Chapter 35 - Dash
CHAPTER 35 - DASH
Trigger warning: kidnap.
I tossed three stacks of hundred-dollar bills on the glass counter of Gable’s magick shop, bouncing ribboned sprigs of herbs. Thirty grand in total. A small portion of the takings from yesterday’s sale of the jeweled dagger that my generous mate gifted me to purchase magical wards to defend our packs from attack. The rest Liv squirreled away for her sanctuary.
The warlock’s eyes drifted from Liv to me. “Change your mind, huh?”
I gave him a smartass grin. “Don’t think for one second I’d give you a Lycan flower.”
I might not abide by every rule, but that was one I wasn’t willing to sacrifice to the humans. The flower we delivered to Castor yesterday was the limit I’d go to supply magical herbs from my territory. A rare Boronia deanei, classified a threatened species in New South Wales. Nursery-cultivated species were stock weakened over generations of plants. According to Castor, the samples I provided him were pure and potent. I didn’t want to contemplate what he’d use them for.
Gable flashed one of his classic smirks as he tucked the bunches of cash in the jetted pocket of his jeans. “I never doubted your loyalty.”
I drummed my fingers on the counter. “How soon can we get the wards assembled?”
“Give me three days to acquire the ingredients and another two weeks to set up perimeters.” Gable’s impish gaze cut to my mate leaning against my right side, snuggled under the arm I draped over her shoulder. “Liv, you’re glowing. This guy treating you well?” He jerked his head in my direction.
Astute for a warlock. I guess he had to be when he and Luna were the only two people to escape The Brotherhood of Serpents.
“He treats me okay.” Liv’s cheeky gaze coasted up to me.
“Just okay?” Gable tapped keys on his keyboard, hopefully placing orders for the spell’s materials. “You let me know if he steps out of line. I have a spell for jock itch for my best customer.”
I tossed a sprig of herbs at him. “I’ve corrupted my mate enough. She doesn’t need your influence.”
The bell chimed behind us, clicking heels signaling the entry of a female. Icy dread dripped down my spine. Alarm bells went off and my wolf hunched, ready to fight. The acrid scent of tar and sulfur brought on the urge to vomit. Fuck. Death itself arrived.
Gable’s face paled even more than his emo skin allowed. “Get off my fucking property.” He hammered a panic button beneath his counter.
Perturbed by his reaction, I muscled Liv behind me and turned to face the disturbing source of the warlock’s hostility. Exhaustion and cramps gripped every muscle, smothering my voice, my will to move, my will to fight and defend. Invisible shackles locked around my throat, holding me in place.
The fucking witch responsible for screwing over my pack stood ten feet from us, bleeding my strength to feed her. The same sickening sensation I felt in the forest. Fear snapped in my chest at her discovering I had a mate and came to collect her blood debt.
My wolf growled at the five men flanking her. TJ Malice and the crew Castor had locked up. How the fuck did they get out and why hadn’t the Jackals warned me?
Blasts of dark magick sailed between Gable and the witch, and I dragged Liv away from the battle.
I feebly went for the gun in my pocket. Flashes of heat from the metal seared my skin and I dropped it, cursing. Damn witch used her magick against us. The sting and dull ache in my hand took a back seat as I urged Liv closer to the back door leading into Gable’s apartment. An escape route from the looming Malice mutts.
My courageous mate didn’t back down from a fight. Throat vibrating with warning, Liv bent over to slide a dagger from her boot, her palm sizzling from the burning magick. Whimpering, she let the dagger fall from her grip, and it clattered on the floor. Brow creased with pain, she clutched her blistered palm to her chest.
Left with no weapon, I freed a rag I kept to wipe my prints clean whenever needed, bunching it in my fist to clutch the handle of my switchblade, slashing it through the air.
Gable swore behind us, then spluttered as if choking, and his body slumped to the floor. The witch laughed and dusted her hands.
Four shifters descended on us, and I shielded Liv with my body. Lungs desperate for air, I got in deep cuts along two of their arms and chests. Blood dripped on the floor as they swore and staved their wounds with pressure from their hands. Strength drained from me like a battery drained of power, easily allowing those mutts to apprehend me. The enforcer wrenched my blade from me and hurled it across the shop and it hit the far wall. I still had another pistol on me, I just had to get to it before these assholes patted me down and stripped me of it.
Fire snapped down my spine when TJ fisted Liv’s hair.
“Get your fucking hands off her.” Control slipped, red descending over my vision, rage thumping in my veins.
I managed to throw two men off me and take two steps when one of them tackled me to the ground, pinning me down with a knee to the center of my spine. Another mutt locked me to the ground with a boot on the back of my neck.
