Breaking Free

by Layla Nash

  “Is not my business to share,” Sasha said, reverting back to his meathead foreigner role. “Now fight, before the wolf takes over and I call Owen to shoot you with dart.”

  Nick shook himself and growled, bringing his fists up to guard his face. He didn’t want to risk another scar or to break his nose yet again. Lacey wouldn’t want to be with a grizzled mess. A few scars were sexy, but too many more than he already had and he’d cross over into scary old man territory.

  The wolf snarled as he ducked one of the bear’s punches, and he got serious about the fight. From the look in Sasha’s eye, he wanted Nick to suffer, regardless of whether he thought the past was in the past. The bear looked ready for payback, and Nick was happy enough to give him the opportunity. Maybe then he’d be able to sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  Lacey

  I didn’t sleep well, but that wasn’t anything new. Cal haunted my dreams when I managed to drift off, and Nick haunted my thoughts as I tried to puzzle through everything else that needed to get done in my life. The worst part of being queen wasn’t the risk to my life and limb through constant challenges and sparring with other packs in the area, but dealing with the day-to-day of running an enormous family.

  The grocery bills alone were enough to make me run away. Add in the rowdy hyena teenagers jostling for rank and running through the city causing mayhem, and wandering into the forest to live as a hermit looked more and more appealing. Even with Savannah’s help, and my security chief Cassidy’s, the to-do list never got done.

  It just got longer.

  I tossed and turned until midmorning, a raging headache burning behind my eyes, but finally dragged myself out of bed and to the kitchen around lunchtime. Coffee didn’t help, and neither did a greasy egg sandwich and bacon. At least no one dared disturb me until I decided I was ready to be disturbed, unless something catastrophic happened. And I’d defined “catastrophe” very narrowly for Cass and Savannah.

  As soon as I left my room and headed for the office, Sav popped out of the woodwork with a list of things to sign and authorize and review. One of the kids got in trouble at school and her mother requested I have a come-to-Jesus talk with her before she went down a bad path. I wanted to put my fist through the wall. Why couldn’t her mother have that talk? Why did the queen have to do it? I never had the chance to celebrate with the pack. I was always the hammer, searching for a nail to pound into nothingness.

  And then there was a dispute between two hyenas over living quarters and who got the better view from the den. I signed them both into the basement and held the two apartments back for when someone did something positive for once. The cackle hadn’t learned yet not to bother me with petty bullshit and sort it out among themselves. It still felt like they tested me at every turn, even after a year of bulldozing through their petty squabbles. No wonder Mother had always been pissed off.

  Cass showed up a few hours into the glut of administrivia, and at least brought something interesting with her. They planned another raid against the BadCreek compound, and had been surveilling the location closely for the last few weeks in preparation. We needed to get over the fence and into the compound to test their reaction times, and to at least provoke a reaction. The more frequently we tested their security, the faster we’d lull them into a false sense of security. Then, when we came for blood and the real attack unfolded, BadCreek would react as if it were just another test. Or so we hoped.

  Sav leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on a table, frowning at the map that Cass pinned to the wall. “It’s too soon after the last one. We’re starting to establish a pattern.”

  “No, we’re not,” Cassidy said. She’d shaved her head recently and looked particularly imposing, steel gray eyes reflecting my mother more than I cared for. Cass was a first cousin, while Savannah was a second cousin—not that the blood relationship really mattered. I’d been betrayed by my own sister, and saved by a friend.

  “I’ll be the judge,” I said, and left it at that.

  Cass laid out the plan—a run at the back fence, where needed repairs went neglected. Savannah shook her head and got up to pace, muttering about bait to draw us into an ambush. The photos Cass provided told a strange story, and appeared to show some anomalies around the damage that could have been magic. None of us knew enough about magic to really tell what it was, but it made me hesitate. BadCreek had a djinn under their control, and we’d never really seen what he could do. If he was anything like the fae, we didn’t want to run into him. Ever.

