Chapter 24 A Violent Kind of Freedom #2
A black wolf hit a Thorne man so hard they rolled into the overturned chairs and came up in a spray of broken wood. Cormac shifted halfway near the service arch, his face lengthening enough to become something that smiled with too many teeth before he slammed two Thorne wolves into the hedge.
Tessa screamed my name. Dad cursed in a voice so raw it cut through even the snarling.
Sava grabbed me from behind. “Move!”
I fought her. “Ian!”
He turned and for one second, through rain, blood, and bodies changing shape around us, I saw him clearly.
Not the weapon. Not the leash. Not the cursed wrong bond or whatever Silas had tried to name us.
Ian.
His eyes went gold.
“Run,” he snarled.
I flinched. I hated that I flinched. He hated it too. I saw that before he turned away and hit another Thorne wolf coming over the fountain wall toward my family.
Sava hauled me backward. “You can be furious while moving.”
“My family!”
“That is where I am taking you.”
A wolf slammed into the stones in front of us. I screamed despite every intention not to. Sava shoved me behind her and drew a blade from somewhere under her coat.
It was not a knife. It was a short, curved silver blade, and the wolf knew it.
He lunged anyway. Sava met him like a woman who had been waiting her entire life for someone to underestimate the doctor.
She stepped inside the arc of his claws and slashed upward across his muzzle.
The blade smoked where it cut. The wolf howled, recoiling, and Sava kicked him in the knee hard enough to make the joint bend wrong.
I stared at her.
She grabbed my sleeve. “Admire me later.”
We ducked around the fountain.
My hip screamed with every step. The stitches pulled hot and wet under my sweater. I could smell blood, which was alarming because two weeks ago I could not smell much beyond coffee, shampoo, and whether a man had put on too much cologne to cover guilt.
Now I could smell rain, blood, wet fur, silver, terror, and Ian.
Ian was everywhere.
Not physically. I could not always see him. The courtyard was too chaotic, too violent, too crowded with bodies hitting bodies. But the bond, or binding, or whatever bastard thing had been tied between us, kept pulling my awareness toward him.
He was rage. He was grief. He was pulling away from me one strand at a time.
No.
I stumbled.
Sava caught me. “Cassie.”
“He’s doing something.”
“Move.”
“He’s doing something to the bond!”
Sava’s face went tight. That was answer enough.
“Sava.”
“Your family first.”
“Ian first.”
“If you stop now, he dies for nothing.”
The words slapped me harder than any hand could have. For one second, the courtyard tilted.
There it was. The thing he had hidden in the room. The thing Sava had seen. The thing in his calm voice when he said he would follow.
He was not planning to follow. He was planning to buy us distance with his body and call it love because nobody had taught that man love didn’t require him to bleed out quietly in the hallway.
“Sava,” I cried, and my voice broke.
Her grip tightened on my arm. “Then make him wrong by living long enough to go back.”
I hated her for that. I loved her for it too.
We reached my family.
My father surged toward me despite the zip ties. “Cassie.”
“Dad, stop.”
“Jesus Christ, what did they do to you?”
“Not the time.”
“What are those things?”
“Again, really not the time.”
Tessa grabbed me and nearly knocked me over. Pain flashed white down my side. I sucked air through my teeth.
She jerked back at once, sobbing. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Cassie, what happened? Where have you been? Why are there wolves?”
“All excellent questions for later.”
Grant stared up at me from the wet stone. His face was gray. “Cassie.”
I looked at him. For once in his life, he had nothing charming prepared.
Good.
I didn’t have time to enjoy it.
My mother reached for me, crying too hard to form words.
A Thorne wolf hit the fountain behind her. Water sprayed over all of us. Henry lunged, barking directly into the wolf’s face, which was brave, stupid, and very Henry.
“Untie the dog,” I snapped.
My father blinked at me. “What?”
“Henry. Untie Henry.”
“There is a monster eating a man ten feet away.”
“And if we leave without the dog, Tessa will lose her mind and I will come back from the dead to be annoying. Untie him.”
Tessa dropped to the fountain base with shaking hands. Sava was already cutting zip ties. Quick. Efficient. She sliced through Dad’s, then Mom’s, then Tessa’s. Grant held his wrists out as if he expected rescue to be a customer service experience.
