by Zana Wilder
This frail, horrendously thin woman is their mother... Angus' wife. She's fucking alive. After all this time... she's alive! Although, if Angus keeps squeezing her like that she might not be for much longer.
She's wearing another of those fucking collars Liz has on – a dull metal circlet, just big enough to fit around her neck and no more. The skin on her neck is rubbed raw and there are some nasty oozing sores down one side – she must have had that thing on for months, maybe years.
The bile in my throat threatens to choke me. I have to distract myself before my anger takes me and I turn on the guards we've taken captive. The fight is mostly over up the stairs now – those that remain alive from the Coven's side have been tied up, ready to be questioned.
I organise the hostages to be carried to the nearest road by groups of shifters. I can't help myself, my eye keeps falling back to the captive guards.
Those that surrendered are huddled together, mostly staring at the floor. They're refusing to look at the state of their hostages as we help them out into the daylight, squinting and flinching at everything.
One of the rescued shifters is so weak she stumbles into a hog-tied guard and he spits on her in disgust. The look of revulsion crossing his face causes my last nerve to snap. I grab him up and dangle him off the ground in front of my nose.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?! Look.... look at what you've done, you disgusting piece of shit. Look at the state of these people, and the old witch? She's nearly dead. And all you can do is spit on them? Don't expect my mercy.”
The guard flails helplessly in the air clearly terrified, and a small glow of satisfaction rushes through me.
“I should kill you all now” I growl, my hand closing tighter on the bastard's windpipe.
I watch, almost detached, as the guard's face starts to turn red and he flails ever more wildly. His breath comes out in hisses as he fights for air. I just hold him, feeling a baleful satisfaction as the man stills and his eyes start to roll.
“Put him down!” Freya's voice at my elbow breaks through “Put him down right now! DOWN. NOW. This is not right Aaron!”
I glare at her and drop the man, who lands with a sickening crack on the floor. I make sure my boot makes rough contact with his windpipe again, and I threaten to press harder as he gasps for breath.
“Why should I stop?” I address the guard “you're a mercenary... you kill for money, right?”
The guard looks terrified but daren't move. Instead he glances wildly around for an escape, for an answer.
“Let me live, I'll tell you who your traitor is” he rasps out.
My rage dies instantly, replaced by a cool steely calm as I turn, following the man's quivering gaze to stare at my father's kappa. Fucking Rennard.
I suddenly remember the patrol guard calling him by his name, I'd been so full of adrenaline it hadn't registered. They shouldn't ever have met before tonight. I huge growl erupts from me, echoed by all the shifters around me.
Rennard is already in his wolf form and is running.
By the time the pack gives up chasing Rennard it's a long haul back to the bothy. It's nearly dawn when we finally load up the rescued shifters, our new hostages and Morganna and get back to the estate.
I knew I hated that man, I could just never put a finger on what it was about him – fucking traitor! I'm beyond furious he managed to escape. If I ever meet him again, I swear on the goddess I will kill him, excruciatingly slowly.
Something integral in my father has shifted; he's a broken man. Finding his beta's wife alive, when he'd persuaded Angus to give up on her, and learning of Rennard's betrayal has defeated him. He's deflated, he seems half the size of man he was.
For the first time, I step up into the role of Alpha, and it feels dangerously good. I have to stay grounded – I was way too close to loosing it with those guards. Killing hog-tied captives isn't exactly something a leader should do. Not the kind of leader I want to be at any roads. I have to keep a lid on my temper. Though Goddess knows it would have felt good to destroy them. A little thrill of animalistic hate reverberates through me at the thought.
I order my sister and Lyell be tracked down. They're taking far too long to resurface after our rescue mission. The way I caught Lyell staring at my baby sister has me worried. I might not exactly be against inter-species relations but this is my sister, and I know Lyell's history.
