The Carpenter's Destiny_Family Secrets

by Noah Harris

  The thought almost made him smile, until he saw some of the nearest people approaching. When they spotted Dean with Mikael, they shouted for them to move to the main house. Apparently, they were to go and see Samuel. Dean should have known that Samuel would have survived the ordeal. The alpha was far too stubborn to let something like another ambush and death take him that easily.

  The going was slow, since despite being able to walk relatively on his own, Dean was still very weak. Everyone they passed watched them go, saying nothing as they observed their slow progression. Dean wanted to scream, hating this helplessness, this weakness of his body. It wasn’t just pain slowing him down considerably, it was the fact that he felt as if the strength had been drained from his. He couldn’t have run or picked up the sword Mikael had insisted he carry here even if he wanted to. The last of any remaining power had gone into furiously stabbing the werewolf to death hours ago.

  When they entered the main house, the first thing that Dean saw was Samuel, pausing as he moved across the open central room. The alpha’s eyes widened at the sight of them, holding a small, shaped piece of wood in his drooping hand. Grunting, Dean shuffled forward, glad when Mikael let him enter the room under his own strength.

  “What the hell did they do to you?” If Dean hadn’t seen the look of shock on Samuel’s face, he wouldn’t have believed the same tone came from him.

  “Used me as a punching bag.”

  Mikael growled from behind him, the sound low and almost animalistic. “They tortured him Dad. That’s what they did. They tortured him to screw with me.”

  “Damian was pretty pissed that I helped with getting rid of Nox too, so don’t think it was just you he was wanting to screw with.”

  Samuel swore under his breath, walking up to Dean and looking him up and down. “Damn him. You look like shit.”

  “Glad to see where Katarina gets her tact from,” Dean muttered, feeling himself begin to waver on his feet. Damn, that little bit of standing on his own was already taking the strength from him.

  To his further surprise, it was Samuel who reached out, putting a strong, steadying hand on his shoulder. Dean could sense Mikael freeze in shock behind them as Samuel wrapped his arm around Dean’s shoulders and began to lead him out of the room. Too surprised to think about resisting, Dean followed Samuel’s lead into the small living quarters.

  It wasn’t until he was carefully sat in a soft armchair that he spotted Matalina. She sat upon the bed that Lucille still occupied, now hooked up to the machines that Apollo had brought back. Matalina’s eyes were wider than Samuel’s had been as she stared. She wore a loose pair of shorts, while her arms and shoulders were bare. Her chest and middle were wrapped carefully and firmly with layers of gauze wrap.

  Dean’s mouth twisted in a mirthless smile. “Battle wound?”

  Matalina rose slowly, approaching Dean, her eyes sweeping over his body. She dropped down carefully before him, leaning forward to wrap him up in a desperate hug. Dean tensed at the sudden movement, wishing everyone would stop touching him without the courtesy of a warning. Yet he would no sooner tell her to stop than he would willingly go back to that cave.

  Her hug, and the quiver in her shoulders reminded him of the time he had been pulled out of the deep end of the public swimming pool as a child, and his mother had swept through the crowd to pull him into the tightest hug she’d ever given him. There was that same desperate relief to it, an unspoken prayer of thanks, and a furious kind of love that always scared him. It was simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, and he could feel his eyes stinging as she held him against her.

  “I’m okay Matalina,” he whispered to her, looking up to Mikael who looked as distraught as his mother did. “Should you really be bending over with that wound?”

  She pulled back, wiping at her eyes as she tried to glare at him. “Don’t you worry about me Dean! You’re the one who went and got himself caught and scared the hell out of all of us. This little love bite isn’t anything, now you stay put while I get the kit. You are an absolute mess.”

  With an imperial air about her, she pushed up from the ground and bustled out. Dean blinked at the spot where she had been. When he looked up to Mikael, he saw his own surprise mirrored back at him.

  “Wow,” was all Mikael managed.

