Chapter NINETEEN
–Kaia–
SOMETHING ABOUT TRéAN’S deal with his enemy, Tadc, stunk, and I don’t just mean figuratively.
There was no way to know if it was my blood connection to the bastard via my maker, Niall, or if my powers were becoming more fine-tuned because of my Fated Mate Cycle with Tréan, but the moment I caught a strange scent on the wind, I felt a sharp jolt of intense fear.
Not for me, but something else.
Something vulnerable.
I tried to warn Tréan about it, but it was too late.
A warrior as tall and broad as my mate and his brothers had just emerged from the darkness, one with the night in a fashion that went beyond lycan.
Bonded to it in a way that made nausea swell.
He didn’t revel in its silky smooth nature-ridden shadows but clung to murky corners no one dared tread. Loved the danger and hunt in a way that fed his corrupt soul with the blood of the innocent.
And he was my damn family member now.
Go figure.
But at least I understood the beast he was because my maker, Niall, was the same.
He had long craved the dark undercurrents of organized crime flourishing in the underbelly of South Boston—an underbelly that existed just about everywhere if you knew where to look, and I did.
He was standing right in front of me, wearing medieval clothing.
Just another monster in disguise.
I wouldn’t call him unattractive, but nothing compared to Tréan and his brothers.
His features were a rough sort of handsome, like a young, weatherworn biker who looked older than his years because he’d seen too much action.
His longish dark brown hair seemed unmoving in the wind, and his near jet-black eyes were sharp as they locked on me.
Despite the numerous seedy types I’d been around over the years, his was definitely the worst feeling gaze that had ever landed on me. Yuck to the core.
Though dressed similarly to the warriors at my back, he differed from them with no visible weapons.
That told me one of two things.
He didn’t want to appear threatening, or he was up to no damn good.
Door number two, I’d say.
Thunder cracked, lightning flashed, and cold rain started spitting as Tadc called out, “Give me what belongs to me, Tréan.”
He made a come-hither motion without losing eye contact with me.
“Give me my descendant and future mate, and I will return what you so ruthlessly tossed aside.”
Refusing to show Tadc an inch of the fear I knew he craved seeing on my face, I bit back emotion when a bone-thin woman with wispy pale blonde hair born of malnourishment was dragged out of the woodland.
Ceara.
Even if I were new to this situation, I’d know who she was based on the low keen of grief I felt simmering inside of Tréan, Bain, and Callum.
Every last Wolf of Ossary wanted to cry, roar, or destroy, and it wasn’t just brimming but screaming to the surface when Ceara was shoved to her knees and braced herself so she didn’t land on her stub of a hand.
“Oh, hell no,”
I cursed under my breath around my gag.
My vision burned blue with my inner beast because this had to stop.
Equal parts wanting to keep my guys from doing something stupid and equal parts enraged by what Ceara had suffered, I broke my binds, ripped off my gag, and swung down from the horse like I’d been doing it all my life.
And I did it so fast, Tréan had no time to stop me.
“Take me and let her go.”
Closing the distance in a few long strides, I stood over Ceara, narrowed my eyes at Tadc, and pressed my wrists together, urging him to take me.
“I give myself to you willingly.
Just let her go.”
I could have done this differently, maybe tried whipping a blade into his windpipe or implementing other battle skills, but rage made me see reason.
An inner fury that did what it had always done and made me protect the innocent.
In this case, it wasn’t by fighting because that would have just caused chaos, starting with Tréan.
My being here already affected his thinking, so I had to think for him. Take his vulnerability away. Get this done, and keep Ceara safe.
Tréan didn’t like it one bit, either, based on the fear and rage I felt churning inside him at my actions.
My sheer vulnerability.
But I knew something he didn’t.
Felt it bone deep but couldn’t put my finger on it.
Whatever he had planned was going to backfire.
“Had you given me just a moment longer,”
Tréan fumed into my mind, “you might have seen what my plan was.
Now you have done something—”
“Accepted,”
Tadc granted, cutting off Tréan’s internal dialogue when he yanked me against him, my back to his front, and held a blade to my throat, pressing its sharp, icy-cold metal into my flesh enough to still me.
I saw the terror and fury in not just Tréan’s eyes but Bain’s and Callum’s.
