Chapter 28 - Torsten
Torsten
The moment Freya and Rowan broke away to chase the retreating Denraider wolves, pride surged through my chest. Through our bonds, her desperation and determination blazed like wildfire — she was drawing on all six of us, her Odinswolf lightning crackling along her white fur as she pushed herself to run as fast as her alpha mate in spite of his longer strides.
“She’s mastered her powers.” My words leaked into our bonds without conscious thought as I watched her streak across the battlefield like a living bolt of starlight.
“She’s magnificent,” Flint agreed, pawing at the ground as if impatient to follow her but waiting on something.
“We need to stay together,” Heath said, his voice torn as he looked to Gage.
“Then come with us!” Rowan’s wild reply crackled with desperation.
Gage’s sky-blue gaze flicked from Freya’s vanishing white shape, then to the rest of us, then to the disorderly battlefield. Frustration pulsed through him, torn between his mates and his sense of responsibility for the alliance.
But ultimately, when it came down to it, Gage would always choose us, choose this pack.
“Then we all go,” he decided. “The Howling Echo runs together.”
Zak moved quickly to Brielle’s side. “Stay behind to help heal the injured. The alliance needs your magic.”
She gave a sharp nod, jaw set.
Then we were running.
Flint’s dark brown wolf surged ahead to close the gap to Rowan.
The rest of us shifted in fluid succession to follow our mates. Zak and Heath fell into stride on either side of me as Gage led our rear-guard group. The pack mind faded, leaving behind our sense of what any of the others were doing in our absence.
It was a relief to go back to the smaller version of our own personal pack mind, just the seven of us and our fused bonds: the Bonded link, pack bond, and mate bonds indistinguishable.
We left behind the scents of blood and gunpowder, opening into the fresh scents of evergreen trees ahead, spiced with the sharp tang of Denraider fear on the cold wind. Everything narrowed into a singular focus — the need to find Valkyrie that drove all seven of us.
Realm and Awareness, two of my ravens, rode high on the frigid air above us, their keen eyes following the eight wolves dragging a trussed white shape between them. Valkyrie’s lightning flared weakly along her fur every time she tried to kick free. Exhausted. Furious. Unbroken.
I shared the images without words. Through the pack mind, all seven of us saw what my ravens saw. Freya’s snarl rippled through our minds, sharp as shattered glass. Her sister was right there, so close we could almost taste her scent on the wind.
Yet we ran for hours without catching up to them, to the point where only Freya and Zak’s healing magic kept us on our paws.
It became obvious the moment we crossed into Oregon.
The former Denraider territory had been left without a pack alpha to defend their packlands, and retreating Denraider wolves fled to gather their things and regroup.
“We’ll reach Denraider heartland if we keep going,” Heath warned, concern sharpening his mental voice. “We’re outnumbered if they regroup.”
Flint agreed. “We get Valkyrie and we leave.”
Rowan snarled, “We get Valkyrie, kill her kidnappers, and then leave.”
The vision I’d had before told me we wouldn’t be the ones to save Valkyrie today, but there was no need to remind them of that yet. Freya needed to see for herself that her sister would no longer live under Denraider rule.
Gage ordered, “No heroics. In and out. Fast.”
As one mind, we decided to close ranks. Freya and Rowan slowed long enough for us to overtake them. Still, even once we caught up, Rowan’s wolf took point, his nose locked to the scent trail. The rest of us fanned out in a rough wedge, seven wolves moving as a deadly pack.
We crested a narrow ridge and my paws skidded as the terrain dropped away.
A clearing opened below, ringed by jagged stone. Denraider bodies sprawled across the rock and snow — eight of them. Throats ripped out. Limbs twisted at angles that spoke of ruthlessness, not mercy. Steam still rose from their blood in the winter air.
These wolves had been dead for minutes, not hours. Their killers were still nearby.
Beyond the corpses, dark fur shuddered as a shifter returned to two legs.
Soon, a naked man knelt where a wolf had stood.
Two more shifted back beside him, all of them surrounding someone on the ground.
They worked at the rope, freeing her. Then they helped her to her feet, and she shouldered into the coat one of them offered her.
No longer bound, Valkyrie stood at their center.
“We’ve gotta get down there,” Freya demanded.
“Let us go first,” Gage returned. He picked his way down the side of the cliff face on a narrow trail with Heath right behind him and Rowan on his heels. Zak and I filed down after Freya with Flint bringing up the rear.
