Dark Souls: Box Set: Books 1-5

by E. J. King

  “We need to wait,” I said firmly. “Until we figure out their end game, we can’t let them know what Ethan told us. We can’t confront him until we’ve had a chance to investigate it. I want to know exactly what is happening in that basement.”

  “That isn’t going to be easy. I’ve never seen that building unguarded.”

  “What’s the matter, Rafferty? Scared?” I teased with a wink.

  I was rewarded with a lopsided grin that made my heart skip a beat. “Do I look scared?”

  He didn’t. In fact, he looked really, really good. With all of the craziness going on around us, we hadn’t had much time alone together since Rafe arrived at Haven.

  “I need to shower,” I said, looking down at the sterile white clothes I still wore. “I’ll make it quick. You better not be asleep when I get back.”

  Rafe feigned a big yawn and then smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

  I was the only one in the community shower room so I had my pick of stalls. The one at the back was the biggest and had the hottest water so it was an easy decision to make. Once the water hit my skin, reality came rushing back to me.

  I had been avoiding thinking about Luke, worried that it would send me into another downward spiral. Even though I had mostly recovered from the Were bite that had shocked my system, I was still feeling weak. I had to put both hands against the wall to keep from falling over. After a few gulps of air, I felt my strength come back. I also sensed that I wasn’t alone.

  Without turning around, I knew that it was Rafe. My body always seemed to be able to sense him whenever he was close.

  If my skin hadn’t already been burning from the hot water, it would’ve flushed under his touch. With one hand on my hip, the other on my shoulder, he stepped under the water. His body pressed against mine and I relaxed against him.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, brushing my wet hair away from my neck.

  “I am now.” I sighed as his lips moved from my jaw down to my collarbone. “Especially if you keep doing that.”

  “I’m glad you aren’t annoyed that I didn’t follow your orders.” His hand moved slowly over my stomach and then down. “I just couldn’t stay away.”

  “You’re forgiven,” I said, biting hard on my lip to hold back a gasp.

  I was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to see his face, to look into his hypnotizing blue eyes. When I turned around, Rafe’s jaw dropped.

  “What?” I felt very self-conscious with him looking at me that way.

  “Nothing.” He smiled shyly, shaking his head in disbelief. “Sometimes I forget just how breathtakingly beautiful you are.”

  “Careful, Rafferty.” I put my arms around his neck, raising up on my toes until we were eye level. “You keep saying things like that, I might fall in love with you. Again.”

  “That’s the plan.” His kiss was long and deep, just the way I liked it.

  The next think I knew, he had me pinned to the slick shower wall. Sometimes it really paid to have a super-strong boyfriend.

  “Talk about slippery when wet,” I joked through panted breaths.

  “Don’t worry, Red. I won’t let you fall.” The smirk he gave me was maybe the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

  It took him a minute to find a good balance and angle, but once he did, our bodies joined perfectly. As was always the case, Rafe moved in just the right way. Neither of us were interested in taking it slow.

  “Best shower ever,” I declared after he finally pulled away, just a few inches. “Perfect combination of clean and dirty.”

  “Dirty? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, sweetheart.”

  I sure hoped that was a promise.

  An hour later, I lay in the dark watching him sleep. My hand was on his chest and I could feel the steady beat of his heart.

  “You’re being creepy, Hart,” he said in a sleep-heavy voice with his eyes still closed.

  “I was just thinking about Ethan.”

  At this, one eye peeled open and looked at me. “Ethan? Wow, you know how to kill a guy’s ego.”

  “Ha, ha.” I poked him once in the ribs.

  “Ouch,” he said unconvincingly. Both of his eyes were open now. “There’s nothing we can do for him right now.”

  “I know.” I turned onto my stomach, propping myself up on my elbows. “I’m just worried about him.”

  Rafe took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Me, too. But let’s try not to think about it right now.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked angrily. “He’s your brother.”

  “I know that, Kaylie.” His eyes flashed in the dark. “But we can’t help him at this moment, and if it’s alright with you, I thought I would enjoy some time alone with my girlfriend since I haven’t really spent any time with her since she took off on me.”

  Whoa. I was surprised by the bitterness in his voice. “How long have you been holding that in?” I snapped as I sat up.

  “Too long.” He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t want to leave you, James,” I said. Yes, I felt guilty about it. But I also was ready to move past it.

  After a belated pause, he sighed again. “I know. I promise, I’ll get over it.”

  He snaked an arm around me to pull me close and I didn’t resist. Truth be told, if I could spend my whole life in his arms, that would be just fine with me.

  “When it’s just you and me in the dark like this, I can almost forget about all the crazy stuff happening around us,” I whispered, settling my head on his chest.

  As if on cue, a wolf howled in the distance and the cry was picked up by what sounded like an entire pack of wolves.

  “Someday we’ll go away, just you and me. We won’t have all the crazy shit to deal with anymore,” he said wistfully.

  It was strange to hear Rafe talk about a future outside of the Hunter world. He loved being a Hunter. I, on the other hand, had always dreamt of a normal life.

