Bold Mercy

by Cane, Laken

  I screamed, fighting the magic like a maddened beast, as everything bad that had happened came to kick my ass. My mind, weakened by the fear over my mother, quickly exploded into a traumatized mess of panic, doubt, and horror.

  My blade would have helped me. And I would scream for it. I would call it. Maybe it couldn’t come, but…

  What if?

  So I opened my mouth and my mind to summon it. I didn’t scream a word, but a feeling. I sent whatever power was inside me to my blade, and then, I felt it. But something else happened as I gathered that power and forced it outward. Two things, really.

  I became stronger than the magic of the chains. They shattered like glass as I leaped to my feet, terrifying the vampires who’d remained behind to watch me. Shards of frozen metal flew through the air, embedding themselves in vampires, walls, furniture.

  At the exact moment I freed myself, the alpha burst into the room like a terrible storm, growling and raging, blood clinging to his beautiful fur. His wolves were right behind him. Zach slipped into the room like a quiet shadow, deadly and intense. And then, like a furious, bald avenging angel, Joe stomped into the room, machete flashing.

  There was only a millisecond of hesitation as they caught sight of me breaking my chains, and then there was only chaos. They flung themselves through the room, tearing through vampires I hadn’t even seen, vampires who’d watched from the shadows, as well as the ones who’d stood with Avis. In seconds, almost before I could take a single breath or a step forward, the vampires were dead, hearts flung across the room and heads, courtesy of Zach and Joe, thrown onto a rather nice couch and lit on fire.

  Jared shifted as he strode to me, the change so seamless that for a second, I forgot everything but my awe. “Kill every vampire in the place and bring me Avis Vine,” he growled, and his warriors wheeled and rushed through the building, their howls raising the hair on the nape of my neck.

  I ran to the alpha and jumped into his arms, and he wrapped me up in his warmth.

  “Kait,” he murmured. He didn’t ask me if I was okay. He could see that I was, and that I wasn’t.

  I shoved my nose against his warm alpha throat, but only for a few seconds. “They have my mother, Jared,” I cried.

  He frowned. “They do not. I just left her, honey. She’s safe with my pack and no harm will come to her.” He searched my eyes, finding things there that made him begin to rage all over again.

  I pushed and he let me slide down his body. “We have to find Avis,” I told him. “She’s turning humans, and not in the usual way. I watched her turn one right in front of me—in minutes.”

  Shock lit his stare. “That’s impossible.”

  “Kait.”

  I turned at the sound of Zach’s voice, gratified to see him holding his long, thin coat out to me. “Thank you,” I whispered, shrugging into the warm jacket. Joe stood beside him, but he kept his eyes averted until I was covered.

  “Joe,” I said. “You were injured. You should be home resting.”

  He snorted. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

  Something that I was afraid would happen sooner rather than later.

  “I found your phone and a couple weapons outside,” Zach told me. “I put them in the coat pockets. Your clothes were ruined, though.”

  I nodded. “Thanks, Zach.”

  “Kait,” Joe said. “Don’t forget your knife.”

  My heart jumped as I turned to where he pointed, and there, embedded in the wall where I’d just been restrained, was my demon blade. It had come when I’d called—I’d just been a little too busy breaking my magical chains to notice.

  “You should shift,” Jared told me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t tell him the magic was delaying my shift, because he could have pulled my wolf out of me. I didn’t want to shift because I had my blade back, and it felt good in my hand. It felt necessary in my hand. For right now, I wanted to hunt with my blade.

  Jared shifted and streaked through the room, following his nose to the enemy. Zach, Joe, and I followed, and though I felt residual pain, it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Squeezing the handle of my blade, my two friends by my side, my heart swelled once again with a hunter’s joy.

  And maybe I’d known deep down that Avis had been lying, but the fact that my mother was safe gave me indescribable relief. It also filled me with rage that the mutant vampire had managed to fuck with my mind.

