Page 13 of Never Tamed (Bad Wolves #3)

Dax

S he fucking disappeared.

One second Red was curled up in the pit Mathis dug, tucked against his side, her scent wrapped around us. I let myself close my eyes for maybe a minute—long enough to drift on the sound of their breathing.

Then I jolted awake.

Because she was gone. Not a sound. Not a trace. Just an empty space where she’d been.

My heart lurches into my throat and lodges there, making it impossible to breathe. Nerves skitter to life.

I scramble to my feet with my head lifted to the night sky, dragging in a breath.

She couldn’t have been taken, not with all of us sleeping right beside her. There were no signs of a fight. No blood. No foreign scents. I catch a whiff of her, fading fast, and follow it out of the pit toward a tamped down trail in the snow.

Which means she left on her own.

Fucking reckless move, if you ask me, but no one ever does.

I have no idea how she hadn’t woken us. Not even me .

Maybe I’m losing my touch.

Impossible.

I shove the others awake, Noble with a well-placed nudge to his shoulder that’s only slightly less forceful than a kick. “Wake up, fuckhead, she’s gone.”

Torin is on his feet in an instant with Mathis only a second behind him. My alpha’s expression lifts the hair on the back of my neck.

“Dax.” He barks out my name. “Can you track her?”

I point to the trail. “What do you think I’m doing? She went this way.”

Torin strides forward. “She can’t have gotten far.”

I know better. Once we’re down the path, my nose is sharper, and the prints I tracked climb the ridge and weave through the trees with purpose. I can see it clearly.

Ren knew where she was going.

The storm picks up suddenly. The snow swallows everything, and we shelter against the trees as the wind picks up. Soon, the fucking snow erases it all—her scent, her trail, my goddamn patience.

Red’s trail vanishes into that whiteout like the forest opened its jaws and devoured her.

“Find her!” Mathis barks the command again and I want to strangle him.

Not for the first time.

The man is doing a fucking stomp on the last bits of my sanity. Within the hour, I’m chasing a ghost up a mountain with three wolves behind me, hoping like hell I will find her before something else does.

What in the fuck was she thinking?

Why would she go off and leave us this way?

I shake my head and howl. The storm steals the sound and carries it away. The others push closer, slightly behind me.

The wind cuts through my fur, and my lungs burn from the cold. Keep going . Keep running .

I sprint in the direction the prints were heading. Although why little Red would want to run up a mountain into the heart of a storm is fucking beyond me.

She must be even faster than we bargained to make it this far, too. It’s not like we were an easy hour from the summit. We weren’t even close.

After what feels like hours, my paws are damn near frozen, and I know. I just know where she went.

Another few heartbeats and the temple rises out of the white-out like a ghost. I slow just enough to search the area. A flash of movement separates from the storm and a figure resolves through the flakes.

Red.

She’s there in the middle of the broken stones talking low to someone. Only the person she’s got her head bent beside glows like starlight spun into skin.

Instinct sends me ducking behind a fallen column with a growl threatening to climb up my throat.

Who the hell is that? Better yet, what the hell is that? Humans don’t glow.

Nothing glows. Nothing in this world unless we’ve somehow all been abducted by aliens. I don’t watch TV but I know.

I slink closer and crouch behind a piece of cracked foundation. From the long hair and curvy form, it’s clear it’s a woman, but when I sniff the air to catch a scent, I come up empty.

My nose twitches. The glowing woman has no scent at all. Not possible. Everyone smells like something.

The woman and Red continue to talk and I catch pieces of their conversation.

“…stop Andras from destroying the balance…”

“…you’ve already started the process…”

“…trust the men at your side…”

And then Red mutters, bitter and exhausted, “I’m allowed a little bit of wallowing.”

The woman rises. Her glow intensifies—not reflected moonlight, but something alive. Primal.

“No, you’re not. Not anymore. Stand tall and do your job. Be my sword. Protect the people you love.”

Then she dissolves into light.

Poof. Gone.

I slam back on my tailbone and surprise skitters like an ache up to my skull. Red’s left kneeling in the cold, the silence deafening.

A whine rumbles my throat and I shift back onto two legs, shaking my head. Another heartbeat passes and I step out of my hiding place. Walk over to her.

Red glances up at my approach. Sadness is etched into every inch of her beautiful features and it twists a knife in my heart.

“Little Red.” I crouch beside her and grasp her hands. Hers are warm. Mine shake.

“Dax.”

“I know you think this is all on you. But it’s not. We’re with you. Every step.”

Whatever the fuck she just experienced, I’ve got to be strong. If she can handle talking to a glowing chick then I can fucking handle giving her support.

She blinks hard, lips pressing tight like she’s holding back more than just tears.

“I get it,” I add. “You don’t trust yourself. But I do. We do.”

She shakes her head. “How, though? Why would you? All I’ve done is fail.”

I pause. “Red, I don’t care what anyone says—Moon Goddess or Santa Claus himself—but if it comes down to burning everything down or you, I’ll light the damn match myself.”

Her breath catches. She looks at me, tilts her head, and something stirs in my blood. This time, my cock isn’t what swells. My heart does.

I twine our fingers together and squeeze. “Come on. Let’s get back. The others are too damn slow to keep up with me, but they’ll be close and worried.”

She squeezes me back, lets me haul her to her feet. I glance at the temple one last time, mimicking her motion, before she turns. We walk out of the ruins together.

We’ll definitely have to shift to make it down faster, or we’ll risk hypothermia and exposure. I don’t want to freeze to death. But first—

“How?” I stop, finally asking the question that’s been buzzing in my brain. “How did you get all the way up here, and so fast? I tracked you for a bit and then your footprints disappeared.”

