Chapter 41
Konstantine
Apollo’s black undercoat absorbed the magnitude of the sun’s burning rays. Hot wind blew through the territory, providing no chill. He panted excessively, nose cracked and tongue scraping.
The ground beneath my wolf’s paws lacked the fresh dampness of green forest grass.
Everywhere he stepped, the earth crusted dry, as though the wolves brought drought and famine with their invasion—a pestilence camouflaged in lupine form.
Dividing themselves into three concentric circles, they loped around the gamma and me, clockwise, then counter, then clockwise once more.
Curlicues of dirt, carried by the wind, wafted onto Typhon’s champagne-hued fur, ticking the tips a muddy brown. The midmorning sun hazed gently yet beat on our backs the higher it rose.
“Any word?” Drake asked through our link.
“None,” I replied.
Cyrus hadn’t checked in, neither had Penelope, nor Dorian, nor my mother. Any attempt on my end or Drake’s to reach them had been met with a block, a small comfort that they had presence of mind. Sound of body was another story.
The guards assured me the bunker was secure, but they had no news on the whereabouts of my beta, my family, or my mate.
On each rotation, Apollo’s eyes drifted toward the castle, up to the tower, but all seemed still on that front.
Too still. The radio silence corroded my brain, a tinny in my ears slowly driving me mad.
Forcing my way through their blocks was an option but a dangerous one. Doing so immobilized both me and the other party, and it was not the time to be putting anyone at risk. Therefore, I was standing by for contact from Cyrus before doing something extreme.
For now, my connection to Arax was my only tether to that side… to them, to her. I let the bond roam freely through me and felt every breath of her nervousness, the cold shivers of her anxiety, and most of all her confusion. It was to be expected.
I lay in wait for an inkling that something had gone awry. Nothing. Yet.
“Vallon,” Apollo stressed, linking her again.
“Alpha,” her wolf, Menhyt, answered. “Almost there. We drew them out and we’re bringing them to you.”
They, Vallon and Jason, had located battalions on the outskirts of the territory, in the forest and on the borders, and were concurrently leading them here with their patrols.
“It’s us until they get here,” Apollo told Typhon.
“Is it though?” Typhon lifted his snout, and Apollo looked to the east.
A score of figures had emerged from the castle, heading our way.
“Cyrus must have sent them,” Typhon grumbled, pawing at the ground.
“Hold,” my wolf snapped at the gamma, who grunted in defiance but obeyed.
It was always like this between Apollo and Ty or Ty and me. He was too trigger-happy. “Kill and ask questions later” was his creed. It was partly Drake’s fault, repressing him for stretches of time that went on for too long.
“But backup is coming,” he argued, wanting to dive in as soon as the wolves had begun circling, never thinking about the consequences.
“And until they arrive, we’re outnumbered thirty to one,” I said.
A discussion with Typhon was time wasted.
Words fell on impenetrable ears, common sense a rare feature for him.
His strength was in his fearlessness, his sheer love of the fight, and the pride he had in upholding his rank.
Honing all of that had been tenuous over the years, but working alongside Menhyt and Jason’s wolf, Tyr, often forced him to stop and think before he acted.
They directed his ferocity and his skills as a leader and warrior down a more productive path, instead of the destructive one he would choose if left to his own.
Drake had agreed straightaway with my initial selection of the deltas for this reason alone. He was the brains, whereas Typhon, being the brawn, couldn’t have cared less.
Right now, however, it was Drake’s placid demeanor that was needed.
Why would Cyrus pull guards from the castle? I muttered to my wolf, tapping deeper into the matebond to glean from it what I could.
We’d know if the bastard would answer, Apollo growled.
Arax’s already-elevated levels of fear had crossed over into terror. In front of me, the guards were slinking into formation, and Typhon could barely contain his excited snorting, puffing dirt out of his nose as he geared for another clash.
“Something’s wrong,” I said to the four of us. “We need to get back.”
“For once we agree,” the gamma wolf replied, a smile in his voice, and gave the guards the order to attack.
The first offensive landed on the backs of the circling wolves, tearing apart the outer ring. The second immediately followed, and Drake and I took care of the third from the inside, where we had been trapped.
The odds had shifted, but we were still outnumbered, waiting for Vallon and Jason. The wolves regrouped, forming a barrier and cutting us off from the castle.
“They can’t touch the Fire, so what the hell do they want?” Apollo fumed.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “and I don’t care.”
I didn’t. The mate bond was shaking, hammering her fear into my heart. I was beyond giving a damn.
“Keep them occupied,” I said, linking Drake and the warriors. “At first sight of the deltas, there better be a fucking war.”
Their answer came in unison. “Yes, Alpha.”
“I love it when you talk dirty, Big Daddy,” Typhon growled.
I wish he would shut the hell up.
Apollo barked at Ty to get his men in position and retreated, seeking higher ground.
Investigating the earlier blasts and wreckage, Apollo and I confirmed they had confined us to a narrow valley nestled between two mountain ridges, which went on for miles.
It was too high to scale without being spotted and possibly picked off one by one, guerrilla-style, since the only way out was through.
The explosions were a diversion, my wolf said. We’re essentially equines in a round pen.
Disappointingly, he was right.
Based on the information I’d received from Vallon, they had brought an army much smaller in size than ours, hence the need to split us up.
They had succeeded, luring me and my officers out into the field.
Unable to determine whether my family and mate had made it to the bunker, I needed to get back.
