Page 10 of Cast in Shadow (Drenched in Darkness #1)

10

The girl followed my orders, but it was close there for a few breaths. She held up her hands, showing her grandmother that she wasn’t hurt. Well, beyond the malnourishment, bruises, and emotional damage thanks to her pack.

Bridget kept her claws anchored in Levi’s back. When two of his wolves—probably the beta and an enforcer, judging by the burnt orange tint to their magic—got too close, the warning in her low growl made them both tuck their tails between their legs and cower where they stood.

Her dead husband had been a fool to try to collar her in any way. If she’d been given the support she’d needed, with the right guidance and room to grow, the Clark Ridge wolves would have been untouchable under her power.

Too bad all it took was a few closed-minded assholes to weaken a once great pack.

I dropped my hands and took one step back from Naomi, giving myself just enough distance to still be able to grab her if she decided to run.

“Nana?” Her voice was so much smaller than the brilliant gold magic pulsing from her, just a few shades lighter than her grandmother’s. It said something about both of them, but especially the older woman. For all the hardship she’d endured, and all the loneliness, she hadn’t let it consume her.

Bridget’s wolf let out a clipped bark but didn’t move an inch.

Naomi glanced over at me. “What now?”

I checked our surroundings, gauging the energy coming off the other wolves. Some of them would have to pay for what happened to my team. Their screams still rang in my ears, and I had to shove my anger down as deep as it would go. Now wasn’t the time.

Getting the girl to safety was the priority.

“She’s worked up. See if you can talk her into letting Levi go,” I said, putting a little softness in my voice for encouragement.

Her eyes narrowed, darting between the man on the ground and the wolf on his back. It didn’t take a genius to track what she was thinking.

“Don’t you dare,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do not tell your last living relative to kill that man, because she’ll do it, for you, and you’ll both regret it.” I edged closer, keeping my hands where Bridget could see them. “Be better than him. Call her off.”

A wounded look flashed in her cool brown eyes, but when she turned back to face her grandmother, her voice carried a pleading note. “Nana, I want to go home. I don’t even know where that is right now, but I know I don’t want to go alone.”

Bridget dug her claws deeper into Levi’s flesh and lowered her black snout to the back of his head, puffing out a breath that made his short hair shudder.

“Levi, tell her you won’t try to stop them,” I said, throwing my own kind of command with my voice. It wasn’t the same as alpha influence, but it was enough to get the attention of everyone in the vicinity .

He moved beneath her, clawing at the dirt as he tried to pull himself up. “Naomi is mine,” he growled.

Bad move, asshole.

He reared up hard enough to knock Bridget off his back, but the idiot didn’t stand a chance against her unless his pack got involved. Most of them were backing away, making it clear they wanted no part in a battle between alphas, but there were enough left with their teeth bared to be a concern.

And what if Bridget did kill him cleanly? Would the pack accept her as their new alpha? I seriously doubted it. They were too broken for that.

Rather than let the woman or her granddaughter take on the responsibility of killing Levi, I used his moment of freedom to close the distance between us and take him down. It was a simple thing. Just a pulse of my power, raw and uncut, and he hit the ground like a sack of stones.

Growls and snarls filled the air all around me, making every inch of my skin tingle. “He’s not dead, yet. But I assure you, I will finish the job if you don’t back off right now.”

Unsurprisingly, the beta and his second charged me from different angles. In a blink, I turned my body into a livewire with my magic, letting it rush to the surface in a powerful current. One touch and boom. Lights out.

That was one of the benefits of living as long as I had: lots and lots of time to learn new and useful ways to use my magic.

“Last warning,” I said, raising my voice over the overwhelming sounds of rallying wolves. “If one more of you makes a move toward me or either of these women, I will wipe the Clark Ridge pack from existence.”

Stillness fell over the area. A few more wolves backed away, but one brave wolf with a golden hue close to Bridget’s shifted into human form and moved toward his unconscious packmates with his hands up .

I let him go. It was best if they had proof that their leaders weren’t dead.

He knelt beside Levi and checked his pulse. “She’s telling the truth.” Another low rumble spread through the remaining wolves, but it didn’t sound like relief. Unless I was mistaken, it sounded an awful lot like disappointment.

Before I could respond, the man shifted back into wolf form, and with a snarl that raised the hairs at the back of my neck, he tore out Levi’s throat.

