“It’s a small thing, really. You see, I can’t very well have you while you’re still… mated to those mutts. Reject them.”
My heart gave a panicked start at the very idea of that without meaning to, I let out a hiss that turned into a very growly “Fuck you.”
That wasn’t even a consideration. If I rejected the bond, it would destroy me. And it would relegate them to spending their entire lives alone. A wolf only mated once. The only thing that could permanently and fully sever a mate bond was death. Only then could a shifter find another mate.
As long as I lived, if I rejected Clay and Jared, they would never find other mates. And nor would I.
“Tsk tsk,” Devin said with a gleeful ring to his voice. “I thought you were serious about saving the lives of the shifters I’ve borrowed from your pack, Allie? Shall I send you a token of the seriousness of my intentions? A hand perhaps? Or a head? Perhaps Destiny’s?”
“You monster.”
“You have one week. In the meantime, I give you my word that they will not be harmed. But if you haven’t done what I’ve asked you to by then…”
“I’ll call you at this number with further instructions in a few days.”
Dark clouds swirled through my thoughts, ridding myself of the ability to respond. My wolf growled within, backed into a corner from which she couldn’t see a way out.
One week, I whispered within. A lot can happen in one week. We can find him. We can kill him. It won’t come to that.
“Oh, and Allie? I’ll expect you to answer the phone when I call. If you don’t, I’ll have to punish one of your pack, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.”
“Is that all?” I gritted out.
“For now.”
I clicked the phone shut and pulled back my shaking hands before I could knock it from the counter and risk breaking it.
“He’s a dead man walking,” Clay swore, his face red. A vein in his temple jumping with his quick pulse.
Jared’s eyes locked on mine. “We have to find them,” he said. “We have to find them and bring them home before he…” He didn’t finish, his throat bobbing while his brows lowered, shadowing his eyes from view.
I shook my head. “I would never do what he just asked me to do,” I told them both, a pit yawning open in my stomach. But even as I said it, I realized it might not be the truth.
If it was a choice between rejecting my mates and saving people from being killed? From saving my entire pack from Devin’s wrath? It would be the most selfish thing I’d ever done to refuse the request.
Jared came to wrap his arms around my shoulders and press a hard kiss to my temple. “We know.”
Over his shoulder, I could see Clay watching me. In his icy eyes I could see that he wasn’t fooled. More than that, I felt the challenge in his stare. Just fucking try it, he seemed to be saying. I’ll never let you go.
20
Finding our missing kin proved to be easier said than done. Not that I expected any less. We couldn’t spread ourselves too thin in case Devin launched another assault or tried to capture any more of our pack. Which meant that we only patrolled the first ring now. The quarry and pub remained shuttered and guarded by hired mortal help. And when we did send out scouting parties, it was in varying directions, at varying times, and only in large numbers.
Not so large that we would be leaving pack camp inadequately protected. But not so small that they would be easily overcome if set upon by Devin’s pack.
In the two days since Devin had declared his terms to me, we’d scouted as far as we dared to go and had turned up empty handed every time.
We’d even approached Dante’s pack requesting aid. As I expected there too, we were denied. Dante and his pack bordered our lands to the west and preferred to remain comfortable and safe behind the thick walls surrounding their camp. It was a lost cause, but it was worth trying. Anything was worth trying at this point.
We had five more days until Devin would expect me to do something so horrible I couldn’t even imagine it. Though my mind came up with all sorts of painful scenarios on its own, while sleeping and awake. Even though I did very little of the former.
“We need to tell them,” Jared said, rubbing long circles in my back. “If you don’t want to, then Clay and I can do it for you.”
I shook my head, causing my hair to fall from where it was tucked behind my ear and form a curtain between us. “No. I have to be the one to do it. I should’ve been honest with them about everything from the start. Maybe if we had been, this wouldn’t be—”
“Don’t think like that. This is where we’re at now. We have to deal with it. It doesn’t matter what might’ve happened if things were different.”
But it did matter to me. And I got the gut twisting feeling that it might matter to the pack, too.
They’d all followed orders just fine this whole time. They’d joined the scouting parties led by Charity, Jared, Clay, or myself. They’d asked little questions. But they deserved answers.
Jared pushed my hair back, draping over my shoulder so he could see my face again. I did my best to school it into something less worried. Failed.
“Are they all gathered?”
“They are,” Jared confirmed. “But we don’t have to go out yet.”
Glasses clinked behind me and I jumped out of my skin, whirling on the couch to find Clay in the kitchen setting three glasses down on the counter. How in the hell he managed to not only get inside, but get into the kitchen and open a cupboard right behind us was beyond me. But I’d long since stopped questioning how he was so unnaturally light on his size thirteen feet.
“How about a whiskey first?” he offered.
I blew out a breath, and he smirked at me, knowing he got my heart hammering double time and had spooked me out of my dark thoughts.
“A double I think,” I agreed. “Please.”
He poured three and carried the small glasses in his mammoth hands to the living room, passing them out one to each of us.
“To…” he trailed off, lifting his glass.
