by R. J. Blain
I began with Sasha; her fear and hesitancy made my bond with her sharp. With Wendy’s calm bleeding into me, I gave it to Sasha. Normally during subjugation, I crushed the other Alpha’s hold on a wolf and took the pack bonds by force.
Instead, Desmond waited, and like I would offer my mate everything I was, everything I had been, and everything I would be, I laid my prized puppy at his feet. He was gentle, even gentler than me, cocooning her and welcoming her, leaving her in Wendy’s capable paws.
Our bond didn’t break so much as it stretched thin and dissolved away to nothing, passing away with the evasiveness of a summer breeze. She was free of me, the wolf still touched by wildness. My affection burned strong and bright, a fresh memory without the pain of final departing, but rather the separation of old friends who would someday meet again.
I worked my way through the ranks of my pack, beginning with the most submissive wolves, sweating in my effort to make the process as gentle and smooth for them as I could. Desmond helped; when I faltered, he stepped in, taking my wolves with a gentle tug, feeding me his strength through the temporary link binding us together.
My sweat froze on me by the time only Frank and I remained. Drawing a deep breath, I let it go in a sigh, disentangling myself from the link with Wendy and Desmond. “I’ll return,” I promised my wolves—Desmond’s wolves.
Desmond cocked his head to the side, showing me his throat for the briefest of moments in acceptance of my intent to reclaim what belonged to me. Licking my face, Wendy huffed once and left me to join her mate, her head held high and her ears pricked forward.
For a moment, she was the queen of the pack, the Alpha female, and no matter how submissive she was, no one could take that from her.
“Come on, Frank,” I said, rising to my feet. The cold settled in my bones, but I forced myself to run in the direction of my den, where my brother should have been safe from all harm.
~~*~~
I made it back to my house, driven by panic, anxiety, and Frank’s teeth. Gasping for breath with my hands braced on my knees, I waited until my heart no longer threatened to burst out of my chest before I reached up, grabbed the stone masking the outside entry panel, and tossed it aside. I punched in my override code to open the door.
My frozen fingers fumbled with the knob, but after several tries, I got it open and let Frank inside. He headed straight into the adjacent closet, emerging moments later with my spare bathrobe. I took it. With a few helpful nudges and pulls from Frank, I wrapped it around me. He closed the door.
I opened the panel for the intercom and hit the button for the second floor. “Head count,” I snarled before releasing my finger from the button.
Not waiting for an answer, I headed down the hall. “Frank, did the whistle sound?”
Frank shook his head.
If Simon had reached the second floor, someone would have triggered an emergency code. Everyone knew at least one emergency code. That left the third or fourth floor.
My mate lived, so if he had gotten onto the fourth floor somehow, she hadn’t been there. That left the third floor as the easiest to breech and the most likely place Simon to have hunted for my brother or my mate. I growled, punching in my all-access code to let myself into the staircase to the third floor. Frank padded silently behind me.
I hoped I never found out who let Simon into my den. With my brother gone and my mate threatened, I doubted I would be able to restrain myself or my wolf. Frank would try, but he couldn’t dominate me, not without the pack backing him. Taking the stairs two at a time, I stabbed my fingers at the pad, jabbing in the code.
The stench of blood seeped through the door. Frank growled.
Bracing myself for the worse, I threw open the door and came nose to nose with my brother. Alex’s eyes widened. Blood caked his forehead, dripping down from a gash across his brow. His nose had been bleeding, and recently, judging from how bright the blood staining his skin was.
My knees gave out from under me, and with a startled cry, Alex caught me under my arms before I could crack my head open on the floor. “Richard!”
Frank whined, bumping my elbow with his nose.
I couldn’t force out any words through my tightening throat, wheezing as I struggled to breathe. I lifted my hands and cupped his face, my fingers shaking as I registered his warmth—living warmth. Not a ghost, not dead, but alive.
My brother lived.
