Chapter 32 #2
“Fuck,” I muttered, shifting my hand back to human form.
“Same problem here,” Hunt said, having tried the same thing. “They sized these things perfectly.”
I stared at my cuffed hand, thinking. There had to be a way out. There was always a way out. I just had to find it.
The cuff was metal, solid and unyielding. The hook in the wall was bolted deep, not something I could tear free. The only weak point in this whole setup was...
My hand.
The cuff was too small for my hand to slip through. But if my hand was smaller...
If some of the bones weren’t there anymore...
“Fuck,” I said again, but this time with resignation. I knew what I had to do.
Hunt must have followed my thinking because his face went pale under all that mud. “Knox. You’re not seriously thinking about-”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “That’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
“Yeah.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “It is.”
I shifted my hand back into a paw. The bones were different in this form, arranged differently, but they were still too large for the cuff. I needed to make them smaller. I needed to break them.
I started pulling.
Not just pulling. Yanking. Wrenching my paw against the metal with all the strength I could muster. The cuff bit into my fur, into my skin, tearing through flesh as I forced my paw through a space too small for it.
The first bone broke with a crack that echoed through the garage.
Agony exploded up my arm, white-hot and blinding. I bit down on my tongue to keep from screaming, tasting blood as my fangs pierced the flesh. My vision went white at the edges. Every instinct screamed at me to stop, to give up, to find another way.
I kept pulling.
Another bone cracked. Then another. I could feel them grinding against each other, fragments scraping together inside my mangled paw. Blood was running freely now, slicking the metal, making it easier to slide through even as the pain threatened to drag me under.
One more yank. One more burst of agony that made my entire body shake.
And then my paw was free.
I collapsed against the wall, panting, cradling my destroyed paw against my chest. It was a mess of blood and broken bones, barely recognizable as a limb. The pain was incredible, pulsing with every heartbeat.
But I was free.
“Damn,” Hunt said, his voice sounding sick. He swallowed hard, staring at my ruined paw. “Fuck, I’m gonna hate this.”
“Do it fast,” I managed to say through gritted teeth. “Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
Hunt took a deep breath. Then another. Then he shifted his hand and started pulling.
The sound of his bones breaking was even worse than hearing my own. Each crack made me flinch, made my stomach turn. Hunt didn’t scream, but the noise he made was almost worse. A high, keening sound that barely seemed human.
But he didn’t stop. He kept pulling, kept breaking, kept forcing his paw through that too-small space until suddenly he was free too, collapsing against his section of wall with blood dripping down his arm.
We sat there for a moment, both of us breathing hard, both of us trying to push past the pain. My paw was already starting to heal, the wolf in me knitting bones and flesh back together, but it would take time. Time we didn’t have.
I forced myself to stand, swaying slightly as a wave of dizziness washed over me. Had to keep moving.
“The door,” I said, nodding toward the hidden entrance Mira had used. “That leads to the house.”
Hunt pushed himself up, grimacing as he jostled his healing hand. “You think they know we’re loose?”
“Not yet. But they will soon. We need to find the babies before they try to run.”
We moved to the door together, Hunt using his good hand to work the lock while I stood ready to bust through. The mechanism was old, rusty, but not particularly complicated. After a few seconds of fiddling, I heard a click.
“Got it,” Hunt said.
That’s when we heard it.
The sound of fighting outside. Grunts and growls and the unmistakable noise of wolves tearing into each other.
Hunt ran to the window and looked out, his eyes going wide. “Holy shit. Knox, you need to see this.”
“What is it?”
“Our wolves are out there. Ravenshollow and Moonfang, fighting together.” He pressed closer to the glass. “But they’re fighting rogues. There’s a whole fucking battlefield out there.”
The rogues. Of course. We were deep in rogue territory. The fighting must have drawn them out, hungry for fresh meat.
“Time to move,” I said. “We need to get Blake and Thomas now, before anyone tries to use this chaos to escape.”
We pushed the door open and stepped into a narrow hallway, dim and dusty, clearly not a main part of the house. Storage or maintenance access, probably. The sounds of the battle outside were muffled here, but I could hear other noises. Footsteps. Voices. Someone moving around in a hurry.
Hunt and I crept down the hallway, moving as quietly as we could with our injured hands and aching bodies. The passage turned once, twice, then opened into what looked like a back room of the main cabin. A mudroom, maybe, with coats hanging on hooks and boots lined up by the wall.
Through the doorway, I could see a larger space. The living room. And standing in the middle of it, his back to us, was Lucio.
