Unstoppable

by R. L. Mathewson

  “Did I ever tell you about my sister, Aine, mo ghrá?” Kale asked, already knowing that he hadn’t. He hadn’t told anyone about Aine, not even Logan, who’d been like a brother to him, or Izzy, who reminded him so much of Aine. “She was such a devious little thing,” he said, unable to help but chuckle as he remembered the way that her face used to light up when she teased him.

  God, he missed her.

  “She lived to torment everyone around her, but you could never stay mad at her. There was just something so infectious about that smile of hers and she knew it,” Kale said, feeling his smile turn sad as he quietly added, “I loved her more than anything.”

  For several minutes, he didn’t say anything as he sat there, finally allowing himself to think about his sister for the first time in years. The pain was still there, probably always would be, but there was also a sense of peace that came from thinking about her that hadn’t been there before.

  “What happened to her?” came the question that had him biting back a sigh.

  “I made the mistake of helping a boy that I’d been warned to stay away from. I never saw him before that day, but I’d heard the tales about him, the ones the villagers used to whisper about when they’d had too much ale. There had been tales about him long before the villagers finally banished him, forcing him to live on the outskirts of town among the whores. I never thought much about him until I found out that Conn was looking for him.”

  “He’d caught the boy’s scent during the last shift and something about it had set him off. I’d never seen him like that before. He was terrified and I…I wanted to make him look foolish in front of the English prick, so when I saw the boy running through the fields, trying to outrun the villagers coming for him, I hid him in the caves where the villagers used to store their grains. I took him past the point that the villagers were too afraid to explore and made sure that no one would ever be able to find him. As soon as I had the boy settled, I rushed back to the village and watched as Conn finally lost control, panicking over a little fucking boy while I laughed my ass off.”

  “I fucking hated him,” Kale bit out as his hands clenched tightly into fists, wishing that he could go back and wipe that smug smile off the bastard’s face when he’d found out that Kale’s father was dead and stole Kale’s rightful place in the Pack. “He had no business trying to lead our Pack, but that hadn’t stopped him from forcing us to flee Ireland and beg for fucking scraps from an English prick.”

  “The next day, while everyone was still panicking as they tore the village apart looking for him, I snuck back into the woods with a satchel filled with enough food to feed an army and made my way to the caves, smiling the whole fucking way until I made it to the caves and realized that there was something wrong. He was on the floor passed out and I couldn’t wake him up.”

  “At first, I told myself that he was just exhausted, but that quickly turned into wondering if Conn had scented illness on the boy and was trying to stop it from spreading through the village. I didn’t want to be the reason why my mother lost any more children, so I stayed in that cave and waited, terrified that I was going to die alone in that cave.”

  “Then, I started to notice changes, small at first, but then the boy was suddenly bigger than me. I was fascinated by the changes. Every day, I’d cut out early on my chores and rush to the cave, excited to see how much he’d changed overnight. It wasn’t until he was larger than all the other men in the village and Pack that I realized he wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was, but I knew that I couldn’t let him live.”

  “Every day for a week, I tried to work up the courage to kill him, but I couldn’t do it and god, I wish that I had,” Kale said, unclenching his fists so that he could rub his hands down his face.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ashley said softly from beneath the bed and as much as he would love to stop, he couldn’t.

  She deserved to know the truth.

  “I should have known that Aine would eventually follow me and when she did, I wasn’t able to get her out of there fast enough. One minute, we were staring at a pair of bright red eyes and the next, we were running for our lives. I’d never seen anyone move so fast before. We’d barely made it into the next cavern when he was there, reaching for Aine. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to pull her free and dragged her into a small tunnel that was barely big enough for us to squeeze in before he could grab her again.”

  “She kept screaming my name, begging me to keep going, but there was no more room. It wasn’t until he managed to grab hold of her and pulled her out that I realized that I was stuck. I couldn’t move. No matter what I fucking did, I couldn’t get to her. As my sister was screaming my name, I was stuck in a fucking tunnel forced to watch as that fucking monster ripped her throat open,” Kale said hollowly, the memory of Aine’s screams threatening to push him over the edge.

  “She wouldn’t stop screaming even when he’d had enough and decided to throw her around the cave like a fucking ragdoll. When he was done, he dropped her broken body in front of me before walking away, leaving me to watch my sister die. She was so fucking scared,” Kale said, his voice breaking at the end as he was forced to close his eyes. “I eventually managed to break free, but by then, it was too late. She died in my arms minutes later and I-”

  “Shhhh,” Ashley murmured softly as he felt her climb onto his lap and wrap her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

  “I couldn’t save her,” Kale said, wrapping his arms around her and held on tightly, refusing to let her go.

  “I carried Aine back to the village, telling her that everything was going to be okay, but I knew that she was already gone. I just…I couldn’t let her go. I didn’t realize that something was wrong until I heard the screams. He’d torn through my Pack, leaving them to die. I heard my mother screaming my name as I made my way to our cottage, ready to kill the bastard only to realize that she wasn’t calling for help. She was telling me to run.”

