by Mary Hughes
She tried to slow him, tangling her feet in his legs, managing to make him stumble.
“Keep it up, see what you get.” He cuffed her in the face with his full strength. Her brain exploded in a headache of vomiting migraine proportions. As the world spun around her and her stomach threatened to evacuate, he hefted her and lugged her off the sidewalk onto a nearby grassy area.
“You can’t do this,” she croaked. “I’m mated.” Or she had been.
“You’d better hope that’s not true.” He dumped her onto the ground. “Because if I can’t have you, no one can. I’ll see to it.”
“You’d k-kill me?”
“In a heartbeat. I own you.” He grabbed her arm and used it to lift her, shoving their faces together. “You’re mine.” He released her to fall to her hands and knees on the ground.
Her knees crumpled. Her aching head, too heavy, dropped to the earth.
He pushed a boot onto the back of her neck, grinding her face into the dirt.
Her stomach ejected what remained of her impromptu dinner at the motel into her hair. Like the drugged drink at the beginning of all this. She’d come full circle.
Despair filled her.
I’m not fine. Not fine at all. She was alone and outnumbered and even her family was against her. Gabriel was her only hope, but even if he wasn’t busy saving his sister and dealing with Ryder, how would he find her?
Unless she stopped Bruiser herself, he’d rape her or conquer her magically. Either way would reduce her to a ghost of herself, worse than a slave.
He began chanting.
And, if none of that worked, he’d kill her. She almost wished for that, except she’d never see Gabriel again.
Never see his smiling face, hear his horrible jokes…
Tears trickled down her face, pooled rivulets in the dirt. “You don’t love me. You don’t even care about me. Why won’t you let me go?”
Bruiser stopped chanting to scream, “I own you. What does caring have to do with that? You’re a fucking iota. You’re nothing! Singer, show her just how nothing she is.”
Her brother’s hand brutally stapled her nape to the ground, forcing her face-first again into the earth.
Edge, breath billowing foul against her, said low and vicious, “Look here, you iota bitch. Nobody cares that you’re unhappy. Nobody.”
Loam filled her mouth, the taste of defeat. Iota bitch, littlest and least. Her body was broken, her mind almost as shattered; her whole being hurt. And her own brother was shoving her down farther. Making her impotent for more breaking, more hurt.
Nobody cared…but that was wrong. Gabriel cared. More, he’d seen past the small, cute female to the core of who she tried to be. He’d filled her with a different message, that she was smart and beautiful and worthy.
She fought back, twisting under Edge’s grip until she freed one hand. “I am not nothing!”
A backfist into his face sent him stumbling away, hand over his nose, blood leaking from beneath. She leaped to her feet, concussion only half-healed but, riding the anger, she punched his hand and nose into kindling.
In her periphery, Bruiser pulled a gun from the small of his back. He must’ve thought she’d called up her berserker because he shouted, “Your talent will be mine. I won’t let you use it against me!”
“You want my talent?” she screamed, throwing herself sideways.
He fired rapidly, bang-bang-bang, following her. The gun jerked with each shot as if he was making a check mark with the nozzle.
A bullet grazed her arm. She continued to roll, more rounds spitting in the dirt behind her. “That’s the real reason you’ve been after me? My fucking talent?”
“I’ll be unbeatable,” Bruiser panted. He took a firmer grip on the gun, pointed it at her chest and pulled the trigger, blam, blam, click.
The second round caught her in the ribs, an arrow of white-hot pain skewering her.
Her berserker tasted it. Use me, it crooned.
She was tempted, but unchecked, where would the beast stop? When its claws had ripped Bruiser into a pile of gore? When her brother’s blood filled its stomach? When her mother and anyone else it could find lay dead, a massacred pile of bodies?
Last time, only powerful magic had stopped it. The time before that, it had taken three strong males.
Who’d stop her beast now?
“I waited for you to see your place in my pack. To give me your allegiance and your talent. Give me what I deserve.” Bruiser drove a second magazine home, then followed her with the nozzle of the gun as she clambered to her feet. “I’m not waiting anymore.”
