Chapter 7
seven
Screams rose from behind me, filling me with dread, and I veered toward the kitchen.
There was a large door leading into a rear parking lot where deliveries were left, and I aimed for it as footsteps thundered down the hall.
I couldn’t afford to waste time on being sneaky, so I ran straight past Nina, Dad’s cook, at the stove and out the door.
I hit the woods where I could muddy my scent and hopefully power up a burner phone to call for help.
I had been hunted here, of course. It had been a favorite game of kids in my age group.
And since Dad had believed that if I got pushed to my limits, I would smash through them and shift, I got no help from him when they beat me senseless.
Even Mercer had stood back and watched, crunching on suckers and letting me bleed out on the grass.
An image of Goldie in that situation attempted to form in my mind, but I couldn’t picture the Walshes treating her that way.
Then again, she had shown an aptitude for fire, and kids who shifted early or had all the markers to guarantee a successful first transformation were nurtured through their adolescence.
A sharp yip to my right drew my eye toward a wispy blur on the edge of my vision.
Mottled skin. Tufted tail. Luxurious ears. And…a fashionable scarf?
“Fayne,” I panted, certain I must be hallucinating. “What are you doing here?”
The small dog cut in behind me, nipping my heel, directing me north when I had been heading south.
As the landscape became familiar, I oriented myself toward one of the older outposts.
Single sentinels used to live there, but I overheard the handful of rooms had been repurposed into cells tough enough to hold rogue shifters caught on the property or other threats to the pack in recent years.
“Is this where they took Sloane?” I perked my ears for sounds of pursuit and sank onto my haunches to conceal myself behind wild blueberry bushes. “I’ve never been inside, but I’ve hiked past it a few times.”
Her soft rumble of confirmation turned my palms sweaty with dread over how we could extract Sloane.
As the low building came into view, bright copper notes hit my nose.
Blood.
Lots of it.
We had found Sloane, what was left of her.
Mercer had forced her to shift, collared her and chained her, securing her to a metal flagpole.
The sentinels present, I counted seven, were taking turns attacking her.
Some with teeth and claws. Others with metal batons and fists.
Somehow, none of the blood was theirs. Even if Dad hit her with a direct order to stand and take it, no one in that shape could leash their instinct to defend themselves.
And then I spotted the reason for her submission.
A muzzle.
Sunlight glinted off the basket encasing her snout. The silver basket. No wonder she hadn’t fought back.
The worst part was knowing that if I had stumbled across this when I lived here, I would have assumed Sloane deserved the punishment.
I would have cringed at the harshness, but I would have blamed that bloodthirstiness on shifter nature and reassured myself I was happy not to suffer the same fate.
I would have averted my eyes, walked away, and done my best to forget it.
That shameful realization got me wondering how often I had looked the other way when Dad said or did something I knew in my soul was wrong but left it for the others to grapple with their own consciences.
I had fallen into a comfortable habit of convincing myself it wasn’t a problem because the outcome didn’t affect me.
With the pack working so hard to exclude me from their world, I worried the petty part of me believed they got what they deserved for living in it.
A cold nose bumped the back of my hand, and Fayne stared up at me, waiting for instruction.
“Do you know if Tara and the others are here?”
After sitting, she used her hind leg to scratch her scarf until it slid free then kicked it toward me.
The fabric was from a corner of a light jacket, and when I brought it to my nose, I scented Tara.
That told me the reason she had come, part of it, but it wasn’t an answer. “Is this a yes or a no?”
The dog shook her head, confirming that the cougar pride had kept custody of its captives.
“Rían gave me this.” I showed her the brand on my hand. “Should we use it now?”
Silver claws or not, there was no way I could fight off that many sentinels on my own.
Head down, Fayne considered our options, but she must have come to the same conclusion as me because she pawed my ankle.
“Okay.” I fumbled the lighter from my pocket at her insistence. “Here goes.”
I finished one pass over the mark with the flame before the lighter was kicked out of my hand.
I twisted out of my crouch, halfway to rising, when the next hit snapped my head back with enough force to leave me seeing stars.
I fell against a tree, its bark carving my palms, and held on as my eyes rolled in my head.
