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CHAPTER 7

Rage

WOLFIE

M y mind cleared. I knew the feeling well. Question was, what had I done when under Alpha command? No blood stuck to my fingers, no scent of death lay in the air.

A human-shaped, burgundy-hooded figure streaked between two dark magic users, tackling me around the waist. I grunted, glancing down to see a head of dark curls as the sweet scent of sunshine wrapped around me with a second scent that smelled of bitter herbs. I recognized it as resignation. I smelled it on myself often enough.

I felt weightless for a split second in time as everything paused while we hung, weightless, over the massive, raging river far beneath us. Then I was sucked into a vortex of air, hurtling toward the rapids.

I cradled the little warm and soft human with hard elbows and knife hilts to my chest. She smelled of sunshine and freedom.

My mind put disjointed images together. Mother coming forth with the black mages, using the last of her commands for the month to order me to surrender the pup and come home. Having put myself beholden to her long ago, she now had enough strength for three commands per month—and I could do nothing to stop it.

But I had not done as she said under her command. Why was my mind suddenly my own? I should be struggling to take the pup and give him to my Alpha, but instead, I wrapped my arms tightly around the girl who had stabbed and kidnapped me and then sent us both over the edge of a ravine. She knew I would survive.

And she knew she would not.

That was the resignation.

Blasted humans and their blasted soft bodies. And blast this specific human for her self-sacrificing, idiotic ideas when she was supposed to kill me and put me out of my misery.

I would not let her find death before me if it was the last thing I did.

She deserved to pay for her sins, just as I did. And for that, she had to live. And sadly, so did I.

I glanced down, my body growing as I triggered a partial shift and used my weight to swap places with the human so I would hit first.

The water slapped against my back, and for a moment, I worried I had hit rock instead of water.

Then it engulfed us and sent us spinning in a rictus of up, down, and never out. My lungs screamed at me, and the human went limp in my arms. I cradled her, knowing that until this ride ended, I could do nothing except protect her from the worst of it. Rocks and sticks beat against me, then all went quiet as the river spat us out on a sandy shore.

Her body shivered constantly, her teeth chattering. I had to get her wet clothes off and dry them by the fire. If I had had my usual items for missions, it would have been easy to slip her into an extra set of my clothes, but I did not. A scowl pulled at my lips as I cursed myself for being so underprepared.

The white pup was still clutched in the human’s arms. Even when unconscious, she had protected him. I eased him from her grip, and he came willingly with a tiny tail wag, even if it took more strength than I cared to acknowledge to pry him from her arms.

I shook my head and peeled off the wet clothing, careful not to touch her more than necessary. She trembled and flailed, but I would not have her dying on me just because she fought me even while unconscious.

My movements were jerky from anger and annoyance. Why did this idiotic Red have to come and do something so against her nature? She was an enemy of my kind. But she jumped off a cliff like some avenging being from Seventh sent to save my soul.

The more of her skin I revealed, the more my movements gentled even as fury flushed through my veins. Lycus pressed against me, fangs elongating and black hair tingling as it grew on my arms.

If I do not get these clothes off her, she may die, I said to him.

He retreated. It was marginal and the blanket of fur on my arms and the fangs remained, but we stopped shifting. That was a positive because it would have been hard to do what was needed with paws instead of hands.

But Lycus was not the only one enraged by what had been done to this innocent creature.

Before, I had been nearly certain that no Red could be innocent. A Red had broken into my house and killed my father. And I had attacked them in retaliation, though it did not bring back my father. Nor did it bring an ease to the sorrow which felt as if a fist had broken through my ribcage and squeezed my heart. No, that kill of an innocent had merely put me beholden to my Alpha.

And the anger at the Reds had pushed the guilt from my soul—until now. Until faced with a Red who was both guilty and innocent. A Red with more honor in her small body than in the entirety of most werewolf packs.

