Chapter 42 Mo
Mo
We push through the main door and into the open air. The compound is a wreck. Fences torn down, guard posts splintered, smoke rising from somewhere near the western edge. The ground is churned up with wolf tracks and boot prints and dark smears I don’t look at too closely.
The fighting has stopped. What’s left is the eerie quiet that comes after violence, when the world is still catching its breath.
“It ended fast,” Darius says. “The second the pack realized we’d come for their alpha, they either stepped aside or helped us take him down.”
Wolves are everywhere. Some shifted back to human, standing over bound prisoners.
Some are still in wolf form, pacing the perimeter.
I recognize a few from our pack. Archer is near the north gate in human form, bloodied but upright, directing others.
Elias is across the yard, a nasty cut above his eye, standing over a group of guards who are facedown in the dirt with their hands behind their heads.
Silas is farther out, his huge wolf stalking the tree line, making sure nobody runs.
But there are others. Wolves I’ve never seen before. A pack of them, lean and battle-scarred and definitely not ours. They move with their own coordination, their own hierarchy. Some of them are tending to the pack females and betas who are emerging from cottages.
“Who are they?” I ask Darius.
He adjusts Sophie in his arms. She’s gone limp against him, not unconscious, just empty, her face pressed into his chest.
“Allied pack. I called in a debt.” He pauses. “We couldn’t do this alone. Not against a fortified compound. So I asked for help.”
Darius asked for help. The alpha who’d rather chew off his own arm than admit he needs anything from anyone called another pack and asked them to fight beside him.
Archer appears, his eyes flashing with relief when he looks at me.
“Perimeter is secured.” His eyes move to Sophie in Darius’s arms. “Cassia’s on her way. She’s in the second convoy.”
“Cassia’s here?”
“We thought we might need a healer.”
A beta couple I vaguely remember from when I was young offers us their cottage for Sophie, and we take it.
Darius lays her down with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. He arranges the pillow under her head and pulls the blanket up over her shoulders. Sophie doesn’t open her eyes. She just curls onto her side, knees drawn up, the same defensive position I found her in.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take her hand. So thin I can feel every bone. Her fingers don’t grip back. They just lie in mine, limp and cold, and I hold them, anyway.
“Soph,” I say quietly. “You’re safe now. Nobody’s going to hurt you again.”
Nothing. A slow blink. The faintest twitch of her fingers against my palm.
The door opens behind me, and Cassia comes in. Medical bag in one hand, dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her eyes sweep the room, take in Sophie on the bed, take in me beside her. She sets her bag down and stands beside me.
“Let me see her,” Cassia says softly.
I don’t want to let go of Sophie’s hand.
Every instinct screams to stay, to not leave her side, not for one second, not after three years of thinking she was dead.
But Cassia is already checking Sophie’s pulse, her temperature, the scars on her wrists, the scar on her neck.
Her face is calm and focused, and I know this is what Sophie needs right now.
Cassia looks up at me. “She’s malnourished. Dehydrated. The scarring on her wrists suggests prolonged restraint. I need to do a full examination.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“She’s in good hands, Mo. I promise you. But I need time with her, and I need you to let me work.”
I look down at Sophie. Her eyes are closed again, her breathing shallow but steady. I lean down and press my lips to her forehead. Her skin is cool and papery thin.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her. “I’m not leaving. I’ll never leave you again.”
I step outside and close the door behind me.
Darius is standing at the bottom of the porch steps, his back to me, one hand braced against the railing. His head is bowed, and for a second, he looks exactly the way he did that night on the fallen log. Carrying something too heavy for one person.
Silas rounds the corner of the cottage. He takes the porch steps two at a time, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me clean off my feet. My face presses into his neck as I breathe him in, and my hands grip his shoulders, holding on.
He sets me down but doesn’t let go. His hand cups the back of my head, pressing my face against his chest, and I can feel his heartbeat hammering under my cheek.
“I’m okay,” I say against his skin. “I’m okay.”
His arms tighten.
Then Elias appears. The gash above his eye crusted with dried blood, his curls matted with dirt and sweat. He stops when he sees Silas holding me, and his face does something I’ve never seen from him. It crumples. The cocky mask, the jokes, the swagger, all of it falls away.
“Blueberry,” he exhales.
Silas lets me go, and Elias is there, pulling me into him, one hand on the back of my neck, his face buried in my hair.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he says. “Don’t ever fucking disappear on me again.”
“I won’t,” I say.
He pulls back, holding my face in both hands, his eyes moving over me like he’s cataloging every scratch and bruise. His thumb brushes the split in my lip, and his jaw goes tight.
“Who did this?”
“Doesn’t matter. I did worse to them.”
A ghost of a smile. “That’s my girl.”
Archer is last. He’s at the bottom of the steps, looking up at me.
“You good?” he asks.
“I’m good.”
He nods. Then he climbs the steps, and his arms go around me, his chin resting on top of my head, and we just stay like that for a moment.
I turn and scan the compound. Takes me less than ten seconds to find them.
I have one thing left to do.
Stuart and his father are on their knees.