22. Orion
CHAPTER 22
Orion
I was in the shower when she called me back, but the slice of panic that surged across our connection forced me to my phone with soap still dripping down my legs. My heart pounded, a burst of pain echoing through my soul when I saw she’d left me a fifteen-minute voicemail. I pressed play and clenched my eyes shut to listen.
“Get off me!” she screamed. “ Orion, help! The Scorpions—” The muffled sound of a struggle came next, followed by someone else screaming Sol’s name. That must have been Guinevere.
“You fucking bloodsuckers,” she shouted. “You fucking demons. You’re gonna be so pissed when—” Another loud bang, then the sound of closing doors and someone picking up the phone.
“Do you hear that, Bastard?” asked a deep voice, one I had to assume belonged to Marx. “I’ve got your snatch. Come find me if you can.”
Then nothing—just dead silence until my voicemail cut off.
Scalding, blinding rage echoed through my body. Even if Sol and I hadn’t officially made up, she was still my mate. I had to find her. I would. There could be no other option.
I dressed faster than I’d ever had and called Kodiak while I barreled toward the clubhouse in my pickup.
“Ry? What’s going on?”
“They have her,” I said. “They fucking took her.” I explained as much as I knew, wincing against the agony in my chest. Whatever they were doing to her was painful, and it shimmied right through her into me.
“Where are you?” Kodiak’s calm voice only set me off more.
“I’m at the clubhouse,” I said, turning into the driveway and slamming the gear into park. When I raced out of the truck, Kodiak was already coming out of the door, Lycan and Poe close behind him.
“Sol said it was the Scorpions?” Lycan asked, his eyes gone ice blue with his wolf. I knew mine was close to the surface, too. I could feel him pacing in my mind, desperate to take over, furious that I’d made him be separated from Sol this long and now we faced the threat of losing her.
“Yeah,” I said, replaying the message for them. Poe ran his hands back through his hair when Sol screamed, more pack members filing out of the clubhouse to listen in. Vermillion heard Guin’s panicked cry and his gaze turned deadly.
“We have to go get them,” I said. “Now.”
“I told you this would escalate things,” Ruby said, pointing a finger at me.
“Are we sure we’re ready for this?” Larentia ran her hands over her jeans and grimaced.
“We’ve been preparing for a war with these fuckers for years,” Serpent added, his eyes turning a darker shade of green.
“All right,” Kodiak said. “Everyone take a deep breath. Vermillion, trace Sol’s call. Let’s find out where they were taken.” He continued to bark out orders, some to Ruby and Serpent to get our guns in order, more to Moose and Talon to call in the rest of the pack.
But I couldn’t think straight. All I could see were those fuckers tearing her limb from limb. They’d smell the shifter on her. Hell, it hadn’t been that long; they might still smell me on her. And what then?
Would they kill her just to spite the Bastards?
Fuck, I should have completed the mating bond at Fiver. Now, I may never get the opportunity. And worse, I couldn’t talk to her. Another bolt of her unimaginable terror ricocheted down our tiny tether and I cracked my neck, closing my eyes to try to get a hold of myself.
It wouldn’t do any good to get emotional and worked up. No, I needed to stay levelheaded in order to find her, despite how difficult that might be.
“Brother, I need you to breathe,” Kodiak said, gripping my shoulders. “She’s been a part of the pack since the last moon. Between your blood in her veins and my tiny connection to her, we’ll find her.”
“She’s not one of us,” Ruby snarled, crossing her arms. “Why the hell should I risk my skin to go get her?”
“You wanna watch Orion go rabid?” Lycan shoved her shoulders, getting in her face as she bared her canines at him. “That’s what’ll happen if we don’t do it. Be ready to put down the second because he’s mated to her. And frankly, I’m more fond of her than I ever have been of you.”
Ruby narrowed her eyes at Lycan and growled. “Say that again, you fuck boy piece of?—”
“Enough! We can’t let the Scorpions show us up,” Moose cut in, and as third in the pack, neither Lycan nor Ruby would argue with him. “By now, they’ll know she’s a shifter and they’ll smell Orion on her. If we don’t go get her, word will spread that we can’t protect our own. It’ll be a matter of time before they do it again.”
Ruby snarled, rolled her eyes, and stalked back into the clubhouse. I didn’t focus on her disobedience. I’d let Serpent and Moose handle it later.
