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“It’s not that bad,” I said.
He didn’t have time to reply because a man’s body was thrown through the air and collided with the both of us, knocking me back to the ground, this time with Wilder on top of me. This was happening to me a lot lately. He’d been prepared for it, because he braced his body over mine and took the worst of the falling weight onto himself.
“This is a lot worse than I thought,” I admitted.
“We shouldn’t have come here.”
“You can say I told you so when we get out of here, okay?”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
He grabbed me and rolled us over as another body came tumbling to the floor. We both scrambled to our feet and Wilder immediately pulled me out of the way of a wolf charging straight for us. The man collided with Wilder like a linebacker whose sole mission was to take down the quarterback. I think. I don’t watch football.
The two of them sprawled onto the floor and began brutally pummeling each other. It was sort of amazing how little thought was going into these fights. No one was planning their attacks or using any kind of precision. It was all fists and teeth and anger.
This was the very definition of a knockdown drag-out brawl.
I’d been in fights before, and I’d had to resort to violence to save my own life, but I’d never seen anything like this. We’d come in here so terribly sure of ourselves, and the second we got through the door our entire plan was shot to shit.
Desmond, whose face was smeared with blood, took hold of a man by lifting him off the floor using only his hair. The man squirmed and grunted, but Desmond was oblivious to his struggle.
“You dare to turn against the pack? You choose to follow a false leader? That’s treason.”
The man spit in Desmond’s face.
The king blinked several times, then fixed a cold stare on the man before him. In a flash he threw the man against the wall, still holding him firmly by the head. The contortion and force was too much. I heard the man’s neck snap before he even hit the floor.
Desmond didn’t give him a second glance.
“The price of treason is death,” he said coldly.
I knew perfectly well what happened to lone wolves or those who went against the pack. There wasn’t a fairy tale happy ending for anyone who challenged the longstanding structure of the wolves. But still, I’d never had to witness the fallout for myself.
When Callum had gone into the bayou to eliminate the Loups-Garous, we knew what he’d done to them. Seeing it firsthand, though, felt especially brutal.
Still, these men had known what the risks were when they chose to follow Mercy, and they’d known what the outcome might be if they attacked the sitting King of the East. Like Lucas before him, Desmond wasn’t about to take a challenge to his throne lightly.
A man grabbed me by my ponytail, yanking my head back brutally. I let out a surprised yelp and my hands went back, trying to free his hold on me. He began to drag me towards the stairs, and I was suddenly very aware of what his particular mission in all of this was.
He was supposed to bring me to Mercy.
Like hell. I’d face her on my own terms, not hers, thank you very much.
I swiped my hand backwards and clawed him hard where I suspected his eyes might be. The man grunted, and his hold on me lightening just enough I was able to wrest myself free. He did manage to keep some of my hair in the ensuing tussle, but at the end I was standing facing him, and he was blinking stupidly at me.
He was probably in his mid-thirties, and had the kind of stringy, disheveled look about him that spoke to a lifetime of hardship and neglect. This was how Mercy worked, she found those without connection, without hope, and she took advantage of it. She was so uniquely capable of spotting peoples’ weaknesses the second she met them, that she could often manipulate them into doing her bidding with very little effort at all.
Just look at Ben.
He thought he was smart and independent, but she had seen right through to his jealous heart and his desperate need to be someone’s favorite. She’d twisted him around her little finger with almost no resistance whatsoever.
And Ben was an Alpha werewolf.
This guy was some beta who had probably never known he could belong to a pack. I would feel sorry for him if he wasn’t still holding long black strands of my ponytail in his right hand.
“You’re coming with me, girlie.”
“Not in this lifetime, pal.” I swung out with all the force I could muster, and right before my punch landed my hand flared red.