After congratulating them on their team work I send Aurora sulking back to her rooms, rolling her eyes like the teenager she is. I can't afford Lyell to be distracted by her – he has work to do. And she can't afford to fall for him. Not Lyell, please... I throw a half desperate plea to the Goddess.
The metal collars on Liz and Morganna prevent them accessing their powers. For Liz the collar is stopping her shifting, and for Morganna it's blocking her from her majik's force.
Liz couldn't change from her cougar back to human form when she was first captured, until a guard unlocked the collar with an electronic fob and forced her to shift back before locking it again. She's had the fucking thing on ever since, and who knows how long Morganna's been wearing hers. She won't talk.
It's imperative Lyell replicates the device's signal. Liz seems to be recovering but Morganna is fading. She's been locked off from her powers for so long, she's lost her sense of self. She just stares blankly ahead, not responding to anything, not even acknowledging Angus's existence. The old beta is inconsolable – he has his love back, and yet he doesn't.
I just hope Freya's right and that when Morganna gets the collar off she'll come back to herself. I'm worried though. Whenever I look at Morganna there's a weird twisting feeling in my gut; there's something not right with her.
Angus won't stop fussing around her- cleaning, bathing, dressing and feeding her like he's more suited to being a mother hen than a bloody wolf.
Tavey is acting beta beside me – there's no point in trying to force Angus to his job, his mind is completely focused on Morganna. Anyway, I'd rather have Tavey working beside me, even without Angus' distraction. Tavey is my beta, we work as a team.
I need details on the Coven, and so far the mercenaries we've captured won't bloody talk. We're going to have to extract the information more forcefully. I won't ask anyone else to do my dirty work. A little part of me thrills at the idea of making these guys pay anyway.
Freya will disapprove so, I won't tell her. She'll find out soon enough, and she can fucking thank me after. The mercenaries brought it on themselves – the filthy buggers chose to work for the Coven. They will talk, whether they intend to or not. I swear on the goddess I will make sure they talk before more harm comes to my pack.
The guard I already roughed up is a good target – he's got first hand experience of how very real my threats are.
I stomp through the holding cells until I locate him and order the shifter guarding his cell to open it. We enter together and I can smell the mercenary's fear when he sees me. It rolls off him in waves when I dismiss my guard, telling him not to return, no matter what he hears.
My rage slips as the door shuts behind him. I let loose on the mercenary, fists finding soft targets and bones crunching. A red haze descends. I can't stop. I won't stop. I've seen the state of those prisoners they kept, I've heard about the experiments and the torture. This fucker should pay. He will pay, I will make him pay.
Only when the man is a begging bloody mess in the corner do I manage to reign myself in and demand he answers me.
“P..p..p..please... stop. I'll tell you anything... please” he begs through a mouthful of broken teeth “please... just ... ask the question.”
I feel sick to my stomach. All my violence, and I haven't even asked him a question. What the fuck am I doing?!
My brain fog slowly clears and I finally ask the mercenary about the collars. He falls over himself to tell me the solution – the fobs are linked to finger prints. Until one of the mercenary's fingers activates the fob, it can't work as an electronic key.
>
I mind-link Lyell, who seems cautiously pleased with my news. I grab my knife from my belt strap and stride towards the mercenary. He won't miss one finger. What's a little more blood? The bastard deserves everything that's coming to him.
Suddenly there's a commotion outside and the door flies open. Freya descends on me like whirling dervish. Lyell must have alerted her. I'm his alpha, what the hell is he thinking tattling to her?!
Freya quickly takes in the bloody cell, and the prisoner beaten to a pulp in the corner. “What the fuck are you doing Aaron?! Do I even know you?”
She pulls the knife from my hand and throws it violently on the floor making the mercenary shrink back against the wall. “This is not how the Aaron I know would act.”
As Freya berates me for loosing control my wolf growls wildly, fighting to get out, to get at her. He's riled up and ready to attack any threat, including her. Suddenly I feel a weird pressure behind my eyes and he backs off.
What am I doing? This is my mate, this is Freya. She deserves better than this.
