Chapter 117 Maddy
MADDY
When my eyes opened the next morning, I could sense something was wrong.
A dark foreboding settled on my mind as soon as I was fully conscious.
I sat up, quickly glancing around the room.
Part of me was worried there was an intruder, but I was alone.
The other side of the bed was empty. Nico was nowhere in sight.
I grabbed my phone, and my eyes widened when I read that it was almost nine in the morning.
That was later than I’d been sleeping. Ever since shutting the bar down, I no longer slept until noon.
Nico must have let me sleep. I definitely needed it after three straight days of nothing but sex.
Still, I wondered where he was. Part of my sense of impending doom was that I could sense Nico’s worry.
I could tell he was upset and scared. I needed to find him.
Jumping from the bed, I yanked on my clothes and hurried out of the room. At the top of the landing, I heard the faint murmuring of the TV. The sound was loud but still unintelligible. As I came down the stairs, I heard a voice—Sebastian.
“Holy shit. I can’t believe this is happening.” He sounded heartbroken and terrified.
A thin spike of fear sliced through my heart.
I didn’t want to know what was happening, but I had to find out.
Once I was at the base of the stairs, I noticed Nico sitting on the couch, leaning forward, intent on the news broadcast. Felipe, Sebastian, and Luis were all there.
My parents were sitting on the other couch—twin looks of horror and shock on their faces.
Gabriella stood in the kitchen, her eyes trained on the TV screen.
Her face was a stony mask of anger. She was the first to see me.
“Maddy? You need to see this,” she muttered.
Nico spun in his seat, and my heart almost shattered at his expression. I’d never seen him look so broken. Devastation and sadness marred my mate’s handsome face.
He raised a hand, beckoning me forward. “Come on.”
I moved toward him in a haze, almost like I was in a dream. I took his hand and sank into his lap. The news seemed to be of a war zone.
“They’ve been playing the same report on repeat for the last fifteen minutes,” Luis said. “It’ll start over again in a second.” He sounded weary beyond words.
True to his words, the report started over with an anchor in a studio. The words Emergency Special Update scrolled across the bottom of the screen in large red letters.
“Good morning,” the reporter said. “We come to you today with a report out of Virginia. Early reports have come in that local anti-shifter activists, under the assumed direction of Viola Monroe, have attacked a wolf-shifter compound near Roanoke. A local affiliate is on site. Before we go to them, we have to caution our viewers. If children are present, it would be best if they left the room. What you are about to see is… disturbing, to say the least. We go now to Johnathan Moyer.”
The camera switched to a man standing in the rain, a blue raincoat with the network’s logo on the chest covering him. He looked shell-shocked. Someone shouted his name off-camera. He blinked twice and seemed to come back to himself.
“Yes… uh… thank you, Clarice. This is Johnathan Moyer with Channel Twenty-Two News out of Roanoke. I’m standing here at a Roanoke County wolf-shifter enclave. The compound houses nearly three dozen families, with the Harris family being the alpha seat of power in the pack.
“At approximately three-thirty this morning, a group of seventy-five to a hundred anti-shifter activists approached the fences and gates, demanding that the shifter population inside bring themselves out for some form of lynch-style justice. The local police force had nearly a dozen officers on site to guard and protect the compound. Surviving members of that police force tell me that when the officers refused to allow them access and asked them to turn around and return home, a second group of anti-shifters, hidden in the forest, opened fire on them. This resulted in the deaths of nearly all the officers before they had time to draw their weapons.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, slapping my hand to my mouth.
“Once the officers were down, the activists flooded into the pack lands.” The reporter glanced behind him, then turned back to the camera, his face ashen.
“The activists proceeded to attack… all members of the wolf pack. Semi-auto weapons, shotguns, homemade Molotov bombs, and simple hand tools like… like axes and hammers were used in the attack.”
Behind him, I could see EMTs, police officers, and firefighters walking through the remains of the compound.
Fire had gutted several homes. I glimpsed human and shifter bodies littering the ground.
Most were covered by sheets or already placed in body bags.
The body of a young girl, no older than seven, lay face-up in the rain, eyes closed. Closed forever.
Pain pricked in each of my fingertips as my claws threatened to extend. The anger roiling inside me was almost enough to force me to shift right then and there.
The reporter went on. “Thankfully, one mortally wounded officer was able to radio for backup before succumbing to her wounds. The Harris family pack defended themselves, but both sides sustained heavy losses. By the time officers arrived, the battle was over. Officials are still tallying casualties, but as of right now, we know that thirty-seven of the activists were killed, along with at least that many wounded to various degrees. Nine officers were killed in the line of duty, with six more hospitalized with severe injuries. The shifter pack sustained a loss of twenty members, and of that number, five were adolescents.” Tears glittered in the reporter’s eyes.
“That includes two twin children, one year of age, who perished in a fire started by the activists.” He broke down and chopped his hand across his throat, telling the cameraman to cut.
The original anchor returned to the screen. “Thank you, Johnathan. I can’t imagine what it’s like there. We now have Glen Harris, alpha of the pack that was attacked last night. He comes to us live from the local Roanoke hospital where his pack mates are being cared for.”
The screen split in two, and a man appeared on the other side. A bandage covered his left eye. Fresh, red scratches ran all the way down to the thick salt-and-pepper beard that covered most of his face.
“Mr. Harris, I would like to extend my condolences to you and your pack.”
“Thank you, Clarice,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“How is your pack dealing with this tragedy?
He shook his head slowly. “Not well. I lost friends last night. I… I watched a pup, no more than four years old, get murdered right in front of my eyes. These people are vicious and have no morals.” Tears streamed from his one good eye. “All they do is hate.”
The pain and grief in his voice cracked me in two. My knee bounced nervously as he spoke. My wolf and I yearned to go to this man, this pack, and help them. To tear and rend and brutalize those responsible.
“Mr. Harris, did these people give any indication who sent them? Most reports say they were working on the belief that Miss Viola Monroe of the disgraced Monroe Group was speaking directly to them through her various online videos and posts. Was this the case?”
The alpha nodded grimly. “They were screaming about how we shouldn’t even be alive.
That we were abominations. It was the same damn hate that woman spews.
I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” Resolve suddenly formed on his face, his one bright blue eye staring into the camera full of fire and rage.
He held up a finger. “I will tell you this, and I hope every anti-shifter in the world is watching. We killed a bunch of you. We killed more of you than you did of us. If you keep following this woman’s orders, this is your fate.
My brothers and sisters around the world won’t stand for this.
Bear, wolf, panther—any species—won’t lie down and die.
We aren’t made that way. If you don’t want to die, you better turn tail and run. ”
After a few more words of condolence and thanks, the news anchor ended the interview, and the broadcast went to commercial.
I looked around at all the others. The room was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat.
Several of them were sniffling and wiping tears from their eyes.
Nico nudged me, and I moved so he could stand.
“I’m afraid this won’t be the end. It feels like the start of something,” Nico said.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked.
He pointed at the screen. “Others will see this and try to take things into their own hands. Yes, a bunch of those anti-shifters died, but more people will see this as a call to arms. Instead of being scared to act, they’ll see those dead humans as an act of war by the shifters.”
“That’s bullshit,” Sebastian barked. “Those fuckers attacked them.”
Nico nodded. “I know that, but that won’t be how they justify it. All those people will see is dead humans, and they’ll gnash their teeth and rage about how good clean humans are dead because filthy evil shifters killed them. Fuck the truth.”
It was insane, but he was right. Once people aligned themselves with one side or the other, they were typically blind to the truth. You saw what you wanted to see, and there was no changing their perspective, not without something major and indisputable.