Red: Through the Dark

by Sophie Stern

  “It’s the childcare center,” she says. “Someone destroyed it.”

  “What?” I cry out, and several wolves turn to look at me. “Show me.”

  Quickly, Ali and I dart out of the main gathering space and head down one of the side halls. At some point, Thorn throws me a t-shirt and shorts, which I manage to pull on as Ali and I make our way down the narrow hallways and around several sharp corners.

  We arrive at the childcare room and I’m overwhelmed by the emotions in the room. The scents mingle as I enter and I smell fear, sadness, and frustration. Anger wafts through the room when Ryder enters. He’s almost as mad as I am.

  “Who did this?” I growl, taking in the broken toys and damaged furniture. Mrs. Beaver is in the center of the room with tears rolling down her face. She’s surveying the damage and shaking her head.

  I’m overwhelmed by the damage to the equipment, but that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is the message sprawled across the wall. It’s a message that is obviously meant for my mate. It’s obviously meant for Red.

  “Who the fuck did this?”

  “We don’t know,” Mrs. Beaver says quietly.

  “Does Red know?” I ask. My mate is going to need me. If she hasn’t seen the message, I wonder if it would be better for her not to know. She doesn’t have to ever find out. I don’t like the idea of lying to her, but these words are harsh, and my little darling is already struggling enough without throwing this onto her pile of worries.

  “No,” Mrs. Beaver says. “It’s just me and Ali this morning.”

  “Actually,” Ali cringes. “I showed her.”

  “What? When? Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know,” Ali answers, and I can tell she’s telling the truth. “She went back to the suite.”

  “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” I say. Ryder is walking around, picking up equipment and broken pieces of wood. He’s obviously trying to figure out if any of this is salvageable.

  “When I came in to open this morning, it was like this.” Ali sounds distraught. “We’ve been having so many problems lately, but I didn’t think this would happen. I didn’t think she’d…I mean they, would come after the kids.”

  “She?” I demand, not missing Ali’s slip. “Allison Martin, who did this?”

  Her eyes are big and she looks from Mrs. Beaver to Ryder to me. No one is cutting her any slack, though. Those big eyes won’t do her any good this time around.

  “I just…I didn’t know she’d take it this far,” Ali bursts into tears, but I don’t give a shit. I just want answers. I want to know who would have torn apart what this pack has worked so hard to accomplish.

  “Tell me now, Allison, or dragons help me, you’ll be out in the woods on your own.”

  “Dead,” Ryder adds, though I wasn’t going to be quite that extreme. Excommunicating a wolf? I’m fine with that. Killing one? Not so much. Not unless the behavior was much worse. Not unless my spouse was threatened.

  “It’s Tessa,” she says finally.

  “I knew it!” Ryder blurts out before I glare at him.

  “What about Tessa? Surely she hasn’t been doing all of this on her own.”

  “No,” Allison says. “It’s why I volunteered to work in the children’s center, though. She, um, wanted me to get close to Red and tell her stuff. I didn’t though! I couldn’t. Once I got to know Red she was really nice. I didn’t want to betray her like that.”

  “You did betray her, Allison. You betrayed all of us by not turning Tessa in the second you found out what she was doing.”

  “I’m sorry,” Allison bursts into tears. “It’s just…I didn’t know it was going to go this far. I thought it was just some pranks. Then she started taking money and other things, though.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “She wanted to cause chaos in the pack. She wanted everyone to doubt your abilities as pack leader.”

  “Why? There has to be more you aren’t telling me, Allison. What else?”

  “She…um…I don’t know! Okay? She didn’t tell me that.”

  I’m about to growl in frustration when I take a deep breath instead. This is about the future of my pack. This is about what is going to happen to my wolves. If Tessa has some sort of cruel intentions, I need to know what they are so I can be one step ahead of her.

