Page 25 of Never Tamed (Bad Wolves #3)

Dax

A h .

There’s nothing better than this.

Blood pours past my canines and trickles down my throat like the sweetest fucking booze in the world. Even better than booze, because this is hot and fresh even if it’s tainted with the slight undertone of literal shit.

It doesn’t matter.

My enemies fall. Another twist and the man’s neck cracks. He slumps down like a bag of bones trapped in a meat suit and I move to the next. Swipe, claw, entrails on the floor. Onto the next. And the next.

If Andras keeps sending them, I’ll keep killing them.

When the moon rises, when the wind grows cold—

The hummed lullaby has transformed into words, and the fucking song twist in my head again. I shake to dislodge them. Like ticks, but worse, because at least ticks serve a purpose. They’ve gotta eat like the rest of us.

This song, the one I can’t place, plays on a loop at the worst possible moments.

I growl and grab the nearest man by the face, squeezing until his cheeks go red and his eyes bulge from their sockets.

“Over here!”

Red’s voice shatters the roar of the melody in my head and I blink, still squeezing. Bone cracks and this man goes down, too.

She windmills her arms and dips down one of the tunnels, moving faster than the rest of us.

For a half a second earlier, I swore I saw her disappear. Literally disappear and show up on the other side of the room. It’s insane. Right? People don’t just disappear.

We’re not superheroes.

I take off after her with Mathis right behind me. Whether the other fuckwits are with us…doesn’t really matter. Does it? My girl is strong enough to butcher her way through whatever comes.

The tunnel ends in a door reeking of newness. The wood is ancient but the construction is only weeks old. Red sends her clenched fist through it and the inches of oak are nothing but tinder for her.

Wherever she’s been hiding these powers, I don’t care. Now is absolutely the right time for her to use them. Maniacal laughter scalds the back of my throat and I release it as she tears the pieces to shreds.

“Come on, Red. I can’t just let you stand there and have all the fun.”

I nudge her with my shoulder before my concentration splinters. When the leaves are fallen, and midnight tolls—

This fucking song is a curse. Growling, I lean forward, clawing my hands through my hair and pulling the strands until pain splinters, the door forgotten.

“Dax, buddy, let us handle it. You’re not in a position to fight.” Mathis says gently, and I hate it.

Saliva pools in my mouth like I'm the rabid beast they say I am and I push him away, growling. “I’ve got it.”

But the melody is there, just out of reach, an itch I can’t scratch.

Noble helps Red pry the pieces of wood aside and thrusts his arm through the hole to unlock whatever he finds on the other side.

The door leads to an industrial hallway with a mechanical room to the left.

“The scent is stronger,” Red adds. “He’s got them somewhere in this area. I’m sure of it.”

“We trust you,” Torin is quick to say.

He keeps his wolf under lock and key. I’ve only seen him let it loose a couple times, during his botched wedding and our escape. What a fucking nightmare, but also fun.

Today should have been the same kind of fun.

It’s not.

Red moves to the end of the hallway and cocks her head to the side, listening to things none of the rest of us can, sounds too far away to catch. I’d love to take her out in the woods with me one day. She’d be a better tracker than any of us and would make fierce competition for me.

How fun it would be to play a game of cat and mouse, too.

I’d love to see which one of us came out the victor. I’d find her.

I’d always find her.

You’re safe my love, so safe, and warm.

Someone calls my name. I’m not sure if it’s in my head or not anymore, but the fracturing baby’s cry, that’s definitely not down here in the muck with us.

“Dax!”

I come back to myself sharply and just in time to arch back and avoid the sweep of claws.

The ambush came on us in a blink with more men than before. Andras definitely doesn’t want us making it to the end of this tunnel system. He doesn’t want to relinquish his prize.

I pour my anger and frustration and fear into my hits. My knuckles slam hard enough into the man’s jaw to dislocate it.

You have to put your hip into it , a voice says in my head. Familiar, distant, strange. If you’re going to be human, then you have to learn how to protect yourself. You can't always rely on the wolf , Dax .

The words, the memory, floods my head, and I stumble off balance.

My vision blanks and the world is colored by crimson, my favorite color. My body doesn’t belong to me but between me and Ren, the hallway empties.

“Dax, for fuck’s sake! You have to leave some of them alive,” Mathis warns with a snarl.

I’m shaking, my lungs laboring for air and my hands trembling. Blood drips from the tips of my fingers “Leave them alive?”

“You’ve done enough.”

He’s feet away from me and looking at me like I’m a stranger, his eyes wide, his face pale. There’s Red, as pretty as a picture, standing at the end of the hallway with concern rounding her lips.

We step over countless bodies, the carcasses littering the hallway. It’s barely a dent in the numbers Andras surely has at his disposal.

With little Red leading the charge, we head further into the maze of tunnels. Soon the stench of sewage is strong enough to have me swallowing over a gag. I'm all for carnage but human waste is an entirely different thing.

“In there.” Red slaps a hand over her mouth. Stifles a groan, a burp. “They’re inside.”

Inside where? The metal bars look like they block another part of the sewer, not cage powerful omegas from the Grey Valley pack.

Andras has his wolves on display, though. They aren’t there just for show. They've left us very little room to move, let alone shift, when they bum rush the tunnels and block our exit.

I crack my neck from side to side and force my mind to happier memories than the one where the stupid song plays on repeat.

Memories of the blond beta, for instance, the way we broke him down to pieces after getting practically nothing out of him.

“Where do these fuckers keep coming from?” Mathis mutters under his breath.

