Forsaken

by Dean Murray

  The fight was taking a toll on Jas; she had to be bruised from one end to the other, and Derrick had landed a couple of deep slashes on her left flank. She was taking a beating, but he was moving more slowly now from the chunk she'd taken out of his right leg, and he'd lost more blood than she had so far.

  James leaned forward, anxious to join the fight. He knew as well as I did that the best possible outcome would be for Jasmin to win the fight, but he couldn't help himself. James liked a good fight more than just about anything else.

  Jasmin was working the perimeter, burning up incredible reserves of energy as she kept Derrick in motion. She wasn't as fast as she normally was, but she still had an edge over any non-royal wolf, and it was obvious Derrick was having a hard time adjusting to just how fast she was. A sudden burst of speed caught Derrick off guard and he pushed his leg too far as he tried to compensate.

  Derrick's injured leg collapsed underneath him, and Jasmin changed directions instantly. My breath caught as she launched herself into the air and then landed on Derrick with a hammer blow of force that spun him around in a half circle as her fangs latched onto his shoulder. Derrick let the momentum imparted by Jasmin's attack continue to spin him around, and he converted it into a fall that very nearly crushed her beneath him.

  Jasmin had already started jumping away by the time Derrick hit the ground, but she landed awkwardly and a yelp of pain made it out of her before she rolled back to her feet. There was a hitch to Jasmin's motions now. I was pretty sure she'd broken a rib, but Derrick's right arm hung limply at his side. She'd managed to savage the muscles of his shoulder enough that he couldn't lift it, which meant that even if Jasmin couldn't finish the fight James should easily prevail. My shoulders relaxed slightly as I realized that Isaac's unwillingness to fight would remain a secret.

  It was tempting to see if Jasmin could finish Derrick off, but she was noticeably slower now. If she won it would buy us some more time before the next challenger, but there was just too much risk that Derrick would kill her. I opened my mouth and quietly said James' name.

  James smiled and called his beast with an explosion of power. Before James could move, two things happened that I hadn't been expecting.

  Jasmin felt James transform and took another calculated risk. She launched herself at Derrick in an all-out bid to kill him. It made my stomach drop slightly, but it was a smart risk to take. She knew that James was on his way, so she had one last chance to finish the fight, and even if she failed, there was a reasonable chance that Derrick wouldn't be able to kill her in turn before James got to him.

  Jasmin's action was perfect. Addison's move made me want to kill her, and it wasn't just my beast powering the fury that washed over me.

  Addison reached out and grabbed James' hand. She wasn't even close to strong enough to stop him in his human form, let alone when he was a hybrid, but he deferred to her with the force of nearly two decades of habit and stopped in his tracks.

  If I'd had any questions about whether or not she realized what she was doing, they were answered as she gave me a self-satisfied smile. I had two courses open to me. I could force the issue with James and Addison, or I could save Jasmin.

  Addison's power play had taken the barest fraction of a second. Jasmin was still in flight, but Derrick was already reacting. His good hand was coming up to intercept her. It was going to be close, but Jasmin had known that all along. She was counting on the pack to back her play and I couldn't leave her out there unsupported, not even if it was going to put all of us in a worse position in the long run.

  I tore open the cage that I used to keep my beast confined to one corner of my being and launched myself towards Jasmin and Derrick as my transformation completed. My hybrid form was several inches taller than Derrick's and I had an incredible weight advantage on my side, but even as I streaked towards the two combatants, I was reaching inside myself trying to activate the power that had dropped Brandon and his pack instantly. Even this late in the fight, if I was able to manifest my power, it would cut off the stream of challengers that we were otherwise going to have to face, but nothing responded to my desperate efforts to trigger my ability.

  Jasmin hit Derrick and her mouth fastened closed on the side of his neck, but the semi-retractable claws on his left hand had already found purchase on her stomach. As his hand sank into her flesh, Jasmin let go of Derrick and dropped towards the sand, but I collided with him at the same time that she impacted on the ground.