  “Allison,” I take a deep breath. “Listen to me, okay? I know this isn’t your fault. None of it is. You can’t control what others do and I don’t hold you responsible for any of this, but I need to know where Tessa is now and what she’s planning to do next.”

  “She wasn’t on the run this morning?” Allison looks surprised.

  “No. Said she was sick,” Ryder pipes in.

  “She wants to be the pack leader’s wife,” Allison says. Then she looks at me. “Even if that pack leader isn’t you, Alpha.”

  “Tell me what that means.”

  “I overheard her talking in the woods the other day. She didn’t know I followed her, but I thought something was wrong, so I did. She was meeting with Lex.”

  “Lex? Why? She hates him.”

  “No. She doesn’t hate him,” Allison shakes her head. “She wants him to be Alpha. Tessa was telling him he’s strong enough to challenge you, but she needed to weaken you a little bit first. You know, to make things more even so Lex would have a chance.”

  “What do you mean? How did she plan to weaken me?”

  “She wanted to get rid of Red so you wouldn’t have her to count on. She wanted to get rid of your mate.”

  Nine

  Nash

  “You need to calm down,” Ryder warns me as I stride down the hall. I know he’s right, but I don’t care about right. I care about the fact that my mate is being threatened and I don’t even know where she is.

  “Fuck off,” I mutter, but Ryder keeps up with me until we reach my suite. When we enter, he lets out of a deep breath.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Thanks for the observation,” I snatch a piece of paper off the table and read it, ignoring his leering eyes. Then I read the paper again. Then again. Then I drop it.

  “What’s it say? Did she go for a walk?”

  “She left.”

  “What?”

  “She left. She left me. She left the pack.” My heart feels heavy as the words she wrote begin to sink in. She left.

  Things got hard and Red left.

  Congratulations to Tessa, I suppose. She left me. Red really did get chased away.

  “You’ll get her pack.” Ryder sounds more confident than I feel. Red has been through hell and back again. It shouldn’t surprise me that she walked away so quickly, but it does. And it hurts.

  “We need to find Tessa and Lex,” I say, taking a deep breath.

  “Nash, you need to talk about this.”

  “No. There will be time for talking later. Right now I need to take care of something I should have taken care of weeks ago.”

  “You couldn’t have known. None of us knew.”

  I don’t think Tessa would physically hurt Red, but I also didn’t think Tessa had it in her to hurt the pack, and to take things so far that she was stealing? Who the fuck is she? I don’t know how things are going to end today, but I do know they’re going to end today.

  Ryder and I stride out of the room and I slam the door shut to my suite. The sound echoes in the caves, but I ignore it and head to the common area. Several wolves are lurking around. A few parents are holding kids and looking distraught. I’m guessing they just heard about the childcare center and they’re scared.

  I whistle loudly and every set of eyes looks up at me.

  “Outside in five. Pack meeting. Tell everyone. If you have kids, Aunt Germaine or Mrs. Beaver will watch them. I want everyone present.”

  I turn without waiting to see if my orders are followed. They sure as fuck better be. Ryder is close behind me and we head outside of the caves. The rain has finally stopped, but the earth is
muddy and wet. Stripping off my clothes, I make my way to an area just outside the caves. It’s where I challenged Jeffrey weeks ago and it’s where I’m going to fucking challenge Tessa and Lex today.

  “No matter what happens,” I tell Ryder. “You find Red. You take care of her.”

  “You can do this,” Ryder says automatically. I love that he has so much confidence in me, but that’s not what I need right now.

  “Promise me. No matter what happens.”

  “I will find your mate and guard her with my life,” he tells me. “On my honor.”

  Soon the wolves begin to come outside and they gather around me in a circle. More and more arrive until the only two missing are Lex and Tessa.

  “Where are they?” I growl. “Where are Lex and Tessa?”

  “Are they the ones responsible?” Jam asks, looking surprised. I nod sharply. He looks sad, but I can’t think about that now. We’re all feeling a lot of emotions. While human men are often taught to guard their emotions and stay calm at all times, wolves don’t have that same draw to emotionless behavior.