We fanned out along the edge of the clearing, hackles lifting. Rowan scouted ahead, his huge black wolf bristling with a promise of violence if any of them moved wrong.
“We need to put them at ease if we’re going to talk to them,” Freya admonished.
So she shifted. In moments, she stood naked in the cold, lightning flickering faintly along the ends of her hair. She pulled clothes out of her sling bag and got dressed as Rowan kept watch, fangs bared.
The rest of us followed her lead, changing in a hard blur. Gage and Heath had guns in hand almost before their feet hit the stone.
Then we slowly approached the four, who waited for us despite one of them beginning to pace restlessly.
Even across the clearing, even after everything she’d endured, Valkyrie was breathtaking. The same ethereal beauty as Freya, but honed by hardship into something sharper, more dangerous. The way she held herself spoke of a wolf who’d learned to survive through strength and cunning, not submission.
Her spine stayed straight, shoulders squared. No flinch, no cower. Whatever chains Denraider had wrapped around her, they hadn’t bent her.
As we approached, the three males around her captured my attention next.
The first was tall and lean, with dark hair and cold gray eyes that took measure of our pack with a strategist’s focus.
Controlled danger hung off him — the loose shirt sliding off one shoulder, one hand resting easy on a gun he’d drawn from his sling bag.
Yet his beauty reminded me of a finely crafted blade: sharp, deadly, and utterly compelling.
The second was a mountain of scarred muscle, easily as large as Gage, but where our pack alpha radiated protective strength, this male exuded pure violence.
Scars crisscrossed his arms and bare chest in pale ridges that shifting had never erased, eyes gone flat with everything he’d survived.
When his golden gaze swept over us, his wolf stayed close to the surface with the cold calculation of a predator deciding whether we were worth the effort to destroy.
The third crackled with restless energy, wild passion barely contained.
Golden-ringed eyes flicked between us and the trees, paranoid and feral, but his pacing was all controlled speed — the coiled readiness of a predator who could cross the distance between us in a heartbeat.
He, too, remained shirtless, ready to shift at any sign of trouble.
There was something almost mesmerizing about his barely leashed intensity.
All three were undeniably attractive in their own dark ways. All three radiated the dominance of alphas — making them Lokiswolves, not Odinswolves like Freya, Valkyrie, and me.
They orbited her like three dangerous moons.
As Freya approached, shock flickered across Valkyrie’s features — pure, unguarded disbelief.
“You were the one on the battlefield?”
Facing down the seven of us should have intimidated these three alphas. We were four dominant alphas, two hybrids with crackling magic at their fingertips, and myself towering above them all.
But these three didn’t run, hide, or submit.
Instead, the gray-eyed one stepped fully in front of Valkyrie.
The wiry one’s hand twitched toward him. “Callan, don’t—”
He didn’t finish the warning. Don’t provoke us? Don’t defend her? Don’t attack?
Before any of the males could posture, Valkyrie spoke.
He didn’t finish his warning before Valkyrie spoke, ignoring the men.
“Sister…?”
The word came out rough, as if she’d ripped it up from a place that hadn’t been allowed to hope in a long time.
Freya’s lips parted on a soft sound that broke across our bonds. “Valkyrie. I’m here. You’re safe now.”
Freya took a step forward.
The gray-eyed male — Callan — moved to block her path, his stance widening.
“She’s coming with us,” he said, voice flat.
He had no idea who he was talking to.
Rowan snarled as a low growl rolled through Gage’s chest. Heath’s finger tightened on the trigger of his gun, while Zak’s witchfire kindled in his palm, blue light licking across his skin.
Callan took a step to meet Gage, dominance slamming into the clearing like a physical force. Two alphas faced off across the blood-stained rock, neither giving an inch.
When Callan smiled at Gage’s challenge, it was the expression of a wolf who’d killed alphas before and wouldn’t hesitate to add another to his collection.
He paused when his gaze flicked to Gage’s right wrist, then his left.
His calculating gaze searched out the rest of ours just after.
His nostrils flared when he glanced at Rowan, no doubt sensing Gage’s pack alpha mark on the huge black wolf through scent alone.
“You’re not Denraider,” he said. “We have no quarrel with you.”
“If you think you can take our mate’s sister—” Gage’s voice dropped to something lethal.
“You want to fight for her?”
The large, scarred male’s voice was a low rasp that sent chills down my spine. The words held no fear. Only a bleak eagerness for violence.