Chapter 2 #2
She looks smaller than I remember. Older, too. Her once-dark hair is streaked with white, her skin pale from blood loss and energy depletion.
For a moment, I almost pity her.
I’d rather eat her for dinner, my wolf growls, having no taste for anything soft right now.
Memories flash through my mind, courtesy of my inner beast. The screams, the chaos, and the way the council’s arrogance helped start it all.
Any thoughts of kindness, no matter what I remember about this woman, go right out the window.
A deep-seated roar builds low in my chest, vibrating my body, before bellowing out of me. “Taren!”
If she wasn’t awake before, she certainly is now.
The older woman jerks violently, coughing and gasping as her dark purple eyes fly open. When she doesn’t speak—when she just stares past us, dazed and glassy-eyed—I yell again.
“Look at me,” I snarl. The sound comes out more wolf than man, rough enough to make the light flicker.
Taren flinches like she’s been struck, eyes squeezing shut before snapping open again. “Don’t—don’t shout,” she rasps, voice brittle as parchment. “My head pounds with every sound in this room. I can’t even grasp my own thoughts above the cacophony.”
“Try harder,” I growl. “I need you to tell me who the hell you were working for. Who took my Rowan?”
Her gaze shifts toward Liz, then back to me. “The Ashmark?”
“My mate,” I correct, each word edged sharp. “You and the rest of that pathetic wolf council called for her capture. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten what happened next.”
She sits up, her strength growing by the second. “Do you forget who you’re speaking to, boy?”
I close the distance between us and grip the front of her already ruined shirt. “Do you forget? I may have forsaken my seat on the council, but that wasn’t because I was the problem.”
Her gaze narrows in defiance. “Are you sure about that?”
“Fucking positive.” I shove her back into the bed, her cuffs rattling from the force. “Now, tell me who The Keep is.”
This has her covering her ears and groaning. “Don’t say that name.”
“The Keep?” This time, Liz steps forward. “Why, Taren? What hold does The Keep have over you? What was compelling enough for you to put Shadowyn at risk of losing its alpha?”
She rocks back and forth, shaking the mattress and making grunting sounds. I think it’s just for show until I notice blood seeping from between her fingers that are covering her ears.
“Don’t say it again,” I tell Liz. Not because I don’t want Taren to feel the pain I have since Rowan disappeared, but because this woman is the last hope we have to get information, and she’ll do us no good dead.
At least not yet.
“We won’t say the name, but you need to give us something, Taren,” I demand, staying next to the bed. “You remember something.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she mutters, wiping her hands over the white comforter, streaking it with crimson. “I’m dead either way.”
“I won’t kill you if I get what I want.” That’s a promise I shouldn’t make, but I’m desperate.
Plus, Liz is still perfectly capable of the task.
“I’m not talking about you.” Taren looks up at me, eyes red around the rim and wide. “I’m talking about him.”
“The—” Liz starts again, but I shake my head.
“Where is he?”
Taren’s chest rises and falls, shuddering with each breath, the faintest tremor of power leaking from her. I sense her wolf clawing at the surface, desperate for release. For a second, I brace for the shift. The crack of bone, the flash of teeth, but it never comes.
When her stare meets mine, there’s no rage in it. Only agony that locks onto me.
It hits like lightning. I can feel the sharp, electric ache of her grief slamming into me so hard it steals my next breath. Her suffering wraps around my thoughts, threading through my skull until I can’t tell where her torment ends and mine begins.
She’s drowning in it. And for one horrifying heartbeat, I think she wants me to hold her under until it stops.
“Enough,” I grit out, trying to pull my mind back from hers, but it’s too late. I see flashes—snow, blood, the hollow echo of betrayal. It’s not power that’s broken her. It’s guilt.
This woman isn’t our enemy, my wolf murmurs, quiet but certain.
And I already know.
“Nobody here is going to hurt you, Taren.” The words leave my mouth before I realize I’ve said them. Liz’s hiss cuts the air in response, sharp as razors.
I turn toward her, pulse hammering. “You know how much I need Rowan back,” I growl. “I’ll kill when it’s necessary, but this isn’t that time.”
My mind’s chaos, my heart worse, but somewhere beneath the anger, I still know the truth when I see it. Taren isn’t our target. She’s a casualty—one of many.
Liz doesn’t agree. Her jeer turns to a low snarl, the sound scraping against my nerves before she storms out, rattling the walls in her wake.
Silence follows her, thick and suffocating.
Taren lifts her head, voice trembling. “Thank you, Cade.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” I step closer, the words heavy with threat. “I may not kill you, but that doesn’t mean I won’t make you regret wasting my time. Maybe you can’t say his name, but you’d better find a way to tell me what you know.”
She stares down at her hands twisting in her lap, all that earlier fire gone to ash.
“I’ll try,” she whispers. “But you need to know that by the time some of us realized how wrong it had all gone, it was too late. We tried to go back. To undo it. But the magic—his magic—is too strong. Not even you can fight this.”
I lean closer, my voice low enough to rattle bones. “Like hell I can’t.”
Her purple eyes flick up to mine, and something in her expression turns the air to ice. This woman isn’t afraid of me.
She’s afraid of what’s to come.