18. CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 18
Grayson
I sprinted with Mace toward the passage. A contingent of Sentinel Falls wolves ran behind us. The Carmag rangers had returned to Westvale, and they’d make sure Ago left no hybrid behind. Fallon had gone with Anson. She would monitor the situation from his operational center. If pack members asked where the alphas were, she would come up with some explanation. No one needed to know the danger facing Noa right now. Only that we were close to finding her.
I heard the hybrids in the far distance, the unnatural calling from tortured souls. But as long as they were yowling, they hadn’t found their quarry. We stormed through the passage with no need for stealth. Let them know we were coming. Let the worry settle into their bones.
The forest after the passage was stark, with black trees and muddied snow, an easy trail to follow. Broken branches, skidding claw marks. Mace signaled to the men, giving them an order to shift. It took only minutes to find the hybrids—they were larger than most shifted wolves. Faster, with a vampire’s advantage. But wolves I didn’t recognize had cornered Ago in a rocky grotto. The vampire stood with his back to the cliff. An arrow had pierced his shoulder. The hybrids with him—the five that were left—dripped blood from their jowls and paced, restless. Uncertain.
But relief surged. Noa wasn’t here. I didn’t think she’d ever been here , in this grotto. Halfway between two passages I knew well.
“Who the fuck is that?” Mace snarled as a figure rose from hiding, perched at the top of rocks. She held a wicked-looking bow with an arrow nocked.
“Angel.” I picked up the mercenary’s scent. Other men appeared beside her with weapons raised. More arrows thwacked into the ground. Into the hybrids.
The vampire shimmered, but didn’t teleport away—because he couldn’t? I flashed to the report in the nymph cave, of vampire blood mixed with silver and magic.
Whatever was on that arrow, Ago’s reactions were sluggish. A second arrow slammed into his chest and he clawed weakly at the shaft, dragged it free.
Mace issued the order. We offered no mercy. But as the wolves attacked, trees in the distance cracked and bent. Unholy howls echoed as a second hybrid pack thundered down the hill—shock troops Ago kept in reserve for when his rotten life was at stake. They scattered the fighting wolves, turned to charge again.
I shifted the moment Mace did.
My wolf leapt into the fray, canines tearing into heated muscle and rancid blood. The wolf’s muscles flexed. He rolled in the snow, a tangle of legs, bodies. Hurdled up and attacked again. He left no living thing behind as he carved a path toward Ago.
The vampire’s eyes were wide. He scraped at the remaining arrow as my wolf launched through the air. The vampire screamed. Gurgled as the wolf spit out the thick, tainted blood flowing into his mouth from the gaping hole in Ago’s neck.
Then he shook his head, ripping apart what was left of Noa’s terror, the vampire who’d sworn to turn her. Destroy her.
In the seconds that followed, adrenalin pounded. Air bellowed through the wolf’s lungs as he stared at the carnage. Someone threw a lighted torch, and the smoke was indeed red when Ago’s remains disappeared, while the ash was one more dull taint in the muddy snow.
A low rumbling set in as wolves circled, making sure the dead remained that way.
“Alpha.” Angel stood with her bow against her knee, laughing at the wolf when he growled. We both understood I wouldn’t shift and stand naked in front of her. I’d never live it down. And my wolf was in no mood for her kind of conversation.
He pulled his lips back. Let her guess what he meant since we had no pack bond.
But the questions raced through his mind and I matched them.
Why are you here? Who the fuck are you? Some one-eyed mercenary named Angel who just happened to be close enough to join the fight?
With fucking arrows capable of nulling a vampire?
And who fights—not with you, but at your command?
I didn’t recognize their scent or their pack affiliation. She was a mercenary, so the wolves she hired would come from different packs, outcasts willing to live a rebellious life. But they didn’t fight like outcasts. They were lethal and disciplined, worrisome men to be admired.
Mace was snarling beside me, with the same questions racing through his mind.
Angel tipped her head. More alpha-to-alpha than subservient respect.
“I’ll tell you one day.” Her smile curved before she pivoted and disappeared, her wolves guarding her back.
Through the pack bond, I issued orders to clean up the mess. We weren’t far from the second passage into Sentinel Falls. I picked up the scent, let the wolf take the lead. I would go on alone. Mace agreed to follow after he burned the hybrid bodies, which was the only way to insure they didn’t resurrect themselves.
Noa’s scent was strong in the passage. I ran through the possibilities but knew the one place where she would run toward. The one place where she would feel safe. What worried me was why she needed that level of safety. And the second scent. I wasn’t sure if it was genuine or not.
When the wolf emerged from the last passage, the silence raised a ridge of hair along his spine.
She, she, she…
To the wolf, Noa was She .
To me, Noa would always and only be Bedisa … destiny.
I offered a soothing pulse of reassurance. He shook his massive head, walking through the open field, following the paired footsteps still visible in the snow. Two people had crossed the open patch where we’d made snow angels. Where the young pups laughed and built a snow wolf with their damaged alpha.
This was where she’d healed me. Held me… and I told her to go…
The sun was low in the milky sky. Ice glinted on the tall stalks of last year’s grass. Beneath the wolf’s paws, the crusted snow gave way with a faint crunch.
She heard us.
Silently, she stepped through the open doorway of my childhood home. Stood on the porch where I’d played. Where my mother once stood, as fiercely as Noa now stood with a bow in her hand—a shiny black compound bow like the one Angel used, with the arrow nocked and aimed.
The wolf halted with one paw still in the air. Only his tail twitched. His lip quivered.
Noa didn’t speak. Didn’t move, other than the turning of her head as she scanned the surrounding trees. Her body hummed with apprehension. She wore clothes she’d left here, jeans that fit her long legs, a tucked cotton tee shirt. Her braid fell against her shoulder as she studied the middle distance. The photographer in her—searching for what didn’t belong. I wanted to lunge toward her, protect her, erase all that had happened. But that was impossible. The woman she was now would not allow it.
She would want every minute, every second of experience, good or bad. Treasure it for the fleeting nature of life, knowing that what fate had laid out before us was now in play.
She’d told me we were the perfect lovers. Passion. Destruction—and perhaps what happened now was all part of it.
“Well, wolf.” Her voice startled me. “Did Mace come with you?”
The wolf shook his furry head.
“Good.” She eased the bowstring back into normal while her eyes traveled over the wolf, as if she was searching for a wound that wasn’t there. “Did any hybrids survive?”
Another shake of the head as the wolf answered her.
“Shift before you come inside.” She turned on her heel. “All that blood will make a mess.”
The wolf, the weak-kneed bastard, relinquished control, and I followed Noa into house. Disappeared into the bedroom I’d grown up in, dragging on whatever was available—black jeans, and a tee shirt that still carried a lavender scent she used when she did laundry.
I’d never had a woman do my laundry, other than my mother, and it probably made me the worst kind of alphahole because I enjoyed having Noa take care of me like that. She was pacing through the kitchen, her back tense.
“We need to hurry.” She gripped my hand, tugged me through the bathroom, across the threshold and the veil of magic. We entered the house Fee built, my refuge—our refuge—through the living room, through the open glass doors and onto the patio.
I gaped at Julien, slumped in a chair.
Noa was babbling, close to crying. “Please don’t be mad. I didn’t know where else to go where it was safe and… he wouldn’t stay inside. Something about needing an invitation even though I said it was okay. He needs healing. He isn’t dead. I got him all this way, and they were chasing us, but…”