  “Do you think you could ever do that? Give up the hunt?” I worried that he was just saying what he knew I wanted to hear.

  His hand stroked my hair all the way down to the ends and then rested on the curve of my back. “For you, I would give up everything.”

  I knew that he would. He’d already given up his old life for me. I also knew that I couldn’t ask him to give up anything else. I couldn’t be that selfish, even if I wanted it more than anything in the world.

  The howling was getting closer to the compound and I was just starting to wonder if we should be worried when an alarm sounded over the internal PA system.

  I sat up abruptly and Rafe jumped to his feet. He had just pulled on a pair of pants when someone pounded on the door and then threw it open.

  “Community meeting. Now.” Slade’s eyes flitted past Rafe in my direction and I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I was wearing Rafe’s shirt and nothing else. His lip sneered when he added, “You may want to get dressed before you join us.”

  We were dressed and in the common room in less than two minutes. We stood along the back wall, watching the room fill with Haven’s residents.

  “Look.” Rafe nodded his head toward the front of the room where Slade stood with two men I had never seen.

  “Outsiders?” I was surprised. Slade ran a tight ship at Haven. He didn’t strike me as the type of Alpha that would let random men into the compound, let alone have them attend a community meeting.

  “We’re about to find out.”

  Slade had turned away from the visitors and started to speak. “I wish that we could be here under different circumstances. Our pack has been tested too many times in recent days. But as long as there are enemies that wish us harm, we must remain vigilant.”

  I studied the faces of the pack members, trying to assess whether this was a cause for concern or just another typical day at Haven. Most of the faces were unreadable. Only a few looked mildly worried.

  “As you know, we’ve been under attack since Carter Merrick’s overthrow and dea
th. His pack is looking to reclaim Haven, and they will stop at nothing to accomplish their mission. Their new Alpha, Nolan, has made it clear that he intends to challenge me. He’s ruthless, and rather than calling for an Alpha Trial, he’s preparing for a full-blown pack war.”

  None of this was exactly breaking news. Nolan had been threatening his attack for a while. He’d gone so far as to take Rafe hostage in exchange for my blood. But apparently the small sample we’d given him had only awakened his appetite even more.

  “Nolan is strong, but I believe we are stronger. As your Alpha, I need to be honest with you. Not all of us will survive the attack.” He paused and his words cut through the air. “But if we are prepared and if we fight together, the pack will endure.”

  It was such a dramatic speech that I half-expected someone to begin a slow clap that would be picked up by the entire room. But then I remembered that this wasn’t a movie- it was my life and I was one of those people that might not survive.

  “We never should’ve made that deal with Nolan,” I muttered in a low voice.

  I wasn’t sure how many of Haven residents had heard the full story about what happened and I certainly didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans. Nolan had wanted my blood, all of it preferably. But Slade had made a deal, giving him a dose of my blood in exchange for Rafe’s release. At the time, it had seemed like a good deal because no one had to die. But we should’ve known that Nolan wasn’t gone for good.

  “It kept you alive, so I have no regrets.” Rafe’s jaw was clenched tightly. “Except maybe one. I should’ve killed Nolan.”

  “We’ve faced threats like this in the past,” Slade continued, oblivious to our sidebar. “But none have been quite so severe. I command each of you to commit yourselves to the defense of Haven. Together, and with the help of our friends, we can win this war.”

  At first, I thought he was sarcastically referring to me and Rafe as friends, but then he looked at the men next to him.

  “The Stokely pack has agreed to join forces with us.” Slade ignored the excited whispers that swept through the crowd. “We will train together, we will hunt together, and we will defend Haven together. Anyone that has a problem with this is free to leave.”

  It was pretty uninspiring as far as pep talks went. Especially since some of us were clearly not free to leave.

  “It looks like our odds have improved slightly,” Rafe said.

  The Stokely pack was small in number but large in stature. Each of the men was about twice the size of a normal man. Even Slade, one of the tallest and strongest men I had ever seen, looked diminutive next to them.

  “Feeling self-conscious?” I teased.

  “Should I?” He gave me a somewhat worried look.

  “Nah. I like my men scrawny.” I noticed an opening in the crowd and made my move. If I was going to fight alongside these men, I needed to know more about them. Then again, they weren’t exactly men.

  “Slade.” I didn’t bother apologizing for interrupting. “What’s going on?”

  His eyes flitted right past me and he turned away. “Not now.”

  “Well that was rude,” I muttered, watching as he retreated from the room with the new guys right behind him.

  “I don’t think Slade is interested in making friends right now,” Rafe said.

  “I figured that out when he made us captives of Haven.” Looking around the room at the scared looks on the Haven residents’ faces, I made a decision. “We can’t stay here, Rafe. We need to find a way to get Ethan out and then we need to get the hell out of here.”

  His icy blue eyes flashed and he said, “Agreed.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As much as Haven appeared to be just a quaint home for some misunderstood werewolves, it was becoming readily apparent we had only been seeing a façade. The reality of Haven was much darker- pack wars, underground dungeons, and secret prisoners. It was like living in a supernatural soap opera.

  “I think we could just storm the prison,” Rafe declared the next day over breakfast. “We can take them.”

