by Laken Cane
He screamed and shook his head, trying to dislodge the silver she’d pushed halfway into his skull.
She scrambled out from under his huge, hot body, rolling away as she pulled another, longer blade with a double edge and a curved tip.
That he was still fighting was a testament not only to the strength of the wolf, but of its ability to take damage it couldn’t when in human form.
She was in trouble.
There was no time to glance around for her gun. The wolf jumped her, his hot breath burning her eyes as the sharp edge of his teeth grazed her cheekbone. Even that graze would slice her face like a razor blade.
She was good, but he was a werewolf. And she’d given to Lex what her monster needed to make her more than human.
Even refusing to take blood she’d still been faster and stronger than a human. But she hadn’t simply refused to feed. She’d pretty much killed her monster.
She could admit that, now that she was about to die.
She didn’t like the feeling of being less than she usually was. Weak. Vulnerable. Human.
For the first time in her life, she ran.
He caught her though—flung her across the room and stood staring at her, his little yellow eye glowing, and he was terrifying with the blade protruding from his other eye. He was weakened by the silver inside him, but fuck, that bastard was strong.
She hit the wall and her left wrist snapped and began to swell immediately. Glad it was her left instead of her right, she pulled her last blade and waited for him to come.
He stood across the room, head low, panting.
If she’d have stuck one of the blades into his heart, it would have killed him. She couldn’t have missed it by much.
Maybe the bastard didn’t have a heart.
“Come on,” she screamed.
He tossed his enormous head, and came.
Her only chance was to make her last shiv count. She was a drained, sick half human, but she was fucking awesome with a shiv.
His teeth closed around her throat. She shut her eyes and thrust upward, not seeing the spot she needed, but feeling it.
Never panic.
She might die, but she was taking him to hell with her.
He collapsed on top of her, his weight enough to crush her, his teeth still half buried in her neck. She couldn’t move.
But the wolf was dead.
She’d done that all on her own. No monster needed.
Above her the ceiling began to spin, slowly, and she would have vomited if she’d had the strength.
Was she dying? Maybe.
She wasn’t sure as she’d never done it before.
Far below the house, the wolf howled.
Hang on, baby.
She’d killed the wolf king.
Something was bothering her, urging her out of her nice, comfy sleep. She finally figured out what it was—someone was beating on the front door.
A cop’s knock.
She smiled.
“Alexander,” someone yelled, and it took her a good half minute to recognize his voice.
Hard thumps sounded as he kicked the heavy door, and in seconds it gave, splintering beneath the weight of a berserker.
She heard his heavy footsteps as he ran toward her. He plucked the wolf off her like so much garbage and slung it against the far wall.
He didn’t speak, just knelt, slid his hands beneath her, and lifted her to his chest.
She opened her eyes once, found him staring down at her with the oddest look on his face.
He balanced her easily with one hand while he found his cell with the other.
“No,” she whispered. “No hospital.”
“Hush, girl.”
“Ellis saves me.” God, it was hard to talk.
But he heard her. Hesitating for a second, he told the operator he’d made a mistake, then gently laid her on the couch.
She thought he was feeling her up until it finally occurred to her that he was searching for her cell. Right pocket. She wasn’t sure she was even speaking. Something awful was wrong with her throat. With all of her. If Ellis would hurry…
Strad cocked his head as the distant sound of a tortured howl drifted to them.
“Save her,” Rune whispered. “Save her.”
The next time she woke up she was in her own bed with a bag of blood bringing her back to life.
Not just her, but her monster.
She’d missed the fucker.
“Ellie?”
“Déjà vu all over again,” he said, smiling down at her.
“No, not really.” But she smiled back at him, reaching for his hand before she realized her wrist was no longer broken. “My monster is…”
“Fucking amazing,” he finished. “And you’re to stop abusing the poor thing.”
She grinned.
“I mean it, Rune.”
“I feel pretty good. How long…” Then she remembered the wolf. She began to pull the needle from her arm and heaved her legs over the side of the bed. “Oh fuck!”
“What is it?” He knew better than to try stopping her, so he began helping her.
“The wolf. The wolf in the basement. Did they find her?”
He frowned. “What wolf?”
“Who was on the scene? I need to talk to them.”
“Jeremy was the first one there, then his crew followed him in. Strad said—”
“Oh God.” She dropped her head into her hands. Jeremy.
“Rune, what?”
“Everything is so complicated.”
He knelt in front of her and took her hands. “Tell me what you need.”
It was too late to go back to the alpha’s house and save the basement wolf. Jeremy would have taken care of that. Whether he’d saved her or killed her was something she’d probably never know.
Still, she had to try. “Get Jeremy on the phone.” Then she thought of something else. “Wait. How did you explain”—she motioned at the blood—“not taking me to the hospital?”
He stood, turning away from her. “Rune…”
“Ah, fuck. Fuck, no.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“Who knows?”