Apollo snarled. I swear to the goddess, Konstantine, if it turns out the council is responsible for this shit…
Then they’re asking for war, I answered plainly. And I’ll gladly oblige. It’s probably long overdue.
“Ten minutes,” Menhyt said through the link for all to hear as I made my way back to Typhon. “Tyr is bringing them in from the north, my unit from the south.”
“Gird your loins, boys and girls,” Typhon commanded his troops jubilantly, pacing up and down.
The invading wolves did the same and tightened their blockade, anticipating the inevitable.
My response was delayed by a pull, not from the mate bond but a bond, the familial bond.
It stung from the deepest troughs of my abdomen and exploded in my chest. The pain spread through Apollo’s torso, and my wolf tripped.
Arax’s fear compounded, and her sadness crept forth.
It was so strong, I felt her heart pounding with worry, which meant she may not be hurt or dying, but someone else was.
“Mom,” I uttered through the tightness in my chest. I tried to link her, but there was no more block. The connection was gone.
Dammit, I shouted to myself. DAMMIT!
I looked at Ty, who cocked his head, confused at seeing my agitation.
“Gamma,” I said, restraining my anger in order to lead. “Give the order now. We can’t wait.”
Knowing Ty, he was probably on the verge of another innuendo, but the promise of blood superseded all else, and he questioned me not.
The fur on his back rose into tall, razored points. Facing his squadron, the general howled his battle cry and rallied his wolves.
I may have been the alpha, but the field was Typhon’s domain. He led the charge, and I was on his heels as his second. There were over sixty wolves to our twenty, but Typhon fought with the barbarity of a hound handpicked from the darkest corners by Hades himself.
“That barricade needs to go,” I commanded, frustrated we had not broken through. My thoughts were with the castle, my mother, and Arax, whose fluctuating emotions had been tempered to quiet disorder, almost as if she had found a period of calm before the storm.
These unknown wolves attacked to restrain, to divert but not to kill.
Their objective had been the castle, and the anger at my foolishness was taken out on a wolf whose throat lay open and frizzling on the arid ground.
Apollo’s paws were slimed with its guts, his first kill of the afternoon while our warriors fought with the rest.
“My congratulations to you, Apollo.” Typhon’s bitterness did not have long to fester. His maw captured the belly of an approaching beast, and its guts soon watered the earth, decorating it with clumps that steamed and cooked under the heat of the boiling sun.
“It’s a tie now, innit, Alpha?” he taunted, his eyes zeroing in on his next kill.
Two down, I thought, an entire shelf of wolves to go.
A long-ranged, high-pitched series of whistles tuned Apollo’s ears to the north.
Their call was answered by those barring the way to the castle, looking for their comrades to come to their aid.
They appeared over the ridge with Tyr and his unit snapping at their heels, directing their path down into the valley.
One strayed, and Tyr body-slammed the wolf against the mountainside, then dragged him the rest of the way by his scruff.
The delta wolf, much like his human, was almost always a model of practicality. It was not too easy to rattle his cool. Therefore, Tyr responding so aggressively and out of character signified that he and his unit had faced difficulties at the hands of their opponents.
The wolf bounced and scraped against the rocky terrain, yowling in pain, and Tyr, irritated at the cacophony drilling into his ears, throttled his catch.
A quick twist of his jaws, and his neck was broken.
The delta, all too glad to be free of the load, deposited its bent body at the bottom, tufts of fur and blood caught on his coat.
Menhyt’s troops came next, and in an attack flawlessly coordinated by her and Tyr, their warriors together formed a half circle, crowding the opposing battalion and cutting them off from any hope of retreat.
They snarled and growled, and on Typhon’s command, both delta fronts descended upon their prey.
Apollo took to higher ground again, and from this vantage, he sought the alpha of their pack. Row after row revealed wolves of the same size and shape, but not one stood out.
Odd, my wolf remarked, hunting for his quarry.
Preoccupied with the search, I was knocked sideways by a quake in the bond. It rocked my limbs, propelling my wolf down the hill on which he stood. Arax’s terror had reached its zenith, and we were out of time.
“Ty!” I shouted through to him.
He left his kill and was by my side at once, his snout covered with fresh blood. “Wha—”
“Cover me.”
I couldn’t spare the seconds to explain.
I went still, opening my mind and emptying it of its thoughts.
My surroundings changed, and fog rolled in.
The tunnel I entered was dark, its walls heavy, bottlenecking the deeper I dove.
The connection was hindered. I was met with resistance, not mental but physical.
I forced my way in, commanding Cyrus on the other end.
I could hear my mate screaming his name, pleading with him to fight and begging someone or something to let him go. He couldn’t, not with me in his mind.
“Luna, shot. Pen, safe. bunker. Arax—”
Broken and distorted, his phrases were incoherent, most of their words lost to the static that claimed them.
“Arax, where is she! What is happening? Are you all right?”
The dial on the frequency spun, the connection frazzled, and the tunnel lengthened, stretched thin. Cyrus’s voice crackled, coming from farther away. I ran toward it, and straining, I heard the last of the words traveling to me.
“She’s in trouble.”
The tunnel to his mind closed, sealed shut by whatever they had used to take Cyrus down.
The link went dead and spit me back out.
Apollo emerged, galloping toward the epicenter of the fray and throwing himself on top of the wolves keeping us from our mate.
“Break their line, break their fucking line!” I roared in the heads of over two hundred wolves—and then, only to Drake, “Gamma.” I exhaled heavily. “They have her.”