  I tapped my nails against my teeth as I studied the photos and the map. The doubt that crept under my skin came with Cal’s voice, warning me that danger came when things looked too good to be true. Was it worth risking some of my family to poke BadCreek in the eye?

  “What do we expect to get out of this?” I asked. We’d run a similar test against the western fence only two weeks earlier. “Other than pissing them off.”

  Cass sketched out a blurry building on one of the overhead photos we’d gotten from Edgar Chase, the lion security chief. He had enough connections in the police department to get good imagery. “This area, along the back fence, is where we’ve assessed some of the children might be kept. From the generators and HVAC there, we think it’s part of a lab. If we’re successful in getting through the fence without being caught, we might be able to enter the lab and get some of the kids.”

  “Or a full team of their crazy drugged-up super soldiers could be waiting in that tiny little box to kill you. Or—worse—capture you.”

  Savannah’s teeth glinted as she watched Cass. “This is too risky.”

  Cass wasn’t having it. “You haven’t been out there every night for the last three months. This is going to work.”

  “Have you seen the children, or are you guessing?” My head ached more, and I debated going back to bed for the afternoon. If I left them to it, Cassidy and Savannah would keep arguing until I decided to wake up again.

  “We have indicators,” Cass said after a long pause. She tossed more photographs on the pile, pointing at blurry faces in the few windows of the building. “Enough to go on.”

  “This?” I said, holding up one of the photos. It looked like a smudge, not a child. “That’s what you’re going to risk my people for?”

  Cass shook her head. “That’s not it. We’ve seen them, we just can’t capture it on film. They’re too fast.”

  I sighed, rubbing at my temples. “Why tonight, then?”

  “The moon is new, so their vision will be impeded. We’ll be able to move faster and get closer before they notice us.” Cass stared at me with a curious intensity, as if she could just will me to agree through concentration alone. She’d always been a good security officer, and was willing to put her life on the line for anything the pack needed.

  My fingers drummed the table, loud in the quiet room, and I finally tossed the photos back onto the map. “I’ll think about it. When is your go time?”

  “Eleven,” she said. “We need to be in position by ten thirty, so we can pull the trigger at 11:18 p.m. That’s when their security patrols gap.”

  “I’ll give you an answer by nine,” I said. I shoved to my feet and headed for the door. “I’ll be in the gym. Don’t bother me for the next hour.”

  Sav started to object, gesturing at the overflowing inbox on my desk, but I didn’t stop to argue.

  Even an hour on the treadmill didn’t help me decide what to do on the raid. The possibility of rescuing children from BadCreek tempted me to risk anything, although BadCreek likely knew we would do anything to get them free. Sav had a point that BadCreek could have prepared an ambush. And we were pretty much on our own—the other shifters in the city backed off after the last big battle with BadCreek, when their alpha and Smith disappeared into nothingness. The lions had a whole litter of new cubs to worry about, and the bears juggled efforts to keep the human mobsters at bay and to manage an expanding effort to get victims of many crimes out of the city and
to safety. The wolves picked at each other, jockeying for territory and rank despite the notional truce, and the jackals remained silent in their grief. We’d heard nothing from the coyotes since the wolf pack who briefly stood up for them crushed the alpha after a coyote betrayal. So the hyenas stood alone against BadCreek.

  We had to free the rest of the women and children, if any remained inside the compound, and kill the men who tortured them and used them for medical experiments. I couldn’t in good conscience live my relatively pampered life as queen of the hyenas knowing that innocent children were subjected to experiments at the hands of mad scientists.

  Despite Savannah’s objections, I gave Cassidy the go-ahead, but took command of the raid myself. I’d be there to watch it unfold, and I’d be the one to make the call on whether or not to go into BadCreek. If some of my people could die in the battle, I wanted the decision to be mine. If their blood would be on anyone’s hands, it would be on mine. That’s how leaders led.

