Chapter 29 #2
Just as I was about to step on the porch, Quinn walked out onto the porch, pushing Ravik—his shirt gripped in his hand. I froze, and I locked eyes with Ravik. His mouth dropped wide, eyes bulging as he stared at me. His face turned ghostly white.
“Yeah… look her in the eye,” Quinn demanded.
Sounds from the wood area caught my attention, breaking my stare with Ravik. Wolves started approaching, slow, forward-leaning. Predatory.
“You think you can get out of here?” Ravik shouted, then spat at the ground. “You’re fucking pathetic.”
“No… You are because you think I came with only three other people,” Quinn seethed.
More wolves started descending from the woods. Two wolves came from inside the house. The stark white one, I knew, was Callie. Which meant the grey one had to be Hyder.
“As soon as your life ends, there will be no Novo, no person for anyone to answer to until the next one is decided,” Quinn said.
“You would kill your uncle,” Ravik said, shock hitting him about what was about to happen.
“You killed my father… but I’m not gonna be the one to end you. She is—a life for a life,” Quinn said.
My eyes shot back at him. Was he fucking serious? His free hand reached into his pocket, where he pulled out a knife, and with a click of a button, the large blade slung out. He pushed it to me. I looked down at the knife and back at him.
“Little doe, take the knife and end this… preferably before one of the wolves makes their way up here,” he said.
“I… I… I…” I stammered. Looking at the knife that he put in my hand.
“Yeah, right, Quinn, she’s a fucking puss, she won’t—”
I shoved the knife right into his heart.
“That’s for Izayuh,” I said.
He made a sputtering sound. I pulled the knife out, and blood started spraying everywhere with each beat of his heart.
“And that’s for Quinn’s dad,” I said.
The spraying got slower and slower. Seconds. That was all it took for his eyes to roll back, and he fell limp onto the ground. My eyes stared at him, never looking away. My heart hammered in my chest, and my breathing had become ragged.
BOOM!
An explosion sounded, and my eyes slowly turned to the sound. Quinn’s truck was on fire.
Fuck. No. Fuck.
This couldn’t be.
My eyes started darting around the field, and wolves were in battles with each other. Then ripping and bones cracking happened right next to me. My head spun back to the porch. The large black wolf stood on the porch. He jumped off the porch and out into the clearing.
Awooooooooooooo.
Awooooooooooooo.
Quinn had his snout to the sky and let out two long, loud howls. Every wolf stopped, frozen where they stood. I looked around, my eyes narrowed, unsure what was happening.
“They are submitting to him,” Annabelle said, from behind me, startling me.
I spun around on my feet to stare at her.
“You live,” she said.
“I do.”
She nodded slowly.
I turned back around to watch Quinn, to watch the other wolves. All of them crawled toward Quinn, front legs lowered. Did this mean Quinn was now the leader? The Novo?
“You know, to be Novo, he has to be married… I wonder who he would marry,” Annabelle snarkily said.
“Hmm,” I said. I hadn’t known that, but I didn’t want to give her that satisfaction.
“When did you and him… become a thing… while he was your guard?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“I might not be able to shift, but my senses are still top-notch. I can smell him all over you,” she said.
“Well, we have been living together since the end of September,” I said, dismissing her.
“Yeah… I’m sure that’s all,” she said.
“Can you speak to them while they are in wolf form?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” she said.
It felt like forever before Quinn finally started walking back toward the porch.
Five other wolves followed him. Callie stood out with her white fur, but the rest of them were varying shades of grey to black.
There was another almost solid black wolf, not quite as sleek black as Quinn’s fur, almost a muted black.
He was right next to Quinn as they approached.
The rest of the wolves took off into the woods. Quinn’s truck was on the tree line, still smoldering away. Instead of walking onto the porch, the six of them went toward the back of the house. I tilted my head to the side.
“There is a small shed in the back that has clothing, unless you prefer to see all of them in their glory,” she snickered.
“I don’t even know who all of them are,” I said.
“Well, as you know, the darkest black one is Quinn, the lighter black one is Benji, the darkest grey one is Daxyn, the lightest one is Raph, the other grey is Hyder, and the white one is Callie,” she said.
“Oh,” I said. My stomach instantly lurched into my chest. Daxyn was here.
Benji was here. I killed their father. Not Quinn.
