I swallowed down a fresh wave of tears.
“Thank you,” Mom said, clearly fighting the same emotions.
It took hours to separate the people into groups. Those who would be punished for what they had done in Long Mesa, and those who were getting a second chance. The latter number was smaller than I had imagined.
“Is it just me, or are there less people here?” I asked Mom softly as she indicated for Nikolai to take a man to what we had dubbed ‘the wolf pile.’
Nikolai seemed to take great joy in literally hurling people into the ever-growing wolf pile.
“Because they’re not here,” a voice snapped as a new person was dragged in front of us.
I flinched at the sight of Norma Loomis. Allan’s second wife had always had a perpetually disgusted look on her face, and she had clearly lost weight the last few months. Everyone I saw seemed thinner and more gaunt than when I had left.
“And where are they?” I asked coldly, remembering Norma was just as twisted as her children and husband. She had no problem brutalizing omegas herself.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Norma smirked. “Bet you think you’re all sorts of fancy now, huh? Got yourself an Alpha mate. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
I couldn’t help the cruel smile that formed. “Oh, I plan to. It’ll definitely be a lot longer than your husband or your kids lasted.”
Norma’s face twisted and she lunged for me, fingers curved into claws as she went for my face.
I easily knocked her arms away and threw a right hook that snapped her head back. She howled in pain, cupping her bloody nose with both hands.
“Wolf pile,” I snapped, watching Alexei drag her away.
Remy looked over at me, his expression a perplexed mix of concern and pride. I winked so he knew I was okay. He grinned and went back to discussing his plans with Dante and Dimitri.
“They were taken a few weeks ago,” the next voice said, soft and timid.
I glanced down to see a girl who had graduated a few years ahead of me. Her face was a mottled mess of bruises and she looked way too thin except for the bulging stomach she protectively wrapped an arm around.
“It’s Bria, isn’t it?” I said, remembering her name. I tilted my head to the side as a memory hit me.
She had snuck me a sandwich when she stumbled on me picking through the dumpster behind the school one blisteringly hot afternoon a few years earlier. She’d simply set it down next to me and kept walking away, never making eye contact.
She nodded and dropped her eyes. “Yes.”
“Do you know where they were taken?” I asked, softening my voice. She looked ready to pass out or bolt at the first chance.
Bria pulled a thin sweater up over a bony shoulder. “I’m not sure. I asked but …” She touched the side of her face where the bruising was the worst.
“They took most of the girls and a few boys. All of the babies,” she added. “Some of the younger women who hadn’t had a fertility cycle yet also went. They put them on a bus in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep because I was hungry. The baby wouldn’t stop kicking.”
“Who’s the father?” Mom asked gently, reaching for Bria’s hand.
Bria swallowed audibly. “I’m not sure. It happened a few months ago. The night of the burnings.”
“Burnings?” I echoed.
She nodded sadly. “The night they burned the two omegas that were left after you two both …”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Maisie and Shane. The night they killed Maisie and Shane.
“You were there when they died?” Mom whispered, clearly as distraught as I was.
“After some of the council took their turns, “ Bria shuddered, “they tied them down. Threw gasoline on them. They took bets as they tossed matches to see whose would catch first.”
My stomach cramped painfully. It physically hurt to remember Maisie and Shane. I could only imagine how terrified they must have been. How much pain and humiliation they endured before they died.
Guilt smothered me in a suffocating embrace. We should have gone back for them or figured out a way to bring them with us. I could feel the press of Remy’s gaze on me, trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
I held as still as possible. If I looked at him, even for a second, I would crack and shatter. I would fall apart like the fountain. If I started crying now, I might never stop.
“After they burned the bodies, the men, and some of the women, were in a frenzy. I should have stayed home, but we were all Commanded to attend. I tried to get away, but I wasn’t strong enough. Several other women and a man were killed that night. It was too much for their bodies to take.”
Mom was openly weeping beside me, enough so that Nikolai was headed our way. His expression was fierce and terrifying.
“Bria, would you like to come with us to Blackwater?” I asked her, working around the swelling knot of emotion in my chest.
Bria’s head lifted. Her greasy, brown hair hung in limp streaks over her face, but there was a flicker of hope in her blue eyes.
“We have a medical center there that can help you when it’s time to deliver your baby,” I added, ignoring my father as he pulled Mom to the side, crushing her to his chest in a hug after a pause.
“You’ll be safe,” I promised her.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled over as she nodded. “Yes. Yes, please.”
“Katy,” I called, looking for my friend.
Katy’s red hair caught in the sunlight as she looked up with a smile that slowly melted. She walked towards me cautiously.
“Katy, this is Bria. She’s coming back with us,” I said firmly.
Katy immediately stepped forward. “Hey, Bria. Why don’t you come with me? We’ve set up an area with some food and water until we can work out the logistics of getting people home.”
Bria started to turn, but at the last second closed the distance between us and hugged me. Her arms squeezed me as a soft kick from the baby landed against my flat stomach.
“Thank you,” Bria whispered. “You saved my baby’s life.”