  The entire time I’d had the pain of that magic flowing through me, I’d been quietly terrified it would somehow change me. That it had been sliding through me, that magic, doing untold damage. And maybe it was affecting me in ways I didn’t yet realize, but as far as mentally, I was back to normal.

  I was a hunter, and I was not afraid of anything.

  I needed to enjoy that feeling while I could.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Avis was surrounded by magic, and it spread its wings and carried her away. It was the only way to explain how the warped vampire woman kept getting out of sticky situations. She should have been holed up with the human she’d turned, watching him with his gory dinner and teaching him, as she’d promised, to be a vampire.

  But when we reached where her scent was strongest, she was gone. When Wyatt Killen shifted and held a borrowed stake to a vampire’s chest, the vampire died without giving up any of her secrets. And when I tracked her scent through the building, it led me to the streets, and after an hour of hunting, it disappeared. I lost her.

  I stood in the middle of a barn in the rural village of Teichmann, a few miles outside Jakeston, my nose twitching as I attempted to sort through the strong scents of farm animals to find Avis’s. I couldn’t. She was gone.

  “For now,” I whispered, bone tired. While I’d been hunting, my mind had been too occupied to think about everything that had happened that night. But now, the hunt was over, and it all rose up to choke the breath from me.

  “Check the house,” Wyatt said, and two of his men hurried through the darkness to make sure Avis wasn’t inside, and that the humans who lived there were still alive. I could have told him Avis wasn’t in the house, but I said nothing. The men had no clothes on, but it wasn’t like they were going to knock politely on the door to ask questions. They’d peer through windows if they could, listen for sounds of distress, and use their superior noses to smell for blood.

  Dogs were barking, but they were contained inside a fenced area and couldn’t do much to challenge the men. They’d been barking before we arrived, though, and I was sure it was because Avis had been through the area.

  Wyatt jogged from the barn at a nod from Jared, leaving me and his alpha alone.

  “We will get her, Kait.”

  “Yeah.” My fingers were shaking when I lifted them to shove loose tendrils of hair from my sweaty face. “I just wonder what else she’s going to do before we catch her. She’s turning humans like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She’s shoving deadly magic inside people—inside wolves—and killing them.”

  “She did that to you?”

  I hesitated, but I wasn’t sure why. “Yes. It was burning me from the inside out. I think they’ve managed to duplicate what it feels like when a vampire is hurt by the sun. I know how that sounds, but I felt it, Jared.”

  “It didn’t kill you,” he said. “So that means there is a chance of surviving it.”

  “She said she’d been saving that particular vampire for me. I don’t think they possess the power any longer, like it wears off after a while or they use it up after they use it once. That doesn’t mean that they might not be able to get shot up with more of it. I just don’t know.” I rubbed my temples, then my eyes. “Nothing they do is possible. It’s like I’m caught in a nightmare and can’t wake up.”

  “Eli is sending a car. You’ll feel better after food and rest.”

  Dawn had come, and Avis and the vampires would be forced to sleep for the day. At least, I thought they would, but who the hell knew anymore? I certainly didn’t. I could
hope, though, because I needed some sleep myself. And I really needed to hug my mother.

  There were a lot of things I needed, but the car arrived and Jared popped the trunk and got dressed while I climbed into the warm back seat. After he got in with me, I slid into his arms and let him hold me while I began to relax. I drifted off with his scent in my brain, and I wished the car ride would last for a few hours. I didn’t have to be strong or prepared to fight or worried someone was going to die. I didn’t think about Avis Vine’s awful magic or if Jakeston would ever get back to normal or what the future held for nonhumans. I could just lie there and let the alpha take care of me.

  And that didn’t bother me at all. Not right then.

  I fell into a sort of blank unconsciousness that both rested and reset me, brief though it was. When the driver pulled into Shadowfield and shut the car off, I awakened immediately, and instead of being groggy and exhausted, I was strangely energized.

