16. Weston
Chapter 16
Iwatched Aurelia’s perception of her life crumble around her.
“Go to her,” my wolf said on a whine. “She is a product of her environment, you must see that. She’s crying out for help—can’t you feel it?”
Of course I could feel it. Her agony pulsed through the air, pounding at me, begging for mercy. For help. The sheer power of it almost brought me to my knees. No magic, my ass. Even without the help of her animal, she was able to affect those around her. Maybe her mother hadn’t been totally honest about her history. There had to be some other sort of creature mixed up in Aurelia’s genes, because no shifter I’d ever encountered could do something like this.
Was this why Granny had taken her in? Had she felt this magic and either succumbed to it—hard to believe—or realized its uniqueness and wanted to see how it developed?
Unlike her mother, though, Aurelia’s animal had budded. It just hadn’t risen to the surface. Was that by Granny’s design—she had demon connections and could use their magic to ensure Aurelia’s beast stayed hidden—or because Aurelia believed it didn’t exist at all? Either way, the lack of appearance by an animal had helped Granny manipulate this woman. When sheer force hadn’t worked, Granny switched tactics until she’d found something that had.
I took a step forward, my whole body taut. My true mate huddled at the base of the tree, hugging herself. The bond that united us yanked at my middle, demanding I look after her. Demanding I make this right.
Duty was a hard master.
Wrestling for control, I stepped backward again. We couldn’t waste any more time fucking in the trees and staying entwined for half the night. The best I could do would be to give her a minute and stop tormenting her with the reality of who Granny really was.
Shouts and yells echoed through the trees. Wood clanged and horses whinnied. Donkeys sounded what I’d come to recognize as an alarm.
A thrill of adrenaline went through me.
“Alpha!” Tanix shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”
“Aurelia, hurry.” I ran at her as she turned around, her brow pinched and confusion evident. Her eyes were haunted.
I grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up like a child.
“What’s happening?” she asked in a small voice, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
I held her tightly so that she didn’t jostle as I reached Tanix, who was visibly coiled for action.
“They escaped,” he said as we jogged out of the tree line. Horses danced and stomped their hooves, sensing commotion and ready for battle. They’d been bred for warfare.
“All of them?”
Hadriel was still on his horse and his attention was directed our way. I didn’t dare leave her with him in case this was the enemy’s first attempt at coming for Aurelia.
“Hadriel, with me,” I called out, just as Tanix said, “Yes.”
Tanix directed us toward the rear of the procession.
“Who?” Aurelia asked with alarm, struggling against my hold. “Who did you take?”
Her ability to pivot for the sake of her community or for survival was awe-inspiring. I’d just turned her world upside down but she was ready to face the next obstacle. Knowing how shitty her life must’ve been up to this point, it was no wonder she took terrible situations in stride.
“We captured some of Granny’s patrol,” I quickly told Aurelia so she’d stop struggling. “In wolf form, I can suck them into the pack and force a bond with them. It gives me complete control. When I’m in human form, a few powerful wolves in the pack can hold the bond I created and consequently hold my control. Only in human form could they have the free will to walk away.” To Tanix I said, “How’d they get free?”
The horses back near the carts were visibly agitated. The donkeys had their ears back, tension wound through their withers, clearly wanting to bolt but held in place by the harnesses. People ran here or there, clothes were scattered on the ground. Wolves darted through the trees.
Instead of answering, Tanix stopped in the area where the prisoners had been kept, grouped together and flanked by two pack members. Nova turned from talking to one of the pack and stepped up quickly, her eyes tight. It meant she didn’t have a handle on things and was likely angry at herself because of it. I never needed to reprimand this wolf, she did a great job of that on her own.
“Alpha,” she said, shaking her head. “We were in position, same as yesterday. Our people didn’t notice any real change, just that suddenly the pack bond seemed a bit slippery with one, then the next prisoner. Then the other few. Nothing came of it, though. There was no change in their demeanor.”
