Page 38 of Forgotten Arcane (Broken Ashes #6)

Neith

F or a moment, I worry that I’m not going to be able to keep up, but I’m happily proven wrong within a few moments, and I can easily keep pace. Thank fuck for that.

“Do we know why they’ve decided to attack?” Reed asks as we hit the tree line and start dodging and weaving through trees. “Have they attacked before?”

“They have never attacked us before, and I have no idea why they would now. Things haven’t been great with them, but we never would have suspected them of wanting to attack,” Calia replies, with an upset frown.

The wolves used to be friends, and it’s always hard when friends turn on you.

“How do you want to handle it?” Truip asks, not out of breath as we carry on running toward the left side entrance.

“As calmly as possible. If we can talk it out with them and figure out why they’re attacking, then maybe we can diffuse the situation before it escalates.

If we can end this without violence, that would be the ideal situation,” Calia replies firmly and with hope that I’m pretty sure is quite optimistic for this situation.

“Having said that, if they attack and you have no choice, then do what you have to,” Eamon adds grimly.

Everyone nods.

Unfortunately, it’s clear when we get to the gate that any hope of talking it out isn’t going to happen. The guard that raised the alarm is lying torn to shreds at the feet of three wolves, while the other wolves all shift around uneasily behind them.

My eyebrows draw down, something doesn’t seem right, but before I can pinpoint what exactly it is, the wolves charge us, growling and snapping their jaws. There is absolutely no mistaking that they intend to attack and kill us.

I pull on my magic, getting ready to call on my wings.

I know that I haven’t practiced flying and fighting with weapons yet, but I’m fairly certain that I can wield a weapon while flying, and the height would actually help in this situation.

Before I can shift though, the Voices mutter in warning, and I know that I’m not supposed to use them.

If they’re telling me not to, then there must be a pretty damn good reason why I shouldn’t. So, even though it would give me a big advantage, I listen because if I don’t listen to the Voices, then I almost always end up in a worse situation.

Everyone is fighting, and it’s fucking vicious.

I spot a wolf launch itself at River’s back, and I pull one of the knives from my thigh and throw it. It hits the wolf between the eyes and kills it instantly as it drops to the floor with a thump.

River finishes the wolf that he was fighting, and then looks behind him in shock.

When he looks back at me, I grin.

“So hot!” he yells, and then gets pulled into another fight.

Calling Asael to me, I waste no more time and dive into the battle.

I really fucking hope that we don’t lose any more of our people.

As we fight, I begin to realize something. My instincts are behaving in a confusing way. Even though all of the wolves are attacking us, with the intention to kill us, I’m not killing them all. For a few of them, my instinct insists that I knock them out instead, rather than take their lives.

I’m not going to argue with it, but it does make me realize that something more than the obvious is going on.

All thoughts disappear when I suddenly find myself surrounded by seven wolves, all of them circling me and lunging for me and trying to take chunks out of me.

I swing Asael, killing the first one that lunges for me, but knocking out the next two.

The only problem with just knocking them out is that they recover really quickly, and then they come back and try to kill me again.

It's exhausting.

All of the guys are fighting their own wolves, either one-on-one or two-on-one. All of Calia and Eamon’s people are also in the same situation, where they are only dealing with one or two of the wolves.

So why are so many of them gathered around me?

I would think that it’s because I’m the weakest, so they think that they can take me down easier, but I’ve already taken several of them out and proven how easily I can kill them, so it can’t be that.

They double down on their attack, moving quicker, and I have to continuously move to make sure that I don’t get caught by one of them. They’re closing in on me, and I can’t keep this up for much longer.

River catches my gaze, and his eyes widen as he sees me surrounded.

“Enough!” he shouts.

Immediately, the fighting stops, and all of the wolves stop attacking.

“What the fuck?” Eamon curses as he looks around at the now still wolves in shock.

River shrugs, in response to Eamon’s question, he can’t exactly explain it right now.

He continues what he’s doing and somehow manages to aim his alpha voice only at the wolves, as he orders, “Shift back.”

My eyes widen along with everyone else’s as the wolves all shift back to their human forms, even the dead ones.

That’s fucking interesting. I was fairly certain that the alpha command didn’t work on the dead wolves.

