CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mori
Fallen Star Territory
I watched from the bushes in wolf form as Vallis passed out and Pami climbed on shore.
She swore at Sharon, calling her everything but a lady and a bear.
Sharon merely crossed her legs and waited for Pami’s tantrum to pass.
She turned to kick Vallis’s unconscious form.
I glanced at Finn’s ghost, hoping he knew enough not to let Sharon cast a spell at me or eat me.
Hoped he was corporeal enough to stop that from happening.
My carrier was going to shit a house of bricks when he found out how helpful Finn had been.
I lunged out of the bushes and landed on Pami’s back. She sputtered twisting and grabbing her dagger at the same time. She charged me and Sharon’s roar cut through the island and the geese and ducks swimming on the lake’s surface fled for safer waters.
“NO!” Sharon roared again as I dodged the dagger and leapt over the elf who was nearly foaming at the mouth from all the lake water she must’ve swallowed and asphyxiated down.
I got a bite in on her left thigh and she howled.
Her dagger swung down and I didn’t move fast enough.
I braced for the stab to my neck or shoulder, praying that if I died someone would still save Vallis, but it never came.
Sharon bowled Pami over and they hit the ground hard.
“Not him! Stop it, you stupid, insipid elf! Killing indiscriminately will get you nowhere! Crossing me by killing part of my backup plan will get you nowhere! Stop it!”
The elf brought the dagger up and stabbed Sharon in the one hand she still had. The shebear stared at it for a long moment and laughed.
“You stupid little bitch!” She slapped Pami in the face and the woman’s head flopped from the impact.
The dagger gouged the elf’s cheek and tore further into the meat of the shebear’s palm.
It was enough to make my hand and neck ache just watching.
It also got my furry ass out of freeze mode.
I sprinted to Vallis. He was still breathing.
His pulse was weak, but it was there. His breath sounded rattly.
I shifted back and thumped him hard around his ribs and back until he started coughing up water in his unconscious state.
I couldn’t let Lero’s mate die! I couldn’t live with myself if I came all this way and then he died on my watch.
The women wrestled but Pami wasn’t giving up even if Sharon was out of her weight class.
“Mori is mine until I say otherwise!” Sharon growled.
Yeah, we needed to get out of here. I rubbed circles on Vallis’s back, trying to rouse him. His paw kicked and his teeth snapped in between coughs but his eyes didn’t open.
“Come on, friend. Come on. We gotta get you back to Lero. Come on. You have a baby on the way. We’ve got to get you---”
I threw my body over Vallis to protect his unconscious form as the women’s fight to the death rolled over to us. Sharon snarled and roared and then she was on top of the smaller woman again. She now had the elf’s dagger in her one hand and brought it down through her chest.
“Such a waste!” Sharon spat out blood and a tooth on Pami’s face. Blood squirted from the dying elf’s chest as if she were a fountain just turned on. “You could’ve been great. You know that? If you would’ve just listened to me.”
A door appeared not far from the four of us and Pami’s eyes rolled back in her head.
I swallowed hard. I knew enough from Lero to know that at one time Vallis thought she was his friend.
Pami didn’t stick around to say anything to us and when her door swung open there was no one there to greet her.
No relatives, no mate, no nothing. I’ve seen through doors before.
Usually, there is something cheery or nature like on the other side.
Hers was pitch black but she held her head high and stepped through anyway.
“Shit!” my wolf swore into my thoughts. “How much you want to bet that we’re next?”
We probably were but it sounded like the shebear wanted me alive. Sharon didn’t turn on me and Vallis. She plopped down on her butt on the lake’s rocky shore and took a vape out of her pocket. She hit it hard and offered it to me. I shook my head.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. You don’t have to worry about me, you know that, right? Everyone runs around acting like I’m crazy but I’m not. I’m not killing indiscriminately even.”
“Uh….” I didn’t know what to say. I should try to kill her, right?
End her now? Only I wasn’t sure I could.
I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t outsmart me and kill Vallis.
As long as he was unconscious she had a bargaining chip.
Even if she wouldn’t kill me apparently she had no qualms with helping Pami sacrifice him.
