Craving that he’d be able to satiate.
It was almost inconceivable, but Devan’s phone, buried somewhere in Zio’s bag, buzzed loud enough to break the thraldom between them.
He fished it out. A rural Slovakian number flashed on the screen. “Fuck. It’ll be Dash. I’ve got to take it.”
Zio raised his head and stepped away, taking with him his intoxicating scent. “Go ahead. I’m gonna run back, though. We’ve been gone too long as it is.”
Devan nodded, already speculating what his alpha could want. His hands itched to grab Zio and haul him back, unwilling to be apart, even for a few moments, but Zio was gone before he could.
He took the call. “Dash?”
“It’s me.”
“Why aren’t you in Bratislava?”
“Because I’m not chained to the city. Luca wanted to visit the clan pockets in the mountains, but we’re on our way home now. He’s putting petrol in the car.”
Devan didn’t much care for Luca’s whereabouts, but it was a rare thing for his clan alphas to travel by road. “Why didn’t you move on foot?”
“We’re running out of time,” Dash said.
“For what?”
“For whatever is coming.”
“Are you being cryptic on purpose? Or is there something I should know?”
“Nothing concrete, but be careful over the next few days. Something is in the air.”
“You can tell that from Slovakia?”
“Of course. I sired you, Devan. Your distress is my own.”
It made more sense than Devan cared to admit, even though it made no sense at all. “I’m not distressed. My head is clear . . . thanks to Zio, but I’m tired. I underestimated the strain full-time healing and an unfulfilled bond would put on me.”
“Everyone underestimates the power of a bond until it hits them. But I’m glad you and the young wolf are working on it together. It bodes well for your future that it hasn’t torn you apart.”
It is tearing me apart. Devan sighed. “I don’t know how long I can resist it. It’s more than a potential bond, Dash. I love him.”
“I know.”
“You do? How is that possible when I didn’t until I just said it?”
“Assumption, knowledge, instinct. You wouldn’t be the shifter I turned all those years ago if you didn’t embrace the most difficult things. It was the quality that made you such a remarkable human.”
Devan rolled his eyes. “I was a gangly student who didn’t know which way was up.”
“Even as a human, you were an industrious young man who already knew he’d been put on this earth to help people. I hope one day you meet someone truly ordinary so you can see the difference.”
The whole world was ordinary compared to Zio, but Devan was pretty sure Dash hadn’t called to hear him wax lyrical about his longed-for mate. Actually, why did he call?
But twenty minutes later, Devan bid goodbye to his alpha, none the wiser and further away from camp—and from Zio—than when he’d answered the phone. He searched his brain for threads of logic in the hope of tying some together but found none. He’d been entirely truthful when he’d told Dash he was tired, and beyond the need to link up with Zio as soon as possible, stringing coherent thoughts together just wasn’t happening.
Lost in thought, Devan retraced the half mile he’d wandered from camp. His senses were naturally attuned to Zio, but as he walked, the cracking current between them faded, as though Zio was somehow getting further and further away from him. After a solid twelve hours in each other’s company, the loss of their connection hurt. Devan rubbed his chest and picked up his pace, breaking into a run as he neared the camp.
Multiple emotions hit him at once, none of them pleasant, and none of them Zio’s. Panic. Distress. Fear. Anger.
Devan leapt the boundary and faced the scene of dozens of shifters running around, vehicles revving, shouting, howls as humans became wolves and raced into the night.
He grabbed the nearest body to him—a young woman who manned the comms tent. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Raid. At the compound. They’ve attacked our home.”
Devan let the woman go and she disappeared into the throng, but her panic remained and lodged itself deep in Devan’s soul. The compound was the pack’s strongest position, the only place on earth where they felt safe . . . where Zio felt safe. It housed their families, human and shifter. It was the heart of the northern pack and the only home Zio had ever known.
And with Varian’s fiercest fighters deployed to protect the border, it was woefully undermanned, unless the combat squad could somehow get back in time to defend it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Devan whirled around, searching for Zio, for Michael, for Danielo.
