Chapter 31 Wolfe #2
I’d seen a lot of damage in my life. Broken bones. Shattered ribs. Wolves torn apart so badly you couldn’t tell where fur ended and flesh began. I had seen the damage and caused it myself, not ten minutes ago on the ridge, but somehow, nothing prepared me for Brand.
He lay on the grass, half-covered in blankets someone had placed over him, but it didn’t hide the truth.
It only made the horror clearer. His face was so swollen I barely recognized him.
One eye was completely shut. The other half-open, unfocused.
His jaw sat at the wrong angle—broken in more than one place.
Bruises covered his neck in shapes I didn’t want to think about.
His chest… Goddess.
I crouched slowly and carefully because something inside me was splintering.
Brand had always looked like he was carved from stone—solid, steady, and quietly dangerous.
Now he looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to him.
His ribs jutted out under the skin at strange angles.
Purple and black bruises covered half of his torso—deep, old ones.
And beneath that—puncture wounds.
Small. Precise.
It looked like someone had driven a thin blade or a metal spike into him again and again.
Rowen moved next to me. “They didn’t just beat him,” she said quietly. “They tortured him.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Brand’s breathing was shallow, rattling slightly, like his lungs didn’t want to expand. His wolf should’ve been fighting to heal—but it wasn’t. I couldn’t feel his wolf at all.
“Why isn’t he shifting?” I asked quietly.
The druid didn’t answer right away. Their scent was dark and furious. “Because if he shifts, he’ll die.”
My head jerked up. “Explain.”
They swallowed hard. “There’s poison in him. A lot. It’s binding his wolf. If he shifts, even if he could, which I don’t think he can, his wolf will take the brunt of it. It’ll burn through him too fast. He won’t survive it.”
I stared at the puncture wounds again, observing the pattern. Thin. Evenly spaced. Calculated.
“They wanted him alive,” Rowen said grimly, emotion making her sound harsh. “Alive, but broken.”
“No,” I corrected, feeling the rage coil so tightly in my stomach it hurt. “They wanted him to watch everything fall apart.”
Brand’s fingers twitched. Just barely, not enough to be conscious, but just enough to prove he was still fighting. My anger soared to new heights.
I forced my voice to be calm. “Can he be healed?”
The druid exhaled slowly. “The poison is slow. If he stays in human form, we might keep it from spreading. But his healing is…locked out. We have to fight it inch by inch. It’s going to be a long war inside him.”
War.
Brand deserved better than this. He deserved to be fighting alongside me.
He deserved peace, rest, and safety. Instead, he’d been tortured for information he never gave.
I reached out, gently placing a hand on his shoulder—it was the only spot left that wasn’t shattered or bruised—and I lowered my head.
“Brand,” I murmured, voice rough. “You hold on. You don’t get to leave. Not like this.”
Rowen’s breath hitched beside me. She stepped back, wiping her face in a way that didn’t fool me for a second.
“Who found him?” I demanded, standing up. “Where’s Cale?” I surveyed the grove.
“Ezra found them,” Rowen told me quietly, pointing across the grove to the figure of a male sleeping on his side under a blanket. “They were only a few miles away, you were right. He was close but not close enough.” She sniffed.
“Cale?”
Rowen pointed to another body beneath a blanket. Only this one wasn’t sleeping.
“Fuck.” I turned away, feeling a mix of anger and helplessness inside me. “Fuck!” I shouted again.
“Wolfe—”
“Axel did this.” I turned back to her, my voice trembling with fury. “I know he did.”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t need to.
“Ezra snuck him to the southern ridge,” Rowen explained quietly. “He and another went back for Cale. We couldn’t leave him.”
I felt dead inside. “Ezra? Is he okay?”
“They got ambushed on the way back, but he’s fine.” She glanced at the form under the blanket. “He knows how to defend himself.”
“Who went with him?” I asked.
“Dex.” Rowen didn’t cower from my glare. “Jaxson is on the western ridge. He’s not been hit as hard as you and Cody. Dex was scouting. He saw Ezra, and they brought them home.”
Home. But this wasn’t Cale’s home. Stonefang had been his home, but I’d never let him stay here long enough to truly call it that.
My head shook in denial, more likely guilt; I wasn’t sure which. But looking down at my beta, I knew I had to help him. “What did they use?” I asked the druid.
They looked up at me, angrier than I’d ever seen them. “Silver.”
The air left my lungs in a single breath. I couldn’t breathe. My legs buckled, and I dropped to my knees beside him, my hand cupping the back of his neck, my forehead pressed to his. Silver was more than poison; it was a death sentence.
“Brother, can you hear me?” I felt tears streaming down as grief overwhelmed me. “I will avenge you. I promise. I will make them all pay.”
I felt his finger twitch, and my heart broke a little more.
I quickly rose to my feet. “Cody!” He was at my side in an instant, almost as if he’d been waiting for the call. “You’re with me.” I turned to Rowen. “I’m going back out,” I said. “Stay here. Keep them calm.”
She nodded, her eyes filled with worry, but all she said was, “Come back to me.”
I didn’t promise it, but I let my thumb linger on her jaw for a heartbeat longer than necessary. My gaze briefly settled on the Heartwood, then I turned and walked out of the grove, carrying the full weight of the Hollow at my back—ready to kill anything that came near it.
And the ones who sent them.
All I could see as I walked away was Brand’s broken body.
He couldn’t shift.
He couldn’t defend himself.
He couldn’t speak.
But his body told the same truth, the Pack Council didn’t come to win a territory, they came to destroy one. And suddenly, the battle outside the Hollow wasn’t the center of the war anymore.
They’d already crossed a line they could never come back from.
When I returned to the eastern ridge, Killian was watching me like he expected something to break, but something already had.
I stood there, my eyes fixed on the highest ridge, my gaze on the moon as it dipped below the peak. Dawn was approaching. “Gather all who are able,” I said, my voice low, steady, and lethal. “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Killian asked.
“For the Pack Council to face what they’ve done.”