Knowing there was absofuckinglutely nothing to be celebrating right now, I muttered a quick “To surviving through the night,” and tossed my whiskey back, grimacing as it carved a searing path down my esophagus and pooled warmly in my belly.
Jared and Clay shared a look before following suit, all of us discarding our glasses on the low coffee table behind Clay.
“No one is going to blame you,” Jared assured me as I stood up, giving me one last pat on the back.
“And if they do, I’ll set ’em straight,” Clay added, tipping his head to one side to crack his neck.
I rolled my eyes at him and stepped past the pair of them to the firing squad waiting outside.
Viv and Layla hushed the congregation of shifters surrounding the fire ring as I stepped out into the brisk night air. All I could see as I approached them was the ones not here.
Vivian, without Destiny.
Seth, without his usual partners in crime—Trey and Todd.
Sara without Luke.
And so many others looking bereft and forlorn at the party of shifters that was lost only two days ago. Some of which I didn’t even recall their full names. If—no, when—I got them all back, I was going to make an effort to get to know each and every one of them.
“Um,” I started, the fire and crickets the only sounds besides the bleating of my heart pounding in my head.
Viv gave me an encouraging look and she and Layla along with my mates came to stand at my sides, lending me their strength.
“You all know how absolutely terrible I am at this sort of shit, but you deserve to know everything that we do, and I’m...I’m sorry I didn’t explain it all sooner.”
My instinct to find a spot on the ground and stare at it was overruled by my need to make them understand. I needed to look them in the eyes when I told them everything. They deserved that much.
My gaze roamed over the crowd, finding mated pairs a
nd other couples. Brothers and sisters. Parents. Grandparents. And for a second, I was so utterly grateful that our pack hadn’t seen any young in more than fifteen years. I’d hate to put a child through what I feared we as a pack were about to endure.
“Our missing brothers and sisters have been taken from us by someone some of you may remember. He was once a member of this pack, but he was cast out and banished for breaking one of our most sacred laws.”
A few whispers broke out, and I wondered if they already knew. Many likely did. Vivian mostly kept to herself and Layla was good at keeping secrets, but a few others in the know weren’t the best at keeping things to themselves.
Looking at you, Seth.
He pursed his lips as my gaze swept over him.
“His name is Devin Wright. He is the one who triggered my transformation. Ryland ordered that he be banished from Forest Grove for that crime.”
“He’s come back?” a male voice called, and I nodded.
“Yes. And he is the alpha of his own pack now. If what we’ve been told is true, it’s...it’s the largest pack in the country.”
“Bigger than ours?” a girl maybe about seventeen asked, her nose wrinkling and face screwing up as though I might have bad intel.
“Yes.”
Especially now that we’ve lost ten shifters, I thought but didn’t say aloud.
“By about thirty shifters,” I added, wanting to be as transparent as I could. They needed to know what we were up against here.
A few gasps sounded from the group and whatever I’d been about to say next vanished with the need to reassure them that I would do whatever I needed to protect them.
“We can’t go up against that,” someone cried.
“I heard two packs to the south got taken over. I wonder if it was him.” Another mused to his friend.
“So then he wants revenge because Ryland banished him?”
“We could never win. Not without all the shifters he took.”
“Are they even alive? How do we know he hasn’t killed them already?”
“How are we going to get them back?’
The fluttering began behind my breastbone at the panic coming from all those looking to me for the answers.
“Hey!” Clay barked, surprising me and shocking all the others back to silence. “Let her fucking finish.”
“Clay,” I hissed, but he just crossed his arms over his chest and stared down each and every one of them.
“We know they’re still alive,” I assured them. “There’s something he wants, and until he gets it, he won’t risk the only bargaining chips he has.”
“What does he want?” Tyler asked, his thick brows knotting together. “Can’t we just give it to him?”
“It’s not that simple,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry as hell. “But I can promise you I’m going to do everything within my power to get our missing kin back and to keep everyone safe. This won’t come to a battle. I won’t ask anyone to fight.”
“Allie,” Clay growled, and I shot him a look.
“You said you wanted to be honest with them,” Jared added. “Go on, tell them what he wants.”
My stomach turned, and I swallowed back nervous bile, unable to speak.
“Devin wants your alpha,” Clay said, and I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, drawing blood. Angry that they were undermining me. Angry at myself for not being able to be 100% honest with my pack.
“He wants Allie,” Jared continued. “Some of you don’t know the whole story, but let me fill you in real quick. This guy is a monster. He kidnapped her.”
He jabbed two fingers in my direction, and I winced, my inner wolf waking as though personally attacked.
“He chained her up in a cave and poisoned her. Abused her. And then to top it all off, he attacked her. Bit her.”
“And then Ryland let the fucker go,” Clay finished for him. “Devin thinks Allie belongs to him.”
“Stop,” I muttered.
“He’s told her to reject us,” Jared admitted to our pack and a barrage of whispers followed. “And if she doesn’t do what he’s asked, he’s told her he’ll hurt the shifters he’s keeping hostage.”
