Legacy of the Fourth House

1. Chapter 1

Chapter one

Jessica

The van hits a rut, driving my shoulder into the floor. I bite back a sound. Nobody reacts.

Good. They don’t know I’m awake.

My wrists are bound, my mouth tastes foul, and my shirt is wet and sticky against my side.

I keep my body slack, which is harder than the pain. The floor under my cheek is ribbed rubber laid over metal. The engine strains beneath me. The tires find one hole after another in the road.

I listen.

Someone breathes close to my head. He smells of soap and antiseptic. Near the back doors, a boot scrapes against the floor, stops, then does it again. Add the driver, and there are at least three of them in here.

My left shoulder throbs where the dart went in. My flank is worse, burning from my hip to up under my ribs whenever the van drops into another hole. The fabric around it is getting stiff with dried blood, but something soft has been pressed over the wound. Tape pulls at the skin beneath my ribs.

Someone bandaged me while I was unconscious.

I don’t know what to do with that.

I remember the light turning green and grass under my feet. Then the net came down, heavy and wet across my shoulders. Men rushed me from both sides with long poles in their hands, and another dart hit me.

The van takes a bend and my stomach rolls with it. Maybe it’s the darts. Maybe I’m carsick. Either way, it sucks.

I breathe slowly and test the restraints without letting anything above my wrists move.

My wrists are zip-tied together in front of me. The plastic has slipped low across the base of my right thumb and rubbed the skin raw. Blood has made it slick. Another zip tie holds my ankles, but that one is loose enough to give my feet some room. My boots are still on. My jacket isn’t.

I flex my fingers inside the zip ties. They move slowly and without much strength. The second time, my fingers respond faster.

Whatever they gave me is wearing off. I reach for my direwolf and find nothing.

Damn it. I want to tear these assholes apart.

I reach for my mates instead.

The bonds are slippery. I find Torres and lose him, reach again, and catch all three at once.

Torres is hot and frantic, the bond stretched thin. Luke is colder, and he’s furious. Soren is quiet. Just weight—steady, not letting up.

I want all three of them so badly my eyes burn. A tear slips sideways into my hair. I leave it there. I want Torres’s stupid running commentary in my ear.

They’re alive. They’re looking for me, even if they’re getting farther away. I can still feel them. The drugs didn’t take that from me, and I breathe a little easier.

They won’t stop looking. I won’t stop fighting. God help these fucking kidnappers, because if I don’t kill them, my mates will.

My ears pop. We’re climbing. The man near my head shifts, and two fingers press against my neck.

I keep my breathing slow.

“She’s clearing it faster than the chart.”

“Then the chart’s wrong,” the driver says.

“The chart was built for a bear.”

“A bear?” The man near the doors gives a short, breathless laugh. “Did you see how fucking tall she was?”

“She was fucking huge,” the driver says.

“Was it three or four darts?”

“Four. Thank fuck the last one finally knocked her out.”

“Five men are dead.”

“And she’d have killed the rest of us.”

“Because we dropped a net on a direwolf.”

“We were bringing her home.”

“We weren’t supposed to half kill her doing it.”

“She was fighting us!”

“What did you expect? We came at her with a net and darts.”

The medic takes his fingers away from my neck. “One more dart could have stopped her heart.”

Nobody answers him.

I don’t know where they’re taking me or why they think I belong there. I’m not waiting around to find out.

The van drops into another hole, rattling the doors and throwing something loose against the wall. I use the noise to fold my right thumb into my palm and pull.

The zip tie scrapes over the raw skin and catches at the joint of my thumb. One hard pull will free my hand.

I stop.

A hand I can free when I need it is worth more than one lying loose where they can see it.

A window opens in the front. Cold air moves through the van carrying pine, wet stone, and old woodsmoke. The driver exchanges a few muffled words with someone outside. Metal drags against metal, then the van moves forward again.

We take several turns before the gravel crunch beneath the tires fades and the ride becomes softer. The van slows, turns once more, and stops.

The engine cuts out. Without it, I can hear boots crossing stone, a nearby door opening, and two people talking quietly.

The back doors swing wide. Cold air floods the van, and light comes with it. I can hear more people, a lot of them. Women’s voices among the men. Somewhere behind them, a child calling for somebody, and being answered.

"Is she awake?" a man asks.

“Not yet. Give it a few minutes.”

Someone farther away speaks.

“Bring the heir inside.”

Footsteps approach the back of the van. The medic leans over me, blocking the worst of the light, and I open my eyes to a slit.