He found Shannon and grabbed him, claws sliding out to dig into Shannon’s flesh. “Where’s Zio? And the rest of you? We need to get back.”
Wild wolf eyes stared back at him. “They already left.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zio ran like the wind, abandoning the vehicles where the human police had stopped them at the roadblocks they’d set up to keep the fighting contained. Warning shots rang out behind him, but he didn’t look back, his entire being fixated on defending his home. His pack.
He reached the safety of the thick forest and shifted, raw power, enhanced by rage and fear, shimmering around him. At his back, Michael and Danielo shifted too, and their pack connection burnt brighter.
Zio reached out, urgency lacing his command like never before: Faster. Before it’s too late.
Danielo: What about the guns?
Zio: They won’t shoot anyone in human form; can’t be sure we’re shifters. As wolves we’re safe in the forest.
It was the only reassurance he could offer his brothers, but they didn’t question it, their faith in him absolute, and their desperation to get home as strong as his.
With every wolf who’d followed them from the border camp at their backs, they fanned out and raced through the trees, enemy scents thickening with every stride, assaulting Zio’s senses. In the back of his mind, the trauma of being separated from Devan burnt ever-bright. But for the first time in days, something burnt brighter, and he latched onto the fury building inside him, used it to push on as the sound of fighting reached him, laced with blood and smoke.
The eastern boundary loomed ahead. Zio burst out of the trees, and the scene that greeted him almost drove him to his knees. Fire. So much fire. From the meeting hall, to the barracks, and even Varian’s house, the entire compound had been razed to the ground.
Shock hit Zio like a truck, but the impact was lost in the swelling rage. Through the smoke and chaos, he caught sight of the bungalow he’d shared with Emma for his entire adult life until her death, and her face was suddenly all he could see. Anger had been Zio’s constant companion from the moment she’d died in his arms, but it had lessened in recent weeks, overwhelmed by Zio’s every thought and emotion revolving around Devan.
But Devan wasn’t there, and without his scent to calm Zio’s wolf, the craving for vengeance returned full force.
Zio skidded to a stop on the brow of Varian’s garden. He tipped his head back and howled, his call to his pack brothers and sisters clear: This ends here.
Danielo split their forces and disappeared. Moments later, Zio’s paws were wet, soaked by the water pipes Danielo had ruptured with his gift. Yes. Zio howled again, jerked his head forwards, and leapt into the fray.
Enemy wolves were everywhere, dozens of them. Hundreds. The more Zio killed, the more seemed to appear. Northern wolves fell, each death a lance through Zio’s heart he’d never forget. Somewhere behind him, Michael’s pained howl ripped through the air. Zio whirled around, but an enemy wolf leapt at him before he could locate his wounded brother.
Fur and blood filled Zio’s mouth as he grappled with the larger wolf. Zio was fast, but his assailant was heavy and strong, and his teeth tore into Zio’s flank.
&
nbsp; Zio yelped, distracted by the fiery pain, and it was the opening the enemy wolf needed. He threw Zio down, knocking the breath from his lungs, and bared his teeth.
Saliva dripped from blood-stained fangs onto Zio’s face. The stench of hatred left him dizzy, laced with the acrid scent of his own fear. He struggled beneath the weight of the huge wolf paw holding him down. The gash in his side opened up, exposing bone, and an agonised whine escaped him.
Buoyed by the herbal pills Devan had prescribed, Zio’s body fought to heal itself as he battled to escape. More blood. More pain. Zio raked his claws down the enemy wolf’s chest, twisting and scraping, inflicting as much damage as possible. The wolf cried out. For an instant, Zio surged, and the ground shook beneath him, but the size difference between them was too great, and he found himself on his back again, throat exposed, ready for certain death.