  “You were just a child, Kale,” Ashley said soothingly as she kissed his forehead.

  “I was the fucking Alpha. It was my job to protect them,” Kale bit out, repeating the same words that he’d told himself as he’d carried Aine’s body into their cottage and…

  “It’s okay,” Ashley said as she ran her fingers through his hair.

  “He saved my mother for last so that she was forced to watch as he killed all of her children and I…I couldn’t move. I stood there, watching as he ripped my mother’s throat out until my legs gave out and I dropped to the floor with Aine in my arms. She kept screaming my name, begging me to save Aine, but I couldn’t move. So, I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the screams to stop and when they did, I knew that it was my turn to die.”

  “Only, he left me there at the mercy of the villagers hellbent on getting every last drop of shifter blood that they could get their hands on. They finished off men, women, and children begging for help and drained the dead as I begged them to let me hold Aine. While they dragged me outside, I swore that I would find him one day and make him pay. When they pressed a knife to my throat and told me to stop moving so that my blood wouldn’t spill on the ground, I decided that I would make sure that I killed every fucking Pyte that I could find to stop it from happening again.”

  Chapter 41

  He hated her.

  And she couldn’t blame him, Ashley thought, closing her eyes and lost herself to Kale’s touch as she asked, “What happened to the villagers?”

  “They began dying, one by one, screaming for mercy as the shifter blood they’d stolen killed them,” Kale said flatly as he pressed his lips against the top of her head.

  Relieved that they hadn’t been able to hurt him, she forced herself to ask the only question that mattered. “What happened to the Pyte?”

  “Years later after I reached my immortality, I hunted him down, making sure that I learned everything that I could about Pytes along the way and when I finally found him, I shot him through t
he back of the head and chained him up in that same cave that he’d destroyed everything that I loved. I waited for him to heal and when he opened his eyes, I shot him again. The next time that he opened his eyes, I asked him if he remembered what he stole from me.”

  “When he laughed, I shot him again. The next time that he opened his eyes, I slowly cut off every finger, toe, and limb one by one, ignoring his pleas for mercy and when I was done, I asked him again. When he didn’t answer me, I shot him again. The next time he opened his eyes, he blurted out my sister’s name before I had a chance to ask him. When he was done screaming her name, I set him on fire and burned him alive. When he was nothing more than a pile of ash, I made sure that I swept up every last speck, placed it in a small barrel, filled it with mortar and once it was set, I destroyed the cave, making sure that if even one speck of ash had been left behind, that he would never be able to escape. I brought the barrel to the coast, hired a ship and sailed to the middle of the ocean where I wrapped it in chains, attached two anchors, and tossed it overboard,” Kale murmured quietly as he gently ran his fingertips up and down her back.

  “I’m glad he’s dead,” Ashley mumbled as she reached up and wiped away a tear.

  “Me, too,” Kale said, sounding lost in thought as she sat there, wondering how he could even stand being in the same room with her.

  “I’ll leave tonight,” Ashley said, forcing the words out when the last thing that she wanted to do was to leave him, but she couldn’t stay, not if she was causing him this much pain.

  “I’m never letting you go,” Kale said quietly as he stopped running his fingertips over her back so that he could wrap his arms around her.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Kale,” she whispered.

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I can’t change what I am,” Ashley said, wishing that she could make this better for him.

  “I don’t want you to,” Kale said, sounding lost in thought.

  “Why?” she asked, turning her head so that she could stare out the window only to sigh when she saw Cuddles carrying her metal mixing bowl around the backyard.

  “Can you tell me why you’re afraid of Sentinels?” Kale asked instead.

  “I’d really rather not,” Ashley said, because the last thing that she wanted to do right now was think about what happened, never mind talk about it.

  “I can’t protect you if you don’t let me, mo ghrá,” Kale murmured, kissing the top of her head as they watched Cuddles drop the mixing bowl on the ground and-

  She was going to need a new mixing bowl.

  “Ashley?” Kale said, reaching up to push her hair back behind her ear as he waited for an answer that she didn’t want to give him.

  She opened her mouth to tell him that it didn’t matter, only to find herself saying, “My mother didn’t die right away.”

  “What?” Kale asked as she felt him go still beneath her.

  “She kept trying to shift, but she couldn’t,” Ashley said, staring out the window as she thought about that moment that changed her life forever. “I went from begging her to shift to praying that she would die, but she kept healing just enough to prolong her suffering. In the end, I don’t even think she knew who I was, but she kept saying my name over and over again, begging me to run, but there was nowhere to go.”

  “What happened?” Kale asked, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

  “I didn’t listen to my mother,” Ashley admitted softly on a shaky breath. “She told me to run, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave her. We’d been on the run for a while, living out of a car, cheap motel rooms when we could afford it, hoping that they’d forget about us, but she didn’t realize that my stepfather got the humans involved. He’d placed an Amber Alert on me and the manager of the motel that we were staying at called the police one night when my mother was at work, but it wasn’t the police that showed up.”