He was holding something in his hand. Something metal that glinted in the lamplight.
A gun.
What the fuck was he doing with a gun? Wolves didn’t use guns. We had claws and teeth and supernatural strength. Human weapons were beneath us, tools for the weak.
But Lucio wasn’t acting like a wolf right now. He was pacing, agitated, the gun swinging wildly as he moved. He was talking to himself, muttering under his breath, and I caught fragments of words. “...should have worked... can’t believe... have to...”
He was panicking.
Good.
I stepped into the doorway, making no effort to hide my presence. Hunt flanked me, both of us probably looking like absolute shit with our bloody hands and mud-caked bodies. But we were standing. We were free. And we were between Lucio and the exit.
He spun around when he heard us, the gun coming up automatically. His eyes went wide when he saw us, shock and fear flickering across his face before he managed to control it.
“How the fuck did you get out?” he demanded, his voice cracking.
“I’m very determined.” I took a step forward, watching the gun carefully. I’d never been shot before. Didn’t really want to start now. But a single bullet wasn’t going to stop me. Not when my daughter was somewhere in this house. “Put that down, Lucio. It’s over.”
“It’s not over!” He waved the gun at me, his hand shaking. “It’s not over until I say it’s over!”
“Your rogue buddies are getting torn apart outside. My pack is here. Moonfang is here. You’re surrounded, outnumbered, and out of options.
” I kept my voice calm, even though my wolf was screaming at me to attack.
“Just give me the babies. Give them to me and walk away. You’ll be in chains soon enough, but at least you’ll be alive. ”
Lucio’s laugh was high and hysterical. “Walk away? You think I can just walk away? Mira would kill me. Mary would kill me. There’s no walking away from this!”
“Then make a deal. Give me my daughter and Cole’s son, and I’ll speak on your behalf. Tell them you cooperated. That you helped in the end.” I had no intention of doing any such thing, but Lucio didn’t need to know that. “It’s the best offer you’re going to get.”
For a moment, I thought he might actually consider it. His gun hand wavered, dropping slightly. His eyes darted toward the hallway behind him, toward whatever room the babies were being kept in.
Then we all heard it.
Movement in the hallway. Footsteps. Two sets, moving fast.
Mary and Mira appeared at the far end of the living room, coming from deeper in the house. Mary was carrying Blake, my baby girl clutched against her chest like a shield. Mira had Thomas, Cole’s son, held in a similar position.
The babies were awake now, startled by the noise and the movement. Blake was crying, her tiny face red and scrunched up with distress. Thomas was whimpering, his little fists waving in the air.
The sight of my daughter in Mary’s arms made something inside me snap.
“Give her to me,” I growled, my voice barely human. My wolf was right at the surface now, clawing for control, desperate to tear the woman apart and rescue our pup.
Mary just smiled. That same crazy, unsettling smile she’d worn every time she’d threatened my family.
“I don’t think so,” she said sweetly. Then she turned and ran.
Mira was right behind her, both of them sprinting down the hallway with the babies in their arms. Heading for the back of the house. Heading for an escape route I hadn’t known about.
I didn’t think about it. Didn’t weigh the options or consider the consequences. My daughter was in the arms of a madwoman, being carried away from me, and nothing else mattered.
I ran after them.
Behind me, I heard Lucio shout something. Heard Hunt yell my name. But I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Blake was crying, her wails echoing through the hallway, and every sob was a knife in my heart.
The hallway was narrow, too narrow for me to shift fully, but I was faster than Mary even in human form. I was gaining on her. A few more seconds and I’d be close enough to grab her, to rip my daughter from her arms, to end this once and for all.
I was maybe ten feet behind her when I heard the shot.
The sound was deafening in the enclosed space, echoing off the walls, making my ears ring. For a split second, I didn’t understand what had happened. Didn’t feel anything.
Then the pain hit.
It exploded through my shoulder, white-hot and blinding, spreading through my entire body like liquid fire. I stumbled, my legs suddenly refusing to work right, and crashed into the wall.
I looked down and saw blood. My blood, spreading across my shirt, pulsing from a wound in my shoulder. The bullet had hit me from behind. Lucio. That fucking coward had shot me in the back.
Mary and Mira disappeared around a corner, taking Blake and Thomas with them.
I tried to push off the wall. Tried to keep chasing. But my body wasn’t cooperating anymore. The pain was too much, everything going fuzzy around the edges.
I slid down the wall, leaving a smear of red on the paint, and collapsed onto the floor.
The last thing I heard before everything went dark was Blake crying.
Then there was nothing.