I shifted my face enough to catch TJ seize Liv’s jaw in a bruising grip. Darkness and paralyzing fear seized me, smothering my need to tear his throat and let him bleed out.
“I’m gonna punish you, wifey, for locking me up and depriving me of my civil liberties.” TJ brought her face down to meet his knee. “Let’s see how you enjoy suffering with a broken nose for five days.”
“Motherfucker,” I punched out, writhing to get free and save my mate, the boot on my throat threatening to cut off my air.
“Asshole.” Liv spat blood on the floor. Seeing her broken and scared fucked with my insides. My breathing came out choppy and laced with snarls.
Five days. Where the fuck was he taking her? I summoned all my remaining strength to get up, unable to get any air or purchase, spiraling into the helpless, defeated panic of a lost fight. My world tore apart at losing her again. Sobs ripped from my lungs at knowing I failed to protect her. That I was the failure Father declared me. The worst realization destroying me was that I put her safety at risk by bursting into the bakery, intervening to save her, revealing my Lunar tattoo and losing the upper hand. Shame slashed the rest of my heart to pieces.
“Hands off!” the witch barked, and TJ reluctantly relinquished his prize.
My consciousness hung by a thread, and I barely got out a snarl.
Heels clicked as she maneuvered through the crowd of men to Liv.
Long, dark fingernails traced the length of my mate’s face from temple to chin “She’s mine now, wolf.”
“No, you can’t take her,” I gritted out, fighting the weight on my neck and back, but losing more strength by the second as the witch fed from me. “She’s not mated. She doesn’t belong to me.”
Liv’s panicked eyes fixed me.
The witch’s lips arced up into a cruel smile. “She belongs to you in every other way. Therefore, she now belongs to me.”
Fuck. Regret ripped at my insides. I shouldn’t have slept with her. Shouldn’t have laid my lips or hands on her. Left any print on her.
TJ’s fist clenched around her arm to show the witch she could feed but not have his trophy. “Ah, thanks for preserving her for my knot, Lumbry.” Venom dripped from my surname.
Liv jerked in his cruel hold. “You won’t fit, asshole.”
He dragged her jaw to his mouth. “I’ll make you. And by the time my men and I are done with your pussy, it’ll resemble a mangled mess.”
She spat in his face, and he slapped her, sending her reeling into the witch, who caught her, laughed, and shoved her aside.
Liv’s whimpers burned my veins like acid. The small amount of hope I had of saving her burned to ash.
The witch came to me and bent down, running bony knuckles along my jaw. Sparks crackled as Gable’s spell resisted her dark charms. She yelped and scrambled backward.
The bitch glanced over at Gable’s collapsed body and sneered. “You’re useless to me with his spell tainting you.”
Raising to full height, she jerked her head, and the two shifters on me released me. I rolled onto my back and started to get up, coughing and rocking from lack of air.
“Thanks for the prize, wolf.” The witch removed a handful of purple dust from her pocket and blew it over me. Laughing, she ticked her head, the Malice mutts obeying her like dogs, trailing behind her as she left.
I staggered to my feet and stumbled out of the shop onto the street, finding them gone. Fucking gone.
Lungs burning from holding my breath, I scrubbed my face of the glitter she blasted me with, using my shirt to clean my face. I held out for as long as I could, returning inside to wake Gable to portal me to my mate. Breathless and aching for oxygen, I sucked in a lungful, taking with it some dust. Grains tickled my throat and I coughed.
“Fuck.” I swiped at my mouth.
Within seconds, the effects hit. Drowsiness. Sluggishness. Collapsing to my knees, I crawled to Gable, shaking the warlock’s shoulders.
“Wake up, asshole.” I shook him one last time before slumping over his chest, my eyes closing. Soul-shattering silence and blackness sank with me to its murky depths.
I came to fuck knows how long later, groggy, my head thumping like a bitch, body aching and stiff mouth drier than the Sahara. Distorted, distant words hammered in my mind. Light stabbed through my eyelids, and I lifted a slack hand to block my eyes.
“Dash?” A hand cradled my neck, lifting me into a warm, soft lap. “Dash, wake up.” A female speaker. Angelic. Her touch laced with nursing power.
“Liv,” I groaned like I lost my tongue. My hands groped the blurred shape above me. Dark hair and brows. Blue eyes.
“He’s been drugged with a toxin.” The speaker set a hand over my forehead, and magick tingled on my skin.
“Clean it out of his system, Dark Sorceress,” a dark male voice ordered. I knew that voice. Couldn’t put a damn name to it with my pounding head.
Golden wisps of magick swirled before my eyes, drawing out darker purple mist, clearing my head and easing the stiffness and pain in my body.
“Fae dust.” The male curled me into a seated position.