“Stop,” I repeated, heat rushing through my veins.
“And once she’s rejected us, he wants her to submit to him. Leave this pack. For good. Have her all to himself. To torture. To rape. To make her bow.”
“I said stop,” I all but screamed, panting, my bones near snapping from the pressure of my wolf.
Jared reached out for me, but I flinched away, too angry to be calmed. “I won’t let him hurt us,” I promised them in a voice so fierce I had to question whether it came from my own lips. “I’ll do whatever I have to. It’s my job as your alpha.”
Silence followed. Faces fell. Tensions rose.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “I brought this on us, and I swear to you that I will fix it.”
Shuffling steps drew my attention, and I glanced up to find Hazel gently shouldering through the throng. She walked straight for me, hands outstretched until she found me and tugged my shaking fists into her wrinkled palms.
“We’ll fix it,” she said, her milky gaze sad and searching as she read me through the soft touch of her fingers. “You are our alpha, girl. If you think we’ll allow you to sacrifice yourself to save any one of us, you are sorely mistaken.”
She lifted my hands to her lips and kissed the back of my palm. “I’d sooner die than see you harmed, granddaughter. And I don’t think I’m the only one.”
My throat burned, and Hazel held my hands tighter in hers when they began to shake.
“She’s right,” a familiar voice called, and I peered up to find Archer standing next to Callum. “You took us in when no other pack wanted us. You gave us a home. A purpose.”
“It doesn’t matter if we’re outnumbered,” Callum agreed and a female mated pair who joined our pack last year moved to stand next to the two mated males, nodding their agreement.
“We’ll fight with you if it comes to that. The last year we’ve been here has been the best of our lives,” the one named Lily said, squeezing the hand of her mate.
“We won’t let that bastard hurt you,” Seth agreed. “And if you think we would, then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”
“Nice, asshole,” Layla said, giving him a playful shove.
Whispers of agreement spread through the pack like wildfire, until the whispers turned to louder shouts of affirmation. Until my heart was so full I feared it might burst in my chest. Until it hurt unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
It was a bittersweet sort of anguish.
I loved each and every one of them for being willing to fight and maybe die trying to defend me and this pack, but…
It only cemented my decision to do everything in my power to save them. These were good people. The best of shifter-kind. My family. And I would not allow them to be hurt.
Not while there was something I could do about it.
Grams released my hands just as the tears spilled over, carving hot trails down my cool cheeks. “Don’t do anything foolish,” she whispered, the roar of the others behind her all but drowning her out.
“I won’t.”
She tutted. “Don’t lie to me, girl.”
“Hazel…”
“If you go getting yourself hurt I promise to haunt you for the rest of your miserable life. And not the fun kind of haunting. I’ll go full poltergeist on your ass. Got it?”
An unwilling smile stole its way onto my lips as I shook my head at her. “Got it.”
21
We watched the fire burn down from the steps on the front porch of the cabin. I was still reeling from the meeting several hours before, and a few too many whiskeys had eradicated any desire to get up, move, or do much of anything but sit here and watch the flames try and fail to lick the clouds.
“Cookie?”
My brows crinkled, and I lifted my heavy head from the fist propped up
on my knee to find Hazel exiting the cabin behind me, a plate of cookies in between her hands.
That explained why my stomach had been rumbling for the last hour.
“Why are you making cookies at midnight?” I asked but didn’t hesitate for even a second to snatch a few still-warm chocolate chip ones from the plate before the guys descended on them.
Clay stole what looked like five with one scoop of his hand, leaving Jared only one remaining on the plate.
I thought they’d both been asleep, honestly. They’d been quiet for so long. Clay sprawled over the rough wood of the porch with his head in my lap. And Jared was sitting on the dirt, two steps below mine, his head resting heavily against my thigh.
It was official, I was certain Hazel’s cookies could even wake the dead.
I stuffed one in my mouth, moaning at the melty chocolate goodness.
“There, see? Nothing a good cookie can’t fix.”
Something cold nudged my shoulder and I spun to see Hazel pressing a cold glass of water to my skin. “Drink this. You’ll thank me tomorrow.”
I huffed, but gratefully accepted the glass, draining in in two long swallows. Wincing as the chill of it stung my teeth.
“Thanks, Grams.”
She ruffled my hair and turned to go back inside.
“Don’t clean up,” I insisted. “Let us do it in the morning.”
“Oh, it’s already clean dear. I’m just going to get another plate of cookies. Seems I underestimated how hungry you beasties would be this late.”
Despite myself, I grinned as I watched her feel her way back to the door and vanish back into the cookie scented cabin.
“Come on, Clay,” Jared said, leaning over my lap to where Clay had himself propped on an elbow, demolishing his cookies. “I only got one.”
“Your own damned fault you weren’t fast enough.”
“Dude.”
“Here,” I offered, sadly looking at my only remaining cookie before passing it to Jared. He didn’t take it, though.
Clay snatched it away from him and not so gently stuffed it into my mouth.
Shifted Scars: A Wolves of Forest Grove Novel Page 19