Caught in a vortex of fear and acceptance, he stopped struggling, gaze snared on the fangs baring down on him. The enemy wolf dipped his head to end Zio. He braced himself for searing pain, for the lifeblood to be torn from him and spat on the ground, but the final, finishing bite never came. A brindle wolf crashed into them from the side. The huge paw constricting Zio’s chest disappeared, and sounds of a fierce fight reached him as he gasped in air. But it was over in a flash, and then Michael stood over him, panting, bleeding, eyes wide with concern.
Michael: You good?
Dazed, Zio rolled over and sprang to his feet, nosing Michael’s wounds as his own knitted together. You need Devan.
Michael: He’s not here.
Of course he wasn’t. Zio had made sure of that, commandeering every vehicle to race his forces back north before Devan had returned to camp from his phone call, an action he bitterly regretted as Michael limped towards him. In a split second, he’d had to decide their course. He’d put the need to protect his potential mate above the lives of his brothers. Of his pack. And now they were outnumbered without their healer, and dozens of them were already dead.
“Zio.” Hands shook Zio’s shoulders—human hands.
Zio blinked, and Michael stood before him, battered and bruised. Zio nudged him with his nose. Change back. It’s not safe. He punctuated the command Michael couldn’t hear with a low whine.
Michael shook Zio again. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. We don’t have time. If we can’t win this fight, we need to retreat.”
No.
“Yes.” Michael knew Zio well enough to counter his wordless protest. “I don’t smell Varian anywhere. He’s either dead, or they took him away. Gale too. We’re outnumbered, brother. We’re not getting out of this unless we fall back.”
Varian. In Zio’s haste to enter the fray, he’d barely stopped to consider their alpha, but Michael was right. Zio scented the air. There was no fresh trace of Varian or Gale’s unit anywhere. Where are they?
Michael shot a nervous glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know where they are. But we need to regroup to find out. Fighting blind is just going to get us all killed.”
He was right, like he always was, but in the five seconds Zio had wasted forcing Michael to ram the truth down his throat, the scene in Varian’s garden had changed. Ten enemy wolves had become twenty . . . thirty, to Zio’s nine, and new fires burnt.
They were surrounded.
Devan followed the scent of blood, battle, and Zio as though he was being dragged behind a bullet train. His tiger ate up the miles, a silver-white blur to any human who saw him, but it still felt like a lifetime had passed by the time the burning compound appeared on the horizon.
The air was thick with humans and their army vehicles. Their weapons. In the sky above, a helicopter hovered. Devan slowed his pace and slunk along the tree line until he found a safe place to shift into human form, grateful he’d possessed the wherewithal to sling his clothes in a bag around his neck before he’d torn away from the border camp.
He dressed in a flash and emerged from the forest, tracking Zio and his brothers to the smoking ruins of Varian’s house. Bodies, enemy and pack, littered the ground. Devan healed every soul who carried the pack scent. Most faces he didn’t catch. Over and over, he dug deep for his powers and emptied his pockets of the tinctures and herbs Zio had helped him gather.
Unknown time had passed when his supplies ran dry. He fell back on his heels as the wolf in front of him staggered to her feet and darted away on wobbly legs. An enemy fighter lunged for her. She evaded, barely.
Devan rocked back and stood, gaze caught on the enemy wolf as it scanned the smouldering mess that remained of Varian’s garden. Blood squelched beneath his feet. So much blood. Devan’s only comfort was that none of it was Zio’s or any wolf he’d called brother over the last few weeks.
The enemy wolf was big, with muscular shoulders that signalled enhanced beta strength, perhaps even that of an alpha. Shock hit Devan as their eyes met. Most shifters possessed a human touch even in animal form, but not this one. Face caught in a snarl, gaze manic with the rush of violence and death, the wolf was pure evil, like nothing Devan had ever seen.
And he wasn’t alone.
More enemy wolves entered the garden. They seemed to be looking for something, and when their collective attention fell on Devan, a warning growl built among them.
