32. Kage
32
KAGE
I sat in the driver’s seat, the vehicle pulled over at the side of the road, door hanging open, and the sound of Weylin vomiting all the contents of his stomach into the ditch.
“Three teams dispatched to her.” Rainor’s voice was detached, cold. Good.
“I want them to be positioned along the border of Ophidian and her territory. Match up human forms with shifted. Human forms are to wear gas masks at all times.” I hated the toxic smoke gift that some of the Ophidian genetics carried. No matter how we fabricated a mask for our wolves, it either gave a poor seal or too well of one, in which senses were blocked, causing the wolves to panic in battle.
“Done and done.” His voice was dead. In a way, it was oddly familiar, though having him out of my mind was unnatural.
Weylin stumbled back to his seat, pale and sickly looking.
“Cut her off,” I ordered. It had to be done. Her emotions were so strong, they filled not only the bond but also our link. We not only felt her mental anguish; we felt one another feeling it.
“Fuck you,” he growled. “I will bear all of her fucking pain.”
“It doesn’t take away from her, but it does take away from you. You will be useless to us,” Rainor murmured.
“I’m a mutt, I’ve always been useless.”
“You are an asset to the pack. Get yourself together, we have a meeting with the council.” I said.
He shook his head and scoffed. “The entire time I’ve lived with Cridhe, you’ve made a point to tell me I don’t belong.”
“You don’t. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t part of it.” I pulled back onto the road, driving toward the city.
We’d dropped Lila off at the precinct. She insisted she would sleep on the cots tonight. That was the only thing she said to us after she buried her family at the town cemetery we had found. The gammas were instructed to collect the rest of the remains with the location they were found written on the box and pictures taken. Rainor was working on getting someone in to identify everyone.
“She’s going to have to get over it.” I said what had to be said and was already anticipating Weylin’s fist to my jaw, except he went low.
“For fuck’s sake.” I swerved, grasping my balls. “I’m warning you, Weylin. I meant what I said. She’s going to have to get over it because it’s about to get worse for her. If the council finds out about her bloodline. And I doubt they are the only ones out for Scarab blood. She needs to toughen up, because just like you, right now, she will not survive every time someone we care about dies.”
“I find it amusing that you and Rain are the only ones out of us to actually have real family, and yet you couldn’t care less about losing them.”
“How was it shredding your mother apart, Rainor?” I asked.
“Tragic.” He sighed, bored. He sounded so cold and detached that even I shivered.
“Ask him that when he’s flipped back on again,” I said. “I guarantee you won’t get the same response. We need to turn it off. We need to exercise that ability so that we can keep moving and get done what has to be done. We can’t be worrying about hurt feelings or what happened in the past.”
Silence.
I settled in my seat, adjusting my bruised nutsack.
“What was it like,” Weylin said without looking at me, “consuming your own father’s heart?”
I knew what he was doing, however he would be greatly disappointed. “Empowering,” I said flatly. “Even if my emotions were flipped on, I would have had the same response.”
“She’s right, you are a monster.”
“And when have any of us claimed to be otherwise?” Weylin didn’t respond. “Turn it off, Weylin. Just like my father taught us—it’s for the better.”
Lila
I sat in front of my computer at the precinct, staring at the screen. There was a file open, and I thought I was reading it. My mind was completely numb, though.
It was well into the night, and only a couple of night-shift officers remained in the building, while a few were making their rounds through town.
Wiping the tears from my cheeks, completely baffled how I was still able to produce them, I leaned forward and took my notebook and pen in hand. I had to figure out where I was going to go from here. I kept tapping the ball point of the pen on the paper as I tried to force my mind to move, come up with anything.
“Hey, sweetheart!” I jumped at the sound of Rodney’s voice, spinning around in my chair. “You sure look like you could use some coffee.”
“Thanks.” I politely took the cup of coffee he held out for me. His eyes fell on my face, and I could only imagine the mess I looked.
“Now I don’t have any donuts to go with it, but I can always make a run down to the drive-thru on second street. Mind you, those donuts ought to be stale by now. However, I bet they’d just give them to us. I reckon they are making a new batch before the morning rush.”