  We feel very deeply, very strong, very often.

  Jam looks like he’s been betrayed. He and Lex weren’t close at all, but they’d been spending some time together. I get the feeling he feels like he was tricked or used, neither of which are good emotions to be feeling before a big event like the one we’re about to experience.

  I doubt most of the pack even realizes I’m about to fight with Lex and Tessa. They don’t know we’re going to be fighting to the death today.

  They wanted to try and take my pack, but now they’re going to see what happens when someone does that.

  “I haven’t seen them all day,” Mary Beth says. “Tessa usually hangs around for awhile in the mornings, but she wasn’t around when I got up.” Mary Beth lives in the same hall as Tessa. They aren’t roommates, but they live close by one another.

  “No, they left early this morning to go on a walk,” someone says.

  “They told me they were going for a swim,” another wolf adds.

  “Tessa!” I growl. “Show yourself!” I yell into the woods. My voice echoes loudly in the silence of the forest. She can’t be far. She wouldn’t. If she wanted to challenge me, today was the day. It’s not common for a female to challenge an Alpha, but Tessa has never just been a normal female.

  I shift then and let out a long, low howl. One by one, the other wolves follow suit. It’s the middle of the day, so anyone walking by is going to know right away that something weird is going on. Humans might believe wolves howl when there’s a full moon, but no one believes we howl during the middle of the day.

  Why would we?

  We howl over and over, calling to our lost pack members, calling to Tessa and Lex, letting them know that their time is now.

  It’s time for them to face the consequences of their actions.

  It’s time for payback.

  “What a warm welcome,” I hear a shrill voice say, and I immediately shift back to my human form. It might leave me naked and vulnerable, but I can’t speak when I’m a wolf and there is quite a bit I have to say to fucking Tessa. Tessa is standing at the edge of the crowd and the wolves slowly move to make room for her as she comes to the center of the circle.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” I growl. She’s been planning this for weeks, maybe even months. It grates on me that we’re doing this on her terms. She’s the one who wants to be the Alpha or at least the Alpha’s bride. She’s the one who tried to keep me so busy and chasing my own tail that I wouldn’t have time to prepare for this.

  She’s the one who tried to scare off my bride so I wouldn’t have the courage to face her.

  She’s the one who tried to make sure Red broke my heart.

  My heart does, in fact, hurt. Knowing Red ran off kills me. I know Red better than most people, though, and I have the feeling my little Scarlett is going to be coming back sooner than we think. It’s why I haven’t told anyone she left.

  She’ll be back.

  I can guess there are a million reasons why she might have run off. Maybe she thinks she’s no good for me. Maybe she’s worried I want a shifter bride instead of a human. I don’t know. All I know is that no matter where Red is, she’s going to come to her senses and she’s going to come back to me.

  My darling bride always does.

  “What do I have to say for myself?” Tessa spits and strips her shirt off, tossing it to the ground. She enters the circle and starts walking around, pacing. The rest of her clothes follow and soon she’s standing in front of me in the nude, ready to shift at any moment. I watch her clench and unclench her fists, careful to keep an eye out for her claws.

  I’m not under any impression that Tessa plans to play nice when she fights.

  “I could ask you the same question, Nash. What the fuck did you think you were getting into when you took over this pack? Did you really think you’d get anyone’s respect by choosing a human? An ugly one, even?”

  “Leave my mate out of this.”

  “Your mate is the whole fucking point of this, Nash! Can’t you see?” She keeps walking, pacing, wringing her hands, but I know what she’s doing.

  She’s talking, keeping me busy while Lex comes to join her. I can smell him. I’m not an idiot. He’s close and he plans to attack me when I’m not looking. Then she’ll attack at the same time and go for the kill, then take over the pack.

  It’s a great plan, really, but they forgot about one little thing.