Devan widened his stance, the first ripples of a shift hovering at the edge of his consciousness. Under the terms Dash had negotiated, he had every right to be on the ground, healing the pack he’d been embedded with. Any reasonable pack leaders would know that, but as the enemy wolves advanced on Devan, he realised that the crazed glint in the first wolf’s eyes hadn’t been unique to him. Damn. They’re all like it.
For the first time, a shimmer of fear ran through Devan. Until that moment, he’d been so hellbent on finding Zio—and helping as many as he could along the way—that his own safety had barely occurred to him. But the sheer number of deranged wolves creeping closer was fucking terrifying.
“I like it when you curse.”
“What?”
“When you swear. It makes me laugh.”
“Yeah, well. I like it when you laugh, so call it even?”
Warmth tried its luck against the disquiet coursing through Devan’s gut, but even Zio’s voice echoing in his head wasn’t enough to distract him. If they come for me, I’m dead. I have to shift.
The rush of energy that came before a shift gathered power in Devan’s senses. His vision sharpened, hearing zeroed in on sounds he hadn’t noticed in his human form alone. The scents of his assailants intensified.
A quiet pop pierced the air. A thud hit Devan’s side, as though he’d been punched.
He snorted. They’re throwing things at me? They really have lost their minds. He steeled himself for the shift, eager for his bones to snap and elongate. He’d always enjoyed the pain, embraced it, revelled in it. As he’d got older, he’d taken the thrill for granted, but that had changed since he’d come to England and lived within the limitations of his complex new life. Now, every sensation that zipped through him was something he’d never felt before. Every jolt and shudder. The flashes of pain stretched out longer, deeper. And his shift didn’t come.
What the—
But the thought didn’t complete. Senses that had been fleetingly sharp dulled as though a dark cloud had been dropped on the world. Weakness replaced power. Bile surged in Devan’s throat, and he fell forwards, bracing himself on the burnt ground until his arms crumpled and his head hit the concrete with a sickening crack.
Devan woke up in a cage in a damp, dark room. His own blood stained his skin and clothes, and the scent was overpowering. He retched, the sensation as alien to him as having four legs had been the first time he’d ever shifted. His stomach emptied, and his head swam. White dots danced in his eyes. Gods, what happened to me?
He fell onto his back. The ceiling above was as black as the night sky, and he possessed no idea what it meant. Everything hurts. He ran his hands over his body but found no open wounds. The blood he sme
lt was fresh, but where had it come from?
“Don’t move,” a voice murmured from somewhere close by. “You healed from the shot, but you were already too weak to recover from losing so much blood.”
It took Devan a long moment to compute the words. He forced his heavy eyes to open wider and searched for the source. His gaze fell on a young woman crouched in the corner of the cage, blonde hair matted, skin streaked with grime. “It’s you,” he slurred.
She offered him a half-smile. “If by that you mean I’m the enemy wolf you rescued from the death sentence your mate passed on me, then, yeah, it’s me.”
“I don’t have a mate.”
“I think you do—”
The girl was cut off by approaching footsteps, heavy with enemy scent. Devan forced himself upright, bones and joints screaming with every movement. Three shifter men were at the cage bars before he could blink, each one a head taller than any northern pack Devan had ever seen. Stronger, maybe, than even Luca.
No—
“Where is he?”
Devan blinked. Somehow he’d missed the first shifter crouching in front of him, only iron bars between them. “Who?”
“Your alpha.”
Which one? But Devan’s muddled mind snared the question before it escaped. He hadn’t shifted. There was still a chance his captors hadn’t figured out who he was. That somehow they hadn’t noticed his scent was unlike any wolf they had come across before. You’re not that lucky.
But perhaps he didn’t need luck. The air was saturated with the blood of a hundred wolves. To Devan, only a faint trace of Zio stood out. He swallowed thickly. “I don’t know where my alpha is.”
“Liar.”
“If you say so.”
The huge southern shifter growled and punched the iron bars of the cage, bending them with the force of the blow.
Fated Hearts Page 17
