Chapter 17 Grey
GREY
Kodiak Sector
Agony shreds me from the inside out.
Not because of whatever my brother’s “friends” are doing to me, but because of what I feel from Ashlyn.
She’s terrified.
And she’s going into heat.
I can sense her estrus from here, her inner wolf howling for mine.
But I’m fucking tied to a chair and getting the shit beaten out of me.
Because apparently when my brother said I could use my wolf, he meant I could attempt to shift like this to fight back.
I haven’t bothered.
There’s no fucking point.
I take the hits. The kicks. All of it without so much as snarling.
I’m too focused on my mate. On our connection. On her pain.
Ashlyn, I whisper, wishing I could shadow to her. I’m so fucking sorry…
I never should have left her. I knew something wasn’t right. But she insisted and I… I failed her.
Just like I failed Nikiski all those years ago. Just like I’m failing her now, too.
I hear her weeping in her cage, aware of whatever sadistic plans our brother has in store for her. Or maybe she’s crying for me.
I really don’t know.
It’s been ages since I last saw her. I barely even recognize the woman she’s become.
Something cracks—a blow to my jaw—causing me to open my eyes for a moment to see a particularly large Z-Clan Alpha treating my face like his personal punching bag.
I spit out a mouthful of blood.
Then go back to feigning sleep.
It hurts. But nothing compares to what I feel inside.
So many pieces are falling into place.
That rune I put on Ashlyn’s arm… that’s why I couldn’t shadow her. It was protecting her by ensuring she didn’t end up in this cave.
I haven’t figured out yet how my brother tapped into my gifts, but I suspect it has something to do with our twin bond.
Which also might be why I’m struggling to fully connect to Ashlyn, I realize. He’s done something to me.
But that means I might be able to undo it.
Or use it against him.
Only, I suspect he’s been in my head for a long time. Which explains not only how he convinced me he was dead, but also persuaded me not to hunt for his dead body as proof.
Fuck.
I have no idea when my brother became this clever. Maybe he always was and I missed it as a child, too caught up in my frustrations with our father.
Or maybe he’s had a mentor, I think, wondering if he’s part of the infamous shadow organization.
Regardless, I need to find a way out of this. A way to return to—
A particularly hard blow to my head knocks me and my chair to the ground.
And all I hear is my brother’s laughing.
Except it’s not only a sound in my ears.
I hear it… in my mind, too.
That echo, I think. Like how Ashlyn’s goodbye echoed. How Spruce’s voice seemed to echo when he first started speaking.
Could that be a potential way in?
I ignore the Alphas as they turn my chair right side up and focus all of my strength inward. I have to do something. I can’t just fucking sit here while my mate goes into heat in the middle of a locally organized rutting party.
Because that’s basically what my brother has done.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
But first, I have to beat him.
How? I wonder, searching through my mental space, looking for where my bond to Ashlyn should be. It’s there. I feel it—and the terror rippling through it—but I can’t seem to follow the line into her mind. It’s… it’s nonexistent.
No, that’s not right. There’s a cloud…
I frown inside.
Why is there a cloud? I try to push it away, but it feels elastic in my mind. Permanent.
Which makes no sense.
There shouldn’t be anything else there except for Ashlyn.
But rather than try to dismantle it, I go into it, and find myself staring at an electric storm of activity. It’s like a mental minefield.
In my fucking head.
I narrow my gaze inwardly and slowly navigate through the chaos. There has to be a way to dismantle this…
However, before I do that, I look to see where it’s rooted and how deep it goes.
Can I be of some assistance? a silky voice asks in my head, one I was not anticipating hearing today.
Cillian?
Hello, Grey. The cavalry is here.
It takes all of my strength not to react outward to that statement.
But it seems you have a bit of a problem that needs to be addressed first, he murmurs. Would you like some help?
Any other day, I would have told the telepath to fuck off.
But today is not that day.
Yes, I answer flatly. I would, actually.