  I tried to take his bad leg into account, but I had to make sure he didn't have a chance to finish Jasmin off, so I ended up overestimating the amount of force needed to bowl him over. Derrick hit the ground with enough force to send sand spraying out all the way to the far end of the square, and then our momentum sent us rolling.

  Derrick got the talons on both of his feet into my legs, but I was focused on controlling his left hand because it was the threat most able to end the fight quickly. As we stopped rolling, I found myself on the bottom with blood flowing freely from both of my legs. I was taking a lot of damage, but I ignored the pain and brought my left leg up against his chest, pushing as I kept ahold of his left hand.

  I felt his talons tear free as he flipped over my head and then I rolled on top of him, savaging his legs and chest as I got into position for a kill. A second later, I had my left hand around his throat, but something stopped me from ending the fight. I knew that later I'd come up with a host of reasons why I didn't kill him, but in that instant I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

  Instead of ripping his throat out, I sank my claws into his chest, puncturing one of his lungs, and then broke his left arm. It was a brutal thing to do to another person, but I couldn't leave him in a condition to resume his attack, at least not until Jasmin and I both had a chance to heal from the injuries that he'd inflicted on us.

  I pulled his face around so that the yellow eyes of his beast met my blue eyes. "I'm leaving you alive so you can testify that we're honoring the rules of challenge. Make sure the rest of the dispossessed know that. You've had your shot at us. I won't spare your life next time, so don't come back."

  I waited until Derrick nodded in understanding and then I backhanded him with enough force to knock even a hybrid unconscious.

  There was silence as the rest of the pack watched me pull myself back to my feet. Isaac and James both knew I would be within my rights to challenge them this instant. Given the fight I'd just been through, they could probably beat me, but that would just leave whoever won the alpha of an even smaller pack and would do absolutely nothing to stem the tide of dispossessed that they both knew were on their way.

  I pointed to Derrick. "James, Isaac, put him in one of the cages and then load him into the cargo truck. Donovan will hire a driver to get him several hundred miles away from here before he wakes up."

  They both nodded and then started towards Derrick, but I held my hand up. "This isn't over, not even close."

  I didn't wait for their responses, instead limping over to Donovan and Dominic, who were both desperately trying to slow Jasmin's bleeding. I let my human form bubble up as I pushed my beast back into the corner where I normally kept it locked up. Dominic kept pressure on Jasmin's stomach as I bent down and picked her up.

  The journey back to the house took twice as long as normal, but Donovan hurried on ahead of us and had a blood transfusion prepped by the time we made it into the operating room. Rachel was there as well; she pulled on a pair of gloves and started handing Donovan clamps and suture thread as Dominic started taping up the worst of my injuries.

  I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the pain, but I couldn't block out the sounds of Donovan trying to save Jasmin's life. Half an hour later, Donovan leaned back with a sigh that made me look over at him.

  "She'll be okay. Her body's own regenerative powers are finally starting to kick in."

  I nodded and my fists unclenched. "I'm glad she made it. I never meant to leave her in so long."

  Donovan no
dded, looked at Dominic as though debating whether to wait for her to leave the room before continuing, and then finally resumed speaking.

  "What are you going to do? The pack won't last long if neither James or Isaac are willing to help with the challengers."

  I could feel a headache starting. "Honestly? I'm not sure. I could always beat the two of them into submission, assuming we have enough time before the next batch of challengers arrive, but that isn't the kind of dynamic that I want in the pack. We'd be better off scattering and finding new packs that each need a person or two than continuing like that."

  Rachel patted Jasmin's arm and then smiled. "At least Jasmin is okay. Hopefully she'll be able to get fully back on her feet before the next challenger arrives."

  I nodded, but I didn't have much hope of that. The best I could do would be to call Ash back and hope that he was able to bring down the next challenger more or less by himself.

