Raw (The Prey Drive #2)

Chapter 1

Noa

“No, no, no.”

The words crack out of me as I reach for her, my hands slick with blood and shaking uncontrollably.

The metallic scent is overwhelming, filling my nose and coating the back of my throat, making my stomach roil.

I’m bathed in it from where I fell in the passageway.

It’s sticky on my skin, soaking through my leggings.

The green color of Rennick’s hoodie—the one I had immediately pulled back on when I’d found it waiting for me on the porch—is barely distinguishable, and his scent is almost lost beneath copper and fear.

My fingers hover just above her pale face.

Heat still radiates from her.

That’s the cruelest part. She’s still warm enough that, for a split second, some irrational piece of me dares to hope.

But then I see it. Really see it. The blood splattered across her skin.

The gaping wound carved into her throat.

I don’t know if it was a knife or claws, only that it cut too deep.

Too precise. My knowledge, my instincts, my healer’s hands, none of it could’ve stopped this.

Not with damage this vicious. Not even if I’d been standing right beside her when it happened.

There’s not enough light down here, none of the string lights overhead are glowing, but the dark smear trailing behind her tells me she was dragged. Dragged and left like she was nothing. As if she didn’t mean anything to anyone, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

My fingertips trail up the side of her face, brushing away the strands of hair sticking to her skin. The wild coils cling to her cheeks and forehead, tangled with the rapidly drying blood. I know these curls. I know this jawline. I know that stoic brow, even now, slack with death.

I don’t want to say her name, because doing so feels like surrender. Makes it final.

How could this have happened?

How could someone get into Ashvale—into our sanctuary—without anyone knowing?

If there’d been even the faintest hint of danger inside our borders, the coven would’ve known.

The magic Amara wove into this place is rooted deep, sensitive enough to catch a whisper of foulness crossing the border.

If they’d been aware of a threat, they would’ve sounded the alarm.

I would’ve gotten a text, a knock at my door, something.

We have protocols for this. Systems in place to protect our town’s people and the Nightingales in our care here.

Who could have done this to her and how did they get past every safeguard meant to keep this exact kind of nightmare from becoming real?

All I did was leave for coffee. Just a walk down the street. And somehow, in that sliver of time, everything has gone to hell.

I trace her cheekbone.

It shouldn’t have been her. Out of all of us, it shouldn’t have been her.

She’s the strong one. The protector. The one who stands between danger and the people under her care without hesitation. She’s the reason so many feel safe here, even when nothing about this world is safe. Not really, not when you’re truly aware of the monsters lurking in the shadows.

Even as I try to hold it back, her name breaks free. Hoarse and cracked. “Lowri…”

Lowri Craddock. Alpha of the Craddock Pack. Amara’s partner. One of the fiercest women I’ve ever known.

Gone.

It doesn’t feel possible. Doesn’t feel real.

My fingers twitch helplessly against her cheek as if touch and my silent plea alone can call her back to this earthly plane. But there’s no spark or flicker of life. Nothing but stone-cold silence and the sickening darkness that’s blanketing us.

“Please,” I whisper, forehead bowing toward hers. “Wake up, Lowri. Don’t do this to us. To her.” Amara. How am I supposed to tell the High Priestess that the person she loves is dead? “Please.”

Tears drip from my chin and splatter against her skin, mingling with the crimson drying there. I can’t stop them, I don’t have the strength to. I let it hit me, the truth of what our community has lost.

But grief doesn’t get to settle long, because something colder takes its place. Something worse.

Fear.

The room is too quiet. I can’t think of a reason Lowri would have been here today, but Seren, Rhosyn, Edie, and Siggy? They were meant to be down here watching a movie. Ivey’s nap is also usually over by this time. Seren would have gone and collected her daughter from her crib upstairs by now.

But there’s no movement. It’s still and silent.

My eyes fly open. I sit back fast, knees scraping against the slick floor.

Heart hammering, I force myself to push through the static clouding my senses—the dull, lingering aftermath of the bond Rennick tore from me.

I reach for any sign of life, straining my ears.

But the only thing I hear is my own pulse thudding against my skull.

No giggles, no baby babbles, no whispered teasing or laughter. I’m met with an aching hollow void.

