Page 6

WREN

Everything hurt. My muscles. My bones. My damn organs. I was pretty sure Angus had punctured one of my lungs with one of his stabs. It was getting harder and harder to take full breaths. All I could manage were shallow, painful ones.

Even my skin was in agony. It felt as if they’d left me out in the blistering sun of the Sahara for days on end. Or maybe that was my thirst talking. When was the last time I’d had water?

I wouldn’t last much longer. Even my wolf had gone quiet.

“God, she looks pathetic. And she smells,” one of the men said. It was Angus’s second-in-command, Dent. The one desperately trying to be as brutal as Angus.

Angus moved closer to where I hung from the hook. I could no longer stand. My whole body was slack now, my shoulders crying out in pain. But even that had dulled to background noise. My mind was protecting itself from the trauma and torture.

Angus ran the blade down the unscarred side of my cheek. “That’s the smell of death. Fuck, it’s sweet.” The blade pricked my chin. “What do you think, little devil? Are you ready to hurt again?”

Images of times with my father flashed in my mind. The pit. The dark. The whip snapping back and splitting my skin. Brass knuckles connecting with my cheek. The feeling of my ribs cracking. Being unable to breathe.

An open palm cracked across my face in a stinging slap. “Wake up, bitch,” Angus snarled. “You need to feel every ounce of pain I’m giving you. You’re getting it all because of The Diablos. Remember that. Those freaks you’re so determined to protect? They’re responsible for this.”

A tear slid free, tracking down my blood-caked face. I wouldn’t make it through another torture session, and I knew it. Maybe it was for the best. I would slip away into nothingness and hope my mom met me there.

Angus lifted his blade, the silver catching the light. But then everything went dark.

For a second, I thought I’d died, slipped into that nothingness. But there was still pain, which didn’t make sense.

Then there were shouts. Grunts. Screams.

I tried to let my shifter vision take hold. To see into the dark, even though it terrified me. But my supernatural abilities had been drained along with the rest of me. Everything was fading.

But I was able to grab tiny snapshots—one by one, and only for the briefest moments.

An arrow piercing one man’s chest.

A wolf leaping through the air and snapping another’s neck.

A bullet hitting someone right between the eyes.

“There’s a fucking wolf,” one of the Death Walkers yelled, but he didn’t get anything else out before the scream. A green-eyed wolf charged and ripped out his throat.

Puck. Some part of me recognized those eyes. Pain and relief surged through me in equal measure.

Then, there was a flash of someone else in the dark. Kingston. Pale-blue eyes and dark hair. But he was almost unrecognizable as he held two guns, shooting with expert precision—unrecognizable because of the pure fury on his face.

The pops, cracks, and screams were deafening now. A bullet pierced Kingston’s shoulder, but he didn’t even flinch; simply whirled and took out the offending Death Walker with a shot between the eyes. There was so much coldness there. It was as if he’d lost all feeling.

Angus cursed and moved behind me, grabbing my hair hard. “They think they’re going to rescue you, but just wait until they find your gutted body instead.”

He lifted his knife, ready to plunge it into me, but nothing came. Nothing but a strangled scream as the hold on my hair loosened. Angus was the one dangling in the air now. Brix held him off the ground by his throat.

“I am going to bathe in your blood,” he snarled, the knife tattooed by his eye flexing with his fury.

Angus’s eyes bugged out as true fear bled into them. “What. Are. You?” he croaked.

“I’m the creature of your nightmares.” Brix lifted his free hand in front of Angus’s face and let his claws lengthen from his fingertips.

Angus started to whimper, his jeans darkening as he wet himself.

“Weak human,” Brix growled. “Coward. Preying on the innocent. Never again.”

“Please—”

Angus’s plea cut off as Brix punched into his chest and yanked out his heart. He let Angus’s body drop to the floor but kept hold of his heart, his hand dripping with blood. Then he let the organ fall, spitting on it as it hit the cement before bending to wipe his hand clean on Angus’s shirt.

The sounds of fighting and shouts rained around us. Flashes of light permeated the darkness as some Death Walkers ran in hopes of escaping. But all I could see was Brix.

Fur rippled over his arms as he struggled to control his beast. His nearly black hair hung to just shy of his shoulders in a wild tangle. But his eyes… Those blue-green orbs had gone stormy in a way I’d never seen them before.

Everything in me warred. Pain and relief. Hope and grief.

“Wren.” The word tore from Brix’s throat.

Tears filled my eyes as he moved closer. My shoulders burned with the pain of dislocation, and my skin blazed with countless cuts. Everything hurt.

But none of it compared to the agony swirling in my heart.

“Going. To. Get. You. Down.” Brix panted between each word. “Help. You.”

He reached out.

“Don’t.” My voice was barely audible, nothing but a raspy whisper, but it still stopped Brix in his tracks.

He cocked his head to one side, his animal half bleeding through. “It’s okay.”

He lifted me from the hook, pain flooding my system so intensely that the world around me flickered in and out. “Hurts,” I moaned.

“I know,” Brix gritted out. “Gonna fix you.”

But it wasn’t the physical that hurt; it was Brix. The contact. The pain of his rejection just days ago. “No,” I whispered as I faded. “It’s you touching me. You hate me. It hurts.”

And then I was gone.