His dark eyes flash a glowing gold, and he clamps down on his wolf.

No worries. That’s where I come in.

“They spawn themselves like a virus. Go, baby, go.” Noble uses his body to protect Red from the throng but she waves him away.

“We have to get to the women. Before Andras hurts them again.” She’s pleading with him. “I’m not leaving.”

I slice my way through one of them and watch his surprise slip away to nothingness. That’s Noble’s problem. He’s always trying to keep her small when she’s made to burn through this world faster than—

A face flashes through my mind, a woman’s face. Her smile tears a hole in my universe and I stumble and crack my knees against the stone. Pain ricochets up from the area. My sister. My mother.

“Dax!”

Red’s concern is cute. The afterimage of the smile is slow to fade and by the time it does, one of Andras's men has their hands on either side of my face. They twist.

Whatever the hell is happening to me, it needs to stop. It’s jeopardizing everything I’ve worked for. Everything I've outrun.

I bear down and pull the man with me. He flies over my head and slowly loses his grip on my face, tumbling onto his back before I pounce on him.

Torin and Red work together to tear the bars from the wall.

At least he’s putting those muscles to good use, finally, instead of worrying about his suit.

My beast prowls close to the surface and instead of helping them, I tear into the man on his back.

His blood geysers into my mouth, fresh and tainted by his ego.

It gives the taste a weird aftertone but whatever.

This sends a message.

It says you can’t come into our fucking home and terrorize us.

Not without getting some pain in return.

Getting to the beta was one thing, and clearly it made very little difference to Andras. But coming in here today and leaving a path of death behind us…

It still won’t mean anything. Probably. We’ll have to take down the woman if we want to bother him.

I clamp down until I crack the man’s neck with my teeth, shifting only the canines and jaw muscles to get the job done.

My name rings out from behind somewhere. This . This is so much easier to understand than the songs and the memories. Those tear me apart with their softness. But violence? It’s a universal language.

Mathis calls my name again and I rise from my crouch with blood spattered down the front of my shirt.

They’ve got the bars open and he gestures for me to follow, half-in and half-out of the tunnel. Red is a flash of movement in the darkness before the gloom swallows her.

Our men pile into the tunnel behind her and the closer we get to whatever she sees or scents head, the higher the hair on the back of my neck lifts.

This entire place is wrong. And it’s worse than Torin’s stinking shrine in the middle of the city. Buildings, materials like this, they’ve always sat poorly with me.

I’m too wild to be redeemed.

And I don’t even want to fucking try anymore.

The tunnel takes a sharp left before I finally hear the cries of the imprisoned women. There, ahead of us, are row after row of cages. Slender white fingers cling to the bars and shake them.

“Oh my god.” Red’s voice cracks.

The stolen omegas and other pack members are tucked into cages barely large enough for a small dog, let alone a wolf. But that’s intentional. Isn’t it? To keep them cramped and human and breakable without giving them the space to change and defend themselves.

This far underneath the distillery, the stench of the liquor has seeped into stone and helps to mask the wolf scents. My heart gives a single thud before it settles into an uneasy rhythm. I lick my lips, but the taste of old blood sours in my stomach.

They cry for help. The sounds shatter my heart and my stomach dips before a wave of sickness lurches up.

And there—there’s Flora! Dirty and her cheeks a little more sunken, but alive.

“Get these doors open. Now.” Torin barks out the command to the men.

Mathis is already in motion. He tries to pry the nearest lock off but the metal holds firm. The hinges are well oiled and strong. But thankfully not coated in silver. That would make this job infinitely harder.

Red’s the only one who has any luck. She moves unerringly to Flora’s cage and pries the bars apart with barely any effort. The omega’s eyes go wide before she falls forward, landing on her hands and knees in the puddles of filth.

She’s in Red’s arms within seconds, her pregnant belly heaving.

You’re safe my love, so safe, and warm. Safe in my arms, with teeth of your own.

No harm will come. No harm be done.

The moon is high, the wind is cold, and you, my love—

The song takes on a discordant, fractured tempo in my head and every beat of my heart brings it closer. I see her smile again like something’s been dredged up from my depths and refuses to be ignored anymore.

Screw this.

I can’t keep losing myself this way to these memories. They disappeared for a reason. Nothing from the past is going to help me be strong.

I pry one of the bars out of the wall from the entrance to this fucking crypt and use it to beat against the lock. The metal shatters after three tries.

Sweating, I toss the lock aside and move on to the next cage, the next. A blur of motion and movement because that’s so much better than trying to figure out who the smile belongs to.

We free as many as we can with the men brought along. And I know Mathis. He’s not leaving this place until we get them all out. But as my gaze skips over the heads for the freed pack members, it’s impossible not to note the missing. The pelts we were given. The ones Andras sent.

Noble leads the charge to get the women out. Red is like Mathis, though. She sticks close to Flora but she’s not going to go yet. Not until she’s satisfied that we’ve gotten them all.

Her eyes meet mine across the room and I know the depths of them intimately. Because we’re the same when you take away all the fancy shit and the trappings.

We’re vengeful creatures.

We like the power plays and we like testing ourselves and seeing how far we can go. We like the taste of blood on our tongue like a forbidden delicacy.

Red breaks eye contact and my gaze dips to Flora. The normal flush of her cheeks has drifted away into a sickly paleness and her hands are tense and white knuckled on her heaving stomach.

My ribs tighten further.

“Go, go!” Torin calls out.

Noble disappears down the tunnel with five women tight behind him, shepherded into place by the rest of our men.

Then a scream splits the space, ricocheting in my skull.