His coat fills most of my view. Then he shifts.

We’re inside a stone-walled yard. Buildings rise beyond the van, light spilling from their windows. People have gathered outside. Some are armed. Others are holding children or keeping them behind their legs.

Behind the van, the road gate is still open.

A guard climbs in and reaches under my shoulders. As he bends over me, his body blocks the medic’s view of my hands.

I pull.

The strap takes the skin off the base of my thumb in one long strip and my hand comes through. The pain cuts straight through the drug. For about two seconds I can think perfectly.

The guard is still bent over me. I drive my forehead into his nose. Cartilage crunches, and he falls backward into the side of the van.

I throw myself out through the open doors.

The zip tie around my ankles catches on the bumper hitch. It jerks my feet backward, then snaps under my weight. I hit the stone on my bad shoulder and roll, tearing the dressing loose. Pain rips through my side.

Someone shouts behind me.

I push myself upright. The courtyard tilts, settles, then tilts again. My legs shake beneath me, but the road gate is still open. I can see it beyond a stone arch at the far end of the yard.

Somewhere beyond that gate are my mates.

I run.

My body responds too slowly. I clip the corner of a wooden crate, stumble, and keep going while boots pound the stone behind me.

I reach for my direwolf again.

This time, she answers.

Heat climbs my spine. My vision sharpens, and the shouting separates into individual voices. The darts stop the shift before my bones can change, but enough of her comes through that my legs steady and my stride lengthens.

Two armed men stand by the arch. One lowers his eyes when he sees me coming. The other takes an involuntary step back.

Good.

I race beneath the arch. A crest is cut into the stone above me—a broad-headed wolf standing over four peaks. I see it for only a second before it’s behind me.

The yard closes into a narrow section between high stone walls. The gate waits at the far end. The two guards behind me have recovered enough to start chasing me. Up ahead, someone by the gate starts dragging one side closed.

There’s still room.

People have pressed themselves against the walls to get out of my way. I see coats, frightened faces, adults holding children close.

Then a little boy slips between them.

He walks directly into my path and stops.

He can’t be more than five. His jacket sleeves hang past his hands, and he looks up at me without any fear at all.

I’m too close to stop.

I try anyway. My boots skid on the wet stone, and my knee buckles beneath me. The gate is closing ahead. The boy stands in the only open path.

I throw myself sideways.

I hit the ground on my side and skid. The boy is beside me now, close enough that I can hear him breathing.

One of the guards raises a dart gun.

He’s aiming at me, but if he misses, he’ll hit the child.

“Don’t point that at him.” My voice comes out raw. “Get it off him!”

The guard keeps lifting the barrel.

The man from the van knocks it down with his forearm.

“Not with the boy there.”

A woman rushes in and grabs the child around the middle. He reaches toward me as she pulls him back.

Then the guards come for me.

The first reaches for my shoulder. I drive my boot into the side of his knee, and he drops with a curse. The second grabs for me. I catch his hand in my teeth and bite until he screams and jerks away.

More men pile on before I can stand.

The heat from my direwolf disappears. My hearing dulls, and suddenly I’m only a drugged, bleeding woman on the ground with too many hands holding me down.

The dart gun rises again.

The man from the van knocks it aside a second time.

“No more darts. She’s already had four.”

The woman has the little boy against her chest several yards away, but he’s twisting in her arms, trying to see around her.

“She stopped for him,” the man from the van says.

“She killed five of ours,” someone says above me.

“And she could have killed him. She didn’t.”

The man from the van plants one hand against my good shoulder and keeps me on the ground while someone brings another restraint from the courtyard.

They force my arms out and wrap the restraint around my wrists and ankles with a chain between.

Two men haul me to my feet. I fight them, but I'm weak. They pull me back across the courtyard, and inside through a pair of heavy doors.

Inside is an entrance hall, not a cell block. Family photographs cover one wall. Coats hang beside the door, with children’s boots lined beneath them.

They take me left past a staircase and into a narrower passage. Cold air touches my face from somewhere ahead. Another door and another possible way out.

Then they force me down a short flight of stone steps. The last one is deeper than the others, and I nearly fall when they drag me down it.

Behind us, the doors open again.

“Tomas. Tomas, come back here.”

The boy has followed us inside. Someone catches him around the middle, but he stretches both arms toward me as they lift him off his feet.

One of the men yanks my arms. The restraint bites into my wrists, and a sound comes out of me before I can stop it.

“Stop hurting her!”

Nobody stops.

“Stop hurting our princess!”