I held back a smile. I’d never understood how Rodney came into the position of chief acting the way he did, so unprofessional. Yet it was a reminder of days not long ago, before I’d been cornered in an alley by three shifters.
“Thanks, this is fine. I’m not hungry.”
“Yes, well, burning the midnight oil and such, eh?”
“What about you? Why are you here?”
“Oh, just wrapping up a few loose ends.” He leaned against my desk, his scent throwing me off. I frowned a little. Rodney was a human. I could smell human on him, but after being with the guys and refining my sense of smell, I swore I could smell… wolf.
“Have a drink,” he encouraged. “It will help you get through the night.”
I looked down at my coffee, a slight film settling on the top. I raised my eyes to Rodney, staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights. Did he really just hand me a spiked coffee?
Rodney’s face distorted into a snarl as he grabbed a laptop sitting on the desk next to him and smashed it across my face. The force of the hit caused my chair to spin, my hand shooting out to brace myself on the desk, dropping the hot coffee on my lap.
My brain rattled inside my skull, my face hot and tingling as liquid dripped down my lap. The scent of copper, my own blood being spilled, mixed with the pain had me seeing red.
My claws came out and, moving faster than I had ever moved before, my hand fisted in Rodney’s shirt, pinning him up against the wall.
“You know what I am?” I snarled, the blood now dripping down my chin. “Why attack me?” He might have a slight scent of wolf on him, but he was still human. I could kill him easily. There wasn’t anything he could physically do that would ever overpower me.
Rodney looked petrified as he stared back into my eyes.
I heard the whistle through the air before I felt the sting in my neck. Still, it happened so quickly, I couldn’t react. Letting go of Rodney’s shirt, I reached for the sting in my neck and pulled out the dart.
My vision began to move in and out of focus. My body swayed drunkenly. I forced myself to move, but the best I could manage was to turn around.
I watched a man with black hair and demon eyes walk towards me. His smile was not only evil, it was sadistic as he watched me struggle.
“Ms. Evans. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He stuck his hand out for me to shake, but suddenly, with a loud and uncontrolled thump, I was lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m Markus, alpha of the Ophidian pack. But you can call me Alpha.”
My mouth couldn’t move. My muscles twitched but were useless and uncoordinated. But what scared me most of all was my eyes going in and out of focus as I fought consciousness.
I had to stay awake. I had to. There was no way of knowing what they would do to me once I was unaware. I fought my eyelids as hard as I could. I attempted to twist and turn and get up until Markus’s eyes narrowed. He pulled a small dart out of his pocket and stuck it into my arm.
The last thing I remembered before succumbing to the terrifying darkness was reaching out into the bond and feeling the slightest brush of Weylin with me.
Weylin
Three members of the council came to the office, followed by four guards. I knew two of them, I had trained them.
The council shifters looked every bit ancient as I remembered. At one point, they’d been considered our elders. Shifters we looked up to and respected. Slowly, over the years, they were beginning to lose respect. Not only among Cridhe, but among other packs. The scent of a change was in the air, and it made other alphas restless. It made them desperate.
Desperate shifters made desperate decisions.
I stood, respectfully, behind Kage as he sat at the table with them, Rainor at his side. They were discussing everyday pack events, as if it wasn’t three or four in the morning.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Kage finally said. “What really brings you to my territory?”
Darragh, the councilman with the most experience, was the one to speak. His long grey hair pulled back into a bun, the properly fitted and expensive suit likely purchased with Kage’s money. Money he sent monthly, intended to aid allied packs. Kage knew what he was doing.
“Whispers of Scarab Pack have come to light,” he said, his voice as aged as the wrinkles in his skin. “It has caused fear to spread through those who remember.”
I narrowed my eyes at the shifter.
“Perhaps, if we were better enlightened on what is causing this fear, we would be better equipped to handle the situation,” Rainor said.
That’s when the first sliver of pain traveled down my spine. It was not my own, though. I swayed on my feet, reaching out and gripping Kage’s chair.