Red hesitates before meeting my gaze. “I… don’t know exactly. I was dreaming. Or I thought I was. I ran, shifted, but it didn’t feel normal . ”

“What do you mean?”

She exhales a sharp breath. “I wasn’t just fast, Dax. It was like I was flying . Like I wasn’t even touching the ground.”

Surprise widens my eyes, and she chuckles at my reaction.

“It’s true. It was crazy. I could hear Anna—the Moon Goddess—calling me, telling me to come find her, and then before I knew it, I was at the temple.” She sweeps her arm back at the ruins and the statue.

“That woman there…she was—”

“Yeah,” Red interrupts. “Crazy, right? I’ve seen her a couple of times. She’s always been there to help me when I needed it, but I didn’t know it was her. I actually thought she was working for Andras at one point.”

The Goddess is real. And she showed herself to Red. Not only tonight, but in the past.

“That’s—”

I don’t know what to say. It’s insane. But I saw the glowing no-smell lady for myself.

I settle on, “Damnit.”

“She said she gave me gifts,” Red adds. “She said I have what I need to beat Andras and that things have already started.” She looks over her shoulder, toward the temple. “She said I have to be her sword.”

This woman already absorbed the moonstone.

“Her weapon?” I ask.

This is all sounding really familiar, but I’m not sure how it all connects to Red. Mathis will know, though. He’ll be able to explain it.

She huffs a tired laugh. “Thanks for coming after me.”

I glance at her. “I’ll always come after you.”

She stops walking. So I stop, too.

Her eyes search mine. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispers, and the pain in her voice damn near kills me. “It’s too much.”

Every part of me wants her. Every part of me wants to fix this for her, but I’m at a loss. I have no fucking clue what to do.

I shift awkwardly from foot to foot. “You’re not doing anything alone, Red. There’s no way in hell I’ll let you.”

She wraps her arms around herself to try and keep out the chill. “Thanks. Having the four of you does make it less overwhelming.” Then she leans in, mouth slightly parted, and I meet her halfway.

Her lips are cold, soft, but the kiss is warm. Slow. The kind of kiss that heats you from the inside out. It’s tender and gentle, everything I’m not.

With Red, everything seems easier. Even talking to that pussyfoot, Noble.

When I run my tongue along the seam of her lips, about to draw her in closer, something shifts inside.

The familiar hummed tune returns, snaking through my skull like a razor made of silk—soft, lilting, wrong .

I can’t shake it. Not this time. It seems to have a life of its own, and it snakes down my spine, every note pulling me tighter. Too sweet. Too slow. Like it was written for the dead.

I freeze with my lips on hers.

Red pulls back immediately. “Dax? What’s wrong?”

But I can’t answer because the song is louder now. It’s inside me, growing.

And I’ve heard it before. I know I have. Not only recently but in the past. It’s a part of me somehow.

Then the screaming starts. The screaming, like the song, I recognize on a bone-deep level and can’t place. Then—

Ren is in my arms and through the blur, I note the worry wrinkling her brow. “Dax, talk to me. What’s going on?”

The notes curl in my head, like they’ve been hiding there this whole time, waiting for the right moment to spring up again.

Where have I heard the song?

My blood goes cold.

“Dax?” Red calls again, but this time, her voice is far away.

I can’t answer. My mouth won’t open. My throat can’t form sounds.

She touches my arm. I flinch. Not because of her.

Because of what I suddenly see.

Snow. Screaming. The blur of someone small in my arms, warm one second, then cold. So cold.

It’s a memory, a nightmare. I blink, and I’m not here anymore. I’m there . Back in time. Back when my entire world collapsed from underneath me.

The lullaby is louder now, coiling through my ears.

“Shhh…” I hear myself say. “Don’t cry, Gracie girl. You’re safe now.”

“Gracie? Who’s Gracie?” Ren sounds like she’s behind a wall of water.

“You’re safe,” I repeat, gently rocking something small and fragile in my arms.

A baby. A baby girl, no more than six months.

“Dax, stop. You’re scaring me.” A hand lands on my shoulder, and I jerk away, heart pounding. “Talk to me.”

“Get away from her!” The words tear out of me. “ Don’t touch her! ”

A woman’s scream rips through my skull and suddenly my arms are empty and covered in blood. The sharp metallic smell of it sears the inside of my nose. Blood paints the snow underneath me, and all I can feel is rage. Absolute sorrow and rage.

I slam my fist into the nearest tree. The bark splinters from the impact, and pain explodes across my knuckles. I don’t care. I need to kill him. I need to make the singing stop.

I punch again. And again. I can’t catch my breath. Blood blooms from my knuckles.

The world is red and white .

“Where are they?” I roar into the wind as my head pounds. The song is a blaze inside me, pumping through my veins. “I just had her—I had —”

I’m thrown forward as someone tackles me hard. Face landing first in the snow, I twist, snarl, ready to tear them apart. My body tries to push into the shift, but there’s too much weight on my chest, and breathing hurts.

My head whirls, and my vision flashes between seeing a figure over me, holding me down, the edges blurred by crimson.

“Don’t you fucking dare, you bastard.”

I pause my thrashing.

I know that voice. Right?

When I search for a name in my memory, I come up blank.

Whoever it is, I shove at him, throwing him off balance long enough for me to sit up. But someone else joins him, arms locking around my torso from behind.

“DAX! Snap the hell out of it now !”

That voice sounds familiar too. But they’re still strangers. Enemies, so I continue to struggle against them with all my strength.

Somehow, I’m able to rip my arm out from the one’s hold, and rake my claws down the one on top of me’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” he cries out but manages to stay on me. “Get a good hold on him, Mathis!”

More shouting. Snow crunching. Then—

CRACK.

Pain bursts across my face, and the world spins before darkening. Then finally, everything goes quiet.