Moreover, I understood how singular we had become when Tréan and I began our Fated Mate Cycle.
All three feared for my life because I was theirs, and they were mine.
And all were mad as hell, not just at my vulnerability but because of what Ceara had suffered.
“Get her,”
I said into their minds, doing my best to keep my internal voice strong and level when the guy at my back felt so off.
Scary in a way I hadn’t come across, and that said something.
Looking at him was one thing.
Contact was another. He seriously wasn’t right. But at least he hadn't seemed to sense my Viking dagger yet. “Get Ceara out of here.”
Thankfully, Callum was able to push past the fear he felt over my safety and act.
Off his horse in seconds, he scooped up Ceara and backed away, his narrowed eyes firmly on Tadc.
“You will pay for what you’ve done to my mate.”
He sneered, and his wolven eyes flared.
“Hurt Kaia, and I will make my wrath last a hundred moon cycles rather than fifty.”
While appreciative of his fierce devotion, I knew the minute he said it, he’d gone too far.
Shown his cards.
Or should I say the Wolves of Ossary’s cards?
“Have you become that important to them, then?”
Tadc rasped into my ear, pressing his blade so deep I dared not swallow.
He flicked his tongue over the side of my neck and inhaled deeply.
“Has Tréan become that good at hiding his stench?”
He pressed his slimy lips against my cheek, undoubtedly eyeing Tréan the whole time based on the seething fury building in my mate’s eyes.
“Did you take what did not belong to you, former alpha?”
He pressed the blade so tight it stung, and I felt blood trickling down my neck.
Knew he was moments from slicing my throat.
“Did you—”
“Enough,”
a tired, raspy, but firm voice said into my mind...into all of our minds as the old wolf that had led me into Tréan’s private den the night before hobbled into the clearing and narrowed her wolven eyes at Tadc.
“Spare her life, and I will go home with you, son, as I have long wanted to.”
Holy plot twist.
Say what? The old beat-up abused wolf the Wolves of Ossary called their matriarch was the bad guy’s mother? I hadn’t seen that coming.
But something about the way her wolf managed to hold her head up high and narrow her eyes at the man ready to end me made everything crystal clear because I saw it right there in her strong, steady gaze.
She was a fighter, just like me.
The only difference was she'd lost a battle with pure evil somewhere along the way.
Now I was about to as well.
I also understood she had been Tréan’s secret weapon by choice.
She’d intended to be a distraction, as he and his warriors lay waste to their enemy, and it might have worked had I not let my rage and protective nature get the better of me.
“Have you long wanted to go home with me, Mother?”
The monster at my back chuckled.
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe.”
Everything after that seemed sort of dreamlike, yet again, as if time sped up and slowed down all at once.
My surroundings became crazy out of control in an instant when Tadc kept his blade at my throat and whipped another straight into the old wolf trying to save me.
“No,”
I roared in anguish—or at least I think I did—before rain poured down, thunder boomed, and lightning flashed so frequently it was impossible to see what happened in its entirety.
All I knew was my Southie instincts and years of training kicked in as what seemed like hundreds of warriors and wolves roared all around me.
It was an ambush made of the enemy and allies alike—a madhouse of mayhem.
I knew this world, though.
I’d seen it a few times over the years to a much lesser degree.
So, taking advantage of the monster at my back’s hesitancy as he decided what to do next, I pulled my Viking dagger free and drove it into his upper thigh, then spun and kneed him so hard in the balls his eyes met mine in shock and he dropped to his knees.
Normally, this would have been the point I shoved his nose into his head with a quick upward thrust, killing him, but I had no choice but to dodge an incoming blade whipped at me, giving Tadc just enough time to scramble away.
Although tempted to pursue him despite his warriors falling in around him, my inner beast was terrified for the old prone wolf bleeding out from a knife wound nearby.
A wolf I had to protect no matter what because she represented the change that could happen here.
Hope in all the gloom Tadc had created.
And somehow, that superseded everything.
Meant everything. She was an example for all packs in this era. A true warrior. So I raced to her as fighting broke out all around us. I’d lost sight of Tréan but knew he fought to get to me. Knew this wasn’t what he had planned.
