Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Part of me, the desperate and bleeding part, hopes Dad will come after me.
That he’ll finally realize how much I mean to him and come running to say he’s made a mistake.
I’m not surprised when nothing happens. He doesn’t even shout for me. There’s no sense of any hesitation on his part.
I bare my teeth and Grayson tightens his grip on my hand, that awful itch radiating along my arms to my fingertips.
Don’t lose it now.
His shoulder presses to mine and we slow our stride in tandem, the same song of madness sonorous between us.
The curse burns in my veins, simmers my blood, and a cry slips through my clenched teeth anyway. There’s no time to feel, or worry, or wish.
“I’ll do whatever you want to do, Mandi,” Grayson murmurs.
Colt and Lacey are a soft scrape of sound behind us as they drop the hunter at the gates to be someone else’s problem.
“It’s unrealistic to think this will all stop tonight.”
I bite my lip. “I know.”
“So are you sure this is what you want? To walk away from your family and cut ties?”
My body heaves with a sob and he pulls me into his embrace, hugging me tighter like he’ll somehow squeeze the sorrow loose. It only burrows deeper.
“I’m sure. I can’t stand with a person who is going to hurt innocent people.”
“You never listen. I told you that you don’t have to worry about me. You are not responsible.” Grayson’s voice cracks.
“I want to worry.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about you. And I want you to live. I want you to be happy, even if it’s not with me.”
The admission is sad, hopeless.
Why should I stop now?
“And because it’s the right thing to do. Loyalty matters and family is what you make of it. Sure, we have an uphill battle in front of us, but if we can get back to the witches, and their cure, then you have a shot to get back to the parents who are proud of you. Your scholarship.”
I clutch at him.
We’ll also be better able to handle the hunter if he shows his face again. Or any others like him.
“I wouldn’t ask you to choose me or your family—” Grayson starts.
“You didn’t ask.” And he never would. He’s not that kind of person. “It’s my choice to make and I did it. I choose you. If you don’t choose me, I get it. But this is my stance. It’s mine.”
And I’m selfish. I’m angry. Something hums through my body in resonance with him.
“Mandi.”
Something about the way he says my name has me stiffening in his arms. And those eyes. Those beautiful golden eyes when he angles his head down to me.
I brace for dismissal.
When it comes, it will be worse than a punch in the gut. I’m walking away from my family, I showed Grayson a hint of what he means to me, and as I wait for regret to land, it doesn’t. Only numbness.
“I’d be an idiot not to choose you.” He dips his forehead to mine. “Don’t you get it yet? All of this fighting, this struggle, it’s been for you. Because you deserve to be happy.”
I lift my face to his, mirroring him, lips within kissing distance. He’s right there.
He chose me.
Our mouths brush and the vamps jog to catch up.
“Are we interrupting something?”
Lacey’s voice freezes me but neither of us jump apart. Not when Colt smirks.
Not when Lacey mutters under her breath, “I know how tough it is to go against the tide of your family. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Good for you.”
My ears prick to catch the low syllables and I flash her a grin that’s anything but friendly. “Sometimes life sucks.”
Maybe it won’t soon.
Grayson gave me something to hope for.
I arch into his touch before he frees his hands from me.
Whispers catch on the low hanging boughs of evergreen and maple. A tangle of limbs overhead wait to swallow us up.
“Come on. Let’s go.” He tugs me into motion.
My apprehension grows the closer we get to the tree line and I stop as the first breath of forest reaches me, along with an underlying stench of something else. Rot.
I find myself back in the woods the night I met Grayson, the rot and the roar and not quite remembering how I knew to get to him. He’d been newly bitten, neither of us ready for what would happen.
“Lacey.”
The sound of her name draws the vampires to a stop and my pulse quickens.
“What’s wrong?” Her gaze searches my face.
I’m straining to make sense of more than the whispers of the fever. There’s no cracking limbs or shuffling, no roar or howl to announce them. Only an insidious sensation I can’t shake telling me we’re all about to die.
“Do you hear something?” Colt asks.