  My Red is a spitfire.

  And then I smell her.

  I smell Red.

  I smell Red almost as strongly as I smell Lex. I know she came back. She’s here. She came home to me. Oh, we’ll have some words later about the fact that she ran away without talking to me first, but I’m so thrilled she’s back I just ignore everything Tessa is saying.

  Red pushes her way to the front of the crowd and Tessa is so busy talking that she doesn’t notice Red slip into the circle, walk up, and slap her in the face.

  “You bitch!” Tessa growls, and reaches out to hit Red back, but I grab her wrist.

  “Leave my mate alone,” I snarl at Tessa.

  “She slapped me first.”

  “I’d say you fucking deserve it.”

  “You might be about to fight my mate,” Red says to Tessa. “But you will never run this pack. I don’t know what Lex promised you or what you promised him, but the two of you will never have the respect or the decency required to keep these wolves in line. When Nash and I have our mating ceremony, you can bet your ass I’ll bet he best Alpha’s bride this pack has ever seen because these wolves? These wolves are my family.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, little girl.”

  “Red,” I murmur, and she nods, getting the message loud and clear. Then she slips back into the crowd. I can still sense her presence, but she’s not in the front row, so I don’t have to worry about her getting hurt.

  This fight is about to happen, so I need to know my darling is safe.

  “I got her,” Ryder calls out, and I take a deep breath and turn back to Tessa. I open my mouth to speak, and Lex slams into me from behind.

  Ten

  Red

  I can’t look.

  “You need to look,” Ryder’s words force me to open my eyes.

  “I can’t.”

  I can’t see him fight. I can’t see him get hurt. I can’t see him die. Not today.

  “Red, you have to.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know.”

  He places his hand on my shoulder and I take a deep breath, then I lift my eyes from the dirt ground in front of me and raise them to Nash.

  This man is going to be the death of me. This is the second time I’ve seen him fight, but somehow, this is so much worse than seeing him kill my brother. That time, he was fighting a murderer. This time, he’s fighting people he thought he knew.

  We’re all going to have sca
rs when this is over and not all of them are going to be physical. Something tells me Nash’s scars are going to take a long time to heal. Something tells me all of ours are going to.

  Tessa and Nash are facing off when Lex leaps from the crowd, shifting as he barrels toward Nash. His clothes rip and tear as he changes from his human form to his wolf body. Lex has never been a huge guy, but as a wolf, he’s bigger than most. His dark grey fur looks mangy and matted as he nails Nash from behind.

  Nash falls forward on impact and immediately shifts. He’s a wolf before he hits the ground. Then Tessa changes, too.

  “Look,” Ryder grips my chin and forces me to watch, but I’m already watching. “He’s doing this for you, Red. He loves you.”

  “I love him, too.” I whisper the words and they hang in the air. I know Ryder has questions for me. He’s always considered it his job to look after Nash, so there are absolutely things he wants to ask me.

  Like why I ran away or why I came back.

  Like why I stood up for Nash to Tessa if I’m just going to be scared to watch them fight.

  Those questions are going to have to wait, though. Right now Nash needs our full support and attention if he’s going to survive this. Jeffrey may have been the first wolf I saw Nash fight, but I know enough about the pack to know he’ll have to do this again. It might be once a year or once every five years, but any good Alpha will occasionally have to fight.

  Nash is lean and strong as he duels two wolves at once. Snarling, biting, snapping, he moves with grace and agility as he battles Tessa and Lex at the same time.

  Lex circles around Nash and leaps at him, but Nash dodges and Lex hits Tessa, instead. She lets out a squeal and rolls, but hops back up quickly. Still, it’s not fast enough to hide the red stain on her fur. He got at least one good slice with his claws. In fact, it was such a good hit that I can’t help but wonder if Lex and Tessa are as much on the same team as they’re pretending to be.

  What if they only worked together to get to this point?

  What if one – or both of them – plans to take out the other?