Sava looked at him. “Say please.”
His mouth opened. A wolf slammed into the paving stones nearby and skidded through blood and rain.
“Please,” Grant said quickly.
Sava cut him loose. “Growth.”
My father grabbed my shoulders. “Cassie, we need to call the police. We need an ambulance. We need the army.”
“Dad.”
“They kidnapped you.”
“Yes.”
“There are goddamn wolves.”
“Yes, and if you do not shut the hell up and follow us right now, there will be a very embarrassing amount of paperwork after we die.”
He stared at me. That finally did it. Maybe it was the blood. Maybe it was the bruises. Maybe it was the fact that I had said hell in the tone my mother used for china cabinets and hospital billing.
He shut up.
I turned to the others. “Everybody listen to me. Questions later. Screaming quieter. Stay low. Follow Sava. Do exactly what she says unless you have a secret history of surviving werewolf hostage situations, in which case, please feel free to contribute.”
No one contributed.
“Great. We’re improving as a group.”
Sava pointed toward the service arch. “Move.”
We moved.
The next several minutes were a mess of rain, screams, and trying not to look back.
That last part went badly. Every few steps, my head turned toward Ian without permission. I caught flashes of him between bodies. A blood-slick arm. Gold eyes. A wolf thrown through a chair hard enough to splinter it. The brutal arc of his body as he changed further, less man each time he struck.
He was magnificent. He was terrifying.
He was leaving me.
The bond shuddered, and pain lanced through my chest so suddenly I nearly fell.
Tessa caught my arm. “Cassie?”
“I’m fine.”
“You are absolutely not fine.”
“Thank you, Dr. Werewolf.”
Sava glanced back sharply. “Pain?”
“Yes.”
“Mark?”
“Feels like someone is ripping out a tree through my ribs.”
Her face went white.
“Still moving,” I said before she could stop. “Very brave. Deeply resentful.”
We made it through the service arch, then a Thorne wolf leapt from the hedge.
Sava shoved me into my father, turned, and slashed the silver blade across the wolf’s foreleg. He screamed, half shifted back to human, and crashed into the side of the stone passage. Dad tried to step in front of me. It was stupid and late and somehow broke my heart a little.
“Keep going!” Sava barked.
The service corridor beyond the courtyard smelled like bleach, rain, and panic. Human staff hid in doorways and under carts. One woman saw us and crossed herself. A young Holloway wolf stood frozen with a radio in his hand until Sava snarled, “Keys,” and he threw an entire ring at her.
“Thank you,” I called over my shoulder, because apparently manners were the last functioning part of my personality.
We hit the west laundry entrance. Outside waited the service road, three dark SUVs, and two wolves in Ronan’s colors standing guard. For one beautiful, impossible second, I thought we had made it.
Then one of the guards looked past us, toward the courtyard, and his face changed. His hand moved toward his weapon.
Sava lifted her blade. “Don’t.”
The guard looked at me and his eyes flickered gold.
My father said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
A snarl rolled from deeper in the passage behind us.
Not Ian.
A Thorne wolf.
The guard made his choice turning to fight the oncoming Thorne wolves.
“Cars,” Sava snapped.
Ian
The world vanished.
Then there was only blood.
Rain.
Fur.
Teeth.
Kill.
The wolf had the world by the throat.
No, the man did.
No. Both.
There was no clean line anymore. The man had made the decision. The wolf carried it out. Tear. Break. Protect. End. The bond burned through the chest, hooked in deep, and the man found the roots with hands made for killing.
Rip.
Pain.
Cassie.
No.
Do not turn.
Run, Cassie. Run.
A Thorne wolf came at the left flank, teeth wide, eyes bright. He died with his ribs opened under my claws. Another hit my back. I rolled, crushed him beneath me, bit down until bone gave and the hot rush filled my mouth.
Blood tasted like iron. Rain thinned it.
The courtyard moved in pieces.
Ronan shouting.
Silas laughing.
Cormac bleeding from the shoulder and driving a wolf back with both hands buried in its throat.
Humans gone.
Good.
Gone.
Find the gate. Guard the route.
But first the binding.