadowing his expression from view.
“Jare?”
“She’s gone, Allie. She must’ve figured it out. I don’t know how, but…”
“No.” I stood up, my knees weak but waking with a new flood of adrenaline. “No, she can’t be gone. She was our best chance of finding them. Where did she go? When? What direction?”
I wrenched open the door and stalked down the hall. “We can still catch her. We have to catch her.”
“She’s gone,” Jared called behind me, rushing to catch up, his footfalls echoing in the empty cabin. “Allie, wait.”
His hand closed around my elbow, jerking me to a stop. “Layla was keeping an eye on her shared cabin all day, but she managed to slip out the window during the commotion when they realized the search party hadn’t come back.”
A chill rattled down my spine. If that was true, then she’d been gone for hours already. We’d never catch up to her.
“She’s gone back to him, isn’t she?” I asked, though it was obvious that was exactly what she’d done.
And I was the idiot
who let it happen.
I tipped my head back in a quiet roar of frustration, kicking the nearest object to me to get out the pent up rage that felt near bursting inside of me. “Dammit!” I shouted as the hall table smashed against the opposite wall, sending wooden legs and a glass bowl shattering in every direction.
“I should have listened to you. We should have chained her up and questioned her as soon as we found out what she was doing.”
Jared’s lips pressed into a thin line. He wasn’t disagreeing with me. Why should he? It was the truth. I let this happen.
“I’m going to kill her,” I growled. “I’m going to find her, and I’m going to fucking destroy her. Right after I tear Devin’s goddamned head off.”
“I know,” Jared said calmly. “I know you will. And we’ll help you do it.”
Less than fifteen minutes stood between now and noon. The last two days had been the hardest so far. Vivian was beside herself with worry and stress. The other pack members were on high alert. We only patrolled the first ring now, keeping the remaining wolves we had as close as we could.
We moved the meat from the pub and closed it temporarily.
The quarry had also been shut down and a human security service that cost us so much money I didn’t even want to look at our account balance was watching over both venues.
Not even Devin was stupid enough to risk exposure to mortals and bring the wrath of the Arcane Council down on him.
It was the only option that kept everyone as safe as possible, even if it would take months for us to recover financially. That was a worry for another time, though.
“I’ve been thinking,” Layla said, lifting her head with a furrowed brow. “He had to have been planning this for a long time, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Attacking our food supply, our income, and reducing our numbers…” Even I had to admit it. “It was well thought out.”
“Don’t forget using my kid sister as a fucking spy to get all the info he needed to do it,” Clay grunted, crossing his bulging arms over his bare chest where he leaned against the fridge.
“That too.”
“What are you getting at?” Vivian asked, her jaw working as she ground her teeth in a way that made my skin crawl.
Layla pursed her lips. “I don’t know. This can’t just be about payback, right? It has to be something more.”
I nodded to the slim black flip phone at the heart of the kitchen island. “That’s what we’re going to find out. He has to want something otherwise he would be killing the shifters he took, and Viv would know if Destiny was…”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it, but Viv nodded anyway. “She’s not dead,” she confirmed. “I would know. I would feel it.”
That didn’t mean she was all right. Not in the least, but I wasn’t about to say that.
“I think I might have an idea what he’s after,” Jared said, staring at the phone like he might rather smash the thing to dust than let me make the call.
“What?” Layla asked and Jared’s eyes darted first to her and then to Clay, whose upper lip twitched into a snarl. Eventually, his glowing amber eyes slid to me, and I saw and felt so much hatred within him that my pulse quickened.
“You,” he said simply, as though it were the obvious answer, but also the most disgusting one he could imagine. “Do you remember what he said to me at Jacqueline’s bookshop the day I asked you to come home with me?”
I thought back to that day. When Devin had come to confront me at work and Jared had made him leave and convinced me to stay with him.
“You’re mine,” I repeated the words Devin said to me that day, shivering and sick at the memory.
“And he believed that,” Jared continued. “It’s why he kidnapped you. Why he turned you. He thought that when you shifted, you would mate with him and be bound to him forever.”
“But I didn’t. I mated with you, and with Clay.”
And the rage and utter betrayal I’d seen in Devin’s eyes that night told me that nothing had ever hurt him more than bearing witness to that.
“So you think this is all some ploy to get to Allie?” Vivian asked, her face turning a sickly shade of green.
Jared shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s the only thing that makes sense. At least, a fucked up kind of sense. The guy’s a psychopath.”
“And not the fun kind,” Layla muttered, drawing curious looks from the others. She and I shared a look and I remembered that she had been borrowing books from my library.
“No,” I agreed with her. “Definitely not the fun kind.”