  I sat up but didn’t pull away from Jared. I lifted my fingers to his lips, and he watched me calmly, but his stare sharpened and his body tensed. I barely noticed when the driver climbed from the car, barely heard the soft thunk of the door closing. Distant voices of returning warriors and the awakening community drifted through the cold, foggy morning, but I was isolated inside the warm car with the alpha and the outside world simply didn’t matter.

  I slipped my hand around to the back of his neck and pressed my lips to his. I didn’t move, then, just closed my eyes and reveled in the feel of his lips against mine, his scent, his warmth, his presence.

  There was something undeniable between us. It flared to life every time we were near each other. Definitely every time we touched. It was irresistible, and it was inevitable. And maybe my encounter with Avis Vine’s magic and the fragility of life had affected my thinking—definitely watching her kill a human and then bring him back immediately as a vampire had altered me—but something settled inside me.

  Jared didn’t want to love me and leave me. And he didn’t want to take part of me if he couldn’t have all of me. He had to weigh each decision he made, had to think about the future, his wolves, the consequences of his actions. That was his job as alpha of a pack.

  I understood that. I was also tired of all the back and forth, all the thinking, worrying, wondering.

  I pulled away from him, finally, darting my tongue out to grab the taste of him from my lips, and smiled. He didn’t return my smile, though. He saw something in my eyes. Something he wasn’t sure he liked.

  “Kait?”

  I shivered at the way his deep, quiet voice wrapped around me and slid into my soul. It was good to be free of doubt.

  “I’m going to check on everyone,” I told him. “You’re going to get some sleep?”

  He watched me, frowning. “You, as well.”

  I only nodded. I was practically jumping with an urgent energy, and I couldn’t sit still a moment longer. I rushed from the car to check on my people and my mother, content with the weight of my blade in my pocket. Already I was eager to change clothes and strap on a belt so I could slide it into a sheath at my hip where it belonged.

  But first things first.

  My mother stood in front of the Rose Inn with a man I didn’t recognize, and I was pretty sure he was leaving her after having spent the night in her bed. This, then, was the “all that and a bag of chips” man she’d recently met. He was slender, around forty years old, and had a kind smile and twinkling green eyes. His long hair was tied back in a long tail, and he wore a rather rumpled suit. He didn’t look like an asshole, but…

  “If you hurt my mother,” I told him, smiling as I took the hand he held out to me, “I will kill you.”

  “Kait,” my mom said, aghast. “It’s too early in the morning for jokes.” She laughed as she pushed me into the building, attempting to make light of the situation. “I’ll see you tonight, Nigel.”

  “You didn’t introduce us,” I said, as she shoved me deeper into the inn and safely away from the love interest.

  “You need to take a chill pill, little girl,” she said, sterner than I’d seen her in…ever. “Maybe a whole bottle.”

  I pulled her into my arms. “I love you, Mom.”

  She softened. “Are you okay, Kaity?”

  “I had a bad night, but I’m good now.”

  She pulled back and looked up into my face. “Food and sleep is what you need. When you wake up, we’ll talk.”

  I frowned. “About what?”

  But she wouldn’t say. She patted my hand and led me back toward the door, now that Nigel was gone. “It’s nothing that won’t hold. I would encourage you to go see Ash and Lucy, but they’re both still asleep.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  She hesitated. “She’s doing okay, but when things settle down and you can get her back home and spend time with her, she’ll do a lot better.”

  I leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I know. Soon, I hope.”

  “Get some sleep, Kaity.”

  “I will.” I left her there, a little uneasy in my stomach because of Lucy. My mom was right. I needed to spend some time with Lucy. And I would, as soon as I woke up for the day. Right now, though, I had things other than sleep on my mind. Sleep would come, but first, I would.

  I strode to Jared’s house, ignoring the stares from the few people awake and outside—I knew I looked a little crazy with blood on my skin and Zach’s coat, but these people were wolves. They’d seen worse.