As I peeled the last of her clothing away, it took monumental effort of will to keep from shifting and finding the nearest elk to kill. To feel the warm blood beneath his neck and to take his life and let the scent of pain numb the emotions broiling within what was left of my soul.

This Red would call me a monster for such a thought, of that I had no doubt. But someone should become enraged on her behalf, and I had a feeling this self-sacrificing idiot would not be the one to do so.

Her skin held numerous round marks that were reddish, upraised and mangled. I had seen such a thing before, but only with torture victims. They were burn marks made with precision to enact the most pain.

And she still had the ability to smile and rescue a deranged werewolf such as myself? I had locked those merciful parts of myself away, but this little ray of sunshine had endured a similar pain, and she chose not to allow it to make her dark but to use it. Where I had allowed the pain to make me a bitter, broken killer, she had taken it and turned into a shining example of honor in even the worst of circumstances.

And I wondered if she ever would have truly killed me.

The stab wound still burned with pain, especially since the stitches had torn and it was once more dribbling blood.

A smile turned my lips despite myself and the anger flushing my veins. She had stitched me up. That was not the act of someone who would murder. I doubt the little minx had even realized that she was never going to kill me. Likely not. She seemed to not want to show the part of her that was softer than the Red warrior she wore like armor.

As I finished peeling the chemise from her and gently lifted her head to get it off, my hands clenched in the fabric. I took some deep breaths before turning back to her to study the bruises along her torso and ensure nothing was life threatening.

There was no movement of broken bones when I pressed against the bruises, but it seemed she had hit more rocks and debris than I had wanted, regardless of how I’d tried to shield her from the worst of it.

There were also other things—a gash where the skin still had holes from where it had been stitched, a few bruises just fading with time, and much older scars that littered her body. A rope-like scar near her kidney I believe she had somehow stitched herself because it had healed less straight than the other scar on her shoulder. When stitched unevenly, the skin healed with pockmarks and divots instead of the smoother scars done with an even hand.

The burn wounds were the most numerous. They had seared over even the small slices that were nothing more than a parting of skin—also a tactic of torture.

I knew the only thing she needed now was my body heat, but I could not bring myself to wrap her in my arms.

She was terrified of me—and for good reason. More than that, I wondered if there was something deeper. Another pain. Some other reason why touch terrified her worse than me attacking her with a knife.

And if so, my soul cracked, and emotions I had not felt in a very long time emerged from the buried depths of my mind. The urge to kill hit me with the force of a tsunami. But I had nothing to kill as I knew not who had done this.

I would find out. And when I did, not even Sixth could save them from my wrath.

Lycus would not be contained. He raged against the confines of my mind with such fervency it nearly caused me to throw myself into the nearest wall just to placate him.

That would not stop him, though. He needed to be unleashed. I gave in to his wish. The shift pulled at my skin and the still-healing bruises and where I suspected I had at least cracked my shin, if not broken it. But the ache was good. It chased away the rage until the red tinting my vision faded.

With a single shake of our woven body to get settled, Lycus padded over to the little Red who had saved us. She was curled up into a tight ball.

The Red’s eyes opened, and she stared at us. We froze. But then I realized she was looking through us.

“Help them,” she whispered. Her eyes closed again, and I realized she had not been fully awake, and yet she was begging me to save someone.

We licked her nose which she had twisted up. Lycus huffed out an amused breath when she wiggled it like a rabbit. He laid down beside her as close as he could without startling her, and rested his head on his paws with his back to her.

Her shivering body trembled; she was so very small and vulnerable. Then she turned and, with a strength that belied her little body, wrapped her arms as far as she could around us.

Lycus did not dare move and held still as a mouse caught beneath a werecat.

Her shivering slowly abated and a gentle sigh escaped her lips. Our muscles slowly unclenched, and for the first time in a very long time, the aches of my body eased and my need to be around a pack of my own abated.

I would let her clothing dry and then put it back on her, hopefully before she woke. She would be none the wiser that any of this occurred.