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He was whimpering as he struck himself again. He couldn't do it hard enough. If there was a cliff nearby, he would have flung himself from it.
Rand, don't. Sshh...Easy.
The voice helped, but he couldn't identify it. There was a sense of someone nearby, coming closer. A comfort, though he told himself that was an illusion.
He dropped to the ground, panting, his body quitting on him, overcome by too many different types of pain. Too much.
Make it stop.
They set the house on fire. Grey and his males had shifted to human, something wolves didn't do during a challenge. There was a ritual. Grey had challenged Sylvan and fought wolf to wolf. Not this time.
Grey's wolves had come in downwind. They used the guns they brought to shoot Sheba as she was coming out of the front door. That was where Rand had found her. She'd been distracted, Rand guessed. His four offspring, now shifting randomly between human and wolf, were a lot to handle. Everyone helped, including Sheba and Sylvan's children, the three now in high school, but Sheba was most involved in their care.
Dylef apparently burst from his woodworking shed when he heard the gunfire. They shot him in the chest. Rand had imagined the blood blooming there as he fell to his knees, his eyes confused, hazy. Then vacant. Gone in a blink, no time for good-byes, last words. Nothing. The last thing he'd said to Rand had been something ridiculously innocuous like, "I'll be out to help you after I put a coat of finish on the table." The scent of the finish had also masked the approach of Grey and his pack.
Rand was out in the back field, working on the tractor they used, because they sold crops on the side to supplement their income. The engine was running, so he didn't hear the gunfire, but an uneasy feeling had him cutting off the tractor to listen, scent the wind. That was when he smelled smoke.
Running; he was running, hearing more gun fire. They were torching the house when he got there. Two of Grey's betas came out of the kitchen door. They carried bats. Bloodstained bats, the baseball bats he'd bought for Sylvan's boys, who were on the team at their high school. They practiced in the backyard with Dylef and Rand some nights while Sheba made dinner and watched with a smile out the spacious kitchen window.
"Not worth wasting a bullet. Easy as taking out water balloons," one of the betas had laughed.
Rand hadn't realized the soul could be destroyed by laughter. Sometimes the heart didn't have the strength to comprehend--or survive--the cruelty of the soulless.
His children. Maple, Teague, Cira. Shy. His little girl, frailer than the rest, but gaining strength every day. She should have grown up to be teased by her brothers and sisters about being the runt of the litter.
But realizing they were gone, putting together those bloodstained bats with the unthinkable, had come later. At that second, Silas and Slate, Sylvan's boys, exploded out of the attic windows with a shower of glass. In wolf form, they ran across the roof line and launched themselves onto the shoulders of the two males.
The attic was their hangout, where they listened to music and did their homework after they finished their chores. Sheba usually gave them a couple uninterrupted hours to do that before she had them take over babysitting, while she and Mischa prepared dinner.
They'd probably had the music up so loud, and hadn't realized the intruders were in the house until it was too late. The young males came out of the windows with the single-minded ferocity of their parents, not hesitating to launch themselves at the men armed with guns.
Rand redoubled his efforts to get to them, but even with his speed, it wasn't enough. Still, Sylvan would have been so proud of his children. Slate and Silas killed those murdering bastards before Grey's other followers shot them, cowards that they were.
Later, Rand would learn they'd already killed Mischa, on the basketball court they'd poured for the kids behind the barn. She was trying out for the school team.
All the teens had been so athletic. So strong and beautiful, every one of them. When he shifted, Slate's wolf form looked so much like his father. Gray and white with shimmering threads of brown that gave his coat the salt and pepper look.
Rand had one goal, and nothing stopped him. The bullets fired at him missed as he shifted in mid-run, clothes torn away. He charged through their ranks and landed on Grey with a roar of rage and pain that should have echoed through the forest a mile around.
Though his men had their dishonorable weapons and were in human form, once the alpha was directly engaged in challenge, no other wolf would interfere. The one single, fucking law they refused to break. Tragic and laughable. All he had in that second was rage. They hadn't been able to stop him from getting to Grey. Now the coward had to face him, fight him.
And they fought. How long, Rand didn't know. Later he would recall he took Grey out in a matter of seconds. It didn't matter. His heart was broken, his soul shredded, and every moment since then had felt like an eternity.
He pinned him down, ripped out his throat, broke his back, dug into his chest cavity and ate his heart. Then he stood over Grey's mangled body, his muzzle soaked with blood, and snarled like a hellhound. Every one of the other males backed up, dropped to a knee, guns lowered. A couple of them he scared so bad they turned wolf in their clothes and groveled on their bellies while tangled in the garments.
There was no victory to it. Sheba had been right. He was meant to lead a pack. But he'd been so busy trying to lead a simple, quiet life, he'd made the same fucking mistake, leaving his guard down. Only this time, he'd lost everything worth living for.
Rand was up and running again. Running. Pain was such a small matter, even when the closed wounds broke and bled.
He ran until he stumbled and fell to the ground, too exhausted, hazy with alcohol and blood loss, to think anymore. Mission accomplished.
; Yet when he came to that forced halt and collapsed, he had enough turmoil left inside to put his head back and howl his agony. Long, haunting rolls of sound that echoed through the forest, stilled every other voice, because all souls understood that song.
He'd given Cai the rest of the story. He'd always turned into the wolf to mute the picture and sound of those memories, but this time his human side had refused to cooperate, his mind refusing to shift all the way to animal. The thoughts had unrolled in his mind like a map the vampire could use to dig deeper into him. And he probably would, for no reason other than curiosity.
He could do it at a distance. This time Rand was going to go even deeper into the forest, as far from human habitation as his feet could take him. When he could get up.
It wasn't really a surprise when the vampire sat down next to him. Rand smelled him coming, and Cai could run as fast as he could. Not that Rand had been setting any speed records.
He was so not in the mood for his shit. But the vampire said nothing. He checked the wound, and put pressure on it with a folded-up bandage he had brought with him in a small pack. He ignored Rand's half-hearted growl, uttering a mild murmur of rebuke. Rand wouldn't have minded the fight, but he was just too tired.
Then the vampire did something peculiar, which reminded Rand of that brief voice in his head earlier, soothing him.
He stretched out behind Rand, who was lying on his side, panting. Cai put a hand on his head, stroking, then rested it on his ruff and shoulder. He brought his body closer, spooning it around Rand's wolf form.
"Rest," the vampire murmured. "I'm sorry, Rand. Sorry I'm a bastard, and so sorry that happened to you."
A breath shuddered out of Rand. He didn't want to shift, but he was doing so. Why? Because he wanted to feel Cai's body spooning against his in the way humans did, the way Dylef had slept with him, and sometimes Sheba, especially if they all piled into the one king-sized bed together.
Cai made a warm sound of approval that felt better than it should have. He clucked over the mess it made of the bandage, but rose to re-dress it while Rand lay there, eyes staring into the forest. He wanted to be somewhere else, and yet here, too. He didn't know why until Cai lay behind him again. He tugged Rand's hair, winding it around his fist. Rand was learning that hold could be oddly distracting, tightening things in his chest and lower abdomen.