“And so it begins,” I said, mostly to myself, with a ripple of dark satisfaction working through me.

Another wolf stepped forward and sank his teeth into the beta’s neck. Two more took out his second.

I pulled my power away from my skin and grabbed the girl by the arm. “Come with me.”

“What are they doing?” Panic threaded through each syllable.

“Taking their pack back.”

A chorus of growls rose in volume as the wolves moved slowly, dividing themselves into two factions: those siding with the wolves who’d taken out their unconscious leaders and those looking for payback.

“We need to get you out of here.” I tightened my grip on her arm and spun her around, forcing her away from the coming violence.

She twisted, looking over her shoulder. “What’s going to happen?”

“Most likely? A very bloody fight.” I kept her moving, but it took some less than delicate pushing.

I’d seen what could happen when a pack was divided like that. A strong alpha could step in to quell the violence, but then they would spend months or even years weeding out the bad actors. Assuming they didn’t catch a knife in the back for their efforts first .

“The pack is poisoned, and in a situation like this, it’s best to let them sort things out internally.”

The girl stumbled over a rock, and Bridget’s wolf growled a warning at me from behind us. I let go of her arm and fell back a few steps, motioning for the big wolf to come around and take the lead.

“Either a new leader will emerge from the survivors, or the pack will scatter,” I added.

She stopped, turning back. It hadn’t devolved into violence yet, but we weren’t sticking around until it did. Still, I half expected her to say she wanted to go back. That she couldn’t stand by and let the pack tear itself apart.

Instead, she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Good riddance.” Then she turned on her heel and followed Bridget’s wolf through the trees.

The walk back to the cabin took longer than I’d anticipated. Or maybe it just felt that way because I was watching our backs every step of the way, trying to stay focused on getting us all to safety, while I still didn’t know the status of Echo.

I could have asked. I still had my earpiece in. But if Dennis told me we’d lost more members of our Lexa family today, there was a damned good chance I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from going back and slaughtering every last wolf in that damned pack. Sure, not all of them had a hand in attacking Echo, but the ones who stood by and watched were just as guilty. Just like the ones who were too scared to intervene when Levi and the others abused their weaker packmates.

There were other things to sort out, too. Like how I was going to get the girl and her grandmother to Salus when I’d left my Jeep at the campground.

We were still about fifty yards out from the cabin when Bridget slowed to a stop. An angry growl rose from her wolf form, and her hackles stood straight up, creating a mohawk of erect reddish-brown fur that stretched from the base of her skull to her tail.

A deep, rumbling warning answered from somewhere in the trees, and I immediately understood the problem.

“Nguyen, stand down!” I yelled ahead. Moving up to stand next to Bridget’s wolf, I spoke more softly. “That’s a member of my team, Nguyen DeBruin. He’s not a threat to us.”

Nguyen chose that moment to step out of the trees in his full grizzly form. He rose up on his hind legs, a towering mass of fur, teeth, and claws that would intimidate any sane creature.

I shot him a glare. “What the hell did I just say?”

He stayed as he was for a beat, agitating Bridget’s wolf and putting Naomi on edge, before he finally dropped to all fours and stomped back into the trees.

A second later, his human voice carried over the tense silence. “I don’t have any clothes.”

Right. I hadn’t considered that. And here I thought he’d been trying to challenge me, since he’d been staring at me during his display of burly bearishness.

Bridget, to her credit, shifted into her human form and strolled up to her porch as if walking around nude in the woods was the most natural thing in the world. For her, it probably was.

She disappeared inside and re-emerged a couple of minutes later in jeans and a well-worn black leather jacket, holding a towel in one hand. “I don’t care that he’s naked. It comes with the territory,” she said, tipping her head toward him. “But if this makes you more comfortable, have at it.” She tossed the towel to me, and I handed it off to Nguyen.

He and I both knew nudity was part of being a shifter, but since Lexa was made up of all kinds of creatures—human, shifter, fae, and just about everything in between—a little modesty went a long way .

In a situation like this? It didn’t matter as much.

I pressed my finger to my comm. “Dennis, where are we at with the cleanup crew?”

His voice rang through. “They’re there now, assessing the situation.”

“Good. Patch me through to Lonny.”

A few short clicks later, the other agent’s voice filled my ear. “Shit, Senna, it’s bad out here.”

We all knew that. There was no need to say it over the radio. Not that I didn’t understand where they were coming from. That much senseless blood and death would be a difficult thing to process for just about anyone.