It must be a part of his new magic, and I know that Raiden is taking notes so that he can look into it later.

“What the fuck!” one of them yells, anger and fear present in his exclamation. “You can’t just make us shift!”

“Clearly he can,” Calia replies drily, and I try not to smirk. Now is not the time for that and would most likely just piss the wolves off more.

“Quiet,” River orders, he looks at the one closest to him. “Why are you attacking us?”

The wolf looks nervous, and in a weird way relieved. I must be reading that wrong. Ransom gestures for me to come closer, and I move away from the ring of wolves that are staying in place and staring at River, and over to his side.

The wolf swallows as he looks at River, and answers without needing to be prompted again, “Alpha said that . . .”

“Logan!” one of them snaps, the threat clear in his voice.

As he starts to lunge toward Logan, Truip grabs him and pins him to the floor, pulling out a set of silver cuffs and securing him.

River looks at Logan, “You were saying?”

“Alpha ordered us to attack. He said that if we didn’t, then he would kill the women and pups,” Logan explains, looking both angry as hell and frightened.

We all look horrified.

“He gave you an alpha order?” River asks.

Logan nods and looks relieved that River believes him, so much so that he opens his mouth to continue talking. My attention briefly shifts toward the other wolves, and I get Ransom’s attention as my intuition begins to ping.

“Can you put magical handcuffs on certain wolves from here?” I ask him quietly.

He glances down at me and nods, “Which ones?”

I love that he doesn’t question me or think that I’m crazy.

I quickly point out the wolves that my instincts and my observational skills are pointing out to me.

By the end of it, there are seven more wolves with magical handcuffs on that will stop them from shifting, and none of them are happy about it.

“Care to explain why you just did that?” Doc asks curiously, since all conversation stopped when we started cuffing the wolves.

“I don’t know how they knew, but they’ve handcuffed all the wolves loyal to the alpha,” Logan says, while the other wolves not handcuffed stay silent and look relieved. He looks around at the dead wolves, and his eyes widen, “Fucking hell, you’ve only killed the ones loyal to Alpha.”

“My instincts were telling me which ones I could kill, and which ones just to knock out,” One of Eamon’s fighters says.

“Same,” Doc agrees, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

It quickly transpires that everyone got the same instinct alert that I did, that the wolves that aren’t dead, even though some of them are injured, are not loyal to the asshole alpha.

I love how magic works.

Eamon’s eyebrows rise in surprise. But he keeps his questions to himself for the moment.

“Alpha has the pups and women somewhere. None of us can find them. He’s had them for over a week now. He’s dangerous, really fucking dangerous,” another wolf says, desperation lining his tone.

“Why haven’t you told anyone?” Griff asks. “You could have reported him to High Alpha Ahren.”

A different wolf shakes his head, “No, we couldn’t.

He gave us an alpha order. We weren’t allowed to speak of anything that happened or that we witnessed, and we were banned from speaking to the High Alpha.

The only way that we would have been able to tell him would have been if he had asked us ourselves, but we never go to the meets, so that was impossible. ”

Coen growls. Being ordered not to tell the truth is a hot topic for him, for obvious reasons, especially when it involves leaders abusing their position. Leaders are supposed to look after their people, not take advantage of them and cause them more pain.

“Is there anything else that you can tell us?” Evander asks. “Like why your alpha suddenly decided to attack the compound?”

The wolves in the cuffs growl and pull against the manacles around their wrists, their magic trying to fight the effects to no avail.

River doesn’t even say anything, he silences them with a look, and even the guys and I raise our eyebrows. It would appear that River has hit a whole new level of alpha, and he was already really fucking impressive.

“It’s okay,” Eamon says. “You can answer the question. We want to help you.”

Surprisingly, all of the free wolves look at River, who nods encouragingly.

I feel like this whole thing has just added to our long list of complications that we already have, but if we can save these other wolves and help them to get out from under the thumb of the cunt of an alpha, then we’re going to.

“There was a supe that came to the pack land just before Alpha gave us the order. He smelled wrong, like he was rotting, but that wouldn’t make sense,” Logan continues to explain.

Well, fuck. I think I can guess where this is heading, but I really fucking hope that I’m wrong.

“Could you describe what he looked like?” Reed asks, tension in his voice.