“How does that feel?” The female pressed the inside of her wrist to my forehead, and I blinked, my vision sharpening. “Your temperature’s going down, which is a good sign. Your body overheated to rid itself of the toxin.”
Finally, my eyes cleared of their haze and recognition hit.
“Aaliyah? What the fuck are you doing here?” I let her lean me against the counter of Gable’s shop. She patted my shoulder, stood up and disappeared out the back.
Castor, my Jackal brother, another one of her four mates, held out my dagger and gun. “I picked up word of Gable’s distress call and a report the cops released the rival pack. I figured shit went down, tracked your phone signal, and came straight here.”
My heart seized with panic for Liv. I felt broken without her, completely destroyed at the thought of the Malices or that bitch hurting her.
Aaliyah returned, crouching down with a grim smile, and reaching out to clean my face with a wet towel, removing all traces of the purple dust. “Drink this to help your body cleanse itself of any remaining dust.” The beautiful brunette passed me a water bottle with the cap off.
A groan beside me dragged my gaze to Gable slumped beside me, an ice pack pressed to his red forehead. “I would have preferred the Fae dust to a punch to the back of the head.”
Aaliyah shifted to his side and tended to his wound, letting her healing magick free to do its thing. “Dash was more critical to heal.”
Gable’s gaze flicked down to her. “I could have had a brain injury.”
Castor thumped his leg. “You didn’t, otherwise she would have treated you first. Don’t be an asshole to my woman.”
I didn’t have time for this when my mate was missing. “Where’s Liv?”
Castor’s expression turned dismal. “From what I can tell from their phone signals, she’s in enemy territory.”
Gable prodded the back of his head as if testing his wounds. “If those hillbillies are working with Sarai, then it won’t be easy to get to Liv.”
The fucking Malices were working with the witch all this time. “I’m going to them. She can take me. Spare Liv’s life.”
Gable laughed in my face. “She’s sucked what she can from you. Now she has fresh meat.” I glared at him for further explanation. “She collects shifters like the Brotherhood does, bleeds them of their talent and abilities to stave off an incurable cancer. The bitch should have died three hundred years ago.”
I ran through all the ways I’d skin and kill TJ fucking Malice when I got hold of him.
“I don’t care,” I growled, shoving my dagger in my pocket and my gun in its holster and stumbling to my feet. “I promised her I would protect her.”
“Easy, brother.” Castor caught me, leaning me against the counter until the spell of dizziness passed. “You’re not in a state to go anywhere until my mate gives you the all clear.”
Fuck that. I tried to bypass him, but he used his full strength against my feeble balance and shoved me back.
“You go in there like this, and you’ll get both of you killed.” When I slouched, he eased his grip off me.
Aaliyah finished with Gable and snapped to her feet. “Give us ten minutes to sort out a plan and you should be good to go then, okay?”
A plan? They were going to come with me?
Castor thumped me in the chest with the back of his hand. “You didn’t think we’d let you march in there like Bruce Willis in Die Hard , did you?” He laughed, dark and mocking. “You’re our brother. We defend our family. She’s family now too.”
Liv was my family. My home. My love. My heart. My moon and soul.
Castor pinched Aaliyah’s chin with his fingers, and she smiled at him.
The icy crust of fear over my heart cracked and melted. I hardly knew this man, got myself into trouble twice in the space of a month of working for his club, and he was ready to go to war with me.
“I don’t know what to say.” I scrubbed my solid jaw.
“Say thanks.” Castor smirked.
Gable’s eyebrows twitched. “I won’t say no to going into battle with the avatar of Dark Magick.” He clapped Castor on the shoulder. “I’ll finally get to see you in action.”
Aaliyah groaned. “Please don’t compare dick sizes.”
My body jerked with apprehension to get to Liv before those asshole Malices hurt her. “What’s the plan?”
Castor and Aaliyah exchanged a glance, the former speaking. “Assemble your men. Meet us at your clubhouse. Zethan is tied up with business. I’ll see if I can get Slade and Alaric down there.”
Fuck. Six men, one warlock, and two avatars against a two hundred strong pack and a crafty witch.
Fear thumped in every beat of my heart. “We’re fucked against those odds.”
Castor’s mouth scrunched with disagreement. “You haven’t seen what a god can do.” He set a firm hand on my shoulder. “How strong a man can be when he defends what he loves.”
We’d see how strong we’d be in the thick of magick and an army out for vengeance.
The Jackal’s grip on my shoulder tightened. “I experimented all morning with your little flower gift, which was why I initially missed the police report concerning the rival pack.” What the fuck did that have to do with things? “One drop of oil from the petals is lethal to a shifter. All we need to assassinate that prick who took your woman.”
We just had to fight our way through an army of soldiers to dispense it.