“This is not how a decent alpha behaves” her angry words echo round my head long after she's stormed away.
She's right. This is not how to run my pack, this is not the example I want to set. As the adrenalin fades I inspect the wreck of a man in the corner. I can't quite believe I let my darkness overtake me like this. I clean myself up and order the pack doctor to attend the mercenary, ashamed I lost it so badly. I even lost track of my goal.
I get one of the mercenaries prints, without removing his finger. Guilt washes over me – I was going to mutilate him for the sake of it, when a much similar solution would have sufficed. I rush back to the communal area of the pack house to find Lyell, Liz and Morganna.
Aurora is hanging around with Lyell when I find them. He has no fucking business around my little sister. I don't like it and make a mental note to pull him up on it. Lyell, with my sister's help, manages to get the fingerprints to activate a fob.
As Lyell works, again I sense weird gut-churning waves rolling off Morganna, but there's no time to pull my jumbled thoughts together nor to voice my concerns. Lyell enters the final bit of coding into his programme and a high pitched beeping emits from the fob as the collars deactivate. They fall from Liz and Morganna's necks to the floor with a metallic clunk. Finally – they're free.
In an instant all the electronics go out, as if the house's fuses have all blown at once. The feeling of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach blossoms into full-on alarm. Shit! This better not be Morganna.
We have no way of knowing how broken she is. We don't even know how long she's been captive, or what those bastards have done to her. Torture, starvation, experimentation – those things can break a soul, fracture a spirit. I don't have the first fucking clue how to deal with a fractured witch.
Morganna lets out an ear-piercing shriek and every piece of glass in the room shatters. It tears through my very soul - it sounds like she's feeling all her suffering for the very first time.
As the pack-house rattles I sprint towards Freya and grab her to me, ignoring her glowering anger in my need to protect her. Shifters around us flee as the foundations of the house start to move and groan. I use my body to shield Freya – the building feels like it's about to fall around us.
Out the corner of my eye I see Angus darting towards his wife. Shit. Morganna has no awareness of where, or who, she is. She could kill him. I can't get to him and shield Freya too. I hope the stupid bastard knows what he's doing.
I brace myself for the worst when, as suddenly as it started, the chaos stops and the lights flicker on. In the middle of the floor, surrounded by settling dust is Angus, cradling an entirely unconscious Morganna.
“I had to knock her out” the older wolf says, his eyes shiny with unshed tears “I hit her, I had to. How will she ever forgive me?!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aaron's POV
There's no point in waiting for the pomp and ceremony of a traditional pack handover. I'll just have to ignore the grumblings of the older council members. My father is a broken man, unable to purge himself of Rennard's betrayal and his worry that our innermost pack secrets were being handed over to the Coven for years. I don't have time to get bogged down in the painstakingly slow formalities of tradition.
Angus as my father's beta is in no position to take over – his every waking minute is spent placating an irrational, half-starved witch who still has no proper grasp on reality.
It might win me no friends, especially in the older generation, but we won't have a younger generation if someone doesn't take charge. I'll need to have an official alpha-blooding ceremony fucking soon to keep them on side.
The hostages we rescued regain their strength over the next few days and start to come before me to tell their pitiful stories. The extent of the experiments are horrific, and for my beta's sake I'm glad we made a move when we did. I don't know what he'd have done if Liz was put through what some of these shifters went through. At least she was only captive for a short time.
Some of the captives were tortured for information, others with genetics the Coven were interested in underwent horrendous testing. More than a handful have lost their shifter animal, and all of them are fucking traumatised.
I give them a choice – either I set them up with some money, clothes and food and let them go wherever they want, or, they swear loyalty to me and my pack and stay here under my protection, regardless of breed. A few slink away, unable to deal with what's been done to them, seeking solitude to lick their wounds. Others have a pack and family they want to return to.