  “Sentinels,” Kale correctly guessed.

  Nodding, Ashley said, “My stepfather made sure that the Council found out that a Pack child had gone missing and that human authorities were involved. It didn’t take them long to find me. One minute, I was hiding in the closet, waiting for my mother to come back, and the next, there was a Sentinel picking me up and promising me that he was going to get me safely back to my Pack and that’s all that I remember.”

  “When I woke up, I was in so much pain. I couldn’t understand what my mother was saying. I just remember lying on the floor, crying, and telling her that my head hurt. It took a while before I figured out that she was begging me to run, but I couldn’t do that,” Ashley explained, releasing a shaky breath before adding, “I couldn’t leave her there with my stepfather.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this,” Kale said hollowly.

  She ignored him and continued. “He didn’t even give her a chance to beg for her life. He just walked into the cell and tore her throat out. There was no warning. He…” Ashley said, closing her eyes as she slowly exhaled. “He didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye to her.”

  “Ah, Christ,” came the strangled whisper.

  “He didn’t die right away. Long after my mother stopped crying my name, my stepfather was still screaming. He knew what would happen as soon as he did it, but he still killed her knowing that he would die with her. He was still screaming when a man that I’d never seen before walked into the basement. When he saw my stepfather, his eyes turned red only to immediately turn back to green when he saw me. His gaze softened when he said my name, telling me to close my eyes and promised me that everything would be okay.”

  “I don’t know why I believed him, but I did what I was told. When the screams suddenly stopped, he told me to keep my eyes closed as he picked me up and took me away from there. He kept telling me how much my mother loved me and just how special I was as he held me in his arms while I cried for her. He told me that he loved me and how long he’d waited to meet me and that he was my father. He told me that he needed to go away for a little while but that it would be okay because he’d made sure that I was going to be taken care of and that as long as I stayed in the city, I was safe. Then, he told me that he loved me before he walked away.”

  “I’m sorry, mo ghrá,” Kale said, pressing his lips against her forehead as she took a deep breath and told him everything.

  “My father’s name is Cade.”

  Chapter 42

  Williams Mansion

  “Get out,” Ethan said, not bothering to look away from the ceiling when he caught her sweet scent.

  Instead of listening to him, Indie walked into his room, determined to play nursemaid to him while his arm slowly grew back. He didn’t want her in here and he’d made that more than fucking obvious the moment that she showed up in his room when they’d carried him in here after the asshole tore his arm off, but she wouldn’t listen. She simply ignored him and his demands for her to leave and placed bags of blood on the bed next to him until he took the fucking hint and drank them, hoping that she would leave.

  She had no fucking idea how close he was to losing it. When he’d caught her fear earlier, it had nearly knocked him on his fucking knees, but the look of terror on her face when Ephraim was reaching for her was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. She didn’t belong here, not with a Pyte who was struggling to hold it together for his mate and another that would happily welcome oblivion to escape the pain.

  He never should have let her stay here.

  “Your arm looks good,” Indie murmured with an approving nod, taking in the long stub where his arm used to be as she-

  Made him fucking sigh when she climbed onto the bed next to him.

  “Get out,” Ethan said, not really surprised when she ignored him and focused her attention on the iPad that she’d left on his nightstand earlier when she’d left to check on everyone else and grab more blood for him.

  “Drew and Kara decided to name their son Mason. Drew wanted to name their baby girl Precious until Kara pointed out that
could work really well if their daughter dreamed of being a hooker. After that, they glared for a while until they finally agreed on Ella, but Drew has decided to call her PBG for Precious Baby Girl. They were still glaring when I left,” Indie explained as she settled in more comfortably and began swiping on the iPad with the same disappointed sighs that she’d been making all day, making him curious about what she was looking at.

  He’d considered looking at her iPad when she left the room, but…

  He didn’t fucking care, Ethan told himself as he forced himself to glare back up at the ceiling as he grabbed a bag of blood. His fangs slid down as he pressed the bag against his mouth and-

  Rolled his fucking eyes when she continued giving him an update on everyone in the house. “Ephraim woke up, but he’s refusing to leave his cell. Izzy made Noah help her down to the basement and as soon as they opened his cell, she kind of lost it. Ephraim just sat there and took it until she finally broke down and started crying and he pulled her into his arms. She’s been down there for a while now, just sitting there, holding his hand as he stares at the wall. I brought him more blood, but he’s refusing to eat.”

  Because he wants to die, Ethan thought, remembering the crippling pain that nearly destroyed him those first few months after Trace went missing. Every minute of the day was a struggle and some days…

  He would have given anything to have his son back.

  “Madison came home a little while ago and Chris told her about Jill. She lost it, but Chris was able to stop her from going into bloodlust. He’s with her right now,” Indie mumbled sadly and since he already knew that from the soul-crushing sobs that he’d heard earlier, Ethan continued glaring at the ceiling.

  “Trace should be back soon,” Indie said, sounding hopeful, probably thinking that the mention of his son would make him stop glaring.