  “We can take on the whole Haven pack?” I raised a skeptical eyebrow and took a big bite of waffle. “You certainly think highly of yourself.”

  “Not me. I’m a wimp. I think highly of you.” His eyes scanned the room, the act of a well-trained Hunter. “Is it just me or does everyone look wolfier this morning?”

  It sounded strange, probably because it wasn’t even a real word, but Rafe was right. In the span of a few hours, the people around us looked conspicuously less human. Their eyes burned an abnormal shade of gold and their teeth were prominent and pointy.

  “I feel like I should be wearing a red hood,” I quipped dryly.

  “You won’t be making any more jokes when one of these wolves tries to eat you.” Rafe helped himself to a giant bite of my waffle.

  “You keep eating like that and I will think you are turning into one of them.” I used my fork to knock his away from my last bite. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  His eyes narrowed threateningly. “And I thought you loved me.”

  “You know better than to get between me and food.” I stabbed the piece of waffle and downed it quickly. “Time to start working on our plan.”

  After the town hall meeting, Rafe and I spent hours working on a plan to free Ethan from the prison so we could get the hell out of Haven before the Were war started. We had tossed around several options, but it was clear that we needed to do some recon before we settled on the right one. There were still a lot of things about Haven that we didn’t know- a lot of dark corners that still needed to be explored.

  That was the first part of our plan. If we were going to escape Haven, we needed to know the place inside and out. Since the outside was more accessible, we started in the square.

  “Dorms over there. Cafeteria and storage in that building. The administrative building and medical wing on the left.” I pointed to each building as I ticked it off the list. “And now we know the basement of the fourth building is a creepy dungeon. But we still don’t know what’s upstairs.”

  “We need to get inside that building.” Rafe nonchalantly studied the building. “But we can’t just walk through the door. Those guards will never let us in.”

  “I know. I’m thinking we approach this from a higher level.” My eyes drifted up to the rooftops.

  Rafe groaned. “The roof?”

  I forced myself not to smile. “It will be fine.”

  “What? Of course. What are you implying?” He feigned confusion.

  I found his act completely endearing. Rafe would never admit it, but we both knew he wasn’t a big fan of heights. It was probably the only thing in the world that caused him a little anxiety. “Nothing. I was just saying that the buildings are so close together it should be really easy for us to jump from the dorm roof to the prison roof.”

  He shuddered slightly when I said the word “jump.”

  “Are we sure we want to rule out the possibility of underground tunnels?” His eyebrows raised hopefully.

  “This isn’t a movie, Rafe.” I turned my attention back to the guards. “As long as we don’t make a lot of noise, they shouldn’t see us.”

  “Our bodies splattering on the ground are probably going to make some noise,” he said, not entirely joking.

  “Suck it up, Rafferty.” I punched his arm. “If you’re too scared, just let me know. I can always go without you.”

  That was all I had to say. Rafe had too much pride to ever let me engage in such risky activities on my own. Even if it meant that later that night we were sneaking up the stairs to the dormitory rooftop.

  “This was worth it for the view alone,” he said when we were nearly to the top.

  “You can’t even see the view yet,” I protested.

  His voice was rich with smugness from behind me. “That’s not the view I’m talking about.”

  “Very funny, perv. Let’s leave my ass out of this, okay?” I shoved hard on the metal
door in front of me until it squeaked open.

  “You’re supposed to be stealthy, Hart.” Rafe brushed past me to step onto the roof first. He was putting up a brave front for my benefit. “We need to move fast. With the threats on the pack, they won’t be out hunting for long.”

  The pack went outside the walls every night to run in the woods and release their pent-up wolf frustration. Aside from the guards downstairs, everyone else was out eating bunnies and howling at the moon.

  I glanced up. “Full moon tonight. Is that good or bad?”

  “Bad. Very bad.” He winked at me. “Just the way I like it.”

  “Someone is feeling very cocky tonight. Let’s see if that lasts.” Now it was my turn to pass him as I stepped right up to the ledge.

  The prison building was right in front of me, with just a five foot gap between the two rooftops. I made the mistake of looking down, all five stories.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I marched back three steps. Feigning confidence, I said, “See you on the other side, boyfriend.”

  The second my feet left the ground, adrenaline rushed through my body. My blood felt like it was on fire, my stomach flipped excitedly. I landed on the other roof with a wide grin on my face.

  When I turned back, I saw that Rafe was still frozen in the same spot. He didn’t seem too impressed with my brief moment of flying.

  “Come on!” I hissed. The wolf howling was already getting closer as the pack made its way back to Haven.

  Rafe seemed to be having an internal argument as he took a step forward, then two steps back, then another step forward. Then he shook his head, muttered something, and sprang forward.

  Two big steps forward before a powerful jump that launched him in the air. His face was stony and focused, no trace of a smile when he stuck the landing two feet to my left.

  “9.5,” I said.

  “Huh?” He looked at me in surprise, like he had forgotten I was even there.

  “The landing. Would’ve been a 10 if you had smiled.” I didn’t give him a chance to respond, turning for the door. “Let’s go.”