Chapter 1 Calder #2
A flare of warlock magic at my back forced me to take a deep, gasping breath, holding it in and closing my eyes until the instinctive burst of rage and panic subsided again.
Seven years of imprisonment, torture, and conditioning at the hands of men with magic like his had left me…
a little less than rational, let’s say. I kept it under control.
Always. My rage could be fatal to anyone around me if I slipped up for so much as a second. And my mate depended on my strength.
But it’d only been about seven months since I’d killed the last two warlocks, the ones who’d kidnapped Jared for a second time and tried to force me back under their control by hurting him. Seven months of relative safety set against seven years of indescribable darkness.
Jared had been my ray of sunlight in that pitch-black hell. Almost too pure and brilliant and perfect to look at.
He still was. I couldn’t falter for a moment, not if I hoped to be worthy of his love.
Less figuratively, I couldn’t falter for a moment right now, either, because the car had definitely started to tilt and slide. “Back up,” I ground out. “I’m pulling it out now whether there’s anyone in it or not. Can’t wait any longer.”
“I can’t tell,” he panted. “I think the car’s empty. I’m not feeling anyone. But it’s like there should be something, and instead there’s nothing.”
The fuck?
But I didn’t have the attention to spare for Nate’s weird magical riddles, and I didn’t have time to reposition myself all the way behind the car where I could get both arms at the same angle, either.
I shoved the hand on the bumper all the way under, got a grip on the frame, and worked my other arm around the rear tire and far enough back to get that side of the frame.
And then I braced my feet and drew on all the reserves of strength that those bastards who’d experimented on me had forced into and out of me with their drugs and their foul-tasting, agonizing magic, strength that no living thing ought to have.
Even for me, dragging several thousand pounds of metal through mud and brush as it tried its best to let gravity take it in the opposite direction wasn’t easy.
Every muscle strained; some of them tore, hot stabs of pain that I ignored.
My left shoulder dislocated, and one of my ankles snapped as I staggered backward, but I put my weight on the other leg and forced my feet to move.
A red haze filled my whole vision. The magic that moved through me, as my shift took hold and my body grew even more, made me want to vomit.
I hated it, even as I used it to my advantage.
The car slowly moved back, and then another foot, dragging what seemed like half the forest with it, as the wheels were too bogged down to turn.
Another step. My ankle had already healed, but the metal frame was close to cutting my hands in half.
At last, with one final rending groan and snap as a side panel bent and broke, the car was back on level ground, the rear bumper at the very edge of the road.
I let go and dropped down to the ground, my ass landing in a pile of slushy snow that had been hiding a bundle of very sharp sticks until they stabbed me in a dozen sensitive places.
Fuck me, anyway.
“Oh my fucking gods,” Nate was saying. “Calder! That was amazing, but are you okay?”
I lifted my head and found him crouching down next to me, peering into my face. One of his hands hovered a few inches from my shoulder, as if he didn’t quite dare to touch me.
Very few people did. For a moment I allowed myself to wish Nate would grab me by the shoulder, check me over for injuries, and shamelessly manhandle me the way he would’ve done with anyone else in the family, including Arik.
Then I sighed, shrugged, and lied, like I generally did when someone asked me if I was okay. “I’m fine. Go make sure there’s nobody in the car.”
Nate narrowed his eyes at me, clearly not fooled at all. He’d been raised—and used for his magic—by the vile, twisted piece of shit who’d run the facility where Jared and I had been tortured, so it figured that he’d learned to tell when someone wasn’t on the level.
“I’m not much of a healer, anyway, so I guess we’ll wait until Arik can take a look at you when we get home. And he will,” he said darkly, a threat if I’d ever heard one. Arik’s affectionate fussing often took the form of physical violence.
Nate pushed to his feet, rubbing his gloved hands up and down his arms. His cheeks had gone bright rosy pink, and I could see his increased circulation, along with the residual glow of his magic, flowing beneath his skin.
It lit him up like the ridiculously over-the-top Christmas light display he’d insisted we put all over the pack house and the trees around it this year.
It took me and Ian two full days and a whole case of beer to get it all up and working, but when Nate and Arik stood there with their shoulders bumping and their heads practically touching as they leaned in to mutter to each other, both of them gazing up at it like the children they’d never really had the chance to be—one had me as his only parental figure, gods help him, and the other had Jonathan Hawthorne, evil warlock extraordinaire—it was more than worth it.
The pain of all my torn muscles and joints had already faded mostly away, but I didn’t get up.
I actually loved sitting in the snow. The modifications made to me had warped my original polar-bear-shifter nature almost unrecognizably in some ways, but…
yeah, if Nate hadn’t been there, I might have rolled around a bit.
Nate shoved his way through a few pine branches, kicked brush and snow out of the way, and finally scrubbed one hand over the back driver’s side window. He leaned down to peer inside.
And he went absolutely, rigidly still.
When he turned to look back at me over his shoulder, that rosy flush had drained away, leaving his cheeks as dead-white as someone with Nate’s olive complexion could get.
“I was wrong,” he said, voice shaking with more than the cold. “There’s kids in there. Two of them. Small ones. And I’m not sure if they’re alive.”