“Nicolina still has the fucking gun and she’s lost it,” my brother snapped at me. He batted my hands away, grabbed hold of my wrist, and pulled me to my feet. “I was about to enter the emergency code. She’s completely catatonic.”
With a little help from Frank, I stayed upright. I sucked in a breath. “Nicolina’s catatonic?”
Had Nicolina been the one to kill Simon? Once again, my anxiety and worry for my mate surged, although what Alex had told me thus far helped me keep a grip.
Catatonic was good, to a degree. If she was non-responsive, she wasn’t going to shoot anyone, herself included—not before I had a chance to figure out what the hell had happened in my house and do something about it.
Pulling me forward, Alex led me around the pool. Bloody footprints covered the tiles. “She shot Simon while we were fighting. I haven’t figured out how the fucker got in here, Richard. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I invited Nicolina to the second floor for dinner. She wanted to swim first. I decided to join her so she wasn’t alone. Simon jumped me not a minute after I got down here. She came right after me, and a good thing, too. She opened fire and didn’t stop shooting until he was dead.”
Simon’s body rested in a pool of black blood, far more than any human body could possess. In death, he stared at the door leading to the changing rooms. I fisted my hands, clenching my teeth as I stared down at him. I grabbed hold of his shoulder and rolled him onto his back.
“Where is she? How many bullets are in the gun? How many times did she fire?” I demanded. With so much silver-tainted blood in the air, I couldn’t isolate my brother’s scent with him next to me, let alone find my mate. I counted five entry wounds riddling Simon, three in his head, one in his neck, and one in his arm. If there were any other wounds, Simon’s clothing hid them.
My wolf was astonished at the ferocity of our mate’s attack. No Fenerec could survive so many silver bullets, especially three in the head.
Considering the potency of the rounds in her Beretta, the bullet in his arm would have been sufficient to kill him.
Simon hadn’t stood a chance.
“Not enough to empty the magazine, and she has two more with her,” my brother warned, pointing to the corner away from the pool. A trail of blood led to the door before streaking along the wall to vanish into the foliage. He spoke in a rush, his voice trembling as he said, “I tried talking to her, but she just stares at me, shaking like a leaf. The only good news? She’s holding the grip with both her hands. Her fingers aren’t anywhere near the trigger. I didn’t want to risk disarming her, but you’re fast enough.”
I turned to Frank, gesturing to the far side of the pool. “Change, please.”
I didn’t need to coerce or force him; my Second obeyed, and once I was certain he had started transforming, I straightened, gripping my brother’s shoulder. “You did good. I called for a head count. Go to the second floor and find out if anyone is missing. If you find out who let him in… don’t tell me.”
“Don’t tell you?” Alex blurted.
“Now would not be a good time,” I snarled.
“And if someone is missing?”
“Find them.”
I didn’t want to let Alex out of my sight, but I couldn’t be two places at once, and I didn’t dare go downstairs among the Normals, not yet—not until I helped my mate. Until I got the gun away from her, she was as much of a threat to my brother and herself as Simon had been.
Herding my brother to the door, I shoved him through, closing it behind him. I turned and crouched, narrowing my eyes as I sea
rched through the foliage decorating the corner of the room. Careful to remain silent, I crept forward, pushing aside the fronds.
My mate, true to Alex’s word, huddled in the corner, her back pressed to the wall. Blackened blood was splattered all over her. I guessed she had taken the neck shot at point blank range. Her eyes were all pupil, and I doubted she noticed me despite my clicking my tongue to catch her attention.
“Richard?” Frank asked, his voice rough from the pain of a recent transformation.
“That was quick,” I replied, sitting back on my heels to watch my mate. The Beretta pointed at the trees, her knuckles white from the force of her grip on the weapon. “Go get a robe from the changing room and some towels.”
Frank obeyed while I tried to figure out what to do. My mate hadn’t moved, her breath coming in quick bursts. When my Second returned, he cleared his throat to warn me of his presence. “How is she?”
