Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
RíO
I let the scent of the Wolves, the sounds of their quiet and hungry breaths, guide me. While we ran, vaulting over fallen trees and winding around paths that they certainly were familiar with, I could only marvel at their coordination. How Leader didn’t need to give orders—they moved with an innate synchronicity while I tried to keep up. And when we came upon the scent of a dozen and a half shifters hidden within the dense, dark wood, they fanned out.
As Jaguar, I was used to ambush hunting. Not this event of endurance. But, as Leader’s glowing green eyes cut to me through the blur of my vision, I took it as a command to join the mob. In my own way.
I climbed while the Wolves cut a wide circle around the Serafim soldiers, some shifted and some not. My claws sinking into the bark of the tree was comfortable. Even when working within a group was new territory.
But they knew the land. And what I couldn’t see, I could smell and hear. Quick, panicked footfalls. Harsh breaths of prey. My tail swished in my perch, waiting and observing until the twelve inched the enemies close enough to attack.
I felt my mate’s distress, square in my heart. She didn’t feel as far away as she should have, but before I could fully set my attention to her, the bloodshed started.
Wolves were messy. Intense. Cries of pain rang out into the night as they started lunging. No quick, killing bites, but ones meant to take down and incapacitate. Three of them went for a shifted Tiger, another one releasing a thick spurt of blood from a soldier in human form.
All kept me observing. Waiting for my time, and when a torrent of the Leader’s scent, a warm winter’s night, slashed into the air as someone landed a blow, I coiled.
And pounced. Leaping into the air with my destination a murky mix of white and red and black.
More soldiers were biting at Leader, trying to take him down, and I landed on the first one’s back. Opening my jaw to crush the back of their skull was quick. The spurt of blood and tissue I barely even tasted as I pounced on the next one.
We were outnumbered, but they were the unarmed shifter reinforcements. They were unprepared on the pack’s home, and once we finished off those that’d attacked Leader, it was a frenzy. The Wolves pulled at limbs, silencing screams and death gurgles like afterthoughts.
Until a shrill cry rang against the treetops. “Mommy!” I felt Leader tense near me—we all did.
We were close to the house, and with a few yips, we split off, leaving some behind to stand guard while we inched closer to the Leader’s yard. Where the scents of my mate and sister made me want to growl.
Instead, I went back to that place. Where I knew my sisters and that they’d shoot first and not bother to ask questions later if we tried on them what we did to their soldiers.
Hell , I half-shifted, they’d probably shoot me anyway . “I’ll protect them,” I whispered at the white Wolf, whose out-of- place coloring was easier to see than everything else, “Wait here, or else you’ll be their first target.” He grumbled, tension thick around him, and not just because of his injuries. But he didn’t follow as I broke through the trees with my hands up.
And if I thought my sister had any soft spot for me, that was quickly erased. I tried urging her to leave, still unsure where the fuck Mara was, but when she shot my best friend who took a bullet for my mate, I saw more than red. Her spine shattering beneath my fangs, body giving last twitches before stilling for good. Fuck everything, I’d kill her and not regret it in the slightest?—
“I’m okay, baby. I’m okay. Te amo, te amo.” Ramona. Her voice, shaking a little but alive and strong pulled me away from lunging on Catalina and blowing all of this up. It wouldn’t take much for her to keep on shooting instead of toying with us.
My nose picked up on a shifting cold, like a harsh winter wind, but it was coming from the wrong direction. My mate lunged at Catalina, the witch and shifters near the porch clashed, but my instincts forced me to relax. To watch. And as my head turned, finding what was so important that kept me from helping them, I sprinted. Where what looked like Orion leading his daughter away from the bloody confrontation filled my chest with sharp panic and dread.
Dahlia screamed for her mother, and I pounced again. I directed Dahlia to the trees and kept the pressure of my claws and arms, refusing to let the jerking body go. With a confirming glance to the forest where Dahlia had gone where I commanded, I returned to the bright green eyes that were switching back and forth from an endless black.
More dark red blood spurted and drenched my wrists, but this was going to fucking end. Now.