Terror crashes as the wind changes and brings with it the unmistakable scent of wolves, cursed to decay while they’re alive.
I jump toward the gate but my father’s shadow is a memory on the other side. “The fence. We need to check the fence.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Lacey, confused, stiffens at my side.
Grayson is already in motion and I halfway wonder if he senses the same thing I do. Like there’s a link between us and the other moon-mad wolves now that we’re past a certain threshold.
He cuts in front of me, his longer strides carrying him faster, his large body blocking me on the off chance we’re right and the attack has come out of nowhere.
What are the odds?
We’ve made it twenty feet before the shredded pieces of metal fence glint in moonlight, like broken bone sticking out of flesh. The fence has been torn into pieces which leave a big enough space for a truck to drive through.
Pieces of flesh and fur cling to the sharp pieces of metal, warped to allow entry.
“No.”
Holly. I break into a run, my head spinning and the voices in my head reaching a fever pitch. Holly, Holly, Holly.
“Mandi. Wait!” Lacey calls my name.
“Go tell the witches we need that cure ASAP!” The yell burns my throat. “Go! We’ve got this.”
It’s the only way we’re going to make it out of this. The peaceful night shatters with the edge of panic I can’t shake.
The vampires are out of my mind the second my sneakers touch down on familiar pavement.
We absolutely do not have this but the sooner we get the cure, the sooner we can end this fight.
The moon-mad wolves aren’t done with the Ironwood pack yet. I’d run during the last attack.
No way in hell am I going to run from this one. Not when the guards were called away from the gate for my talk with Dad. Not when the pack is unprepared for whatever is stirring.
The streets are eerie and quiet. Where did everyone go?
“You should go with them,” I tell Grayson. “It’s safer for you.”
“I’m not leaving.”
He’s angry with me, angry I’d suggest he cut and run. I fall for him harder, my heart stumbling over itself, especially after the way my people treated him.
Grayson would still rather stick it out with me and save them than save himself.
That is the kind of man I want to be with.
I stop in the middle of the street, dragging my nails through my hair and using the bit of pain to clear my head. Think. Where would everyone go at this time of night? There are no ceremonies, no holidays or celebrations.
But I’d rejected Jrue.
That might, under stressful circumstances, warrant a tribunal, especially with the news of me being moonlocked. Dad and the rest of the elders would need to come up with a different course of action for the pack and figure out what to do about Jrue, what to do about me.
“The meeting hall,” I burst out.
Grayson blinks. “You think everyone is there?”
It’s impossible to track the moon-mad wolves. The further we go into the community, the more their reek permeates the air.
There’s no clear air.
It pulses, stronger, on our approach to the rectangular building with the steep pitched roof. Our communal hall.
My eyes water and a cough wracks through me.
Grayson grabs the back of my shirt and draws me to a stop before I reach the sidewalk in front of the hall.
“Mandi, you shouldn’t be here,” he says in a low voice. “This isn’t safe for you.”
“My family is inside.”
“You can’t shift and you have no weapon.” He doesn’t give me the space my body language pleads for. “We should have nicked the gun from the hunter but we weren’t thinking.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I pull out of his hold and rush up the sidewalk, tongue knotting and decisions already made.
But the second I get close, my knee bent to kick open the door, I stall. It’s already open.
The silent night explodes into sound and the door swings inward, ripped off its hinges by the massive moon-mad creature inside.
Saliva pools from its canines. Eyes glow red before it throws itself at me in an impossibly fast maneuver.
The inside of the hall is madness.
I have a half second to glance behind the creature, to note the rest of the room in tatters and wolves fighting for their lives, before the beast knocks me on my ass.
I go down hard before instinct kicks in. Using the wolf’s weight and inertia against him, it, I bring up my feet and kick it in the midsection, sending it sailing overhead.
It hits behind me and I scramble to my side and up, storming into the hall.
The moon-mad wolves, the ones no one assumes are capable of rational thought, have cornered the Ironwood pack inside.
This wasn’t random. It was systematic.
What the hell happened after their last attack on our home? What outcome that night brought them to this point?
