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He let out a snarling howl of pain and turned back to the forest. Brady remained where he stood and watched the retreating form of the yellow furred wolf. I could feel some relief as I reached my brother.
“He’s gone,” I sighed.
“He’ll be back,” Brady said. A distant look of a vision appeared in his eyes, and he gazed out at the forest where the wolf was no longer visible.
“Come on,” Brady said and shook his head. Brady shook his head and said, “We aren’t done here.”
He turned and ran into the fray once more, only his bright red hair visible within the fighting bodies surrounding him. I ran to follow and help as I had before, running through the crowded battlegrounds surrounding the usually peaceful packhouse.
I leaped over a string of rogues fighting each other and turned to help one with fiery red hair, but a deep laugh stopped me in my tracks.
“The fates must be smiling on me today.” I looked behind me at the familiar voice. Xander’s father stood with a wide grin on his face as he approached. He moved like a snake ready to strike. A predator stalking his prey. “To kill the daughter of those who killed my mate with my own claws.” He looked at his hand as heflexed the partially shifted appendage menacingly before looking down at me. “Now that is poetic justice.”
He leaped forward as his body shifted in midair. His claws and teeth aimed at my neck and abdomen. I barely had time to move out of the way, my hands instinctively covering my stomach where my child grew.
I couldn’t shift. Not completely. The shift would harm my baby if I tried. It was why most of the pregnant women stayed behind in battle. All I could do was shift my claws and teeth to fight, but it would do me little good against a fully-shifted male.
His gray fur sparkled in the dusky light as he circled me. He had me cut off from the rest of the pack here, everyone busy with battles of their own. I could still see my parents fighting with the witch on the other end of the property and my brother helping more of the rogues drag away those they had restrained. I was alone in this battle.
Chapter Twenty-one
Xander
The packhouse yard was a bloody mess. Chaos was everywhere I turned to look. I found myself fighting those who had watched me grow as a child and coo over how much I resembled my mother. People I had once thought of as my friends now looked at me with bloodthirsty expressions and the desire to kill me.
I was attacked and called a traitor at every turn; yet I did not fight back to kill them. I held the hope that I could get through to them. Cheri and I bumped into one another as I leaped over a fallen rogue with the bloodshot eyes of a rabid animal. She looked startled at first until she realized who I was.
“Have you seen Liberty?” I asked as I swung her out of the path of a clawed hand and kicked the feral rogue away.
“No,” Cheri answered as she pushed me back to avoid yet another attack. “I saw your father, though! He is near the fence line.”
She pointed to the side yard of the packhouse. A jumble of bodies fought against one another there and blocked any view I might have of my father. I nodded to Cheri before I ran in that direction. If I couldn’t find my mate in all this chaos, I could at least find my father and try to put an end to this senseless fight.
Screams caught my ear near the front of the packhouse. Wolves were now pouring out into the streets in their fight and humans were now being caught in the middle. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Dad would think this was a good plan: to openly fight like this with humans so close by. It was against everything that he himself had taught me growing up. In every instance of my training for his revenge, he had always stressed the importance of keeping humans out of it.
Humans weren’t meant to know about our world. Not all of them, that is. There was too much history of humans fearing us…hunting us out of that fear. Even rogues knew better than to draw the attention of humans. It was why every packhouse held a veil around the pack’s territory should the packhouse be close enough to humans such as the Rigel packhouse. It was why most attacks happened within the veil and the house itself. Nowthe fighting had broken out of the pack’s veil, and humans were directly involved.
I looked around once more before leaping over the gate that marked the pack’s territory. I broke free of the veil and landed just in time to block a rogue from attacking a human woman who had fallen to the ground behind me.
Her eyes watched in terror as the feral rogue snarled and snapped his partially-shifted jaw at my face. I tried not to look at her too much. I didn’t need her to memorize my face in case I ever saw her again after tonight. If we were lucky, the witches would completely wipe the memories of this night from the humans involved, but memory wipes weren’t foolproof – at least not from what I had read in Brady’s books. Should one of the humans see something that would trigger the memory, the wipes would be reversed.
“Run!” I growled to the human as I pushed the rogue back to the property line of the packhouse. I gave him a final shove, and he fell back into Keith’s waiting arms on the other side. I nodded to my friend as he quickly bound the feral creature and hurriedly dragged him off with the others.
There was still more fighting out in the street; sirens blared in the distance as I rushed to help more humans and pack warriors. I didn’t pay attention to the faces of the humans I was helping. I barely registered their genders. I knew the witches wouldn’t need my description to find those who had been here tonight. Iwouldn’t risk the humans being able to see me for more than a minute as I saved them.
All the while, I still watched the packhouse yard from the street in search of raven hair or fur. She had cut off the link to our bond, although at least I knew she was still alive. At one point, I felt a slam of fear quicken her heart, but nothing since then.
I couldn’t even call out to her through the bond link. Every time I tried, my message felt like it was hitting a brick wall. I knew she was angry with me. I had barely confessed everything and promised her peace from my father just before he attacked. It had to look like another lie to her. She had to feel betrayed all over again.
Flashes of magic stuck into the remaining rogues around me as the Crete Coven arrived. I watched as a large man moved by swiftly, his magic binding any of the feral rogues who rushed to attack him with a single wave of his hand. The woman who followed him closely glanced at me before waving her hand at the human beside me, their eyes growing dull with sleep before falling gently to their side.
“These humans need to be brought to the packhouse,” she informed me and nodded to the warriors behind me. “Tell them.”
I turned and looked at the three warriors behind me before looking back at the girl. She and the man were already headedto the tree line at the back of the property. I could just make out lightning striking the ground in that area. A storm was contained there as Minerva ran from a cyclone and threw her own magic at a large black wolf.
My heart stuttered for a moment at the sight of the midnight-colored fur before I realized it was Orion. I turned back to the warriors again and pointed out the unconscious humans.
“Get them to the packhouse. Don’t let any harm come to them. The witches will wipe their memories of this night, but they must have no marks to remind them.”