Voice deep and gurgling, my tormentor somehow grinned even wider. “Oi, Yoyo.”
My mate’s distress—hell, the distress of everyone around me—threatened to pull my focus, but I kept true. If there was anything to stop this, to make sure Pai left all of us alone, it was to use his greatest prize to bargain for our lives.
Xiomara’s body was dueling with itself, whether to heal, shift, or both, but I just sank my claws further into her neck, her side. Through it all, my big sister stared at me, her eyes that I knew like my own, were easy to recognize through the blur of my vision. She didn’t try to fight, nor did either of us react when the rest of the Wolves started to emerge from the woods. Fabric and bodies rustled over the ground as the pack members carried in their kills. I sensed the Pack Leader, pretty wounded but okay from fighting the shifters that’d been hiding as reinforcements.
When I’d scented an uncanny copy of his winter aroma emerging from the cabin with a Dahlia that tried her best to dig in her heels, I just reacted.
Now, Mara’s scent was slippery again, intangible and impossible to completely grasp. To my surprise, with Orion’s voice, Xiomara whispered, spraying blood on my face with her words, “Te quiero, Yoyo. Hazlo.”
Incredulous rage coursed in my chest, tightening my squeezing her and forcing up more blood. What fucking trick was she playing? Though I couldn’t truly see it, the please was an unspoken supplication in her eyes that were inky pools.
“Everyone’s different, but I try to relate the scents of emotions to things that are familiar to me. So that when I encounter them, I have like… an internal catalogue to refer to. If that makes sense?”
On my inhale, I was flooded with the surrounding blood and rage and… and the stale, damp of despair that I first noticed on Ramona the night we crossed paths at Vinny’s.
The wrath that’d been carrying me flagged—had Mara always smelled like this underneath the elusiveness of her scent?
As Orion, Xiomara had some height on me, and with her feet still on the ground, she jerked, twisting our bodies just before I had to steady us against a punch of pressure that released a fresh torrent of her blood.
I blinked furiously, trying to make sense of what just happened and clear my vision in a futile effort. Using the blur of shapes and scents, I quickly took in my mate on the ground, rubbing her face and surely glaring up at Catalina who was no longer fighting unconsciousness. She held two guns, now, one pointed at us and one at my mate.
My roar shook the trees, and I fought to keep myself from trembling. If I made a move, she’d kill Ramona before I could truly take a step. If I killed Xiomara as I’d intended, she’d kill us both.
“Déjala ir, Río.”
“ Déjanos ir a todos . A mi alma gemela, esta manada, a todos nosotros. O voy a matarla.”
Cata was usually composed, even when she was raging, but I caught the telltale hitching of her breathing. Xiomara was already flagging, her heart slowing with the wounds I inflicted and Catalina’s gunshot.
“Ya tu perdiste esta pelea. Tu puedes explicar algunos tratos de negocios fallados, pero la muerte de su arma sagrada? No.”
Mara wheezed weakly in my arms, her legs no longer holding her up and leaning into me to do it for her. There were some words there, too, but she was fading too fast for even me to hear them. The satisfaction I always thought I’d feel for slaying this particular dragon that still haunted me didn’t have the kick to it that I’d hoped. All that filled me was determination and exhaustion.
Everyone around us was bracing, waiting for one of us to move. Either to end all of this or fully push us toward bloody chaos where fewer would leave the cabin grounds alive.
Mara’s true form started to appear, darkening the Leader’s pale skin to tan then brown. Her limbs began to shrink, forcing me to hold her in the air. Her body was giving up the struggle to heal her and keep her shift at the same time.
Catalina cursed. “Fine. We’ll fall back.”
“ No . Fall back, leave town, and never come back. No retaliations, no hunting down me or anyone I care about. Say whatever you have to say to Pai to make it stick. That’s the only way you’re both leaving here.”
She growled, something that she rarely ever did. “I should’ve fucking killed you when I had the chance.”