“Why wasn’t I alerted?”
“You were, uh, otherwise engaged.” Her gaze flashed to Aurelia.
“I instructed them to monitor the situation closely,” she went on, “until you could be reached. The moment we stopped, though, the prisoners scattered. One blink and they were gone. They barely needed to flex to rip the pack bond. Grasping at them through it was like running fingers through water. Speaking of water, there’s a creek that runs parallel to here. It’s wide and shallow, and they all ran through it. We have yet to pick up their scents outside of that creek. We’re still looking.”
“Dante, Sixten?” I asked.
“Organizing the search effort,” Tanix responded, his clothes at his feet. “The prisoners escaping shouldn’t have created this amount of chaos with the horses.” The look he gave me was pointed, meaning there was a large predator out there, helping to create a diversion by scaring the animals.
Fuck. I set Aurelia down quickly and shed my clothes. If the escaped prisoners met up with those who’d evaded capture, they might think it an ideal opportunity to try and pick off some of my pack, one by one.
What they didn’t know was they were about to run up against the big bad wolf.
“Guard the woman,” I commanded Nova. “Pull everyone together. Group them tightly around her and the supplies. Wait for my return.”
I ran to the side and shifted, waiting for the flash of pain to subside before feeling the pack bond stretch out around us. My wolf took hold of it, quickly getting a feel for where everyone was and effortlessly structuring them. Tanix was sent in the opposite direction with a team accompanying him, just in case the prisoners running toward the creek was a diversion.
How had they broken my bond?
I dashed through the trees, my wolf calling others to us as we ran. They fell in line as my wolf caught the scent of the prisoners.
He bared his teeth as he stepped in the creek, the pack spreading out around us, with Sixten flanking us to the right and Dante quickly joining my wolf’s other side. Issuing cues through his body movements and pushing his will through the bond, my wolf steered both Dante and Sixten to break off and go up the creek. We took fewer people with us down the creek. If we ran into the enemy, it would be easy for my wolf to force a bond and protect our people. The others might need to fight, and therefore needed the numbers.
Currents of scent drifted through the air. I thought my wolf caught a faint, familiar whiff, but not one from the prisoners. Slowly, he tried to catch it again but it was elusive, older. He couldn’t quite place it. Continuing onward, he had our people spread out a bit, most on land, hunting for a sign that the prisoners or anyone else had come this way. Nothing.
After about a half hour, with no alarms pushed through the bonds from anyone else, we called everyone in and headed back.
“That was a very well-executed escape,” Tanix said when we met back up, just out of the creek. “Very well executed. We wasted no time in going after them, but they were just.. . gone. Vanished. We didn’t pick up any scents stepping out of the creek.”
“We had people stretched out along the banks, too,” Sixten said, her hands on her hips in obvious frustration. “Nothing.”
“Think it was magic?” Dante asked.
“I’ve never heard of magic like that, and we know the most powerful of faeries,” Sixten replied. “We know the new demon... thing, whatever it is he’s calling himself?—“
“Lord,” Dante supplied.
“Lord, whatever. He doesn’t have that kind of magic.”
“The woman ran into the trees at near the same time the prisoners escaped,” Tanix said softly, his gaze on me firm. “They took off in the opposite direction.”
I felt a pang in my gut, knowing what Tanix was suggesting. His account of the timing was correct.
“Did she try to run?” Sixten asked, looking between everyone. “Didn’t she just wobble into the trees some?”
“Yeah, bro, look,” Dante told Tanix, “I get where you’re going with that, but she didn’t bring up that line of questioning. That was all Mr. Dick Jacket and the alpha. That chick has taken an emotional beating these last two days. She’s sloppy and unstable—no offense, Alpha. She didn’t execute this plan.”
I gritted my teeth, not commenting, kicking myself for being distracted by the woman yet again.
“I’m just pointing out the coincidence,” Tanix replied.