  "Honestly, sis, I wish I could just send Jasmin away for the next little while. She could use a break from the craziness of pack life. Nearly anywhere would be safer than here."

  Rachel looked at me oddly. For a second it seemed like she was almost looking through me.

  "Alec, just because someone is far away doesn't mean they are safe. There are plenty of threats out there that won't respect someone's desire to stay apart from the violence and danger that is part of pack life. Even a normal human is in danger nearly all of the time."

  I would have to have been a fool not to know exactly what she was getting at, and half of me felt a sharp stab of pain at the reminder of what I'd lost. The other half of me was angry with her for the risk she was running. I'd forbidden everyone in the pack from mentioning Adri's name and I'd sealed the order with an imperative backed up by my beast. If Rachel had come right out and said, 'Adri isn't safe,' then I wouldn't have been able to stop myself. As it was, it took a supreme act of will to stop from throwing her into a wall.

  "You are skating on the very edge, Rachel."

  She shook herself, almost like she was coming out of a dream, and for a moment it seemed like she wasn't sure what I was talking about.

  "I'm sorry, Alec. I didn't mean to do it."

  I held her gaze for several seconds before nodding. The anger had served to cushion me from the worst of the pain, but I still wanted to put my head in my hands and cry. The tears hadn't come, not even right after she'd left, but I'd wanted them to come and give me some kind of release.

  I couldn't escape the room, not without showing how much Rachel's comment had bothered me, and I couldn't afford that kind of weakness, not right now. I couldn't escape, but I couldn't tear my mind away from her, from Adri, either.

  The way she'd looked the day that she'd come to tell me that she was leaving Sanctuary had burned itself in my mind. The decision obviously hadn't been easy for her, but her resolve had been equally visible and it had made her even more beautiful than normal. I'd had to stand there and watch as she first condemned me and then turned and walked out of my life forever.

  It had been like having an angel come down and open the door to the Garden of Eden and then push you back out into the wilderness before you'd had a chance to sample the fruit whose aroma had been pulling you deeper and deeper into the garden. I'd seen paradise, and the washed-out world to which I'd been exiled was hellish in comparison to what I'd felt when I'd been with her.

  Rachel's words spun around inside my mind, and I found myself suddenly conscious of all of the ways, supernatural or mundane, in which Adri could be endangered despite finally being a safe distance away from us, from me. I'd spent so much of the few weeks we'd had together trying to convince her to flee, to find somewhere safer than Sanctuary, but I'd never considered just how much danger she would be in no matter where she went.

  She was in New York. It would be hard to find another place in North America with a higher concentration of vampires than Manhattan. Even assuming she managed to avoid being killed by a bloodsucker, there was no guarantee she wouldn't run afoul of a werewolf, and that didn't even consider the fact that the Coun'hij wasn't above using her as a pawn to get back at me for having stood Agony off.

  Isaac walked into the room, simultaneously interrupting my thoughts and providing me with a way to solve two problems at once.

  "We got Derrick in the cage, so even if he loses control, Donovan's driver will be safe. The truck is loaded, all we need is a location and a time and we'll make the handoff."

  I nodded, and then held up a hand. "James can make the drop once Donovan has had a chance to make the arrangements. I want you on a plane within the next hour. Pack for an extended trip."

  Isaac's control was still frayed, and I could almost see the thoughts flowing around inside his head. He would like nothing more than to attack me, to force me to bow to his will, but he knew that wouldn't get him what he wanted. If our pack fell apart, there was no guarantee right now that Jess would choose to go with him. He could very easily find himself in a new pack all by himself.

  "Where are you sending me, and how long is 'extended'?"

  "You're going to Manhattan. I've just had it rather forcefully pointed out to me that there are all kinds of dangers in the big city, and you're going to go make sure that nothing happens to the member of our pack who lives there."

  Isaac's anger was rising. I was backing him into a corner where he risked death if he obeyed me as well as if he refused.