“Well, I’d say she got close and personal with at least one of the shots,” I commented, torn between horror and pride at my mate’s ruthlessness. “I can’t feel Alex at all.”
Frank rested his hands on my shoulders and kneaded at my tense muscles. “Simon’s death messed things up a bit. I couldn’t feel Alex either for a while, but I’m getting faint hints of him here and there. Focus. That little girl needs us to figure out how to get that gun out of her hands without one of us eating half a magazine of silver bullets.”
While I was tempted to bite Frank for calling my mate a little girl, he was right. She was armed and very, very dangerous. Had she been unstable from killing Luke? While she had seemed a little shocked, she had recovered quickly enough.
Simon wasn’t her first kill. Desmond had trusted her with a gun when hunting for me after Luke’s death. There hadn’t been anything wrong with her earlier. Her scent had been a mix of happiness, satisfaction, and pleasure, all because of me. She hadn’t wanted me to go with my pack, ultimately forcing me to nip her to sleep so I could escape her, not that I had wanted to leave her at all.
She had been tranquil when I had carried her to the guest bedroom and tucked her in, leaving her to guard the den.
Not only had she guarded our den, she had saved my little brother. I could never repay her that debt.
“Come on, Richard, now is not the time for you to zone out. We have to figure out how to help her. You can join her in falling apart later.”
Simon’s death did hurt, but he had attacked my brother, and by forcing my mate to kill him, he had hurt her, too. I ran my hands through my hair. “I’m thinking, Frank.”
I wasn’t a crisis response expert. Sighing, I said, “Maybe we should call in Alfred.”
If Yellowknife’s Chief of Police didn’t know what to do, no one would. He knew what I was, what we all were. Since my pack was under his jurisdiction, he had inherited a lot more than a police force when he had risen in the ranks.
“That’ll cause her—and you—a lot of problems, Richard. It’ll be bad enough having one of your pack shot in your house, but when they find out a minor—who is licensed in the US, not here—has one of your guns, they’re going to freak.”
“Self-defense,” I snarled.
“Let’s see if we can get the gun from her first. Covering up who shot Simon won’t be such an issue so long as she doesn’t have the weapon in her hands when Alfred gets here,” Frank replied, resting his chin on top of my head. “She’s definitely catatonic; we’re not exactly keeping quiet, and she hasn’t even twitched in our direction.”
“That could change any moment,” I retorted.
“Let me try to approach her. She doesn’t hate me on an instinctual level.”
I shuddered at the thought of Nicolina turning the gun on Frank. “Absolutely not. I won’t have you shot. Forget it.”
“So you’ll go up there and eat a bunch of silver rounds for what? Pride?”
“Simon deserved every last round she fed him,” I growled.
My mate echoed my growls.
Frank tightened his grip on my shoulders. “You’re going to get yourself killed, you stubborn piece of shit.”
“Just be ready to grab the gun and get it as far out of her reach as possible, Frank. The safety will be off, so try not to fire rounds accidentally,” I replied. Narrowing my eyes, I calculated the distance between me and my mate. I could reach her in two or three leaps. With both of her hands clutching the grip, I could probably get to her before she had a chance to fumble for the trigger. “I’m less worried about her turning the gun on me than I am about her turning it on herself.”
I’d rather she pumped me full of silver than she so much as scratch herself. Drawing a deep breath, I held it until my lungs burned. The stabbing cold from my venture through the snow as a human bit at my bones, but I ignored the pain.
Once my mate was safe, I could thaw.
“Shit,” Frank hissed. He released me. “Maybe we should come at her from both sides?”
“We’d hurt her and just double the chances one of us gets shot,” I pointed out. “I’m more resistant to silver than you. So long as she doesn’t get me in the head or heart, I should be okay if you remove the slug fast enough.”
If Frank didn’t remember the bullets in the Beretta were designed to kill each and every wolf in the pack, myself included, I wasn’t going to remind him. If Frank had to extract a slug, I would be flipping a coin to determine if I survived the resulting silver poisoning.