The words barely grazed me. She’d said way worse when I truly accepted her vitriol as my fault. Now, I had the love of my mate to hold me steady. I felt it inside of me, undeniable and breathing. I was doing this for us. “You’re running out of time.” And it wasn’t a bluff. Mara was fully in her true form, now. Unconscious and blood dripping into the grass at my feet.
More tense seconds passed, and I felt the Wolves that fully surrounded us, now. They didn’t come too close, lest they tip Cata over the edge, but their presence was its own unspoken threat. My mate and I stayed still, holding in the balance as Mara continued to slip away. Had I judged Catalina wrongly?
Through her teeth, cold and hot at once, she gritted. “Fine.”
I didn’t let myself relax. “Drop your weapons. Command your soldiers to do the same. And fall back. I’m not releasing her until then.”
With a grumble, Catalina did just that. I watched her form shift into a crouch as she left her guns on the ground at her feet. I didn’t even have to ask for Ramona to grab them both and point them at my sister. Did she know how to use them? Sure fucking hoped so.
The Wolves pressed further, herding the surviving soldiers past their vehicles and toward the trees. The tide appeared to have fully turned, and the Leader handed an uncharacteristically quiet Dahlia to Sylvie. He was limping, that much I could see, but I also smelled the blood of at least eight others on him.
Once all those in the Serafim Group were accounted for and pressed to the perimeter of the land, I walked forward with Mara, lying in my arms as her heartbeat still struggled to steady.
I still couldn’t make out Cata’s features when I finally stood in front of her. No doubt, they were filled with disdain at being bested. Only time would tell if she’d stay true to her word. But, I resolved, I would make sure to be here if she ever went back on it.
I let my arms fall, dropping Mara into a heap at her feet. My little big sister, a true shifter like Mamá and Javi, landed with a thud. Tonight had been the first time she’d told me that she loved me. Invoking the nickname that she only used when she would comfort me in her own twisted way when our father and sister had their backs turned.
Whether the words and her taking a bullet for me were another ruse or not, I was too drained to care. As Catalina ordered one of her soldiers to pick up Xiomara, I remembered the scent of my sister’s depression that rode the wave of her evasive scent.
I wouldn’t feel the rearing grief of her sorrow until later. Until I wasn’t so angry and still ready to deliver what she’d asked me to do.
Orion stayed half-shifted and ordered a number of his Wolves to follow him as they led Cata, Mara, and the rest of their posse through the forest. They didn’t allow them to retrieve their fallen comrades, nor did they let them flee with their vehicles.
For a stilted moment, I wondered if I should go with them, to see that the danger of my past was truly gone, but a familiar, grounding hand caressed my back. Goosebumps swept across my skin and fur, and the enormity of what we’d just endured hit me like a fucking avalanche.
I took her in my arms, holding her head tightly into my chest while I shook with my purr and fear that everything could’ve easily gone the other way. Could it really be true that we’d survived?
Ramona let me hold her for what seemed like an eternity, her tears soaking my skin as mine did into her hair, as there was movement around us. I listened to the comforting whoosh of air entering and leaving her lungs, and eventually, the Leader and Wolves returned.
They confirmed that they’d chased my sisters and the Serafim soldiers to the nearest edge of the Antler Pointe Pack territory and notified the already awaiting neighboring pack to further chase them south. Apparently, Harrison had been sent to communicate with the Mountain’s Peak Pack and had been waiting with their Leader who followed through with the collaboration.
The world spun for a second, until I was slumped in the grass trying to catch my breath. It was done. Over.
Ramona cradled my head into her chest. “I’ve got you, Río. It’s okay. You saved us.”
My mind replayed what’d happened, running over every piece. “Wai—Ty—” How could I have forgotten? My best friend took a bullet for my mate, I needed to go to him, to respect?—
“Shh,” Ramona licked at my temple, tightened her embrace. “He’s alive. Delaney’s taking care of him over there. Just breathe, baby. You did it. You’re free.”
I tried to do as she said, tried to breathe, but only a sob came out, a downpour of tears. “You did so good, my strong mate. You saved us, and you’re free.”