Then give me a moment, Cillian says. This gift I’ve inherited from Ivana is still quite new…
I sit and wait, then nearly sigh in relief as warmth floods my veins. Warmth and power…
Somewhere, an Alpha growls.
I sense it’s my brother.
But before he can reach me, I shadow out of the chair to the other side of the room.
At least I know how he controlled my shadowing now. It was something to do with the link he bastardized.
A link I now feel again.
His life pulses through me, our twin-bond very much alive.
But it won’t be for long.
I shake out my arms and legs, then shadow again when I feel my brother try to latch back onto my mind. It seems he perfected our father’s collaring ability.
Can you help us pinpoint your location in Kodiak Sector, please? Cillian asks calmly. The number seven from your sister isn’t helping.
The number seven? I repeat, not following.
Seven o’clock, I believe, he replies.
I’m about to ask what he’s talking about when a fist to the jaw sends me flying across the room. My brother is on me in an instant, a flash of metal in his hand.
I growl and return the punch with one of my own, then shadow out from beneath him—but not before grabbing the metal from his hand.
I crush it in my palm, my Z-Clan strength finally useful for something.
Ashlyn was on the shore, I think at Cillian, panting from exertion as I try to fend off my brother while considering what seven o’clock might mean.
With Nikiski being linked to Ashlyn through visions, perhaps she knows this.
The only thing I can think of is to go to that location and look for a mountain at your seven o’clock. Because we’re inside one of them here in Kodiak Sector.
Yes, we’ve gathered the mountain cave bit, but there are a lot of mountains here.
I know, I mutter, shadowing again to avoid being hit by another Alpha’s fist.
There are dozens of them spilling into the room, my brother seeming to have set off some sort of an alarm.
He smiles, the look of victory crossing his features.
But it’s a look that doesn’t last long as I let my beast peek out through my eyes.
I very rarely engage my inner rage.
Though, I’ve done it once already in the last month.
And I’m about to do it again.
I crack my neck, my arms loose at my side. Then I give into the urge to kill.
Spruce’s lips part as I rip the head off of a nearby Alpha, tossing it to the floor without so much as flinching.
Because this is me at my strongest.
This is me when I’m pissed.
This is me embracing all the fury of my childhood. A fury our father taught me how to foster and grow. A fury I’m about to unleash on all these assholes now.
But specifically, my twin.
He growls.
And I growl back.
Then I charge him without giving two shits about all of his friends.
This is between me and my brother.
A man I should have hunted and killed ages ago.
But he tainted my mind.
I’m about to return the fucking favor.
I hit him with a bolt of power from my palm—the bolt infused by a rune I created in my mind.
Because I don’t have to draw them. I am the creator of wards. They exist inside me. I think of them and they appear. And they do whatever the fuck I want them to do.
Like cast a web through my brother’s psyche, give him a dose of his own foggy chaos.
He coughs, then grabs his throat, trying to breathe.
I don’t let him. I tell the web to grow and expand and take over his mental space. Make him feel collared and under my control.
He tries to hit me back via the link Cillian disabled—I feel it ringing in my head. But I swat it away, grateful to be free.
But then I hear a shriek from Ashlyn that nearly sends me to my knees.
Our connection throbs.
Her terror echoing through me and forcing me to relinquish my control of Spruce.
And then he’s on me again, slamming his fist into my jaw and Ashlyn’s cry disappears.
Fuck.
It wasn’t real.
He manufactured it somehow.
But it sounded so—
Another hit to my face breaks my nose.
A hand collars my throat, metal kissing my skin, and I shadow once more, barely escaping my brother’s trick.
I craft a rune and throw it right at his heart before he even realizes I’ve materialized, then I throw another at his head, his throat, his fucking groin.
All of them send him to the ground in a fit of shocks that have him vibrating on the floor.
I’m done with whatever this is between us. A game. A brotherly bond. I don’t fucking care. That shriek is the last one he will ever put in my head.