  My stomach curdled with nerves, though, as we made the silent trip outside the city to the forest around the compound. Cass gave orders quietly into a radio, and the two teams spread out to pre-coordinated positions. Half the teams shifted into their hyena forms to further blend in, and dispersed like a crowd of ghosts into the undergrowth and the trees.

  I stayed near Cass as we moved closer the compound, pulling out night vision binoculars so I could scan the compound.

  Not much moved, just a few sentries closing out their rounds for the night. Maybe Cass was right, and BadCreek became so desensitized to our incursions that they didn’t bother to surge security during the new moon. Or maybe it was a trap. I waited for my hyena side to weigh in, to bring those instincts to the fore, but she remained silent. Maybe she was still hungover from the night before.

  I had to make the call. There wasn’t any more time to debate and reconsider. There might have been children waiting to be rescued. I nodded to Cass, and a brief grin flashed at me through the dark. Without even a sliver of moon showing, even my hyena vision had a tough time finding her in the forest. The radios clicked a few times, and then we moved forward.

  It happened quickly. Hyenas flooded toward the fence, followed by a few humans, and I started after them, even though I’d meant to stay in the trees. A few floodlights came on in the compound as the hyenas breached the fence, and I growled in support. We’d get there. We would at least find the building and figure out what was inside, maybe destroy the lab equipment to make it more difficult for BadCreek to torment their prisoners.

  I took a deep breath and clenched my fists as the fight unfolded. A few guards ran toward the hyenas, but not nearly enough, based on our earlier raid. My stomach sank. Something wasn’t right. I grabbed the radio and gave the order to retreat, not wanting to lose anyone, but nothing changed. They didn’t respond. More of my people went into the building, others pulling guard, and I searched for Cassidy in the chaos. What the hell was she doing?

  “Get out of there,” I hissed into the radio, and reached for some of the alpha prerogative that let me exert a little influence over my people.

  Some of them flinched and started to retreat, but more BadCreek guards raced out. I straightened, ready to abandon my human form to run in and save them, but the world tilted around me. I sucked in air as something cold tightened around my chest and I couldn’t move or breathe, and I felt myself floating, dragged into the trees. I couldn’t see what held me, but it was stronger than any man or shifters as I thrashed and fought back. The ground grew farther and farther away and I screamed into nothingness as I envisioned the worst: a very long death at the hands of the BadCreek scientists. Falling to my death would have been preferable. I tried once more to scream into the radio, but my hands wouldn’t work. The band around my chest tightened and I lashed out at what looked like a blue arm, and I turned enough to see the face of what I could only assume was the djinn.

  He smiled, teeth pointy, and all the air disappeared around me, even though I could still see the stars.

  Chapter Ten

  Nick

  Nick spent most of the day pacing the confines of his room, irritated beyond reason that Sasha dimed him out to the alpha bear and Kaiser insisted on locking Nick up until they could be sure the wolf was no longer in control. By the end of the fight with Sasha, even with the physical exertion and alcohol, the wolf managed to wrestle his way to the top and Nick found himself a passenger in his own head. He knew he would eventually get back on top, even with the crusty old wolf calling the shots, so he wasn’t too concerned, but the alpha bear thought of his family and the cubs first. And the bear didn’t trust the wolf with anything.

  So Nick had plenty of time to think and plot, as control shifted between him and the wolf. He didn’t expect much from the sorcerer, but he had high hopes for the leprechaun. Finding Smith would solve most of their problems, if the ErlKing was in any condition to actually help once he was freed. Depending on where he’d been kept and what kept him, of course. Nick glanced up as his sister appeared in the small window in his door, her expression difficult to decipher.

  Kara unlocked the door and slid inside, carrying a tray of food, and Nick thought about making a run for it, just to cause some trouble for Kaiser. But Kara’s mate, Owen, waited in the hall and kept an eye on them both. The wolf growled at the kid, still not liking that Nick’s sister smelled too much like the bear.

  She gave him a sharp-eyed look, though. “Cut it out. Sit down and eat your lunch.”