Devin was no Viper or Saint. He was an actual monster. The kind that didn’t deserve to be understood or forgiven. The kind that needed to be killed. End of story.
Clay snorted his agreement and tapped the clock on the stove. “It’s time. Let’s see what this fucker has to say.”
I snatched up the phone and went to the only contact in the list—the other burner cell—and hit call, afraid I’d lose my nerve if I hesitated even for a second. Devin needed to know that I meant fucking business, and I wouldn’t bend to whatever it was he wanted. If it was a war he wanted, then I might just give it to him.
I put it on speakerphone as it began to ring and let it clatter back onto the counter, leaning over and winding my hands together to keep from shattering the marble countertop with my grip.
The call connected and there was a brief pause when I thought he might’ve hung up, but then a familiar voice filtered through the speaker, lifting the hairs on my arms and filling my stomach with acid.
“Smart girl,” Devin said. “Though I expected no less.”
He sounded almost the same as I remembered. That same smooth voice that haunted my nightmares for almost a year after what he put me through, now colored by age. It had a deepness to it that hadn’t been there before. A gruffness that suited him far better than his smooth tongue ever had.
“You’re a dead man,” I spat, unable to form anything more articulate just yet. I needed him to know what I intended to do to him.
“Now that just hurts my feelings, and we both know you wouldn’t dare launch an attack against me. Not while I have so many of your pack under my thumb.”
“Get to the point, asshole. What the fuck do you want?” Vivian shouted, and I sent her a look. They all promised to be quiet.
“Vivian, is that you? Destiny’s been asking for you, you know—”
Vivian’s eyes went saucer wide, and she launched for the phone, her wolf bursting out from within. “You fucking bastard!”
I managed to snatch it before she could, and she sailed over the smooth counter and landed in a heap on the floor, scrambling to her feet with claws instead of fingernails.
“Get her outside,” I ordered, and Layla dutifully herded Viv out, muscling her in a way I didn’t know Layla was even capable of.
Laughter echoed from the line and the amount of venom in my blood was making my vision darken. He was laughing at her. At us.
The only thing that allowed me to remain even remotely calm was thinking in detail about everything I was going to do to him once I got my hands on him.
After a moment, his laughter quieted. “No? Not funny? Well shit, hope I didn’t offend…”
“Where are they?” I asked. “What have you done with them?”
“They’re alive,” he replied. “For now. So long as you do as I ask, they will remain that way.”
Clay bristled, his body tensing in a way that told me his wolf was also on the verge of breaking free.
“And what is it that you want?”
A pause.
“You.”
“Motherfucker,” Jared cursed under his breath, shoving away from the countertop to walk into the living room, arms braced behind his head. Every muscle taut as a bowstring.
“You belong to me, Allie. You always have. You always will. One day, you’ll see it, too. I promise you that.”
My own stomach turned at his admission, but I supposed I shoul
dn’t have been surprised. And honestly? This might work to our advantage. He wanted me? The twin soul wolf.
As far as any of us knew, I was the strongest shifter to have ever lived thanks to having ingested my would-be twin sister in my mother’s womb.
If he wanted me, he would get me.
I’d end him.
“When and where?” I asked, drawing furious and shocked looks from my mates.
“Now, now, my pet. Don’t be hasty. I know you miss me but there’s no rush.”
“I want this over with,” I told him, trying to ignore the way Clay and Jared were staring daggers at me. But beneath their trepidation I felt their curiosity. They were wondering what my ulterior motives were with this.
I loved them for realizing I wasn’t stupid enough to just walk into a trap.
“Me for the shifters you took and full immunity from future attacks against my pack. Do we have a deal?”
The crackle of a fire somewhere near him on the other end of the line popped and hissed before he replied, his voice taking on the dangerous tone I remembered from the times he hurt me.
“You think I’d play right into your hand?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Allie. I know you too well.”
My tongue slid across my teeth, passing over where my canines were slipping out from my gums, elongating.
“If you challenge me openly, I will kill them all,” he promised me, and I dropped my head, clenching my teeth together in frustration. That had been exactly what I planned to do.
It was an easy fix. I knew I was stronger than him. I would win, and he would die. And this fucking madness would end.
“How do you propose this works then?” I ground out, imagining plucking his stupid green eyes out of his skull with nothing but my bare hands.
“You’ll see, my love. I have plans. Big plans. You’ll have to be...neutralized. Can’t have my wife trying to kill me at every turn, now can I? First, though, there’s something I need you to do for me. A gesture of good faith so that I know you’re serious about your offer to leave your pack and take your place with me, where you belong.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, fully unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice any longer. “What’s that?”
Shifted Scars: A Wolves of Forest Grove Novel Page 18
