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“We’ll give you all enough time to get free of this place,” Max says, radiating Enforcer energy. “Head north. You can slip through the gap in their surveillance if you take the woods.”
“We can leave!” she tells the others, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “We can go home!”
The energy shifts in the room, and my broken pack looks hopeful. Almost like they’re starting to really believe that they’ll be able to leave this place and have a life once more.
“But will the Blood Mages come after us?” a woman asks, the words small and frightened.
I realize that they don’t understand, and I’m grateful when Max speaks. “During this party, all the Blood Mages that had been hurting you were killed. Violently. There was only one remaining Blood Mage who didn’t seem to be attending this party, and we’re going to find him now.”
“One left?” Victoria asks in shock.
“Just one,” I say, and my eyes burn with tears.
The people are murmuring amongst themselves in disbelief. I catch fragments of comments. How can this be possible? They were so powerful. They were everywhere. Can this be true?
Victoria looks at me “We’re not just free of this place. We’re free of all of them?”
“Yes.” I feel a tear roll down my cheek.
They gather together, holding each other. Some are crying. Some are laughing. How could I forget that the prison they were kept in wasn’t just made of metal but made of pain? The Blood Mages stand like looming monsters in all their minds, and the monsters being dead is just as significant as being free from the metal cage that bound them.
“They should go,” Max says gently. “Before the Enforcers start asking questions.”
Victoria hears him. She brushes tears from her cheeks. “Yes, we need to leave. We can’t waste any more time.”
But another thought occurs to me. “But,” the word stretches through the room, “don’t use the magic they gave us. That dark magic that calls to you in your greatest moments of weaknesses. Using it kills your soul. It makes you become like the Blood Mages. We can have a good life again, but we can never give into that call. Trust me. The cost is more than any of us want to bear.”
They’re worried now, but I need them to be.
Victoria nods. She takes my face in her hands. “Thank you, Asha. Thank you, all of you,” she says, looking at my men. “We’ll watch out for each other and stay safe from the dark magic. And we’ll see you soon.”
We hug, and then she gestures for them to follow her. The new leader of our pack. The perfect leader for our pack.
I watch them scramble over the bodies on their way out of the mansion. One by one, they shift and become a pack of wolves for the first time since the destruction of our home. They’re a lean bunch, a ragged bunch, but they’re my pack. My family.
I finally have them back.
Tears spring to my eyes, but these are happy ones. For once, I encountered a member of my pack and it didn’t end in death. Hope is truly a powerful thing, and they have hope now. Just like I do.
But a needling thought cuts short my elation. This isn’t over yet.
And it isn’t. Whether my brother is dead or alive, I won’t stop until I know for sure. He deserves that much. And it might be all I’ve been through, but something whispers inside of me that this is more a quest to find answers, to find his body, than to find him alive.
Yet hope is still there. Small and fragile, but powerful.
SEVENTEEN
Orson
A full moon dangles above the forest, shedding layers of silvery light over the backcountry. I speed through it, having assumed driving responsibilities from Max while he and his brother grab shuteye in the backseat. They sustained more substantial injuries during our battle with the sludge beast. With the asshole member of Asha’s pack. Trouble curls into a little ball between the guys in the back, nubby tail pressed against Max’s thigh, head resting on Braxton’s lap. Like a little family.
We are a family. A pack.
On the passenger seat beside me, Asha lies sleeping beneath my jacket. The jacket has shifted lower with her sleepy movements, so I pull it up higher over her shoulders and see her relax even more deeply into sleep. I like her like this too. Without the weight of the world pressing down on her shoulders, she looks far younger, her face softened by sleep.
Maybe she’ll look this way all the time once we’ve found the answers to her brother.
My heart swells a little, feeling hopeful, before my mind moves back to the events after the not-Simon was killed. The debriefing with the Enforcers had gone well, probably due to the fact that everyone seemed to be under the impression that we wouldn’t survive. They’d been more than a little relieved to see we’d done all the hard work while they sat on their asses. No surprise there. They’d gone in to clean up afterward, asking about the survivors.