I nodded as Katy led her away, shooting me a worried look.
“Honey,” Mom said, coming up behind me and sliding a hand along my shoulders. Nikolai stood beside her, his worried eyes studying me.
“Can you … I need a minute,” I mumbled, stumbling back a step.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Nikolai offered, his worried gaze making me self-conscious.
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. I met his eyes. “I just need a few minutes.”
I turned away and headed down the road, not entirely sure where I was going.
“Babe.” Remy’s hand reached for mine and caught it, falling into step with me.
“I can’t talk about this right now, Remy,” I told him, staring straight ahead. “I just … I need a minute.”
“Do you want me to leave you alone?”
He was worried and frustrated, but he would do as I asked if needed.
I started to choke on a laugh. All I could do was tighten my hand around his. Words stuck in my throat like the desert dust to my sweaty skin.
He would leave me to wander the streets of Long Mesa because I actually could now without worrying about being grabbed or taunted or chased.
Cassian was dead. He had finally gasped out his last breath an hour earlier. Preston had been dead for over a week. Marc was still alive, but in an indescribable amount of agony while being watched by an elemental who had zero issues with breakin more bones if he considered moving.
Allan was dead. Linden was dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
They were all dead. Just like Maisie and Shane and so many others. Like Bria had almost been. And her baby …
“Baby, you’re scaring us,” he said softly.
Us.
I could hear the footsteps behind me and could only imagine the line of my friends currently trailing us. Rhodes an
d Larkin. Katy. Dante, Tate, and Ryder.
People who loved me too much to let me suffer on my own.
“I’m okay,” I whispered back, still moving forward as I walked away from the heart of town and down a barely used side street.
“Stay,” I told Remy quietly as my feet turned down another road.
His hand squeezed around mine as he silently walked beside me.
Muscle memory led me back before I truly realized where I was. It wasn’t until the charred husk of the omega house came into view that I knew where I was going.
I freed my hand from Remy’s. “Give me a second.”
“Skye, what is this place?” I could hear the worry and confusion in his voice as I kept walking away.
I stopped a few feet from where the crumbling front steps would have been and simply looked.
The sky beyond the horizon was hazy with an impending sand storm. Dry lightning cracked through the sky like an ominous warning as I glanced around.
My mind could reform where walls and doors had been.
Walls that had peeling paint and reeked of the smells that seeped into the weathered wood over the years. The cracked glass of windows that never opened right. The front door with the busted lock.
I moved closer, tracing the jagged edge where the fireline had charred the foundation. Decayed pieces turned to gritty powder in my fingers.
I could see through the skeletal remains, into the backyard I had played in full of rocks and rusty nails. I would line them up like little girls did stuffed animals, arranging them in a way only my mind understood.
Rocks and rusty nails. Those were my childhood toys.
My fingers snagged on a loose board as I rubbed them across the foundation. It came free with a single tug, a splinter digging into my palm.
The flash of pain was grounding, steadying.
I dropped the board and it landed on something metal. I knelt and unearthed a crowbar from the rubble.
I tested the weight of it in my hand for a second before letting it swing downward with a satisfying crack that snapped a few of the floorboards like toothpicks.
My other hand closed over the end and I swung again like it was a baseball bat. I hit a corner of the house and debris went flying.
I swung again and the entire structure creaked as the post I’d hit dented. I hit a new spot, watching in fascination as a cloud of dust swelled up and was carried away.
Again and again. I swung harder and harder, destroying parts of the very house that had nearly destroyed me.
I pictured Maisie’s sweet face as I slammed the edge of the crowbar down onto a discarded pane of glass. Shattered fragments sprayed out, cutting my arms.
I pictured Mom’s face, pale and bruised as she crawled to the shower while I destroyed another post.
I lost count of the memories that purged themselves from the darkest parts of my mind. I swung until my arms ached from the force of it. I kept going until the crowbar fell from my numb fingers.
Remy was behind me before the first sob tore from my lips. He turned me away from the house, whispering something that couldn’t penetrate the incessant buzzing in my ears.
My friends stood in the distance, waiting and watching. Larkin and Tate were crying. Katy and Ryder looked just as heartbroken. Rhodes and Dante were doing their best to comfort them while not giving into their own emotions. Emotions they felt for me. Because they were willing to share the pain I felt to lighten my load.
I sagged against Remy, burying my face against his chest as I cried for the girl I used to be and she had endured.
After a second, he lifted me up, swinging me easily into his arms as he carried me away from my past.
46
Skye
The bump of the wheels touching down woke me up. My eyes blinked open sleepily and I found that I wasn’t in the seat I had started off in, but now in Remy’s lap with his arms serving as my seatbelt. Truthfully, his arms had less give than the federally approved belts did.
“Hey.” His warm voice rumbled out of him, creating a sweet vibration that echoed into me.
I snuggled deeper into his chest, my hands tucked under my chin.
“What time is it?” I murmured back. It was dark outside the windows and the cabin lights were still turned down low. We hadn’t left Long Mesa for hours after my little break down at the omega house.