“Mandi!” Grayson shouts out my name before the wolf I’d kicked aside lurches to its feet and swipes for me.
He catches its arm before it makes contact and I swivel, grabbing one of the broken splinters of wood from the door.
Attention split, the beast isn’t sure where to look, and with Grayson holding it, I swing the lumber like a bat. It cracks the creature on the side of the head and takes it down.
With no time to waste, I sprint deeper into the hall.
Shouts and screeches bounce off the impossibly high cathedral ceiling and fall like arrows, piercing my eardrums.
The Ironwood pack has shifted. I recognize fur colors, tails arched like war banners, and the snap of teeth. Distinctive howls and familiar roars and growls.
I slap my hands against my ears for a second, overwhelmed and overstimulated.
This would be a great time to change. This is the moment I’ve waited for, when my wolf finally makes an appearance instead of lurking out of reach.
But she’s not rising, my body isn’t shifting, and I’d dropped my weapon.
I bend to pick it up as two hands slam against my lower back, sending me sprawling. Grayson yells and steps into the spot I vacated as another moon-mad wolf snaps its jaws shut where my head had been.
He takes the brunt of the bite in his shoulder. Blood seeps from the wound, a spray of crimson.
Bone crunches.
“No!” I scramble to my feet.
His eyes go golden. An apology forms on his lips, too silent to hear, before his control snaps. Muscles bulge and his body contorts against his will and fills him with agony of the change.
The moon-mad creature unlocks its jaw, releasing Grayson from the bite, taking a step in the opposite direction. Unsure what the hell is happening.
Horror slams in me through Grayson’s change.
He’s taller now, his skin stretching alarmingly. Great tears fissure across his forearms, filled with flayed skin and black fur.
No longer the boy I knew.
No longer the wolf I’d seen him shift into before.
Grayson’s moon madness has taken over completely and erases his control with this new threat, turning him into a monster.
He howls in the other creature’s face and the sound forces it to retreat.
The change set, the damage done, the two snap at each other and tear with impossibly sharp claws.
A sob works its way free and I’ve stepped toward them before familiar arms wind around my waist and pull me away.
“Mandi, no. You can’t be here. Get out.” Mom coughs, blood splattered across the left side of her face. “Right now!”
I’ll die if I stay. I’ll doom my mother along with me because my gut tells me she isn’t going anywhere if I refuse to listen. Now is not the time to make a stand.
Or is it? Can I jeopardize her too?
Can I leave Grayson?
I shake my head and tears spring free. This can’t be how our story ends.
He stepped in to protect me.
I pull myself free from Mom and face her, jaw working and mind spinning. “You go. I’m fine. I need to help him.”
She’s trembling everywhere. “We can handle ourselves, honey. What’s a few dozen moon-mad when the Ironwood pack is strong? But you, you’re human—”
I push her away, Grayson and the other wolf crashing between us. Mom regains her balance before I do and reaches for me again but I thrust out an arm.
“Please. Go.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
I get my stubbornness from her, I swear. “Get Holly and run.”
The demand in my voice rings clear and I catch a glimpse of shock. Then Grayson regains his feet and shakes his head, shakes off the hit, the gold in his eyes erased under a wave of red.
Around us, the room is an awful symphony of agony and horror. Torn flesh makes the floor slippery, blood pooling from members of both sides who have fallen.
My gorge rises but I can’t breathe easier until Mom is out of sight.
I watch her disappear through the tide and pray it’s enough.
We might hold our own for now but Grayson won’t stop fighting until every last one of them, of us, is gone. He’s gone. I try to tell myself not to look for him in the black furred monster rising up from the floor over the body of his dead foe.
I can’t help it.
His attention locks on me and I lose my breath. Time stutters then folds over itself, stopping when he takes a floor-shattering step in my direction.
“Grayson.” I whisper his name but there’s no change in his expression.
I don’t expect there to be.
He’s gone, my own fever rages, and if we’re not careful, the reign of the Ironwood pack will fall tonight. Grayson is full monster.
I’m about to follow him over the edge.
But I thought I’d be able to help my family a little bit more before it all ended.