  "It's forbidden by the Coun'hij for any of the moonborn to go east of the Mississippi! She doesn't even want anything to do with us. You can't order me to make a trip like that, not for Adr..."

  I'd pulled myself to my feet while he was pacing back and forth, and now I found myself standing in front of him with my claws around his throat and no recollection of having crossed the distance between us.

  "Be very, very careful. The imperative still stands, and if you say her name I will kill you."

  Isaac cleared his throat and then nodded jerkily.

  "This is nothing more than an overly extreme punishment. The old Alec never would have done this."

  I released my hold on him and let my hand shrink back down to the one I'd been born with.

  "You risked the entire pack by your refusal to fight today. Every dispossessed hybrid in North America will rightly assume that all they have to do is kill one or two regular wolves in order to get their chance at me. They'll line up for the chance to take over the pack, and you could have at least stemmed the tide slightly by stepping in and protecting Jasmin. How many challengers will we end up fighting who would have steered clear at the prospect of facing two accomplished hybrids before even having a shot at me?"

  "What good will stemming the tide mean if we're still ultimately going to be worn down?"

  None so blind as those that refuse to see. I shrugged and swept my arm around, taking in the manor and everything else in the area.

  "I don't know, Isaac. I don't have any bulletproof solutions right now, but anything we can do to buy us more time will give us a chance to find a way out of this hole."

  Donovan stepped forward and cleared his throat.

  "If I may, Master Alec. It might be prudent to kill Derrick. While it's not something easy to contemplate, if he never reports back to the rest of the dispossessed, that would help alleviate the problems that have arisen today."

  I'd known Donovan would make the recommendation, but it still angered me that he'd done so with Rachel in the room. I'd done everything I could to shelter her from the worst aspects of what I was. I'd failed miserably in most of the ways that mattered, but I wouldn't let her see her older brother become a cold-blooded murderer.

  "No, he lives. If I kill him now, that buys us a couple of weeks; then we're back here again in the exact same situation. There's no guarantee that Isaac and James won't pull the same stunt then that they pulled today. I won't sell my soul to cover for Isaac or James' bad decision. I may be an animal, but there are some things that I still won't do, especially when they a
ren't guaranteed to save us in the end."

  I held Isaac's gaze for several seconds, watching his anger war with his reason, and then pointed at the door.

  "Pack your bags, Isaac. You're going to be gone for a while, and if you let anything happen to her, I'll kill you. You're starting to reap some of the consequences of your actions."

  Isaac had been gone for quite a while before Dominic tentatively cleared her throat.

  "Alec, you need to send me away at some point. You need to punish James—I understand that—and the best option is for me to go to New York. Otherwise you'll have to send James away, and that would hurt the pack more than having me gone."

  I rubbed my temples and wished once again that I could just disappear for a couple of days.

  "I don't want to send you away, Dom. I know how much you'll miss James, and the rest of the pack. It doesn't seem fair to punish you at the same time that I'm punishing James, but you're right that it would be good if we could find a way to keep James around for the next challenger who comes through."

  Dom smiled, but it was a sad expression. "I know, Alec. I love James, maybe more than he loves me, and I will miss Rachel and the others, but I understand what is at stake. If this is what it takes to make James see reason, then I'll do it. I never expected that I'd find the kind of happiness I've found here in Sanctuary. I won't run out on you after having received such a gift."

  Chapter 2

  Adriana Paige

  Brathingford High School

  Manhattan, New York

  The clock had become my constant enemy. It wasn't just that I desperately wanted school to be over with each day. I did. It was the fact that I wanted the evenings to be over with too. The only escape that had even a hint of promise was a year and a half away, and even then I wasn't sure that college was going to be any better.

  Mom was the happiest she'd ever been. Work was going great; we had more money than she knew what to do with, and if she wasn't shooting the kinds of stuff that she wanted to, she was still starting to become well known inside the fashion industry. She kept telling me that this was just temporary, that she was going to work some time into her schedule to do some landscape shoots, but I wasn't so sure.