Chapter 24 A Violent Kind of Freedom #3
The thing under my ribs throbbed and pulled toward Cassie. It wanted. It reached. It begged in a voice that sounded like mine and not mine.
Mine.
No.
Leash.
No.
Cassie.
No.
Let her live.
The man inside the wolf put his claws into the pain and tore, and the world flashed white.
Cassie screamed. I felt it across the severing line.
Not sound. Body. Soul. Mark. The shock of her understanding hit me so hard I staggered on four limbs that were not fully mine yet.
He’s not coming.
She knew. For one unbearable second, her pain filled the place I had just ripped open.
Betrayal.
Fear.
Love not yet spoken but already reaching.
Then the wolf took it and made it rage.
Silas moved toward Ronan.
The old wolf had shifted halfway, tall and monstrous, silver hair gone dark with rain, fingers lengthened into claws. He struck with Alpha speed, going for Ronan’s throat while Ronan turned from ordering wolves toward the west route.
Challenge.
Pack.
Brother.
Enemy.
Kill.
Ronan met him, but he was a breath late.
I was not.
I hit Silas from the side and we crashed through the fountain. Stone cracked. Water burst upward. Silas’s claws raked my shoulder to bone, but pain had no meaning now. He twisted under me, strong, old, Alpha blood hot in him.
“You prove me right,” he snarled.
Words.
No use for words.
He drove a knee into my ribs, shifted further, jaws snapping. I let him bite my forearm. Let him take the meat. Let him think that meant I had offered weakness.
Then I closed my other hand around his lower jaw and pulled.
He screamed.
Good.
The wolf liked that.
The man did too.
Silas thrashed, claws tearing my chest, my side, my throat. I drove him down again, through broken stone and fountain water gone pink. His wolves tried to reach him. Ronan’s wolves intercepted. Cormac took one in the side and kept fighting. Someone shouted my name.
Ronan.
Ignore.
Silas’s eyes found mine. For the first time, he looked afraid.
“You cannot kill me,” he choked. “Alpha blood answers blood.”
I pushed my face close to his.
The words came out wrong, more growl than speech. “You should not have touched what was never yours.”
Then I broke him. Not cleanly, he didn’t deserve clean.
I tore through the old strength and the polished cruelty and the schemes dressed as law.
I tore until Silas stopped being Alpha and became meat under my hands.
I tore until the rain could not wash the stone fast enough.
I tore until the wolves around us fell back from the ruin of him.
When it was done, I stood over what remained.
Breathing.
Bleeding.
Empty.
The binding hung in me by threads.
Cassie was distant.
Too distant.
Good.
Run.
The wolf turned toward the west route. Ronan stood between me and the courtyard steps, blood on his face, his eyes gold and wide with something too close to grief.
“The humans are gone!” he said.
Yes.
Good.
Then his head snapped toward the service arch.
“Find them,” he ordered.
No.
The word was the last clean human thing in me.
No.
Ronan’s wolves moved. I shifted fully before they reached the arch.
The change ripped through me without grace.
Bones broke into what they had always wanted to be.
Hands struck stone as paws. My spine lengthened.
My jaw pushed forward. Fur rose wet and dark across my body.
The last of my torn clothing fell away under rain and blood.
The wolf stood where the man had been. Larger than most. Larger than any wolf should be. The courtyard went still. I placed myself between the pack and the route Cassie had taken.
Mine.
No.
Free.
Protect.
Kill.
Ronan turned slowly.
His face changed when he saw me. Not because I was shifted. He had seen my wolf. He had stood beside him in border wars and executions and hunts that ended before they began because enemies knew better than to run.
He changed because he could not find me inside it.
“Ian,” he said.
The name moved across the rain and didn’t reach anything that could answer. The wolf lowered his head and a growl rolled through the courtyard.
Ronan’s power rose. Alpha command, old and iron-deep, filled the stones beneath my feet.
“Stand down.”
The command hit and slid off.
The wolf’s lips peeled back.
Ronan went very still. Around him, his wolves froze. Some with blood still on their jaws. Some half shifted. Some injured. Some frightened enough now to stink of it.
Good.
Fear kept them away from the gate.
Ronan took one step toward me.
“No,” Cormac said from somewhere behind him.
Ronan ignored him.
“Ian.”
The wolf watched his throat.
Brother.
Alpha.
Threat.
Ronan’s voice dropped, losing command, losing audience, losing everything except the boy who had once washed blood from the weapon’s hair and hated their father for calling it useful.
“Don’t make me do this.”
The wolf heard tone, but tone didn’t matter.
The gate mattered. Cassie’s distance mattered. The torn roots in the chest mattered.
A wolf near the service arch shifted his weight.
One step.
Toward the route.
The wolf lunged.
Ronan shouted my name but there was no name left to catch.