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With those orders given, I rushed back to the fray of the fighting once again in search of my mate or my father. I ran back to the direction that Cheri had claimed to have seen my father. Although my hopes of finding him in the same place weren’t high, I knew that I had to check, hoping someone else could have seen where he had gone.
Keith and Ginger now fought side by side against a row of feral rogues, two of which were Keith’s own parents. I rushed to his side to help them. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to go up against his own parents. Not even I would want to be forced into that fight.
I leaped onto his father’s back first and wrapped my arms around his arms. Keith’s mother turned with a snarl and movedto attack me, but Ginger moved quicker and grabbed onto her in the same way I had grabbed onto Keith’s father.
As we both held his parents, Keith quickly bound them both with a rope the warriors had brought from the packhouse. I watched his eye mist over as he tied them together, their hateful snarls aimed at both him and me alike.
“How long have they been this close to turning?” I asked. I couldn’t think of a moment in time I so much as suspected his parents of turning feral. It never occurred to me the extent of their loyalty to my father. It had always seemed like the rogues only followed him because of who I was.
“They had shown no signs at all,” Keith answered. He looked distraught as he gazed down at his mother, her eyes turning bright red as she spat at him.
“None of them showed signs before now,” Ginger said. She pointed around at the feral wolves with sadness. “Just this morning, they all were normal. I had even heard Keith’s parents talking about how much they missed their parents and couldn’t wait to be back in the pack. They knew that you wanted to do it peacefully, and they didn’t have any objections to the idea at all.
I looked back down at Keith’s parents with suspicion. “What happened to them between then and now, I wonder?”
Ginger snapped her head up and looked over her shoulder. As she looked back at me, I saw worry in her eyes. “I nearly forgot. Liberty! I saw her leap over me just before you showed up. I thought she was about to help, but she disappeared.” She pointed back to the fence line where Rory had said she had seen my father earlier. “She was right there.”
I could feel my fear grow once more as I looked in the direction, a slight sweet scent hanging in the air over the smell of blood and dirt.
“Go, we can handle my parents,” Keith urged me with a shove of my arm.
I didn’t hesitate to move. My body tingled with the urge to shift as I ran at full speed in the direction they had last seen Liberty. I sent message after message through our bond. I begged her to let me in and tell me where she was. When I wasn’t messaging my mate, I was attempting to mindlink my father. Neither of them answered. Neither of them allowed me in.
“Where are you?”I shouted down both links, and again, but there were no answers.
Chapter Twenty-two
Liberty
I ran to the forest with Xander’s father right on my heels. I narrowly avoided him with every leap and swipe of his claws. He had to know the forest about as well as I did, but I knew that his wolf was too large to fight freely in the dense trees. Since I couldn’t shift fully to fight him back, I had to find the only advantage I could get in this fight.
My feet crossed between a row of trees, and I aimed my body to run between those growing close together. I knew from experience how hard it was to fit an enormous wolf between them. I dared to look over my shoulder to find the large gray wolf, pacing back and forth in search of a way around them.
“There is no way you fit in like that, Milo,” I called to him from the center of the trees. “You’ll have to shift back to fight me in here.”
I steadied my stance and watched him. He snarled in response and continued to find his way through the trees. I couldn’t help the yelp that leaped from my lips as he threw his body against the trees. The sound of splintering wood made me question my plan and wonder if I hadn’t just trapped myself in here.
Thankfully, the trees didn’t fall. Their bark barely splintered from his impact and eventually, he began to shift back to human form.
I hadn’t gotten a good look at him. I knew from a distance that he resembled Xander, although he lacked the charismatic smile of his son, and his looks were diminished in comparison. His hair was peppered with grays that matched his wolf’s coat, and his eyes were a dark chocolate brown.
He wasn’t as tall as Xander, either. He stood maybe three inches taller than me, and his shoulders were half as wide as his son’s. If not for the nose and mouth, I would have even questioned his relationship with his son. I would have wondered if he was, indeed, his father at all.
I watched as Milo cracked his neck with a sigh as he finished his shift. My eyes narrowed as I noticed the glowing red take overthe dark brown color of his eyes. I could feel a strange magic pulsing through him.
“What did that witch do to you?” I asked as he stalked into the trees with a dark grin.
“She did exactly what I paid her to do.” His voice was little more than a growl, hardly a sign of a human being in his voice. “You wouldn’t believe how many people forget where their loyalties belong after so many years. Just look at my son,” he sneered. “Mated to a Rigel-Crete hybrid monstrosity.”
I leaped back as his clawed hand swiped for me and hissed when the tips of his claws marked my skin. Black sludge dripped from the wound. I could feel a dark magic attempting to invade my body.
“What the hell?” I cried out with a surge of my power to purify the wound. I looked back at Milo, who smiled his monstrous smile again.
He dove for me again, and I leaped onto a low-hanging branch and propelled myself up higher in the tree. I had hoped to gain some advantage by being out of his reach; but to my surprise, the old omega wolf followed me up into the tree and knocked me down to the hard forest floor.
The air ripped from my lungs as I landed, my magic rushing through my body to heal all injuries and wrap around myunborn child protectively. I had little time to roll off my back and up to my feet before Milo landed near me, his poisonous claws aimed for my throat.
Vines quickly grew up and around his feet, locking him into place as I put distance between us and grew out my claws. Most of my magic was protecting my child now. I knew I had to find a way to fight back against him, despite the dark magic that fueled him.