  “She must have been freaked out,” Dean commented, trying to adjust himself as carefully as possible. “Never heard her use a contraction before.”

  “She has been…concerned,” Samuel replied as he entered the room, looking gravely at Dean.

  Dean eyed the older man, remembering what Damian had said. In some ways, it had seemed too coincidental for him to have landed himself right into Damian’s waiting arms like that. Yet, he didn’t want to believe that Samuel would willingly hand him over like that, especially not to Damian. The two of them had their differences, no question about that, but he couldn’t see Samuel selling him out like that, not even for the benefit of the pack. Samuel was many things, but he had showed that he considered Dean a part of them, even if he was unhappy about that, and he would never betray one of his own.

  “It’s not your fault Samuel,” Dean told the alpha quietly, having his thoughts confirmed at the look of surprised relief that crossed his face.

  “I sent you out there, without thinking that it might not be safe. I should have known better.”

  “If there’s anything we’ve learned about Damian, it’s that he’s as tricky as he is greedy. He’s kept us so busy watching his army that we never thought to watch for people monitoring us. I don’t blame you Samuel.”

  Matalina returned with a large box of medical supplies under her arm. Dean wanted to groan out a protest, but he knew there would be no point. The best that he and Mikael had managed on the way here was stop for a basic first aid kit so that Dean could clean himself up a little. It hadn’t done much for how rough he looked, but it was better than nothing. Matalina had experience in dealing with wounds, however, and Dean wasn’t going to try to argue with her when she had that hard expression on her face anyways.

  “So, what happened?” Dean asked, groaning as she began to move him about for better access.

  Samuel growled, beginning to pace in irritation. “The attack happened about half a day after Mikael and the hunting party left. They came in waves. We couldn’t understand how they managed to get past the other packs, until we learned that they were all under attack at the same time. It was timed perfectly, all of us hit at the same time, so no one had any warning of anything.”

  “You said they came in waves?”

  “Yes, they came in groups, never all of them at once. They would simply ambush us in groups, and never from the same place either. It was effective. We would only just manage to patch the hole they made in our defensive line when they would go for a weak point somewhere else. The cycle would repeat itself over and over again for hours. We didn’t have the manpower to fix the defensive line fast enough, let alone mount a counterattack.”

  “What ended it?”

  “The hunting party returning. Katarina showed up as another wave had come, larger than the ones before. It was fortunate timing. Damian’s group was caught between the hammer and the anvil then. Surrounded by our pack, that group was torn apart before they could rip another hole in our defenses. We were able to push forward and rout them from where they had been making their attacks.”

  “Where, ow Matalina!” Dean yelped as she probed at a sensitive wound. She chided him with a glance before returning to cleaning the wound. Dean didn’t like the look on Mikael’s face, and he definitely didn’t like that his mate had been watching each and every wound that his mother cleaned. Dean could sense the growing anger in Mikael, and he reminded himself to keep a close eye on Mikael before he did something impulsive.

  Samuel seemed to know what he was about to ask. “She and a group of other warriors continued chasing Damian’s group to the west. They’re supposed to be helping fend off the attack on the other pa
cks in that direction. I have yet to hear anything, but since my daughter is not the best at keeping in contact when there’s blood on the breeze, I’m not surprised.”

  Dean winced again as Matalina found another cut. “I’m sure she’s having a good time. They’re not going to get Damian though. Guaranteed he figured out what was happening when Kat showed up and took off back to a safe area. Did the same thing when he left me behind to come deal with attacking The Grove.”

  Samuel paused his pacing to stare at Dean. “So Katarina was correct, you did see Damian?”

  Dean took a deep breath, looking over to Mikael who nodded his head stiffly. Dean regaled them with most of what had happened since he had been taken. He skipped over the hours he had been left with the ugly trio, but even what he did manage to tell them was exhausting to go over again. No one interrupted, and Samuel looked thoughtful as Dean finished, Matalina looked grim, and Mikael looked as if he were about to rip someone’s limbs off.