“Jeremy. Strad knows something is up but wouldn’t pry. He’s a classy guy, Rune.”
But really, Jeremy already knew. If no one else had discovered her secret, then nothing had changed. “The berserker—he didn’t ask? Didn’t see me like this?”
Again, he looked away.
“Ellis!”
“I’m sorry! He insisted. He was coming in to check on you, and if I hadn’t opened the door he’d have kicked it in. He was coming in no matter what I said.”
“He saw me like this? Healing and with the blood?”
“He came in early. You were stabilizing and still looked like death.” He smiled, and there was a spark of admiration in his eyes. “Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. But he…”
“What?” Despite herself, she was interested.
“He has a thing for you.”
She widened her eyes. “You’ve lost your mind. The berserker and I hate each other.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We do! Fuck you anyway.”
He laughed. “There’s also the crew.”
She sighed. “Tell me.”
“They’re…well, pissed would be an understatement.”
She wasn’t surprised. “What did you tell them about this setup?”
“I told them the reports were exaggerated, that my mother had visited you, and that you were doing great. But they’ve been working with you for years, honey. They know there is something different about you.”
She closed her eyes. Things were changing too fast. “Get me Jeremy, then call the crew in. I have to catch them up.” She hesitated. “I still don’t trust Strad, but I need to ask him what happened there after I was taken out.”
“You want me to have him come over with the gang?”
“No, no. Just…forget calling Jeremy. Get Mathe
son on the phone.”
Ellis grinned. “Yesterday you were hurt severely. Maybe even fatally. Today you’re sitting up on the bed wanting to bark orders at everyone. You rock, Rune.”
“Yeah. Back to normal.” But she winced as she touched her throbbing throat.
“How are you feeling?” Ellie asked.
“Not the best, but give it a few hours. Considering I was nearly decapitated by a wolf, I’m doing pretty damn great.”
He called Strad and handed her the phone. “Be nice.”
“You mean be myself?”
“No,” he said. “Not so much.”
She grinned.
The berserker answered on the first ring, his voice tense. “Is she worse?”
She took the phone from her ear and stared at it for a few seconds, confused until she realized she was on Ellie’s phone, and he’d have seen that name on his display.
“Oh. No, it’s Rune. I…I’m fine.” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to thank you for saving my life.”
He remained silent.
“Anyway, I need to know exactly what happened in Beldane’s house after I was taken out. What did RISC do in there?”
He kept his voice calm, polite. “I wasn’t there for most of it.”
Of course not. He’d been at her house peeking at her as she lay wounded and unconscious with Ellis’s stash of blood running into her veins. “But Jeremy must have updated you.”
“What exactly are you trying to find out?”
He was a smart berserker. She sighed. “Before Beldane attacked me, there were howls coming from somewhere in the house. A basement, I think. Did they find a wolf?”
“You asked me to save her.”
She frowned. “I did?”
“Yes.”
“And did you?” She glared at the wall. Why did he make her drag every little piece of information from him?
She could almost hear his smile. “I did.”
“Yes! Who is she? Is she all right? What the fuck had that son of a bitch been doing to her?”
“I’ll come to visit you soon and explain.”
She groaned. “Fuck me.”
“What?” He sounded shocked.
“It’s an expression. Like, oh shit.”
“Hmmm.”
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fact that she was as awkward as hell when having an actual conversation with him. “I’ve been hearing some bad shit about Jeremy. You’re his lac—on his team. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to talk about him when you get here?” She was not up for a visit from the berserker.
His hesitation was almost audible. “No.”
“Yeah. I didn’t think so.”
“Some things you need to stay away from, Rune. Just do your job.”
She could taste her disappointment. “That’s bullshit. Even you have to realize that.”
“The community would be better served with you alive.”
“I don’t plan on dying. But I’m not going to sit on my ass and let things happen I know are wrong.” She shifted the phone to her other ear, her hands shaking. “We swear to protect, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to treat that like it’s an option.”
His voice was soft. “You’re sworn to protect the humans, Alexander.”
That was when she began to remember she hated him. “That won’t change. But not all humans deserve protection, Berserker, and I will destroy the motherfuckers.”
She hung up before he could say another word, furious with him for proving he was still Jeremy’s man and even more furious with herself for thinking, for one unguarded moment, that he might be one of the good guys.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Shiv Crew was at her door not an hour later.
“Let us in, Ellis,” Jack said.
“I will break the door down,” Raze added.
Rune stood beside Ellis in the middle of the living room, her fingers pressed against her lips. Dammit, they would break the door down.
“Give me time to get back in bed, then let them in,” she whispered, as though her crew might hear her through the door.
Still sore, she sprinted into the bedroom and climbed into bed, pulling the sheets up to her chin and turning to the wall.
In a few moments she heard them tiptoeing into her bedroom, whispering back and forth as though their yelling and banging on the door earlier had never happened. Her crew—noisy? No way.