The popcorn bowl is still full on the coffee table.

So are their drinks, condensation dripping down the sides of the cups.

Something resembling a nest has been half built on the dark blue sectional couch, the soft blankets and pillows having been brought in from the nesting supply closet like we do every group movie night.

It looks like they stepped away for more snacks or more blankets and would be back any second to resume the festivities.

But no one is here.

My wolf slams against her cage, howling. Reaching for the freedom she’s never been granted. She calls out for her people, her makeshift pack, and against all reason, for the man who should be our mate. The man who left only hours ago and is probably safe in his own pack’s territory by now.

Rennick, I cry out soundlessly without thought, as if he could hear me from his home across the state’s line. Please. Help me.

My vision blurs again as I wipe at my eyes with trembling hands, trying to will myself back into control.

That’s when I hear it.

A baby’s cry.

All the oxygen leaves the room.

I whip around toward the sound, nearly toppling over before rising into a tense crouch.

It’s Ivey. I know that cry like I know my own breath.

But as I start to lurch forward, a new sound halts me.

Footsteps. Confident and purposeful. They echo from the far side of the room, from the darkened doorway of one of the unclaimed Nightingale rooms.

I freeze before Lowri’s body, heart pounding too fast as a figure appears from the shadows.

She emerges slowly, like she’s savoring the reveal.

Tall and unnaturally pale, her impossibly straight black hair drapes loosely over her shoulders like a curtain.

Her face is all hard lines, no softness, not a single hint of kindness.

Her lips are bloodless and her eyes...her eyes are wrong.

Too pale. Too empty. Inhuman. I don’t recognize her, but the power rolling off her tells me everything I need to know.

Witch.

Not just any witch. A strong one. The kind whose aura thrums with so much power the only person I’ve ever felt outmatch it is my own mother. And now it’s walking toward me, wearing the face of a stranger and cradling the innocent life of one of the people I care about most in this world.

Ivey.

The baby squirms on the woman’s narrow hip, her chubby cheeks flushed and blue eyes wide with fear.

The moment she spots me kneeling there, they well with tears, her little body arching away from the stranger’s hold.

Ivey knows this isn’t right. That this presence is wrong, that something is missing.

That her mom isn’t here.

I can’t think about where Seren is. Can’t let myself go there, not when I need to focus on the very clear threat before me.

The woman steps into the room like she owns it, like the crimson ornamenting her pale hands and the baby on her hip are both trophies. Her cold eyes lock with mine as a sinister, taunting, smile spreads across her bloodless lips.

“Oh, please don’t stop on our account, dear,” she coos, her voice dipped in honey and malice.

“I always find satisfaction in observing such dramatic displays of emotions…” She watches me for a stretched, quiet beat, her long slender fingers tapping rhythmically on Ivey’s back.

“So much pain…” she murmurs, almost wistful.

Then, like a switch flipping her expression fractures, her eyes brim with tears.

Her too pale lips tremble. A strangled, hoarse sob rips from her chest. It’s the sound of a woman unraveling.

Her shoulders quake, the air she sucks into her lungs catching.

And for one horrifying second, she’s me.

The witch wears my grief like a second skin.

Everything within me goes cold at the display.

She exhales, a slow casual breath, and just like that all that grief vanishes like it never existed. She blinks once. Twice. Straightens her spine and smiles like the predator she is. “How did I do? Too much? I can never tell with these kinds of things.”

I stare at the woman, suspended in the gray no-man’s-land that exists between bewilderment and terror, unable to find the ability to comprehend her question, let alone answer it.

I think there’s still a part of me that is desperately holding on to the threadbare possibility that this isn’t all happening.

That I’m stuck in some kind of nightmare.

It’s Ivey’s fussy whimper that once again grounds me in the horrifying reality surrounding me.

The dark witch clucks her tongue disapprovingly at the five-month-old, offering her an unimpressed look.

“Irksome creature,” she mutters as her eyes cut back to me and light up with an upsetting gleam.

Like a panther setting its sights on its next meal.

“I suppose we can say the same about you, Noa. My sisters and I wouldn’t have been sent here if you weren’t a pesky little thorn in the side. Now, would we?”

Her sisters?