“I figured it would come down to this one day.” Mercer towered over me.
“I told Carmichael taking you in was a bad idea.” A sigh moved through him.
“But he couldn’t be reasoned with when it came to your mother.
He was obsessed with her. She already had a mate when they met, but Carmichael didn’t care. ”
Mercer opening up to me now was not a great sign for me getting out of here alive.
I had no idea if I had triggered the summoning token, and Fayne was nowhere in sight. I was on my own. But that was okay. Really. I had been all my life.
“The Walshes were…telling the truth.” Pain screamed through my jaw. “I’m…one of…them.”
“A latent is a latent is a latent, Anie. What difference does it make who your parents were if you’re more human than shifter?
” His expression held pity confirming he—and therefore Dad—were clueless about fledging.
“Carmichael should have let one of your challengers end it before the Walshes located us, but he refused to give up potential leverage against them.”
“End it?” I huffed a laugh that dribbled blood down my chin. “You mean kill me.”
“He thought you would shift, that you would be a dragon bound by his pack and his laws, but no matter how many of your peers he set against you, you never managed to sprout even a single scale.”
“He…?” I felt the sting of hot tears on my tender cheek. “He ordered the challenges?”
“Do you really believe anyone would have raised a hand to you otherwise?”
Sure, I had known Dad was aware of the beatings, the bullying, the broken bones. He always comforted me afterward, but I never expected him to intervene. I thought my peers were the ones who hated me, that if he stood up to them on my behalf, things would only get worse for me.
To learn he had orchestrated those years of torment broke me into a thousand jagged pieces no amount of glue or time could ever mend. “He never loved me, did he?”
“You wouldn’t be alive today otherwise.” He snorted at my naivete. “I can promise you that.”
No. He was wrong. This wasn’t love. What had he called it a moment ago? Oh. Right.
Obsession.
A fierce howl startled birds from the trees, the song taken up by a dozen other voices.
Dad was on the hunt. That call? It told everyone to stay out of his way.
“Sorry, Anie, but you need to be dead when he gets here.” He reached for the red lollipop sticking out of his pocket before catching himself and rolling his shoulders. We couldn’t have him choking on candy while he was choking the life out of me, now could we? “That’s the only way this works.”
The tiny voice in the back of my mind that always whispered I wasn’t good enough, worthy enough, that I was a waste of space, murmured it would be a mercy to end things here. My whole life had been a lie. I was nothing and no one. Not a Sartori. Not a wolf. Not a Walsh. Not a dragon.
As the fiction of Ana Sartori unraveled around me, I couldn’t grasp a single thread strong enough to hold myself, whoever that was, together.
A hard yelp smashed through my identity crisis, hopeless and faltering. Sloane was giving up, her resolve flagging. Another pitiful cry, one of surrender, gave me the strength to shove my issues down, stand up, and face Mercer. For her, my first true friend, my best friend, I would give it my all.
My determination to fight him to whatever end must have shown on my face because a cold smile broke across his that made me shiver.
How had I never glimpsed this side of him?
This ruthless ambition? How had he given me lollipops and life advice for as long as I could remember while biding his time to kill me at the precise moment when Dad was less inclined to return the favor?
“I’m not dying today.” I slid a hand in my pocket, retrieving one of my claws, their cold weight a comfort.
I hated to give away I was armed, but two hands were required to secure the chains.
I had no choice but to fasten them in his view, but I relished the wary glimmer in his eyes before he blinked them clear.
“You, on the other hand, are going to pay for what you did to my friend.”
“You only got the better of me last time using the element of surprise.”
That, and Sloane had already worn him down. I wasn’t fooling myself that I could take on Mercer at his best and win. He was a fighter and a soldier, but he was still wounded. I could use that. Focus my strikes on his spine or on forcing him to protect his back from me. That would buy me time until…
No.
I couldn’t bank on Rían swooping in to save the day. I couldn’t grow dependent on him, not when I couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t toss me aside as so many others had after I failed to live up to their expectations. I had to place that faith in myself.
But, I mean, I wouldn’t cry if a dragon showed up, melted Mercer’s face with fire, then flew me away…