I take two Alphas down on my way to reach him, both of their necks snapping with a pair of violent twists—one in each hand—as I give into my rage. It’s a violent side of me that I rarely allow the world to see. But Spruce has earned my wrath.
I throw more runes his way, ensuring he stays fucking down. Then I look for something sharp.
All I see is the glass cage holding our sister, though.
I run for it, not even caring that the thing is going to fucking shatter, and jump up to slam my body through the glass.
Nikiski must have seen me coming in a vision because she’s already flat on the ground, my body sailing over hers as shards spray all over the damn place. I land over her, taking the brunt of the damage. Then grab a particularly jagged piece from the base and yank it out with my bare hand.
It burns against my palm.
Cutting into my skin.
But I don’t fucking care.
I walk over and drive the sharp end right into my brothers neck. And then I stab him again. And again. All while he screams into my head.
I can barely hear him over the memory of Ashlyn’s shriek.
All I see is red.
Blood.
Violence.
Rage. Rage. Rage.
The link inside me dies the moment the lights go out in Spruce’s eyes, yet I don’t stop cutting and stabbing until the last strand is severed.
He needs to burn.
But a cry from Nikiski has me spinning toward her as a horde of Alphas approach with salivating expressions.
She can’t stay here, I think.
On it, Cillian replies, reminding me that he’s here somewhere. But not in the cavern.
However, magic shimmers in the next moment as Cillian, Kieran, Cael, and Lorcan, appear together in all black, weapons drawn.
Nikiski jumps into Cael’s side, clinging to him like she knows him, just as he opens fire on the three Alphas who were approaching her.
Then Cillian turns and throws me something that I catch midair.
A miniature fire grenade.
I almost laugh, but instead kneel and pull the pin, then stuff the small item into Spruce’s mouth. Picking up his body, I toss it over his head, and walk away as the thing explodes behind me.
The stench of burning skin follows, my brother’s life fully extinguished.
I glance back, just to make sure he’s truly on fire, and feel nothing other than fury as I watch his corpse disintegrate.
However, I’m not mad at him. I’m mad at myself. Because I should have known he was alive. Sure, he fucked with my head. But I didn’t even feel it.
That backdoor fog, though, explains how he knew about Ashlyn.
And also why he apparently chose to target her.
Though, it doesn’t explain how he came to be in charge of this group of Alphas or what all happened between him and Nikiski.
She glances back at me, her dark eyes wide. Probably because I’m covered in blood and still in feral mode. That’s not going to end any time soon.
“Grey,” she whispers.
“Niki,” I return, using the nickname I gifted her as a child.
She runs toward me and throws herself into my arms, not seeming to care at all about the blood.
“I’m so sorry, baby girl,” I tell her, using another nickname from our childhood. “I’ve been trying to find you since that night…”
“I know,” she whispers. “I’ve seen your efforts, big brother.” She clings to me, her head buried in my neck. “Thank you, Grey. You’re the one that kept me sane. You and Cael, I mean.”
“You saw him, too?” I ask, meeting my best friend’s gaze over her head. He’s standing next to three dead Alphas.
Kieran, Lorcan, and Cillian, appear to be taking on the rest.
They won’t be able to stay here long before more Z-Clan packs show up.
But I doubt any of those Alphas will have the ability to collar us the way my brother did to me.
“Every night,” Nikiski whispers, making me frown.
Then I remember what I asked—if she saw Cael, too.
“Oh,” I reply.
“You need to go,” Nikiski says, pushing away from me. “You need to go now.”
Those words are similar to what was said to me mere hours ago.
Which has my heart stalling in my chest. “Ashlyn…”
“I’ll see you in Lunar Sector,” Nikiski promises. “Thank you, but go.”
For a beat, I’m torn. I’ve spent a century trying to find my little sister and fully expected her to need my comfort to heal.
But she’s telling me to go after my mate.
My mate who is in very real danger…
I hold my sister’s gaze for another beat.
Then shadow into the midst of chaos.
There’s blood everywhere.
Growls.
Grunts.
Howls.
And my Omega… screaming on the bed.