Chapter 22
She was gone.
But not just physically. She’d rejected us, turned away from us somehow.
Forgetting Carson, forgetting Kara, I took off, Marcus and Carrick flanking me.
No, no, no…
She couldn’t.
My wolf was ravenous but I held him back, finding that place at the back of my mind, the place made out of her. Her soft breaths as she slept, her hair in the breeze, the defiant tilt of her head. I would not let him loose. Not when it would put her at risk.
I followed her scent, panicking as it joined Kallum’s and three other wolves I didn’t recognise.
I could hear ripping flesh and I followed it, finding my brother bloody and wounded but victorious over the bodies of two wolves, the scent of a third body not far away and mixed in with my mate’s scent.
Kallum’s wolf snorted in victory. Gulf warriors were vicious but they had nothing on my Luna Guards. My wolf puffed up with pride, but where was my mate?
I shifted. My brother following suit.
“She’s gone,” he said before I could ask the question. “Don’t go after her, brother. Let her go.”
I stared at him. “Let her go? What are you talking about?”
He straightened, pulling himself to his full height, though I still dwarfed him. “You can’t do this to her. It’s wrong and you know it.”
He couldn’t be serious. I knew my brother was in a dark place but he couldn’t have done this. The open wound at my side burned, blood dripped down my right thigh, but I ignored the pain. “You let her leave?”
“She didn’t want to stay,” he panted. “She didn’t want you.”
My lip curled at the insult, my teeth gritted as I fought not to tear my brother's head off.
“Kallum, watch yourself.” Marcus stepped up beside me, warning him against pushing my wolf too far, but the look in my brother's eye told me that was exactly what he was trying to do.
“She didn’t want you or your wolf. You were too weak.
” He was pushing me, baiting me, and I knew it.
My fists clenched, tendons popping. I didn’t have time for this.
I turned to go after her. She couldn’t have got far and I could catch up to her easily, but Kallum stepped in my way.
“I won’t let you bring her back here. You’ll have to kill me first.”
That wasn’t a problem for my wolf, who so easily forgot who his friends and family were when his mate was at stake.
“Get out of the way, Kallum. Don’t do this to him.” This was Carrick. Ever the peacemaker. “You’ll get all of us killed.”
“If we would do this to an innocent woman, we deserve to die.”
“Does she deserve to die?” I growled. “You sent her out there alone? There are Gulfs everywhere and?—”
“And she can handle herself,” he cut me off. “Or they’ll catch her and kill her and it will still be a better end than the life you offered her. You know it, we all know it.”
I didn’t have time for this. I pushed past him, but once more he got in my way.
I stepped back before my wolf could retaliate.
Taking a breath, I met his green eyes with my own, warning him.
Flexing my Alpha power, I let its oppressive cloud settle over him.
He trembled under its weight but he carried Alpha blood too and it didn’t bring him to his knees the way it would another wolf.
“Get out of my way, Kallum,” I snarled, but once again, he got in my face. He was pushing me and I was fighting with everything I had to hold onto myself. My wolf would kill him and I would never forgive myself. I’d already lost one sibling tonight, I couldn’t lose another.
“We know better than anyone what her life would be. Do you really think she’ll just forgive you?
” he spat and my grip on my wolf shook. He was close, so close to swallowing me whole.
“Do you really think that you can chain her up, rape her and she’ll just get over it?
She’ll hate you for the rest of your life.
She’ll end up killing herself just to be free of you, just like?—”
My world went dark.
Panic. All consuming, mind-bending panic.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t fucking see. I floated in dark nothingness, my senses dulled. Deaf, blind, and mute, I opened my mouth to scream but it caught in my throat.
Was this how it happened? Was this the horror I’d been told of when you got lost in your wolf? Just dark, emptiness stretching on for eternity?
I tried to fight my way out but there was nothing to fight. I floated in nothing. What if I never got out? Was I stuck here forever?
What was my wolf doing? Had he hurt Kallum? Was he going after Iona?
I couldn’t touch or see or hear or speak…but I could think and I could remember.
Iona.
I tried to scream her name but no sound came out. My mate would find me. Mates always found each other.
Blind and lost in the dark, I searched for her, for the safe place I kept her in, in my mind. I found her scent, then her hair, long and black as the night sky. Moon pale skin. Her eyes, so angry, so sharp.
I held onto her, willing her to bring me back to the world.
Iona, Iona, Iona…
Suddenly the world rushed back to me. I gasped for air like a drowning man finally breaking the water's surface.
My spine wrenched around what I thought was a tree and I landed hard on the earth, my ribs feeling like a truck had just ploughed into them.
I was back. I was still here. I looked up at my father’s face, his eyes wide with shock. I’d come back…lost wolves didn’t do that. Before I could process what that meant, my nose picked up on the chaos around me.
Blood. Bad blood.
I scented my loved ones everywhere, tasted their flesh in my teeth.
Groaning, fur shifted to skin, and only then did my father back away.
I sat up, following his gaze to the slaughter.
No…no…what had I done?
Kallum, Carrick, and Marcus lay on the ground, bodies broken and bloody.
Carrick was so badly mauled I could count his ribs, and one of his legs was broken.
Marcus’s arms were bent at odd angles, twisted and hanging off from him, but Kallum…
he was mutilated. His face was half gone, his torso…
open. Tendrils of intestine hung loose from his body, bones sticking out from every limb.
I gagged, choking on my grief. A strangled sound crawled out of me.
“Look at me, boy.” My father turned my head, forcing me to look at him before I lost my mind. “Are you here?”
“What have I?—”
“Listen. Use your ears. Listen.” Blood. Blood rushed in my ears…not just mine, but theirs too. It was faint but it was there. “They’re still alive. Help is coming but you have to go.”
Go? Where do I?—
“Iona.” Just her name in my mouth soothed my pacing wolf.
“Go after her.”
I stared at my father, the man who had promised to kill me before letting me go through with the mating ceremony. “You said I had to free her.”
“Yes, but not when there are Gulf wolves on her trail. Go after her.”
The sound of paws on the earth pounded in my too sensitive ears, and moments later, Konnor appeared, paling visibly as he took in the damage I’d done.
He flattened his ears back, whimpering as he nudged his brother's body.
Our brother's body. We’d trained together.
Grown together. Grief was a knife in my gut, but it was a pain I had to survive because my mate needed me.
“They’re still breathing,” our father said to Konnor before turning back to me, shaking me out of my stupor. “Go. If you feel yourself slipping, you end it somehow, you find a way to take yourself out, do you hear me? Don't hurt her. Don’t let history repeat itself.”
He stood, the pain of the tattered remains of his children clear on his face. He went to Kallum, cradling his broken body.
I wanted to stay, to heal the damage I’d done, to go after the Gulfs and end it once and for all, but my focus narrowed in on the only goal that mattered. Iona.
She was all I could see.
With a final look at my brother and friends, I shifted and ran into the woods, my youngest brother at my heels.
My wolf rumbled, fierce, ravenous in his rage that she would leave, that anything might try to hurt her. I looked to the moon, sending up a prayer to keep Iona safe until I found her. Safe from my kind, from every threat in these woods, safe from escape.
I couldn’t lose her. Not now.
She was my female.
My mate.
Mine.
And no wolf, no distance, no force in this world would keep her from me, because I knew now what I didn’t before. That I could find her anywhere. I’d been to the darkest pit of my wolf's mind, the place I was condemned to live forever if I didn’t claim her, and even there she was still mine.
All I had to do was show her that she belonged with me, and like it or not, when I caught up to her, that was a lesson she would learn.