Nevertheless, here we were, so, having left my Viking blade in Tadc’s thigh, I grabbed another blade off a fallen warrior, stood over the old wolf, and fought with everything in me, slashing left, right, up and down.
I spun, kicked, and dodged, slicing more than a few times and catching a few slices myself, but I held my ground.
The more I fought, the stronger I felt, and it had to do with Tréan.
Merging with my fated mate.
It had to do with me, too.
All the fury that had built up in me over the years. I might have let go emotionally in the heat of passion with tears, but this was different.
Now, I was letting go of all the anger.
And it felt wonderful. Freeing.
Yet, simultaneously, it was terrible because I felt the life draining out of the old wolf I protected as more and more men and beasts came at me.
So many through the driving rain and flickering lightning that I knew I was running out of time.
More than that, I was the only thing left between the old wolf and certain death...just like I had been with my mother as a child when our eyes connected in a sinking boat.
This time, the ocean wasn't crashing down around us, but too many warriors to count, rushing at me again and again, over and over, until time ran out, and I did all I could.
I did what I couldn't do for my own mother, but I sure as hell could do for the matriarch of the Wolves of Ossary because even though we hadn't known each other long, she was just as important to my new pack as my mother had been to me.
So I dropped to my knees and covered her body the best I could so she didn’t die a more brutal death than she already was, having been cut down by her own offspring.
Pressing my human cheek against her wolven cheek, I whispered that it would be okay.
We would go together.
She wouldn’t be alone. Not if I had anything to say about it. While I might not know her history with the pack, I knew they considered her a mother figure, and that meant something, everything, so she didn't deserve to die alone.
“I haven’t been alone since the Wolves of Ossary took me in, sweet child,”
she whispered into my mind, dwindling, turning to a pinprick of light in my mind.
“Now go save them!”
As if her words invoked it, the blade I’d left in Tadc’s thigh warmed against my side, right back in its sheath, and a roar unlike anything I’d ever heard ripped across the sky, drowning out the booming thunder.
Seconds later, something enormous slammed down over me, and the ground shook.
Though shaking like a leaf because what I experienced next was another whole type of terror, I still managed to look over my shoulder and up at a beast that put being a mere wolf shifter to shame.
I might not be into fairytales outside of a story or two spun for my cousins in their youth, but I knew a dragon when I saw one.
Especially when, in all its flaming red glory, it roared fire at the heavens and made warriors scramble.
If that wasn’t enough, a little copper-colored dragon, a child dragon if I didn’t know better, slammed down beside it and tried roaring as loudly as the big one, blowing fire at anyone that made the mistake of trying to attack me and the dying wolf beneath me.
“Push through it, let it take you, and go save them,”
the matriarch wolf whispered into my mind one last time.
Or had she? Because when I looked down, her eyes had drifted shut.
“No, no, no,”
I whispered as the dragons warred over us in a blaze of fire.
For a split second in time, I was young again, waking in a hospital only to be told my family had drowned in a boating accident.
Felt the extraordinary pain of loss all over again.
Knew things would never be the same. Outside of my uncle, I was all my cousins had left. “Don’t go. Don’t...”
I trailed off as the scent I’d first caught when Tréan and I were heading our enemy’s way drifted across my nostrils on a blustery wind-driven rain.
“Innocence,”
I whispered, inhaling deeper, finally catching the scent of the card the enemy had intended to play when trading with Tréan.
A card the old wolf I’d been protecting knew about based on her final words.
It was hard to say what happened next other than I grew desperate in a way I’d never been before.
Needed to protect in a way I’d never needed to before.
The feeling was so strong the unthinkable happened.
Or so I thought it was unthinkable until I knew my bloodline and members of my pack were in danger, and that was it.
I couldn’t get to them fast enough, and pain splintered through me when it shouldn’t.
Cut through my core when the moon wasn’t full or visible.
“Push through it, let it take you, and go save them,”
the old wolf’s words echoed in my mind, and then she said more when she shouldn’t have been able to, given she’d already taken her last breath.
“Save our kin as you tried to save me this night.”
That’s all it took because I fought the pain of a shift that made no sense and allowed myself to ease into it if it meant keeping those I loved safe.
