Chapter 31 #2
Darius hits him a fourth time, going for the throat again. Zion catches his jaws in his bare hands and holds him there at full extension, the wolf’s hind legs scrabbling at his thighs. Zion’s biceps barely flex.
He starts to pull. The bone of Darius’s jaw creaks.
Violet’s magic comes again, wider this time, and Zion ducks under it without releasing Darius. The arc smashes a chunk out of the wall behind him.
I’m only on my three legs, but my teeth find the back of his calf. I tear deep enough to feel the cord of muscle separate.
Zion drops Darius.
He turns to me without losing his footing, almost lazily, and his backhand catches me across the head.
The lights in the chamber double and triple.
I am on my back on the floor, and I do not remember going down.
“Lucas!” Violet’s voice from nearby.
I shake my head clear. Across from me, Darius has rolled onto his elbows, blood streaming from his nose into the fur on his jaw. He pushes himself up but does not stay there. His left foreleg gives with the first step, and he is back on the floor.
Violet sends a third arc of magic. Zion bats it aside with one bare arm. The blue light shatters against the wall behind him in a shower of bright dust. Violet sags against the concrete, breathing hard. Her well has dried up.
Zion stands in the center of the arena now. Skin closing. Wounds sealing. His chest is rising and falling, but easily—the breathing of a man who has just finished a brisk walk.
He looks at the three of us with what appears to be pity.
“You see?” he says quietly, his voice relaxed again, “This is the point I have been trying to make. You can hit me. You can break me. You cannot keep me broken. The Covenant has been growing us for a generation. There are dozens of me out there. Stronger than alphas. Faster. We do not bow because nature gave one bloodline a slightly heavier neck.”
I drag myself up onto one elbow. My shifted body refuses to hold weight on the left side. The bond is screaming behind my ribs. Sienna. My mate, in iron, alone in the dark while this man explains himself to us.
Zion’s smile is pure evil. “Once the two of you bleed out on this floor, your packs come under the Covenant’s control.
Then the next pack. Within ten years there will be no alphas.
Only us. Then, the shifters we command. Humans below them, where they have always belonged.
” He laughs once, pleased with himself. “Slaves. Every last one of them.”
He crouches in front of Darius as if he’s explaining a small disappointment to a child.
“Every pack has one of us, brother. The Covenant finds us young, when our own kind has rejected us, when our fathers have decided we are not worth claiming.” His voice does not waver.
“Our father did that to me. I was eight years old. The Covenant took me in. They built me. They made me what I am.”
Darius shifts back and stands up. I follow suit.
“Get up off the floor and fight me, Zion,” Darius snarls.
Zion laughs as he rises. “I do not even need to shift to finish you. Either of you. That is what I have been trying to make you understand.”
He takes one step toward Darius. Then, he stops. His head tilts slightly at his brother.
There is something behind Zion I cannot see properly from where I am. A small, dark figure moving along the opposite wall, low to the floor, with the patience of a hunter who has been counting heartbeats.
The blow to my head still has my vision blurring at the edges, the lights overhead doubling. But suddenly, I recognize her.
Lillian.
She does not announce herself. She does not speak.
She closes the last three steps between her and Zion’s back with the silent training of a hybrid who lived through her own pack’s massacre as a girl.
Weight forward. Balls of her feet. The knife blade in her hand catches the strip light overhead with a cold flash.
She drives it through the back of his neck.
Zion’s head snaps back. His mouth opens. No sound comes out of him.
Lillian pulls the blade free. The motion is steady. Practiced. Her stepson drops to his knees in front of her, his weight pitching forward, and she watches as he falls.
He hits the concrete face first.
Lillian does not lower the knife. She crouches at his shoulder and fits the sharp edge against his neck where the first wound is already trying to close, and she draws the blade through.
The full cut takes both her hands.
I hear a bone of his spine crack, then the wet release of muscle. The blade comes the rest of the way through, and Lillian sits back on her heels with the knife across her knee and blood up to her elbows.
Zion’s head rolls away from his shoulders.
Lillian stands up. “Can’t grow a head back, now, can you,” she says fiercely. She is breathing hard, the knife hanging slack from her bloodied fingers.
She looks like she clawed her way out of hell to get here. Skin bruised, clothes torn, blood streaking her arms and the front of her shirt.
The chamber falls into a stunned silence.
“Mom!” Violet finally shouts, relieved. “How did you get out?”
Lillian walks over and inspects her daughter. “The guards watching my cell left. Fortunately, I’ve been practicing my hybrid magic. Iron can hold a wolf, but magic can set her free.”
Darius’s left arm is bent at an odd angle when he gets to his feet. He crosses the arena to his mate and her mother, and his good arm embraces both of them. His forehead drops to the side of Violet’s head.
It’ll take a few minutes for him to heal. I can already feel my own injuries healing.
I brace my back against the wall and use it to get to my feet. The bond is suddenly hot. Burning. “Where is Sienna?”
Violet looks at me over her mother’s shoulder. Anger enters her eyes. “Last I saw her was in the lower level with Lydia. You sure have good judgment in people, Lucas.”
“Violet.” Darius’s voice has disapproval in it, but I shake my head.
“She’s right. My entire pack was deceived. I have to get Sienna.”
I push off the wall, but a voice stops me before I can take a single step. Deceptively gentle and so familiar.
“I really don’t think I can let you do that, Lucas.”
Lydia steps into the doorway. And she’s not alone.
Behind her, the corridor is filled with enhanced soldiers.