Chapter 19 - Dorian
“Check the dungeon!” I belt out to Damian when I hear Amelia’s voice cry out from above.
“Dorian! Damita’s gone!”
My pulse ignites with fury just as Damian returns in a flurry of hot pants.
“He’s gone!” Damian yells. “Fuck, Dorian! I told you it was a mistake keeping him here!”
“Now’s not the time!” I yell at my brother, too crippled by my racing heart as I realize the hybrid has just kidnapped my daughter. I know he’s right, but there’s no time to argue. The situation is dire, my daughter is a mere month old and in the hands of a murderous beast.
“If you didn’t keep him alive, he wouldn’t have taken your daughter!”
I push at Damian’s shoulders out of anger. “I kept him alive for my mate! Just go!” I roar. “Find him before he gets away!”
Damian staggers back and growls, but he must see the helplessness evident in my eyes and he says nothing as he shifts into wolf form just as Amelia rushes forward on staggering feet. Damian races out in a blur, and Amelia keels over in a fit of hysterics. I catch her in my arms, having to push aside my own daunting feelings to tend to her and assure her that we’ll find Damita. Grabbing her arms, I steady her on her feet and stare determinedly into her eyes.
“We’re gonna get her back, I promise!” I declare sternly, to which Amelia calms down only enough to lug in deep, tortured breaths as she stares into my eyes with tears in hers. “Go find Connor, and tell him that I’m tracking Jackson into the woods.”
“No!” Amelia shakes her head fervently and sniffs to stop her cries. “I’m coming with you!”
“No way, Amelia! You don’t know what he’s capable of!”
“I’m not leaving your side this time, Dorian!” she exclaims. “He has our daughter!”
I stare into Amelia’s helpless eyes, realizing that leaving her behind would be like a repeat of something that tore her heart to shreds. With no time to waste, and Jackson’s scent lingering only mildly in the air, I nod and turn to the ingress of the woods.
“Hop on!” I throw the command over my shoulder just before I shift into wolf form. As soon as I land on my front paws, Amelia climbs onto my back and grabs fistfuls of my fur to hang on. Filling my lungs with Jackson’s scent, I leap off into the forest and follow the breadcrumbs in the air.
“Dorian! He’s heading for Fayetteville!” Damian’s wolf voice enters my mind, reminding me that we share a mind link as blood brothers.
I lunge over the river and sprint through the woods in the direction of Jackson and Amelia’s former hometown, eventually catching up with Damian’s wolf as we race together with great speed. All I can think of is our newborn daughter, and the need to save her from the monster who’d grabbed her.
It doesn’t even matter how Jackson escaped the dungeon. Knowing how conniving he is, he must have found a way. But it only means that he hasn’t changed at all, and was lying when he said the rogue blood was wearing off and he was returning to his human nature.
There isn’t an ounce of humaneness left in him. No one kidnaps a newborn baby, and I have no reason to keep him alive anymore.
I’m going to kill him once and for all.
When we reach the gathering of trees on the outskirts of Fayetteville, Jackson’s scent becomes more imminent, while Amelia tenses above me as she recognizes the town. She must be dealing with so much inner turmoil, and the only thing I can do is save our daughter now.
“ He’s inside,” Damian growls lowly when we steal across the backyard of the Ramirez siblings’ childhood home. Once near the broken door that was torn down when the Alpha Council closed in on Jackson before, I lowered my wolf body for Amelia to climb off.
Tears flow from her eyes as she stares at the inside of the house shrouded in darkness. I invoke my human and Damian does the same, then I turn to Amelia to comfort her with my hands squeezing her shoulders.
“Wait out here,” I instruct her in a whispering tone. “We’re bringing Damita back to you.”
Amelia stares back blankly, seemingly numb as she doesn’t even bat an eyelid. “Don’t let him lay another finger on her.”
I nod to show my resolution, then turn to my brother. “I’ll take him on. You get my daughter and bring her out.”
Damian glances at Amelia warily when he realizes that my only concern is to get my family to safety, even if it means I have to fight Jackson to the death. We exchange knowing glances, and he nods before cautiously padding to the gaping hole where the door should be.
Neither of us knows what awaits us inside, but the rogue werewolves have already been captured and Jackson is riding solo this time. There’s no way out of this for him, and it’s time we ended things.
I head into the house, only the moon casting a dim light around the destroyed living room. I wasn’t here when the Council captured Jackson, but I can connect the dots of the events that played out from everything I’d been told by my friends.
Stepping on a pile of glass, I look down to find a picture frame with its face ruined.
“He caught a glimpse of that picture and gave himself up that night,” Damian whispers.
I reach down to pick up the broken frame, blowing off the dust to reveal a picture of Amelia when she was younger. She smiles broadly and poses for the camera in her graduation cap, and I realize this must have been photographed just before her father died.
But it wasn’t a bout of sensitivity that led to Jackson’s surrender. He must have had ulterior motives all along and somehow knew that I’d lead him to the hybrid child he’d wanted from the start.
“Dorian Walker…” Jackson chides from the top of the staircase. My eyes shoot up to the landing to see him strolling casually toward the balustrade. He’s much weaker now, half the size he was when he had us captured.
I almost feel sorry for him with how pitiful he looks in his condition, but we have to be careful. Only Goddess knows what he has hidden under his sleeve.
“... I knew you’d come after me,” he chuckles from the top.
“There’s no way out for you, Jackson!” I roar back. “Give me back my daughter, and we’ll let you live!”
“Let me live?!” he snickers and throws his head back to laugh maniacally. When he looks down again, that insanity is evident in the way his eyes blacken. “You want me to believe that?!”
Damian steps forward, but I stop him with my arm. He growls from his chest, but I shake my head.
“We’ll let you live if you hand Damita over!” I yell back at Jackson. “I don’t know what you want with her, but it’s over now.”
“It was never over, Dorian!” he bellows and punches a fist into the wall. “I knew my sister was pregnant.” He bangs the fist against his chest, splattering blood through the air from the cuts across his knuckles. “I left her alone to bring a perfect hybrid into this world, and now I have it.”
“What now, huh?” Damian asks him. “Do you really think we’re just gonna leave without my niece?”
Damian’s acknowledgment of Damita as his niece comes as a surprise to me, especially since he’d voiced his inhibitions earlier tonight when he visited Fort Smit unexpectedly. Of course, he wasn’t happy that I had kept Jackson alive and locked in Nightclaw territory. I went on to explain that I had found my true mate in Jackson’s human sister. In hindsight, my brother was right about it being a mistake to keep the hybrid beast alive.
But right now, none of it matters—not even to Damian who growls from deep within his chest as he glares up at Jackson. He feels equally as protective over my daughter even though he hasn’t met her yet.
“That’s what you should do if you wanna stay alive!” Jackson chuckles. “I only acted like the rogue blood was wearing off…” He strolls forward and climbs over the balustrade. “... I’ve been saving up my strength for this very moment. By the time your friends find out you’re dead, I’ll have disappeared with the hybrid.”
Jackson throws us a disturbing grin before leaping over the staircase and shifting midair. He lands on the ground with a loud thumb of his wolf’s hind legs on the wooden floorboards, and Damian and I prepare for a fight.