It had been just over a week since Isolde’s transition so my magic still burned in her body. When I closed my eyes and focused on the thread tying me to her, I sensed it coming from Scorpion territory. We had enough intel to know where they holed up, and though I had no desire to go storming through a vampire nest, I’d do anything to get her back. I’d been named Orion for a reason. Between that and the surge of her fear in our mating bond, I should be able to track her down.
We can do it, my wolf growled. Let’s go.
I struggled to slow him down, knowing I’d need the entire pack if I were going to be successful. The bloodsuckers wouldn’t have taken her to Marx’s house. That would be too risky, especially once they found out that she and her sister were shifters. They must have known we’d come for them, that we wouldn’t let this stand.
“I can feel her, too,” Lycan said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I can tell she’s scared, but she’s still alive.”
“That makes four of us,” Poe said, holding his phone up to his ear. “It’s small, but it’s there.”
“We’ll be able to use the pack bonds to find her,” Lycan continued. “Ry, it’s gonna be okay. She’s gonna be okay.”
Rage boiled in my gut, overwhelming me, and when I opened my eyes again, the wolf and I had merged into one consciousness. He didn’t want me doing this on my own, and I couldn’t give control over to him completely. I’d need him to find her; I’d need all the help I could get.
We’re going, he barked. Now.
Wait, I argued. Wait for the alpha. Wait for the others.
“We’ll have to invade Scorpion territory,” I said, the words deep and stoic despite the scalding wrath in my veins. “We need to go. Now.”
“Orion,” said my oldest friend in the world. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
My wolf laughed, but it wasn’t out of amusement. No, it was out of the audacity of this man telling me what to do about my own mate.
“I’ve got Vermillion working on the tech side. Guin still has her phone on her, which is a fucking miracle.” Kodiak’s voice come out gruffer the more he talked, like his own beast was taking over. “He’s tracing the signals. Between that and the bonds, we have enough.”
“We’re waiting too long,” I roared, giving over to the anxiety. More anguish blared to life in my veins, Sol’s physical pain bleeding over to me. I wilted at the hips, putting my hands on my knees to bear it. I yanked on the tether holding Isolde to my soul, sending as much power as I could through the thin thread, trying to let her know that she wasn’t alone, that I wouldn’t lose her to those fucking bloodsuckers.
I’m coming, little fox, I tried to tell her. I’m coming.
“Do it now!” I couldn’t bear the separation any longer.
Kodiak’s answering snarl should have warned me off commanding the alpha like that, but I couldn’t care less. He could beat me later if he wanted to, or perhaps drag me into another sparring session to settle the dominance again. In that moment, I needed my friend to help me. I needed the alpha, the president of our MC, to protect one of our own, even if it hadn’t officially been sealed yet.
As soon as I had her in my arms again, I’d get down on my knees and grovel for the rest of my life. I’d never let her go again. I’d make the mating bond permanent, just like she’d wanted me to that day in bed.
Eventually, most of the dominant members of the pack had gathered, and Larentia had armed as many of them as she could. We weren’t fucking around, and we weren’t going to waste time. While Guinevere wasn’t a member of the pack, Isolde had shifted with us last moon, and a week from now, she’ll have officially mated me. That made her family enough for the wolves to descend.
“Vermillion thinks the Scorpions took them to the asylum,” Kodiak said, coming to stand next to me. “I’ll smell them when we get close enough.”
“Fucking great,” Lycan snarled. “They’ll all be there. We’ll be outnumbered.”
“Barely,” Vermillion said, sitting his laptop on the hood of my truck while he typed. I came closer, watching as he pulled up footage from the nearby traffic cams. “I’ve been trying to hack into the Scorpion’s security system since you called. It’s slow going, but I’m almost there. This is the intersection just off the asylum property. They went through there only an hour ago. Based on this and the cell signal from Guinevere’s phone, I’d say that was our best bet.”
I cracked my neck and took a deep breath, trying to maintain control. The wolf was too pissed off, too furious to think clearly. He’d have us on a crusade to track them down immediately.
“So, what’s the game plan?” Talon asked, crossing her arms while she glanced between the alpha and Moose.
“We’re loaded down,” Moose replied, nodding toward the vehicles that now contained a hell of an arsenal. “But it would be nice to get a head count.”