I prayed to every ancestor I had that I wasn’t signing the death warrant of Baby Andy in the future by not at least trying to kill her now.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to get it,” she laughed and hit the vape again.
The air filled with the scent of strawberry ice cream from her little puffing machine.
“I will have all the power I want, Mori. One day, I think you’ll even help me.
I can see it already. You’re tired of being kicked around.
You’re tired of feeling like your paws are tied every which way you turn.
You’re mad that you can’t kill me right now because too many people are counting on you and none of them give a damn that you’re still heartbroken because of that missed connection.
It’s always about what Good Ole Mori can do for everyone else.
I get it. I was there. Venal was a selfish child.
As soon as he crawled out of my womb he was greedy and demanding.
The thing is, Mori, it’ll stay like that as long as you let it.
If you don’t start throwing some of that weight around you’re going to always be at the bottom of the ladder.
” Sharon hit the vape again. “Like let me make you an offer. You heard what I told her. You’re my back up plan if something happens to Andy.
I really needed one after killing Venal in a rare moment of rage. ”
Rare my ass but I wasn’t about to argue with her. The longer she talked the more time Vallis had to rest before we made our escape.
“What offer? I’m not related to you.”
“Your mate is. Yeah, that Grim Howler shirt wearing dude? That’s my son too. His carrier ran off before he was ever born and I only found out recently. Don’t bother with the how but it’s true. So, I could tell you where he is right this second. Just kill that bear for me and I’ll tell you.”
“Uh… Why do you want Vallis dead?” I asked, ignoring everything she said about my mate. It was lies, right? She was a liar who just wanted me on her side, and I wasn’t about to be her pawn.
“I don’t,” she shrugged and puffed again.
“I just want you to prove that you’re worth my son.
That you will do whatever it takes to meet him and have his baby.
That baby will be very important to me if anything happens to Andy or perhaps I can’t get my hands on him.
He’ll be the sacrifice instead. It’s really a small price to pay.
You do know that you’re not going to meet your true-mate in this lifetime, right? That’s what Dern’s trying to change?”
My wolf tensed to pounce but the noise of the water changed. Something was sliding through it but I couldn’t see what because out here near the water on this sunny day Sharon Claudis was practically a fog machine on the side of her body Wess had frozen the night she killed her own son.
I saw the tip of a boat. Was it the one Pami had tied Vallis to and where had Finn’s ghostly ass run off to? Then I smelled them. It was Colton, Ivan, and my sire! My heart leapt into my lungs and stole my air. She had every reason to keep me alive but not them!
“Oh, don’t look like that. I know if I kill them you’ll never help me, Mori.
I’m not crazy. So, I best be going,” she said, shoving her vape into her pocket and pushing herself upright.
I never saw the sword coming. Through the fog there was no sunlight to glint off it’s edges.
No way to spot the woman who moved stealthily through it all.
I didn’t see it until its sharp metallic point poked out of Sharon Claudis’s back.
She let out a grunt of surprise and then a roar.
She shifted despite the spicket of blood running from her body.
The other woman in her swaying skirts grunted as I threw myself back over Vallis.
He grunted under me and opened one big eye.
I caught the briefest glimpse of the woman’s face.
It was Annila! I knew she was tracking Sharon but never imagined she’d actually catch up to her.
I started to rise to my feet. I needed to help Annila!
An arm clutched around my waist. I drew my knee forward ready to strike the shin of my captor with the sole of my foot when my sire’s scent surrounded me.
He didn’t pull me away but held me in place.
Ivan and Colton appeared on either side of us and started tending to Vallis.
“We’ve got to help her!” I shouted but my wolf knew.
My inner beast knew that this wasn’t merely a bear and a dragon fighting.
It wasn’t just two alphas. It was a shebear and a dragoness and alpha/omega meant nothing right now.
They were fighting over young that was yet to be born and young that each of them wanted to lay claim to for very different reasons.
There was no getting in between them. No getting near them.
They wouldn’t even see us now. Annila screeched and both women hit the floor.
Slowly, the fog cleared but someone was still screaming and howling. Me. It was me screaming.