He unloaded the clip into her.
A firestorm of pain hit her. Belly, arms, legs. She stumbled.
He shot the last bullet into her chest. A sucked breath nearly punched her unconscious. Punctured lung. She fell.
Her wolf scrambled to heal her, but it was almost impossible to know where to start in the Swiss cheese that was her body. Bruiser would kill her now.
As blood bubbled from her mouth, ugly red choler rose inside her, her iota talent. Now you must accept me, it purred. Free yourself.
The urge was so strong she almost gave into it. Let it take her over.
Let it kill.
It’d be so easy. All she had to do was let go, and the beast would eliminate the pain, the threat. Everything.
Including, perhaps, her mother.
Who’d stop her beast now?
Her vision darkened.
Would Emma ever return?
In her tunneling vision, Bruiser came to stand over her, gun pointed at her face. “I’ve had enough of you. When you wake, you’ll be mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In the twilight of consciousness, Emma’s brain started flashing images. Her entire life shifted like a mosaic of live tiles—not for review by some heavenly gate-guard, but shuffling through her memories, desperately trying to find a way out.
One image burst free. Landing in Gabriel’s strong arms after falling from the Choice Buy’s ladder, his chiseled jaw, his lids lifting, irises that startling, star-struck blue-green.
“Emma, you’re safe with me.”
“Gabriel,” she moaned.
“Don’t say that fucker’s name.” Bruiser slammed a kick into her head, cracking her cheekbone, bright pain throwing her back from the abyss of unconsciousness. She tasted blood.
Her berserker wolf tasted it too. Use me. Accept me.
“Emma.” Gabriel’s voice. Not a memory but him, ringing along an impossible, unseen connection, a slender tether between them.
How? Her mating tie was gone.
But that was definitely Gabriel’s voice, whispering in her mind. “Let go.”
Could he be urging her to use her berserker talent?
“I c-can’t.”
Bruiser pointed the gun in her wavering sight. “Shut up. Or I’ll make you. Permanently.”
“It’s for the best.” The beast should die.
“Emma.” Faint. Almost indistinct. Yet Gabriel’s voice continued. “You’re ashamed of the beast. I get that. But shameful isn’t the same as immoral.”
And if it kills?
“You’re a good person. You won’t let it kill anyone.”
Nobody’s here to stop it.
“You’ll stop it.”
What if I can’t?
A beat. “You’re afraid. I’m sorry. But fear and shame—they only hurt you. Bruiser has hurt a harem full of females. Eventually he’ll kill them.”
Tears trickled from beneath her lids, tracking down the muck on her face, dirt mixed with her blood. Hot blood, her blood, spilled by Edge, by Bruiser’s fist and bullets, by males who thought they deserved anything and everything up to and including the lives of their females.
Females who trusted them.
“Those women,” Gabriel said. “They need your beast.”
Use me. Accept me.
Her flesh began to knit. Her punctured lung sealed. A sob shook
her. “I-it might take me over.”
Bruiser shouted, “Who are you talking to, cunt? Answer me!”
“Emma, darling…I’m coming for you, but it took too long to find you. I won’t make it in time. Let your strength surge, sweetheart. Do it for me.”
Her berserker snarled. Kill kill kill.
She struggled to hold it. “After Bruiser it’ll slaughter my brother. My mother.”
“Shut up, shut up!” Bruiser screamed—and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened besides a click. Bruiser howled.
Gabriel said, “Look at her. Look at him. She’s dead anyway. You can’t make it worse.”
She opened her eyes. Her mother knelt outside the sacred ground, head down. Unable or unwilling to defend herself.
But there was no mistaking the alpha’s expression, wild eyes, pin-prick pupils, spittle flecking him as he dug a fresh magazine from somewhere and rammed it into place. He’d kill not only Emma, but her mother—ending their lives simply because Emma had dared to deny him.
Because he thought he had the right.
“Fight back,” Gabriel said. “We’ll deal with the consequences later. Do it.”