Mom had finished separating the pack. Remy used his Alpha Command to compel them all to change. Lulu’s magic swept over them, the act silent and invisible. I hadn’t even realized she had used her magic until her legs gave out and she went down.
Dimitri had been waiting to catch her, and I heard him start cursing as a small dribble of blood seeped from her nose. She tried telling him, and all of us, that she was okay, but it was obvious the more magic she used, the more it wore on her body.
The now shifterless wolves ran out of town with one snarl from Remy. Quite a few people opted to stay in Long Mesa or go to family in nearby towns whose packs had joined Blackwater. Bria and a few others returned with us. Remy left half the men we’d brought to stay in Long Mesa just in case, and the next plane of people from Europe were being diverted to shore up the south west portion of our growing pack.
But now that Long Mesa had fallen, Blackwater controlled the western coast from California to the Arctic and as far inland as Texas. Norwood had more people still, but our numbers were steadily climbing.
I felt kind of shitty for taking a backseat for the rest of the trip. My mind was still trying to process everything that had happened.
Cassian, Allan, Marc, and Linden were all now officially a brutally distant memory. In a lot of ways, I was freer than I had ever been. But the threat of Norwood wasn’t going away. It was growing closer.
“It’s a little after midnight,” Remy told me, nuzzling the crown of my head. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good,” I admitted, still completely limp against him. For all his hard muscles, he made an excellent pillow. “Did you sleep?”
“A little,” he said, but the shadowing around his jaw and the tired look in his eyes made me think that little was basically nonexistent.
“Sorry for kind of shutting down back there,” I said, easing one hand from where I had it bent awkwardly between us. I flattened it on the hard plane of his chest. “I didn’t think it would hit me that hard.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he replied, his brow furrowing. “That was where you lived?”
I nodded slowly, feeling flayed open and vulnerable.
Anger flashed in his eyes before it was smothered by love and concern. “I’m sorry, baby.” His finger traced the slope of my nose with heartbreaking gentleness.
“You scared us,” he admitted after a second. “Your mom was worried it was too much.”
“Where is she?” I asked, lifting my head to look around. Remy had tucked us into the back corner of the airplane, away from everyone. From this angle, I couldn’t see over the seats to where Mom was.
“She’s here.”
I glanced across the aisle, my eyes focusing and then widening when I saw Nikolai sitting there with Mom curled against his side. His arm was wrapped around her, and she looked more peaceful than I’d seen in years as she slept soundly. Even the jolt of the plane touching down hadn’t woken her up.
I blinked slowly, almost expecting them to vanish like a mirage.
“Is she okay?” I finally asked.
Nikolai glanced down at her, his expression infinitely gentle in a way I had never seen. “She will be. I think the day was as exacting on her as it was you. I’m thankful for you both to be rid of that place.”
Nikolai glared briefly at Remy, who snorted.
“Your dad thought we should just burn the whole town to the ground,” Remy explained.
“It made the most sense,” he insisted.
I smiled. “The place wasn’t the problem. The people were. And now those people are gone.”
“Too quickly,” Nik
olai added bitterly. “I thought it would have been fun to round them up and take them to Russia. My guards could use the target practice.”
My jaw dropped a little. “Um. That sounds like a lot.”
“And I told him their punishment was enough,” Remy cut in firmly.
Nikolai’s gray eyes slid to me, but I could see the teasing glint. “I’m worried your mate may be slightly too merciful, little wolf.”
I glanced up at Remy with a grin, my finger dragging along the slope of his jaw. Everything in me went liquid and warm as his soft gaze met mine. “I think he’s perfect.”
I could hear Nikolai start to chuckle as Remy dipped his head and kissed me gently, his lips barely tasting mine. The lights turned on as I started to open my eyes.
“Ouch,” I muttered, blinking rapidly against the sharp sting of the fluorescents. “Bright lights.”
Remy’s nose nudged my forehead as his arms tightened. “House or cabin? Your choice.”
“House,” I said immediately, needing the feeling of my pack around me. People started to get up and move around.
“Maybe Mom should crash with us tonight,” I added, looking at where she was still sleeping.
“I’ll take her home,” Nikolai said quietly, sweeping back a lock of blonde hair from her forehead. “Don’t worry.”
“Okay,” I sighed. After a second, my nose wrinkled and I looked up at Remy. “Actually, is just staying here an option? I’m comfortable. You make a good bed.” I yawned at the end of the sentence and cuddled against him more.
He snorted lightly. “Lucky for you, your bed is portable.”
“Huh?”
I squeaked as Remy stood up, still cradling me in his arms. He started walking down the aisle, and I caught the grins from my friends as we walked by.
I lightly slapped at his shoulder, embarrassed. “Put me down. I can walk.”
“I like carrying you,” he said simply, stepping through the open side door and slowly going down the stairs.
“Being carried around doesn’t exactly scream, ‘badass Alpha female,’” I pointed out.
Legacy (Blackwater Pack Book 3) Page 39