  As though she knew I was coming, the alpha’s housekeeper was standing on the porch, the door behind her wide open. Her frowning face cleared when she spotted me.

  “Kait,” she called, gesturing for me, as though afraid I might pass her by and go sleep in the grass. “Come. Your bed is made up and I’ve laid out clean clothes for you. Jared told me you’d be along, and he would fire me if I neglected you.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “No he wouldn’t.”

  “Well, no,” she agreed, “but he would be very unhappy, and we both know that an unhappy alpha is…”

  “A mean son of a bitch?” I followed her up the stairs, but my nose twitched at the smell of bacon coming from deep in the house, and what I wanted to do was follow it.

  She didn’t laugh. “Sad,” she said. “I don’t like to see our alpha sad. Jared isn’t an asshole, Kait.”

  I’d hurt her feelings with my bad manners. “I’m sorry, Nell. I know he’s not.”

  She pushed open the door to the guest room. “Have a shower and get some clean clothes on. I’ll have a tray waiting when you come out.”

  “Nell.” I caught her arm before she could leave the room. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

  “Thank Jared.” But she softened. “You’re welcome, dear.”

  I combed my tangled hair, brushed my teeth, and showered in record time, and then, I dried off and put on a white t-shirt that hit me mid-thigh. I didn’t stop to eat. I’d devour every morsel Nell had left for me. Later.

  There was something I had to do first.

  I had no hesitation or doubt as I strode to the alpha’s bedroom. I silently opened his door, slipped inside, then shut it behind me. No light came through the covered windows, but I didn’t need much light. There were a couple of soft, warm nightlights placed around the room, and I was glad. I didn’t want total darkness, because I wanted to see him.

  I took a deep, quiet breath, breathing in a scent that would always be better than anything or anyone I would ever smell again, and I padded across the room to the bed. Right or wrong, complicated or troublesome or fraught with pain…I didn’t care. I needed him, I wanted him, and I was going to have him.

  But when I stood staring down at the bed, I found it empty. Before I could turn, he pressed his bare body against me from behind and snaked his arms around my waist.

  “Fuck, Kait,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I. It wasn’t a time for talking. I was finally goi
ng to do what I’d been wanting to do since he’d walked into my house and asked me to work for him. No matter what it meant, or whether or not I was ready for what came after, I was going to fuck the Gray Shadow Pack alpha.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wolf alphas generally weren’t attracted to each other—they were in competition with each other. They fought, or at best, had an uneasy alliance. There were far fewer female alphas than male alphas, and we’d evolved that way because a sad but true fact was that male alphas tended to be more physically powerful than females, and they killed us, forced us into submission, or disabled us so that we couldn’t fight. This was the history of wolves.

  Times had changed, however, and most male alphas no longer matter-of-factly destroyed their weaker competition. They were no longer more animal than human, driven by instinct and a feral need to survive, protect their pack, and snuff out the enemy. They thought more like humans.

  Still, deep down, there was that innate and primal instinct in alphas to fight other alphas. To dominate them. That instinct was strong in Jared, and it was strong in me. I had my wolf to temper my instincts, though, as she was fundamentally submissive to the alpha’s domination. Still, I was not in wolf form, and I was alpha.

  So sex with Jared was not gentle, kind, or sweet. Maybe over time we would settle and that sweetness would come, but our first encounter was fierce, hot, and dangerous as we both fought our instincts and embraced them.

  It was absolutely everything I’d hoped it would be. More, really, because some things a person simply couldn’t imagine. It was the sort of sex that really should have been done deep in the woods where no one could hear, where we did not need to be quieter or worry about breaking furniture or be confined by walls.

  He ripped the t-shirt from my body like a barbarian and I loved it, even as I slammed him back against the wall—dislodging a clock and beautiful painting of the Shadowfield woods in the process—and sank my teeth into his shoulder.