We. He’d said we.
His acceptance opened the door for her own. Yes, her iota talent was shameful, and it was entirely possible she might lose herself to it forever. But damn it, no man had the right to make of her, or any woman, what Bruiser had. She had to at least try to fight him.
I am not nothing.
It was time to use the only weapon she had left.
She let the beast free.
Her berserker roared through her blood like fire. Lightning fast, it twisted her, throwing them sideways as the gun barked.
Hot lead tore a groove along her back. She arched in pain but the berserker howled and shoved her aside.
Emma saw everything like a passenger, with no control. Fear iced her gut as red rage filled her blood and vision. Immense claws slashed everywhere in retribution. Rich, coppery blood flew. Meat tore with wet sensuality. The berserker raised its face and opened Emma’s mouth to the salty, hot drops.
The butchery went on and on. A prisoner inside her own body, she was overwhelmed with the violence. Horrified, but eventually even horror died to numbness.
She felt herself floating in all the red, red blood while her berserker raged, unchecked.
The faint echo of Gabriel’s voice, more a memory than reality.
“You’re a good person. You won’t let it kill anyone.”
What if I can’t?
Tears filled her soul. She wasn’t a good person, or at least not good enough to stop the carnage.
“No.” Gabriel’s faint voice, almost gone. “You are good enough.” A beat. “I wrote the recommendation to prove it.”
Deep inside the numb shell of herself, Emma’s heart hiccupped. His bad humor, always at the wrong time and place…or just the right time.
Enough. She said it to the beast. That’s enough.
You accepted me, it snarled.
Yes. Now accept me. “That’s enough.” She rasped it out loud. Pushed the beast’s head down, asserting dominance.
It growled. You’re nobody without me.
“You’re wrong. Bruiser was wrong. I’m not nobody. I’m a Techie Titan, a daughter and sister. I’m a member of the Blackwood pack. I have people who care about me. But even without all those, I’m somebody. I always have been.”
Oh yeah? Who’s that? Emma Singer? Emma Sharpclaw? Taunting, Emma Light?
No. I’m me. She rasped it out loud. “I’m me. And I demand my talent let go of my life.”
It yielded.
As her berserker rage receded, Emma became aware of herself. She stood there, stinking of blood, her clothes stiff with it, her face and hands doused in it.
Her brother—was alive. He sat on his haunches, blood spattered over him, his eyes like plates as he stared at her, trembling.
Her mother—thank God, her mother was alive too, as she tottered to stand beside him, her shaking hand rising to cover her mouth. Pointing at Emma’s feet.
Slowly she looked down.
Bruiser lay there, his throat torn out…and his heart, lungs, and stomach.
His guts were strewn about like discarded rope.
Emma tried to feel something, anything, that would connect her to reality…but her ears rang, and even the cues of her heartbeat and breathing were muffled. The beast had done this?
No, she had done this.
Her stomach heaved. “What have I done?” she whispered.
“Live,” Gabriel had told her. “Deal with the consequences later.”
Now was later. She wanted to die.
He was wrong. She should have died.
Then, when everything already seemed utterly surreal…her mother sank slowly to one knee.
“M-my liege,” Shalla said.
The position…was as to a triumphant new alpha.
“No!” Edge grabbed his bracelet almost frantically. “Me. It’s me who beat Bruiser. I won. I’m the new alpha.”
Shalla’s head rose, eyes blinking against some sort of compulsion…and slowly her gaze cleared. “The witch who powered your magic bracelet is gone, the residual power drained.” She tore off her amethyst necklace and threw it on the ground. “I’m in my own mind now.”
“Mother?” Edge’s voice broke. “I didn’t want… I-I was just trying to get what I deserved. What we deserved.”
“Oh, Elroy.” Shalla shook her head, expression infinitely sad. “I have so many regrets. But for now…” She rose and intoned, “The king is dead. Long live the king!”