“You’re fucking insane, Richard. Have I told you that lately? Absolutely off your rocker. Have you forgotten you just broke your neck? Have you forgotten you haven’t recovered from running wild yet? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
If Frank knew she was my mate, he’d understand. He would do the same for Vivian without hesitation.
I had two good reasons to take the risks even beyond my love for my mate. “Desmond and his mate, Frank. He’s got the entire pack. Think. What’ll happen if he runs wild because his daughter dies? I’ll take a bullet happily before I allow that happen. I needed the pack to hold him off for how long?”
“Jesus, Richard.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think she was right in the middle of this.” If I had, I would have left Frank in charge of the pack with Desmond backing him.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” Frank ordered.
I rolled my shoulders. I stripped out of my bathrobe and spread it out. “Change of plan. Get behind the door and don’t be surprised if you hear gunfire. I’m going to wrap her up, but it might take a bit to get the gun out of her hands. Worse case, I’ll unload the gun into the wall.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Get Alex to go upstairs and pull out the vodka. After this, I’m going to need it.”
“You are not drinking yourself into a stupor, Richard.”
“If I get that gun out of her hands without anyone getting shot, I’ll deserve it,” I muttered.
“Fine. If both of you get out of this alive, you can make friends with all of the vodka you want. Fuck, I might join you. That’d make Desmond happy. Two rogue wolves drunk as fuck while his daughter’s covered in blood and in dire need of a psychiatrist. Why not? Vivian is already going to kill me, so I may as well start digging my grave early.”
“You’re such a good sport, Frank.” I stretched, tensed, and waited for Frank to retreat to the safety of the hallway leading to the showers. “Okay, Nicolina. Try not to kill me,” I muttered.
She didn’t respond to me, which worried me as much as it did my wolf.
I lunged for her, whipping the bathrobe at her. The motion caught her eye, and with the smooth precision of a professional shooter, she aimed.
Had her finger been on the trigger, I would’ve died. I threw the robe in her face, slapped my hand to the wall, slid it behind her head, and slammed my full weight against her. Crying out, she struggled beneath me.
I jammed my elbow against her arm to deflect the Beretta. It discharged with a deafening bang. The thud of imp
act heralded the fire of silver scorching up my arm into my shoulder to blossom through the rest of me. If I let her get another round off, I probably would die just like Simon. I slammed her to the floor, my hand beneath her head spasming in rhythm with my heartbeat. My right arm still moved, and calling on my wolf, I groped for her hands.
My mate still held the Beretta in a death grip. I dug my fingers into her left wrist, pressing down until the pain of my grip forced her hand open. Driving my knee into her side, I pinned her, shifting my hold to her right wrist, repeating the process until she dropped the gun. It fell to the floor with a clatter. I slapped my hand down on it, and in my haste to shove it away, it discharged again, firing a round into the fake trees lining the pool.
Nicolina struggled beneath me. Slumping on top of her, I struggled to catch my breath.
“Frank,” I called. While certain I had spoken, I couldn’t hear myself through the ringing in my ears. A shudder rippled through me.
By the time my Second reached me, I didn’t need him to tell me the bullet was still lodged in my arm. The silver sucked away my strength, leaving me sprawled on top of my mate, incapable of even rolling off her. She thrashed, pummeling me with her fists.
Frank wasn’t alone. My brother grabbed Nicolina under her arms and pulled her out from under me. Despite her struggles, he had no problem wrapping her in one of the larger beach towels. I wanted to say something, but the act of breathing took all my strength.
“You just had to get shot, didn’t you? Couldn’t pull off this stupid, idiotic stunt without eating silver, could you? Of course not. You have a death wish. Fuck, Richard. Just be thankful she wasn’t using the hollow points or I’d be picking out silver shards for a week. It’s not too deep, but it’s going to hurt like hell getting it out,” Frank warned before he dug his fingers into my arm. Instead of digging at the hole, he worked his fingers beneath the slug, forcing it out the way it had gone in.