“Leave them to it then,” I said. “Nguyen ditched his clothes a little way to the southeast of where we are now. I need you to gather them up, grab the Jeep, and come pick us up. Have Dennis give you the details on how to get here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

I turned to where Bridget was sitting on her porch with her arm wrapped around her granddaughter’s slender shoulders. “Is that your Chief?” I tipped my head to the flat black Indian motorcycle parked next to the cabin.

“It is.” She gave me a skeptical look. “You know bikes?”

“Just enough to make idle conversation.”

Hers was a striking example of what happened when someone who didn’t care about keeping something “original” restored a decades-old piece of machinery. It was clean, but everything about it was low key. There was no flashy emblem or shiny paint job. The whole thing was understated, which gave it a kind of badass elegance.

“It’s gorgeous,” I admitted. “But I’m thinking you might be better off leaving it behind.”

She glanced at the bike and flicked the tip of her canine with her tongue. “Fresh start? ”

“That’s what we’re hoping for, right?”

She gave the motorcycle another longing look. Then she gave the girl a little squeeze and stood. Nguyen came to stand beside me, keeping a respectable distance. The towel was a kind gesture, but it was barely big enough for him to hold both ends when it was wrapped around his waist.

Despite her nonchalance about the nudity issue, before Bridget turned and headed back into the cabin, she eyed Nguyen’s muscled form with open appreciation.

Was my brain broken?

Nguyen was physically attractive. Big, strong, dependable. He checked all the right boxes, but I’d never felt anything more than a platonic kind of kinship for the man. Certainly nothing like what I’d felt when Emerson was in my head the night before.

Damn him.

Just the thought of him made my heart ache, along with other parts of my body.

Could I have chosen a more inappropriate time to think about something like that? Granted, he was part of the problem. He’d always had a lasting effect on me, like a siren song that got stuck in a sailor’s head.

It wasn’t just that he could turn me on, he could keep me on, even when he was nowhere to be seen.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge those utterly unhelpful thoughts, and turned my attention to the girl. “How are you holding up?”

She blinked at me a few times. “Good, I guess, but what are we doing? We can’t be sure they won’t come after us, right? So, what are we waiting for? And what did my grandma mean by ‘fresh start’?”

“We’re taking you somewhere you’ll both be safe but getting in means leaving everything about your past behind. ”

“Getting in where?”

“Salus,” I said, with just a sliver of hesitation. “Have you heard of it?”

She shook her head.

Good. It was probably better that way anyway.

“Salus is a pack that takes in shifters from all over the world. All breeds. Like a safe haven for good people who are in trouble and looking to start over.”

She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Sounds like a fairy tale. Are you sure they take all shifters? Even female alphas?”

“Yes. Salus was actually started by a female alpha—a tiger—and now it’s run by a council of six members who are all voted in. The leadership changes every other year, and no leader can hold a seat on the council for more than two cycles in a row. It gives everyone a chance to hold a leadership role, if they want it, and ensures no one person holds undue influence.”

Naomi’s lips dropped into a frown. “And if I don’t want to be a leader?”

I bit back a smile. The girl was running scared, I got that, but when she finally had the chance to settle in and get more familiar with her true nature, she would want it. There was no doubt in my mind.

“There’s no pressure. If you don’t want a leadership position, you don’t have to take one. Everyone is expected to pull their weight, but they’ll explain it all to you when we get there.”

“And Nana will be with me?” She eyed the open door behind her.

The girl looked so worried. So scared. The truth might not be what she wanted to hear, but it would be the kindest thing.

“I’ve secured a place for you, but Bridget will have to go through a vetting process before they decide whether or not she can stay.” I gave her the most reassuring look I could offer, resting my hand on her shoulder. “She’s a good person. That gives her a damn good chance.”

She nodded, then glanced toward the door. “Are you two friends? Did she tell you about me?”

“I didn’t know what they were doing to you,” Bridget said, closing the cabin door behind her and moving to pull her into a hug. “I almost went looking for you so many times. I’m so sorry I didn’t.”

The girl buried her face in her grandmother’s neck, and from the tremble in her shoulders, it was clear she was trying to hold back tears.

I used their long overdue reunion to arrange a few things. My priorities were tied, which I never liked. I needed to get them to Salus, which meant I needed my Jeep. But I also needed to get a team out to find Echo, or whatever was left of them.