I must have loosened my grip while listening to Orion act like a true alpha. Or perhaps I loosened my grip because I wanted to emulate him rather than acting like the merciless wolves Gabi had raised me to believe in.
Whatever the reason, my reaction turned out to be a weakness, exactly the one Chief Bellwether had been waiting for. The instant he was no longer in mortal danger, his hands grabbed both sides of my snout, ripping my jaws wide open. Then I was spinning through the air, the crook of his elbow catching my throat while my claws and fangs tore into nothing.
The tables had turned. One moment, the pack leader was my hostage. The next moment, I was his.
Chapter 8
Which is when Chief Bellwether drew upon his dominance. “Kill Blade in my name,” he ordered, the compulsion rolling out across the wolves in a visible wave of changed behavior. “Slowly,” he added, the addition not binding but nonetheless obeyed.
Because his pack was apparently just as sadistic as he was. Their body language suggested they took pleasure in leaping at the prisoner, taking a bite out of his side, his arm, his leg. Causing pain and weakness without expediting the end of his life.
Or perhaps they were building up the energy housed within Blade’s broken body. After all, torture was a tried-and-true method of enhancing blood magic, the same sort of magic I’d seen unleashed in far too many packs when a similar sacrifice was made. Worse, Ari and Hailey had been caught up in tonight’s awfulness due to the alpha compulsion, moving against their will to join the infliction of pain.
I had to stop this. Couldn’t let Ari’s gentleness and Hailey’s youthful optimism be marred by taking part in something awful. So as Blade jerked against his restraints, I struggled against the alpha’s hold.
Blade’s efforts had no effect, but mine did—they prompted the alpha to tighten his grip and block my air flow. Dark spots slid across my vision even as Blade sagged, appearing to lose consciousness. Then the first drop of his blood struck soil at the base of the cactus. A gust of wind sprang to life that felt like the desert’s inhale.
Orion inhaled too. Of course he did. He was best equipped of all of us to stop this extended torture, his dominance great enough that he could spit out a counter-command and freeze the attacking wolves in place. No wonder his mouth opened, the first syllable already emerging from his lips before my captor intervened.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Chief Bellwether warned, pitching his voice loud enough to carry over the sounds of battle. “How long do you think this one will last without air?”
As he spoke, he shook me like a rat whose back needed breaking. Instantly, Orion’s mouth snapped shut, his protective instincts sliding away from Blade, Hailey, and Ari to latch onto me the same way it always had when he thought I was in danger.
In response, I widened my eyes, trying to get Orion to focus on the more important issue. Just spit out the command, give me an opening, let me do my part…
We’d worked together so well moments earlier. Now, though, Orion resorted to empty posturing. “The matebrand…” he started, lifting the arm that still had electricity sparking out of it.
Chief Bellwether interrupted. “Isn’t in play or you would have used it already. What did you do? Roll around in the sand and pick up outpack electricity? A child’s party trick.”
That must have been exactly how Orion had made his tattoos glow. Because, of course I would have felt my own ink awakening if Orion had rekindled our matebrand during the time we were separated. In contrast, the desert was full of electricity tonight. It likely would have been easy to tempt some of that energy to mimic the matebrand’s swirling imagery on Orion’s arm.
That same electricity teased at my fur now. A promise that the outpack would help me if I needed help. That all I had to do was ask…
And I did need help. Because past events had proven Orion would let Blade die if it came down to a choice between the prisoner’s safety and my own. I wasn’t about to repeat our misstep at the oil rig, especially when Ari and Hailey’s lives were also at stake.
So for the very first time, I welcomed the outpack inside me. Stopped fighting the energy that swirled around and through me. Channeled it to assist me in mustering a shift so fast Chief Bellwether didn’t know what was happening until it was done.
Human, I slid out of his grasp and drew in a tremendous breath, filling my lungs with much-needed oxygen. Oxygen and electricity. The outpack surged through my body in answer, tingling my extremities.
No, that wasn’t an answer. It was a demand. The magic I’d just teamed up with wanted me to rekindle my matebrand. Wanted me to bind myself to it and to Orion the way I’d done once before. I owed it…
But I’d made no such bargain. I’d merely accepted the gift on offer without promising anything in return. Clenching my fists, I forced the electricity out of my body and into the sand beneath me, my rejection as firm as when the matebrand had tried to manipulate me and Orion into kissing outside Finnegan’s basement apartment. I was in control of my body and future. Nothing could make me re-create a mate bond with Orion until we were both good and ready to commit.
I expected the desert magic to recede then. But it didn’t. Chief Bellwether reached for me and I scampered backwards more agilely than I should have been capable of. Electricity sparked each time my feet struck the earth, and each spark made evading my pursuer easier than I would have expected it to be.
Not that I really needed the outpack’s assistance now. I didn’t have to win this fight, just stay out of Chief Bellwether’s reach while Orion acted.
Evading would have been simple if the desert hadn’t rippled beneath me at just the wrong moment. I windmilled, trying to keep my balance. And as I did so, I saw what had been happening on the other side of the mass of wolves while I was making my escape.
Blade’s skin was more blood than bare now, entirely due to the work of Chief Bellwether’s underlings. Because Ari had taken the slowly command to heart and used it to counteract the other half of the order. The teenager was still in the back of the melee, hadn’t taken a single bite out of the prisoner. There would be no torture haunting dreams already broken by seeing his previous alpha killed.
Hailey, in contrast, had chosen expedience, or perhaps mercy. Whatever her motivation, she now sprang across the last few wolves, aiming for Blade’s throat the same way I’d aimed for the throat of the pack’s current leader.
Unlike me, however, she didn’t mitigate the force of her jaws clenching together. Didn’t hesitate either. Just clamped down and ripped with a jerk of her head. Then, shifting from fur to humanity, her bare feet struck sand already saturated by fountaining blood.
Blood was power. No wonder the desert responded, first with another anticipatory ripple like the one that had knocked me sideways, then with an earthquake that shook me all the way off my feet.
I struck the sand on hands and knees, so I didn’t see what happened next. I heard it though. Two voices making demands of the desert in exchange for what I now realized had always been a planned blood sacrifice.
“I will own the outpack,” Chief Bellwether bit out, his attention abandoning me in favor of something he considered far more important.
And, at the exact same moment: “Reveal the ancient lore surrounding the sister matebrand.”
The second voice was Hailey’s.
The outpack’s response began as a squall of wind that seemed to emanate from the heart of the desert. It carried not just familiar aromas of sagebrush and creosote, but also underlying rot. The same rot I’d grown familiar with while hunting down perpetrators of blood magic in my former role as enforcer for the Council.
The air smelled the same because that’s precisely what this was—blood magic. Chief Bellwether had set up not only a regime change but also a major boost to his power, all fueled by the tortuous sacrifice of his predecessor.
Meanwhile, Hailey appeared to have successfully shoved her way into the culmination of Chief Bellwether’s plan. Because even as the scent around us changed, the desert answered Hailey in words that thrummed through me, bypassing my ears and tunneling directly into my brain.
“Once close as kin, secrets kept, blood not hearts entwine,
“Betrayal’s mark precedes sister matebrand’s rise as ancient inks decline.
“Compelled by…”
The voice that wasn’t a voice cut off as abruptly as it had begun, and there was no time to decipher the cryptic wording. Because it appeared Chief Bellwether had gotten his way after all, or at least part of his way just as Hailey had gotten part of hers.