Cut her bond off , Rainor demanded through the link. This is not the time. I did my best to push down the bond, not completely cutting it off.
“I assure you,” Darragh continued, “if it is true that some form of the Scarab bloodline has survived, that the carrier of their gift lives, there is nothing that will prepare you for the destruction that will follow.”
“Carrier?” Rainor asked.
My vision became blurred, but only for a moment. I blinked it away.
“Yes, there can only be one carrier per generation. It is the power of the pack that feeds the carrier that brings power to the gift. Without the pack, the gift is useless.”
“So, you murdered an entire pack to prevent one shifter from accessing a gift,” Kage concluded.
“No, young pup. The destruction of an established generational pack was not the ultimate goal.”
“I’ve read my father’s journals.”
“In the end, it is what had to happen, but it was not the goal. Scarab Pack was approached and requested to sacrifice the bearer of the mark. The mark indicated the gift. Once that child was laid to rest, the gift was no more. All they had to do was sacrifice the child. Instead, they chose to fight the balance. They chose to upend what was right, to keep that level of power to themselves.”
“If it is found that Scarab lives, what then?” Kage asked.
Eachan, the elder with auburn hair and piercing blue eyes, answered that for him. Leaning forward and in a hushed tone, he said, “Sacrifice the child, keep the balance.”
Through the partial opening of the bond, I felt her then. There was no pain, there was no emotional turmoil as there had been earlier that day. There was…fear. And then there was nothing.
My fingers dug into the cushion, my claws extending as I opened the bond as far as I could. I reached and stretched and searched—and felt nothing. With a curse, I spun around, phone in hand.
“Weylin?” Rainor stood up, but I ignored him.
One of my commanding gammas answered the phone. “Where is she?”
“They brought the whole pack.” He sounded wounded. If she was harmed, he would be far worse than just hurt.
“Who?!” My growl echoed through the room.
“Oh my,” one of the elders whispered happily behind us. “Trouble in paradise?”
“Ophidian!” the gamma shouted in pain. There was a scuffle and a snarl before the line went dead.
I held the phone in front of me and opened an app I had rarely used, pressing the red button.
Within seconds, Kage’s and Rainor’s phone went off, buzzing, as did mine. The screen flashed red with the message All Hands in blood-black letters.
I didn’t wait to see if the others would follow me. I took off for the fifth floor. For the armory. What those fuckers decided to do was on them. I was going to get my mate, I was going to rip the heads off the ones who had her, and I was never going to shut my bond down again.
I tried to reach out to her, praying I wasn’t too late, but it was her fear that ripped into me.
Kage and Rainor were right behind me, getting into the elevator. “Do you feel her now, assholes?!” I snapped at them.
The wetness traveled down my cheek, causing my breath to hitch as the elevator doors closed. The pain and fear inside of me was more than I could comprehend, and that was likely due to the fact that it wasn’t mine. I had never felt an emotional fear as my mate was feeling at this moment.
I reached up with two fingers and wiped the tears, bringing my hand down so I could see them, rubbing the pad of my thumb through them. “When was the last time you cried?” I asked Rainor, who had swiped at his face and stared at his hand in a sort of horror.
“I cannot remember.” Though, from his racing thoughts traveling through the link, he was thinking about the time that he did not cry. Watching Lila mourn the loss of Max had reminded Rainor that he did not cry over the death of his mother. Having been the one to carry out her death, he believed he didn’t deserve to grieve her. He’d refrained from shedding a tear since the age of ten, afraid doing so would bring forth the soul of his restless mother, punishing him for all the crimes he had committed.
I glanced at Kage, who let Lila’s tears from our bond flow freely from his eyes, not touching them at all.
“What does it mean?” I asked him.
“Our bond is getting stronger,” he said. “I will count every tear she sheds, and I will deliver the pain tenfold on the one responsible.”
“We will find her.” The beast growled, Rainor’s eyes glowing red.
I stared at the wetness on my fingers, slowly balling them into a fist. Those fuckers hurt her. Those fuckers made her scared. Those fuckers stole her from me. “Yes…let’s make them bleed.”