“You’re pointing out when the alpha was distracted, which was a perfect time for the prisoners to take off,” Sixten said. “Any idiot can see she’s a product of Granny, not a team member. I’m not saying she isn’t a guilty party, because we all heard that she has no reservations about what she was doing, but she is just trying to stay alive.” She paused. “I was in the demon dungeons—I know what that’s like. I’ll tell you something else, if part of my group escaped and didn’t bring me with them, I’d escape later out of spite, track them down, and kill the lot of them. She wouldn’t want to stay behind if she didn’t have to, good sex or not. No offense, Alpha.”
“Real eloquent,” Dante murmured.
She punched him. “Shut up.”
I took a beat to balance myself, thinking through this logically. I couldn’t allow my leadership to be affected by that woman. She’d done it too much already and now the prisoners had escaped. Whether she’d planned it or not—and I didn’t think for a moment that she had—she was still responsible for pulling my focus away. One of my people could’ve died. I needed to take greater care.
“She sacrificed herself so children could eat,” I said, still looking out at nothing. “She would sacrifice herself here to help her people go free. Any good alpha would, even if she doesn’t know she has that kind of magic.”
“How could she not see how fucked they all were this whole time?” Dante said, bewildered. “Like... we clearly saw her figure it all out. I was watching that shit. She’s not good at hiding her emotions. I felt like I could feel her horror. Broke my fucking heart, I’m not gonna lie. But she’s smart enough to have seen this before now.”
“Sometimes we ignore the truths that contradict our worldview or our ideals,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s right, but it is a distinctly human thing to do. If she didn’t ignore it she wouldn’t have been able to live with it, and then where would she be?”
“She survived at the cost of a village,” Tanix said.
“Yes, she did.” I sighed. “I hear your concern, Tanix, but this escape wasn’t her design. Her life is small. She works mostly alone. She doesn’t manage people. She would never be able to pull off this kind of escape, not without some extensive training. This was done by someone with experience. Someone who runs patrols. We’re being shadowed, of that there can be no doubt. My question is, why didn’t they free her? Why didn’t they include her in their plans?”
“Simple,” Dante said, quirking an eyebrow. “She’s being watched closely by a powerful alpha. The others had a lot less people paying attention to them. They just had to break the bond to get free.”
“True, true.” Sixten nodded slowly. “Kind of lucky, then, that there’s a true mate situation?—”
This time Dante punched Sixten. “Lucky for the dragons getting their woman, maybe,” he ground out, “but un-fucking-lucky for the alpha, hey? Have a little common decency.”
Sixten grimaced and looked at the ground. “Apologies,” she murmured.
“The question still remains—how did they break that bond?” I started back to the others. “They shouldn’t have been strong enough.”
“Is it possible they’ve brought in another powerful alpha and just ripped the bond away?” Tanix asked. “The strongest of us were in human form. We weren’t on hand to solidify it.”
“No,” I said. “They said the bond weakened. They would’ve felt someone taking it, even in that state.”
“Can’t be Aurelia,” Sixten said. “Even if she wasn’t suppressed, she didn’t shift.”
“She didn’t know we had other prisoners,” I said. “We’ve kept them apart and as you all have clearly viewed, yes, she’s been watched closely. Besides, they aren’t the first of their patrol to break the bonds. We lost some when we invaded the village.”
“True.” Dante looked out at the trees. “They’ll be back. We’ve got their prize.”
“And now that prize knows she has backup,” Tanix said. “All she has to do is get free of us and they can snap her up. Once they get her, they can head straight to the royal court. If that happens, she’ll be beyond our reach.”
Something like panic gripped me at the possibility of losing her. Of someone taking her to a place where I couldn’t see her again. Of hiding her from me.
Heart racing, I sought her out immediately, ignoring someone offering me my clothes. The crowd in front of her parted and her eyes, tight with worry, found mine.
“What is it?” I asked, and through my concern I forgot to be suspicious.
“She thought she felt a presence,” Hadriel said, holding her hand. I stilled a flash of rage at the contact, backing down my wolf. Well, trying to.