Z leaned over the bed and put a big warm hand on her shoulder. “Sweet thing?”
She fought to keep her eyes closed and her breathing even. Don’t call me sweet thing.
“How is she doing, Ellis? Has she spoken?”
“We heard Beldane nearly took off her head,” Raze said.
“Is that true?” Jack asked.
“Listen, guys, it’s like I told you already—a hundred times. He did a number on her, but he’s the one who’s dead. Rune will be fine. She just has to rest and recuperate.”
“Yeah,” Levi said, and she realized she’d come to know the twins well enough so that finally she could tell which one was speaking. “She’ll be fine. She does seem to do a great job at healing herself. And others.”
Sarcasm from Levi? The little shit.
“Okay, guys. You came, you saw, you spoke,” said Ellie. “Now get the hell out before you wake her.”
Inwardly she grinned. Ellis could be bossy when he needed to be.
They filed out of the room obediently. She thought about throwing off the sheet and coming clean, but in the end couldn’t bear to. She’d hidden her monster for too long.
The only way her monster was coming out from under the bed was if someone dragged it out using chains and whips and lots of coffee.
She must have been weaker than she’d thought because she drifted off when the boys left and didn’t wake up again for five hours.
She yawned and climbed out of bed, disoriented but determined to get dressed and get something done. “Ellis?”
He’d left a note stuck to the dresser mirror, letting her know he’d be back later that night and for her to call him when she woke up. He’d left her some dinner in the fridge.
She tossed the note onto the dresser and started to head for the shower, but she got a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
Pushing her hair away from the left side of her neck she frowned as she examined the teeth marks still remaining. The alpha had scarred her.
She had other scars, but lately her monster had seemed to wipe the slate clean when he healed her. But not that time.
After she’d showered and wolfed down the dinner Ellis had left her, she finally did the one thing she’d been putting off. She called Jeremy.
He answered on the first ring. “Rune. How are you?”
“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
He was silent for a moment. “What about?”
“About the Dark Others. About this Preston dude. You did promise to keep me updated. And…” She hesitated. “Someone saw you having sex with a wolf. And told me you’re abusing female Others.”
It was harder than she’d thought it would be, accusing him. She was almost positive he was abusing the female Others. Look at what he’d eagerly done to her.
When he fucked her, when he cut her up, he was taking out his hatred on one more Other.
Her heart thumped in her chest with a heavy, painful beat. She had fresh blood in her and though that usually put her on top of the world, all the blood in the universe wasn’t going to be enough to compete with the stress she’d lived through recently.
She’d let him abuse her because she was a fucked-up mess. And as shameful as it was, she still craved it. Not the abuse, maybe, but how she felt afterward. God, the relief. She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and drank half of it, waiting for him to say something. Anything.
Finally he did speak. “Rune, I am so sorry you’ve been dealing with shit like this alone. You should have come to me.”
“What do you
mean?”
He sighed. “Come in. Talk to me.”
“Are you the abuser?”
“Of course I’m not.” He sounded so hurt, offended.
She closed her eyes. If he was the abuser, he wasn’t going to tell her. But Amy hadn’t been sure. “I’ll come in.”
She loaded up with silver and a gun, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door. Almost surprised to find it dark, she took a moment to breathe deeply of the cold night air before walking to her car.
She noticed an unfamiliar vehicle parked directly across from her house. She fiddled with her boot while surreptitiously checking out the car.
There was a glow of red from a cigarette. One occupant for sure, maybe more. And they were watching her house. Fuck it.
She drew her gun with one hand and a shiv as long as her forearm with the other, and marched toward the car. She wasn’t in the mood to be screwed with.
She reached the car and beat on the window with her gun, a little surprised—and disappointed—when the glass didn’t break.
The windows were tinted. She knew she was being reckless and idiotic, making herself an easy target for whatever lurked behind the dark glass. She recognized her post-injury, post-blood attitude.
She really didn’t give a fuck.
She put the gun to the window when it remained up, and reached for the door handle. It wasn’t locked. She yanked it open.
Gun ready, she peered into the car as smoke rolled out into the open air. It wasn’t tobacco smoke. “Who the hell are you?” she asked.
Two women in the front and a man in the back. All were relatively young, the driver around thirty.
“I’m sorry,” the driver said, holding up her hands. “We didn’t mean to scare you.”
Rune raised an eyebrow. “Lady, do I look scared?”
“No,” the man in the back said, “and you don’t smell scared either.”
The girl nearest Rune was scared, though. She had wispy blonde hair and large eyes that looked gray in glow from the streetlights. She pressed her lips together in a tight, straight line, and her hands shook as she held them up. She flinched away from Rune’s gun.
Rune pushed the gun a little farther into the car. “Somebody better start talking.” Before she’d finished speaking a scent hit her brain, and she barely refrained from sniffing the air. “You’re wolves.”