Emma glanced down at Bruiser’s broken body. Even though his torn throat looked like a bloom of meat, it was slowly healing. Surprisingly, the king wasn’t dead. Not dead, but he was defeated.
By her.
“The sacred ground…” She spun in place, hardly believing it. There, in each corner of the grassy space, were the four slat talismans Edge had planted, four wolvish charms to make this a true sacred ground.
The fight taking place here, between alpha and challenger, became a real alpha fight.
Bruiser was ex-king. Which made the new king…
“Emma. Are you okay?” Gabriel’s concern twanged on that invisible connection. He must have gotten rid of the limiter.
“I’m fine.”
But she was nowhere near fine.
She was the new Scottville alpha.
Deal with the consequences.
There were too many to count, so Emma started with the ones she could handle. She scooped up her mother’s broken necklace, commandeered Edge’s matching bracelet, and shoved both in her pocket. She shoveled Bruiser’s organs back in, hauled his body into the truck bed, and deputized Edge to watch over him. Maybe not the best solution, and she’d never trust her brother again, but for now she only wanted one thing—to find Gabriel. To feel his arms around her. To hear him say it would be all right, even if nothing was all right, even if nothing would be all right ever again.
Even if, after he held her, he pushed her away forever.
She glanced at her mother. Shalla looked older. Sad, defeated. She refused to meet her daughter’s eyes.
With a deep sigh, Emma opened the truck cab’s passenger door and waved her mother inside.
Shalla hesitated, knifing Emma to her core. Beast.
“Mom, please.”
A flick of faded emerald eyes, a flash of something. Then Shalla curtsied and without a word, lifted herself into the truck.
Emma climbed into the driver’s seat. She remembered too late that the keys were still in Bruiser’s possession, got out, saw a family SUV start to pull into a space nearby. The driver’s eyes widened at her. His hands cranked the wheel in an awkward Y turn before the SUV screeched out of there as if the tires were on fire.
Oh yeah, bloody and battered, she probably looked like an extra from Scream XX. She shrugged. Deal with it later. Hopefully in Gabriel’s arms.
<
br /> Would he want to renew mating bonds with a slaughtering beast?
One thing at a time.
When she got the keys, the ex-alpha was already breathing. But it would take him a little longer to manufacture enough blood to get moving again, plenty of time to drive to Matinsfield.
More consequences to deal with later. Emma drove off.
Her mother kept glancing at her. Probably simply Shalla’s uncertainty, but each brief stare sliced like a dart.
Beast. How much of the brute will never be caged again?
Finally Emma said, “Mom, just say what’s on your mind.”
“Emma, I-I’m sorry.”
“What?” Emma’s hands tightened on the wheel. That wasn’t what she expected. “Sorry for what? You were obviously being controlled.”
“After Edge was released from prison, yes. That awful Enforcer gave him the means.” She touched her throat, where the necklace had lain. “But before that…my fears were controlling me.” She sighed.
“Mom, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Being a prisoner first in my home pack, then in my mate’s, then in my own body, watching while the world careened out of my control…you broke that cycle, Emma.”
“Not me.” She laughed, no humor. “My berserker.”
“Your talent. I didn’t see that before.” Shalla swallowed, shifted in her seat. “The day you caught me with Dickie Bloodfang’s brother, I said things. Things I felt were true, but now, in the light of my own son taking advantage of me… I’m sorry, Emma. I was mated young, to a male not of my own choosing. Your iota talent, well, it called up a slew of bad memories.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t choose Dad? You were mated. That’s what the emerald eyes mean.”
“Ezra and I were mates, yes. But joined by rituel marier—ritual mates, not chosen mates.” She sighed again, a whole lifetime of regret released in the heavy breath. “I came from a proud line of betas. But when I was a pup, my father discovered Scauth wasn’t as honorable as he should have been, and…” She swallowed hard. “Scauth killed him.”
“Mom…I never knew.”
“It was long ago. Dad had been too vocal in his objections to Scauth’s treatment of females and pups. He died in a pack hunting ‘accident’, but we all knew Scauth had him executed.