I took her hand from Hadriel only to have her pull away. “What kind of presence?” I asked, letting her.
“Alexander,” she said in a firm voice. That tone was practiced, intent on hiding fear. I could feel her fear, though, like I felt her begging for help earlier. Like I felt her begging for my touch the first time I set eyes on her. “I can’t be certain. I didn’t see him or anything, I just always feel a kind of... uneasy, crawling sensation when he looks at me.” She shivered. “It felt like he was watching me.”
“From where?” I growled.
It was Nova who pointed, the opposite direction the prisoners had run. “We’d already sent people that way when she spoke up. They didn’t find anything. No scents, no tracks.”
“Neither did we,” I replied. “Mount up, let’s put some?—”
“I found this, by the way.” Aurelia held out a little square tab of paper.
I hesitated before taking it, glancing at Nova. She shook her head infinitesimally. Aurelia hadn’t brought it up before now.
“And what is that?” It felt like cardboard, thick but somewhat pliant. The edges were slanted, one side almost looking torn.
“Don’t you recognize it?” She gave me a haughty look. “That’s one of my evil products that apparently kills whole villages.” She pointed at the ground near where she’d been standing. “I found it on the ground. Clearly your people have been sampling the merchandise. Very reputable, your outfit.”
I yanked it nearer my face so I could get a better look. The surface was lighter in some places than others, the other side equally nonuniform. The slanted edges and ripped area looked like a child had cut it out. The coloring was almost anemic and overall, it didn’t seem at all appetizing, not like the colorful, symmetrical candy-coated looking tabs I’d seen in badly hit towns and villages and all through the cities.
“This is part of your product?” I held it out to make sure she’d had a good look.
She rolled her eyes. “I know what I make.”
“Is it a new product? New to markets, I mean.”
“Not even remotely. It’s done really well without a lot of modifications.”
Dante practically leaned over my shoulder to get a look. “Do you have kids working in your outfit? Because that looks like a kid cut it out.”
She stared at him for a beat. “I don’t have help and I have a lot to get done. I cut them in the doses best suitable for the batch and toss them in the bin. A few villagers collect it and store it, and a few others take it to the property line when its time. Granny’s people pick it up and take it to market.”
“Like that?” Dante reached over me to point at it, clearly forgetting himself. I wanted the answers, though, and she didn’t tend to give those to me easily.
“For this product, yes, like that. For others, I have to separate them into sheets for storage. Others need to go in little packets or they corrode. Obviously you can just look for yourself since you clearly took the supply. I’m surprised you haven’t already.”
“The cart holding the product is behind us.” Nova jerked her head toward it. “It hasn’t been touched. None of the crates have, either. I checked when you were looking for the prisoners, Alpha. The crates we took out of the storage shed are still covered and tied down exactly like they were when we pulled them out, save the couple we checked to figure out what it was. I could be wrong, but they don’t look like they’ve been disturbed.” She lifted her brows slowly. “I will have everyone searched, but I can’t imagine anyone would take the chance.”
I agreed with her. Only a fool would dabble in the drugs coming out of this village. We’d looked in a couple of the covered crates but in the haste to get moving, hadn’t dallied with the details. Everyone was wary of that product’s dangerousness, no one wanted to dig through it.
“You found it on the ground?” Dante asked, looking around the ground at his feet.
Turned out, there were more. Some ahead, some behind, scattered in the dirt with enough space between them that they could easily be missed. And they had been, obviously, except by Aurelia, who knew what it was, and by the prisoners, who knew what they could do. That product must’ve somehow loosened the bond connecting those shifters to my pack.
“Walk with me.” I motioned her on, needing more info but also needing to get my people on the move. I didn’t want to give the lurkers time to organize and surround us. Without my ability to capture them with a pack bond, we’d be in trouble, especially if they outnumbered us.