A good handful of tough looking misfit shifters swear allegiance to me. It's an unexpected bonus. Now I have a group of shifters loyal to me, not my father or the old council, but to me. They're grateful for being rescued and they have vengeance on their minds – I need blood like this.
All the responsibility that comes with taking charge doesn't wipe out the image of Freya fighting alongside my men. It plays on repeat. I have one amazing, sexy woman, and thankfully she seems to have forgiven my loss of control. So when she approaches me with waggling eyebrows and suggests some alone time, I pounce.
I carry her squealing, slight frame up to our rooms and toss her lightly on the bed. I take my time looking her up and down, appreciating her – my fiery red-headed witch hybrid. Touching her makes my skin tingle.
I press my mouth hard into hers, possessing her. Mine. Her cheeky little tongue darts into my mouth teasing me. I pull away, breaking contact briefly to yank my shirt off, desperate to feel her against my bare skin. Her grumble of discontent at me moving away makes me smirk.
I watch, entranced, as she slips out of her top. Unable to just observe, I run my hands down her shoulders and across her breasts, watching delighted as the skin puckers and responds to my touch.
Freya reaches up and pulls me to her and I let my weight pin her down. My wolf is so near the surface, demanding I make her mine, demanding I mark her. I hold back with difficulty. Marciel rushed her; I need to let her take it at her own pace. Fuck me is it difficult.
I tug her trousers off and pull her panties to the side, rubbing my thumb across her clit and making her hiss. Fuck, she's so wet for me already. It's awesome she's so turned on. I tease her nipples with my tongue, trying to take everything slowly, at a pace I can control my wolf, but Freya wriggles and bucks her hips into my hand demanding more.
I crawl swiftly out my jeans and nudge her legs apart, positioning myself between them. I need this woman like I've never needed anything before. I take my dick in my hand and tease her slit with it, making her eyes widen. Hell, do I like that look of wanton need on her face.
“Aaron, please... I want you. Now”
“Not yet Freya” I murmur, nibbling along her earlobe before putting a finger inside her slit, teasing her. I won't be able to avoid marking her if I come, and I don't think she's ready for that... but I can sure as hell give her the best orgasm ever.
&n
bsp; I flick her clit with my finger and nip down her neck to her breasts with my teeth. Her breathing's heavy and rapid and she squirms under me. I have to hold my wolf in tight check as she bucks under my touch.
I kiss lightly down her stomach and along her panty line before burying my face in her pussy. Her musky smell in intoxicating. I slowly tease her engorged clit with my tongue, while fucking her with two fingers. She gasps, grabbing my hair and letting out a low guttural moan, shuddering to a stop. I didn't realise she was so close. Wiping my mouth I sit up to look into her face, pleased with myself, and acutely turned on.
My wolf is still fighting me, demanding we mark her. When I feel her two little fangs graze my neck I loose it, and then she bites. Hard. She marks me, and it's like the world is exploding. I've never felt anything so carnal, so intense.
I let out an involuntary growl and my wolf takes over. I thrust my cock deep inside her making her gasp, and in the same moment I pin her hands back and bite her neck, mate-marking her, making her mine.
Mine.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Freya's POV
I can't believe Aaron could be so cruel. We've not known each other really all that long, but I didn't think he had that streak in him. In that cell, with the mercenary, his face was contorted and ugly. Hatred shone out of it. If I hadn't been so angry with him for loosing control, I would've been scared of him. I shiver, just thinking about it makes me cold inside.
I had to step up, I had to stop him. He looked shocked, dazed when I screamed at him. I had to flex my powers and compel him before he really snapped out of it. A little tingling shiver ran over my birthmark and into the back of my head, and he obeyed.
I felt his wolf balk at the intrusion, but sensing his mate, his wolf stopped resisting and Aaron the man obeyed. I had no idea I could even do that.
I'm still fuming with Aaron when I feel a force like a sledgehammer hitting me right where my majik lives. As I stagger sideways under the wave of malevolent power the whole pack house descends into darkness.