“I’m thinking at least twenty,” Vermillion said, clicking his fingers against the keyboard to bring up different vantage points. “Ugh, fucking finally! I’m in.” He flipped the screen around so we could all see it, and Kodiak took a spot up front. There were a few Scorpion bloodsuckers mingling around out front, each with an assault rifle strapped over their shoulders that I knew had silver bullets inside. It wouldn’t stop us, but shifters did have a weakness when it came to that specific metal. It would slow us down and hurt like a son of a bitch.
Likewise, we had enough iron bullets and stakes to put these fuckers back into their coffins for good. Being a shifter connected us more deeply to the earth, to the natural cycles of the world. But vampires had to die before they could rise up again, reborn with necromancy. They were abominations, and tonight, we would put as many as we could back into the grave permanently.
“Here we go,” Vermillion said, clicking more buttons to bring up the cameras inside the massive space. It had once been an asylum for the criminally insane, the biggest one in the United States. In the seventies, it was shut down due to lack of funding and the inhumane treatment of the inmates. Now, it housed much worse than the scum of the human race. It was a breeding ground for the walking dead, the fucking blight of modern lore. “Holy shit. They brought in the calvary.”
He flicked through the footage, going room to room while Moose counted vampires behind me.
“That’s over fifty,” Lycan said, letting out a defeated sigh. “How the fuck are we going to do this?”
Larentia walked closer, attaching the clip of her assault rifle before handing it to her brother. “We do it like we did after the raid.”
We were much younger then and too naive to know the consequences of our actions. When the Scorpions snuck onto our property to wipe us out after a full moon, we had retaliated in the most brutal way possible. We’d waited until they were in a feeding frenzy, a massive party they threw a few times a year where the blood ran freely from human volunteers and drifters they’d managed to pick up. Drinking blood was like doing hard drugs for them. It induced an ecstasy similar to cocaine or MDMA for a human, and when they consumed it in large quantities, they lost track of reality.
Once their old leader had passed out, we snuck onto the property and staked them while they slept, while they fed, while they fucked each other in their blood-soaked euphoria. It had been a massacre, but we avenged our dead. That night still haunted my dreams, the screams of exploding vampires so piercing I’d never be free of the horror I’d created.
“We’ll have Morwyn on standby so she can heal anyone when we get back,” Larentia continued, reaching into her pants for her phone so she could contact the pack healer.
“They’re not feeding,” Serpent argued, rubbing a hand over the back of his head as he narrowed his penetrating eyes on Vermillion’s laptop. “But I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. I could gas the place with a nerve agent I’ve been working on.”
Talon shifted her weight. “What’s it do?”
“It’s made from shifter blood. It should simulate the effects of their feeding and knock them out for a while.” Serpent shrugged. “I’ve never actually tested it on vampires before, just their blood. But from what I’ve experimented with, it permeates their cells in the same way and disrupts their neural signals.”
“For how long?” Larentia added, grabbing another rifle before sliding in a clip and handing it to me.
He shrugged. “Ten minutes? An hour? I don’t fucking know. I’ve never used it before.”
Kodiak nodded. “It’s all we’ve got.”
“Right,” Lycan said, gathering our attention back to Vermillion’s laptop, where he’d pulled up a blueprint of the building’s design from the forties. The road captain ran down the plan, including how we’d divide up and invade through the various access points. I would go with Kodiak, Lycan, and Poe, and we’d head directly for the basement, where we believed they were keeping our girls. Moose would take Vermillion, Talon, Larentia, and the others through the rest of the place, putting down any Scorpions that stood in their way.
“The gas shouldn’t affect us,” Serpent said, grabbing a few stakes to slide into his thigh and chest holsters.
“Shouldn’t?” Lycan balked and let out a sardonic laugh. “Fucking hell.”
“I haven’t had time to fully test it, but I’ve been okay.” Serpent shrugged. “Morwyn didn’t see anything flawed in my research.”
“Yeah, except for the fucking screw loose in your head that makes you want to play with poisons all damned day.” Lycan sighed and grabbed a gun from Larentia, loading himself with his own iron-made weapons.
“Focus,” Kodiak snapped. “Tell everyone in the med-bay to be on high alert.” He turned to me. “Chin up, Ry. We’re going to get your girl.”