  “Not my fault,” Nick said, his voice gravelly. The wolf grudgingly gave up control, retreating to the periphery to rest, and Nick braced himself for a fight later. “This is ridiculous. I don’t need to be locked up.”

  “Not your call,” she said, echoing his words. Kara flipped dark hair over her shoulder and folded her arms over her chest as she sat in one of the two chairs, though her nose wrinkled as she pushed some dirty socks off the arm. “You need to clean up in here.”

  “I like it this way.” Nick tore into the massive roast she’d brought, not bothering with utensils. Sometimes having the animal in control gave him an excuse to act like a barbarian and dispense with those irritating social niceties. Like forks and knives. “And I’m not going to do any damage around the place. The cubs are safe around me.”

  Kara didn’t blink. “What are you up to, Nick?”

  “What are you talking about?” He ignored the carrots and cabbage on the plate, though he scooped up the potatoes and turnips. A good hearty meal. She’d always been a smart girl. Too good to be related to him, really.

  “Nick, come on. You can’t fool me. You’re up to something, and I need to know what it is.”

  He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair, still holding half the roast in his hand. “You need to know, or that bear needs to know?” And Nick tilted his head at where Owen still watched them through the window.

  A hint of flush colored her cheeks, but she didn’t back down. “Me, Nick. Tell me.”

  He grumbled and focused on eating, though he knew she’d wait. The wolf knew it had been a bad idea to let her in, even if the food was delicious. Chances were the alpha’s mate cooked it; Kara couldn’t boil water if her life depended on it, but Josie made sure no one starved. He needed to bring her a gift to repay her. A deer, maybe. Some rabbits.

  Nick blinked and shook himself, pushing the wolf back further. Although Josie was the practical sort and probably would appreciate a deer to feed her growing family.

  But Kara still waited, and the longer the silence stretched, the guiltier he felt. So Nick sighed and put down the roast, wiping his face with a handful of the napkins she brought. “I’m looking for Smith.”

  “Smith? But he’s…gone away. Somewhere else.” Kara shook her head, a hint of fear sparking in her eyes. “He’s gone, Nick. No one knows how to get him back. It’s too dangerous to try.”

  “I asked some old friends for help,” Nick said. He shrugged and went back to the roast. “I don’t hav
e anything to lose, looking for him, so why shouldn’t I? What if he’s stuck and needs help?”

  “You have me to lose, jerk.” Kara folded her arms over her chest. “And what if you get stuck, too?”

  “I’m not going there myself,” he said. “I can’t. No shifters can. So I’ll see if my friends will do it for me. And if they can’t, then we come up with another plan.”

  Kara’s eyes narrowed. “Friends? What kind of friends?”

  Nick laughed, getting up to scrub the rest of the meat juice from his hands. “What, you’re worried I’m hanging around with hooligans? Come on, Kara. Friends, people I work with... It’s all the same, and not something you want to be mixing about in.”

  “I’m worried about you,” she said, and that was enough to strike a chord in Nick’s heart. He didn’t like her worried, no more than he liked Lacey worried. The wolf, at least, agreed on that.

  “Don’t be,” Nick said. He leaned back against the wall near the bathroom, hoping she would believe him. “I don’t have anything else to do in the city, so bringing Smith back seemed like a small way to pay back what the other shifters have given me.”

  That rankled. The other shifters imprisoned him after he was freed from BadCreek, so that deserved some other sort of payback, at least as far as Nick was concerned.

  Kara sighed as she leaned forward, watching him closely. She didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t much else Nick could tell her. “Are you back in control, Nick?”

  “Of course.” He smiled winningly, resisting the urge to check his watch. He’d received a note from the leprechaun earlier, and he didn’t want to be late. Hugo was trouble enough even when everything went according to plan.

  She laughed, rolling her eyes. “You think that’s going to work?”

  “It always did before.” Nick strolled over so he could kiss the top of her head. “Besides, I’m the older brother. You’re supposed to do what I say, kid.”