  “So he left you to come deal with this attack. Leaving behind a trap for my son, possibly my daughter, in the hope of getting both while leaving our defenses weakened. Yet he left to come see the attack, rather than witness the trap sprung.”

  Dean shrugged, regretting the gesture when his shoulders protested, “Probably wanted to see you go down more than he wanted to see Mikael and Katarina go down?”

  Mikael snorted at that, “He hates my father, but if Damian is anything like he was when we were younger, he hates me more. He knows I’m the one who officially ended Nox, and I was the one who humiliated him during the ambush. That slimy shit will want to see my head roll more than he’ll want to see my dad’s.”

  “And he never showed himself during any of the attacks. The few reports that I received from the other packs under attack never reported seeing him either. Seeing as he was the main instigator of this, there’s a priority on his head.”

  Dean frowned at Samuel, “Wait, you’re saying he never showed his face here either?”

  Samuel shook his head, “There have been no reports of him being seen anywhere. Here, or near where they had temporarily camped out to launch their attacks on The Grove. You are the last person we know of to have seen him.”

  Dean sat back, allowing Matalina freer access to him as he thought that over. What Mikael had said made a lot of sense. Damian had taken what he and Mikael had done very personally, and he didn’t seem the type to let things go very easily. He was more cunning than petty though, so if he chose to be here for the fall of this pack instead of for the trap laid out for Mikael, that would also make sense. That he hadn’t been here at all was unsettling. The only thing that could have kept Damian away from all of this would be something else he believed to be even more important.

  His thoughts wandered over the possibilities in the silence that the three of them shared, until his eyes rested on Lucille. Her coloring was already better, now that she was getting sustenance from the machines that he and Apollo had been sent after. The machines were beeping steadily, the cables connected to them running out of the room and into what he assumed was Matalina and Samuel’s bedroom.

  Dean blinked, “Hey, where’s Talon? Shouldn’t he be here, either playing nurse for me or Lucille?”

  Samuel looked up from the cooking fire he had been staring so absently in, looking almost confused, “Ah, seeing as this was not his fight, and his two escorts were warriors sent here to protect him personally, I sent him back to the cabin we keep for honored guests. I believe he wished to be part of the effort, if only as support, but I didn’t want to worry about him in the thick of things. It generally looks bad if your guest dies under your watch.”

  Matalina finally looked up from the focus of her cleaning, “The battle ended a few hours ago, the call went out that the danger had passed.”

  A horrible idea occurred to Dean as he remembered something else Damian had said, and he struggled to stand, “Mikael, help me up. We need to get to that cabin, now.”

  He stared down at the bloody mess, not sure if he felt sick from what he was seeing or from the implications. Both bodies were sprawled out, their throats opened wide, and their blood splattered over what felt like everything. Dean hadn’t met either of them yet, but he could tell that they had put up one hell of a fight before they had finally died. Both bore marks of having fought back ferociously, and the cabin looked different now.

  It seemed as if no part of the space that served as the living room hadn’t been touched by the violence. The furniture was in pieces, the fabric upholstery was shredded and littered the floor among the wood splinters. The few pictures and books that had been lain about were also torn apart, pages and glass sprinkled along the mess. It looked like a bomb had gone off, but in reality, it had just been a fight between these two werewolves and whatever attackers had invaded.

  Talon was nowhere to be found, though Dean was sure that the large man hadn’t disappeared without a fight. He wondered how much of the blood splattered across the room was his. The room that had been Talon’s had a bloody mess in it, and there were two bodies of wolves in the doorway and just past the door, sprawled beside the bed. However many there had been, they had lost two in the struggle.

  Samuel stood grim faced as he surveyed the damage, “They must have come during one of the raids. Slipped in while we were busy, and took him.”