Eased into it until the world looked different, and I raced through the dark, storm-ridden night.
It was the first time I was fully aware that I’d shifted, and it wasn’t terrifying in the least.
Rather, it was freeing in a whole new way.
Even more freeing than my recent battling.
I relished the strength of my canine body as I weaved in and out of the trees, desperate to get to the scent.
Regrettably, I had no choice but to skid to a halt when several wolves ambushed me, only to be taken down moments later by even more.
A tan-colored one nearly got me, but a cedar-tinted, sable-colored female came out of nowhere, grabbed it by the throat, and slammed it to the ground before her wolven eyes met mine.
That's when I realized she’d pinned down Blaithin, who’d clearly been trying to kill me.
“Go, my new sister,”
Mave urged while her pack kept me safe.
Pride lit her steady gaze as she looked at me.
“Go protect the Wolves of Ossary and never stop loving my brother because he needs your strength.
We all do.”
She narrowed her eyes at Blaithin.
“I will take care of this bitch.”
While it sounded like she wanted me to return to protect Tréan, I sensed she was instead urging me to keep following the scent I’d been tracking.
That it meant everything.
“Where are you?”
Tréan roared into my mind, the sound of his beast deafening in a way I knew was supposed to slow down my wolf.
Designed to make a pack listen to its alpha.
Yet there was plenty of fear in it, too.
Desperation to keep me safe.
“Why can’t I sense you?”
he went on.
Had it been any other wolf but my mate, I would have remained silent because I didn’t want anyone homing in on my position.
The scent I tracked was that important.
Yet Tréan was, too, so I replied that I was okay but had no idea if he caught it.
“Go, sister,”
Mave urged again, reassuring me she could handle Blaithin, so I listened, racing into the dark, stormy woodland before Tréan caught up.
Drawing close to the mysterious scent, I banked a right and slowed when I heard something over the crashing thunder.
My ears perked forward, and I listened more closely before detecting what sounded like short, high-pitched howls.
My need to protect kicked into overdrive and I followed the sound into a small cave, where I found three wolf pups in a pile of leaves, staring up at me—two males and a female.
One was black, one gray, and the female was a rich mahogany brown.
Even though I sensed the invisible cage around them, I had the power to push past it.
When I nuzzled the pups and inhaled their scent, I was shocked to realize why.
This litter belonged to Tadc and Ceara.
That meant the pups were my blood, too.
This was the card the enemy had up his sleeve because if the Wolves of Ossary had sensed one of their own had pups, Tadc would have owned them.
I might be new to this wolfy thing, but I knew that much.
Lycans would do anything to protect their offspring.
Sadly, the pups had been neglected based on their matted fur and skinny bodies.
My instincts and what I’d heard about Ceara told me it hadn’t been by her choice, either.
This was all Tadc’s doing.
Offspring weren’t to be loved but used as bargaining chips.
And these three were more valuable than most.
What to do with them, though? Tadc would no doubt be coming for them at any second.
I was surprised they weren't being guarded, but then, I’m guessing Tadc, bastard that he was, didn't foresee me getting to them because, being of their blood, I could bypass their invisible cage.
Hell, I should have tried harder to kill him when I had a chance, but in the end, protecting the old wolf was more important because it had led me straight to these three.
Tréan said something, but it was choppy, barely there, and I understood why.
My wolf was protecting the little ones at all costs.
These pups were my blood, so even my mate would be blocked from us until I figured out what to do next.
What would I have done if I were back home and had to get my cousins off the radar?
Get them away from enemy territory, for starters.
Three little wolves weren’t grown women, though.
They were, however, not fully wolves but shifters, so I suspected that despite not knowing how to speak yet, they could follow instructions.
Unable to carry all three by the scruff of the neck, I lowered my head so they could climb onto my back.
Fortunately, the males hopped right on.
The female clearly wanted to walk on her own four paws because she gave me a challenging look.
“A girl after my own heart,”
I muttered into her mind, already knowing she’d be my favorite.
“But not yet, sweetheart.”
Snagging her up by the scruff of her neck, I let my wolven instincts lead the way and headed into the woodland.
Headed toward what I could only hope kept me and the pups clear of trouble.
Little did I imagine it would be the last place I expected.