“Sir.” Clothes were given to me and this time I took them, handing the drug to Nova. “Mount up,” I told everyone. “Let’s move out. We’ll need more feet on the ground. We’re being watched. Stay vigilant. Sound the alarm if you see or smell anything.”
Once near my horse, I quickly dressed and swung into the saddle. I reached down for Aurelia, who had Nova at her back to make sure she didn’t bolt.
“Oh.” Hadriel paused near his mount. “I’m riding alone now, I take it?”
“Not even a prisoner should be subjected to your jokes for too long,” someone murmured.
“Cute, Kurt. I can see why you never developed a sense of humor—your mother was all out of jokes after she had you.”
“Ooooh,” a few people said as everyone started laughing.
Aurelia ignored all that. “But...” She pointed at the saddle. “You don’t have much room at the back of that.”
It was true, but I didn’t have time to mess with it.
I continued to reach for her. As though on impulse, she took my outstretched hand. In the next moment I swung her up in front of me, chest to chest, guiding her leg over my thigh.
“Ohmmm,” she said, her surprise turning into a soft moan. “This isn’t going to be comfortable.”
Her arms constricted around me, clutching onto my shoulders. Her face tucked into my neck, her lips touching my skin.
I begged to differ.
“This is a bad idea,” she whispered, crawling up a little more, her groin over mine. She wrapped her legs around my waist and settled, almost melting down around me.
I realized my eyes were closed, reveling in the press of her body, in the feel of her breasts pushing up against my chest and her lips resting against my neck.
Fuck, this was heaven.
“We need to get out of here,” I said gruffly, starting the horse forward. “I know of a place we can stop and regroup. We’ll ride like this until we can get there. If it gets to be too much for you, we’ll figure something else out?—“
“The horse will be okay? You’re much bigger than Hadriel.”
“You’re a waif.” A pang of unease hit me, remembering her stories about food in the village. I needed to ensure she had plenty. “Tell me about that... product you found. What does it do?”
“If I’m honest, will you stop reading my journals?” She leaned back a little so she could look into my eyes.
My breath caught as I took in her beautiful face. Those gorgeous eyes held a sunburst of golden browns, honey, threads of green. She wet her plump lips and it took everything in me not to lean forward and capture them with mine.
“I really want to say yes,” I replied honestly, “but you had a couple passages where you wrote down names Granny had mentioned in passing. Another one where you detailed what Alexander had gossiped about when he returned from one of his trips. You give time frames when you note Granny coming in with various presents.” I lowered my voice, falling into her gaze. “I need that information, baby. I need those details. You aren’t the only part of this outfit. If we want to stop this operation, we need to find the other part of it. It’s not stuff you’d be able to remember off-hand.”
Her gaze drifted down to settle on my lips. Her thumbs absently stroked my shoulders. “Don’t call me baby.”
Not yet.
The answering thought was so quick it shocked me, then unsettled me. I felt my brow knit together.
“I apologize,” I said stiffly, my cock painfully hard. “I need the contents in those journals.”
“What if I go through and point it out to you?”
I studied her for a long moment, unable to tear my eyes away even to see our surroundings. Hopefully my people were doing their jobs, because I certainly wasn’t doing mine. I couldn’t help it, I was entranced.
“Do you really want to?” I asked her softly. “You’ve written about some dark times in those journals. Do you really want to go back and remember them?”
Her eyes clouded over, sadness permeating the air around us. She didn’t comment.
“What did that... product do?” I asked again.
She tightened her left arm around me so that she could reach down with her right, digging into a pocket. She pulled out another of those tabs. “This one wasn’t far from the other. It’s a relaxant. It works best on shifters and goblins, but Granny made an off-handed comment about vampires buying them for some reason, as well. She didn’t give me any further info. It smooths out all the rough edges. Rounds the corners, so to speak.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It helps to calm anxiety, basically. It helps to de-stress.” She popped it into her mouth.
A shock of alarm ran through me. I pulled the reins to stop the horse before I grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks to pop her mouth open. I dug in my fingers, searching for that drug before she swallowed it down.