  The cabin was positioned near the edge of The Grove, in a quiet place separated from most of the pack. Dean figured that it was supposed to be for a bit of privacy for guests, so as to not be crowded in with a possibly strange and unknown pack. That meant it would have been all too easy to slip in while everyone’s attention was elsewhere, and abduct Talon without anyone being aware until it was too late. With the edge of the wood not far from the cabin, it would have been easy, once they killed Talon’s guards and subdued him, to drag him out and into the cover of the wood.

  “I bet they were trying to be quick and quiet about it,” Mikael was carefully stepping over the mess, trying to not disturb anything. “Doesn’t look like it went according to plan.”

  “Went enough to plan that they got him,” Dean replied, feeling a tightness in his chest. Dean had feared they would find Talon’s body with the others when they had first entered the cabin. When they found no trace of him, save for the few things he had brought with him that had been left behind, his potential for grief had turned to fear. Dean knew all too well what kind of hospitality Damian could offer to his ‘guests,’ and knew that there was no way Talon being abducted was simply by chance.

  Dean could practically hear Samuel grinding his teeth as he glared at the mess, “He planned this, from the beginning.”

  Dean could only nod, knowing nothing he could say would help. Every time they thought that they understood Damian’s plans, they inevitably discovered that they were in fact, at least two steps behind. Damian would have known Talon was in The Grove, if he had been watching for Dean, he wouldn’t have missed the arrival of the shaman. How he had known that Talon was a shaman was still a mystery, but he supposed it was one of Damian’s ‘measured gambles’ at play again.

  Looking back, he could see what the plan was all along. No doubt Damian would have loved if his trap in the mountains had killed either Mikael or Katarina, yet that had been more about pulling their strength away from The Grove. With the strength pulled away, it allowed him to attack their defenses with a measured, but intense strength. Doing it in calculated waves, with the right timing, he kept Samuel occupied with trying to defend the line where Damian’s warriors had been coming from. Damian had kept them all so occupied with what was right in front of them, they missed what was going on in the background until it was too late.

  “Clever son of a bitch,” Dean growled, shifting uncomfortably as his body fought to stay upright.

  Samuel glanced over at him with a frown, “Why is it, whenever you talk about him like that, you always sound like you respect him?”

  Dean hoped the look he shot Samuel as he gestured a
round the room was enough to peel paint, “How can I not Samuel? He played us, all of us. This was his goal all along, and I’ll bet that every damn pack that he attacked around us either had to be included in the battles, or they have a shaman of their own that’s missing. He’s had us dancing to his tune from the moment he got the idea in his head that he wanted this place. But don’t think that respecting his abilities is the same thing as respect for the man. He had me beaten for hours on end, just because I got in his way, and because it served his plan. Don’t think for one minute I don’t want to see him dead. Because I do, more than you do.”

  The amount of energy that it took for him to get that little speech out was almost too much for him. He felt as if he could sleep for days, and still wake up exhausted. He didn’t want to be standing in this bloody, torn up room any longer. The reminder of how they had all failed, and how it was now Talon who was the one who was in danger just brought on more heartache than he thought he could stomach right now. He wanted to get away from here, retreat into a dark hole of his making and not come out until he stopped hurting inside and out.

  The brush of a hand on his back brought him out of his thoughts with sudden violence. He almost fell as he spun too quickly from the unexpected touch. He would have fallen too, if Mikael hadn’t reached forward and caught him. Dean’s head spun from the motion, but it didn’t spin enough for him to not feel a trickle of shame for having reacted so dramatically from just a simple touch from his mate. Mikael didn’t look hurt by it, only upset and angry.

  Trying to recover himself, he turned to the once again stone-faced Samuel, “Can you track them? I don’t want to leave Talon in their hands Samuel.”

  Samuel’s jaw tightened, “Our best trackers went with Katarina. We could only follow their path so far before it began to get lost in the flurry of other scents. It’s Damian, he’s smart enough to make sure that his kidnapping team went through areas full of other scents. Even our best trackers would have a hard time tracking them down, especially by the time they get back.”