Me. I drove the knife into his chest. Panic started settling in.
I’d taken a life. Part of me didn’t care a single bit, but I didn’t want to cause pain to my friends.
Were they my friends, though? Benji did help Quinn get me out of there, but not before it was too late.
All six of them walked from behind the house to the front, sporting clothing. I wondered if it was like a lending closet of clothes. Did it have multiple sizes? Or did each person have their own set of clothes in there? Those weren’t important questions right now, Zalayuh.
I stared at all of them and they looked back at me. Daxyn and Benji’s eyes lowered from mine to their father, who laid dead on the porch behind me. I dropped my head, looking to the ground.
“Don’t feel bad,” Benji said, breaking the silence.
“But he was your father,” I muttered.
“He was, and I’ll be sad about him leaving… but he was also a piece of shit whose time needed to come,” Benji said.
Daxyn had tears roll down his face, but nothing came out of his lips. He walked onto the porch and knelt to him. He pushed his eyes closed, kissed his two fingers, and placed them on his forehead.
“For your sins have caught up to you. I’m not sure you deserve heaven, but wherever you go, let your lessons be learned,” Daxyn said.
My eyes opened wide. I wasn’t quite expecting that. The tears that rolled down his face said something completely different than the words that escaped his mouth. He stood back up, wiping his palms on his jeans.
“He should be placed onto a raft in the creek and set afire,” Daxyn said.
“He doesn’t even deserve it, but we will honor tradition,” Benji said.
“They are gonna want to have a meeting to determine who is going to take the role of Novo,” Quinn said.
“Let me guess, you want that?” Daxyn said.
“No,” Quinn said flatly.
“No?” Daxyn and Benji said at the same time.
“I did want that, but… now I don’t. I have something better than that,” Quinn said, darting his eyes toward me.
“Oh… so you scooped right in and took the girl I’d been with, the girl I thought was dead,” Daxyn said.
Benji didn’t say anything. His face said everything. His eyes narrowed, and red filled his cheeks.
“I’m bound to her, and I’d planned to tell you, but then you were swooning her with your oh so great charm and those flashy blue eyes,” Quinn said.
“What?” Benji shot out.
“Are you serious?” Daxyn asked.
“Holy shit,” Annabelle said.
“Why didn’t you say something, brother?” Raphael said, breaking his own silence.
My eyes were still on my feet. Heat rushed to my cheeks. I hated being the center of the conversation.
“When Raphael? I bound with her the first time I saw her on her seventeenth birthday. Unlike others, I have standards. It’s not like she’s a wolf, and she felt it, and we started courting and became a couple.
She was human, and I don’t force myself on anyone.
I was going to approach her on her eighteenth birthday, but Daxyn was all over her and then disappeared with her.
Then, before I knew it, I was dragged to a cell where she was being kept,” Quinn said.
“You could have said it then,” Raphael said.
“And what would that have changed? I’ve played that scenario in my head a hundred times. Do you really think he would have allowed me to raise his grandchild? Or Daxyn would have been okay with that? He kidnapped her, for God's sake, there is no going back on that,” Quinn seethed.
“He’s right. It wouldn’t have mattered. Don’t act like he would have some change of heart. He was a controlling prick,” Benji said.
We all stood in silence, staring at one another, none of us sure what to say.
“We need to go back to the hotel and get our stuff, then I’m going to my home. I haven’t been there in far too long. I’m sure Callie has her stuff everywhere,” Quinn said.
“Um, how are we getting there?” I asked, looking over at his truck.
Quinn laughed. “Well, you’re gonna get a ride.”
“Like… while you’re a… a… wolf?” I stammered out.
“Yes… It will be fun,” he said.
Everyone laughed but me. I stared wide-eyed at him.
“Callie, you can either run back, or I’ll get the Civic and come get you before going home,” Quinn said.
“I’d prefer just to wait for you to come get me,” Callie said.
“Wait… the Civic?” Daxyn asked.
“Oh yeah… the Civic your dad ordered destroyed in fact wasn’t,” Quinn added.
“Always the defiant one,” Benji said.
“Be safe, Quinn. Wolves during the day alarm people, and you aren’t a small-sized one,” Callie said.
“We are gonna stay in the woods. She’s gonna run into the hotel room and grab my clothes… simple enough,” Quinn said. Then he reached out, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the back. “Let’s go, my little doe.”