Page 10 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 9

Blood Brothers

FINNICK

“ I mean it. Take what you need,” I repeated, hoping my fear wasn’t obvious. Or that this male, the most feared creature in shifter history, wouldn’t react to it if he sensed it.

As I pressed my wrist to his mouth, all the stories of him over the years rushed through my thoughts. He was by every account a monster who would kill indiscriminately, and had no regard for life. From what I’d heard of the creative slaughter at Southern, I knew it was true.

But if he was Flor’s mate… If he’d protected her, and rescued Luke… If Glen had bonded himself to this male willingly, to save all their lives, then I could do no less.

Desperate need emanated from the wounded shifter inside the bag, though he was obviously so much more than a shifter. More than an Alpha. His dominance was oppressive, almost suffocating. He hadn’t felt like this at the Conclave, when he’d called himself Joaquin. The strength it must have taken to hide this much power was shocking. Of course, now he was ridiculously weak. Starved.

Still, his lips against my wrist remained shut. I tried to remember the fairy tales my nanny had read to me as a child, before she’d vanished for being “too lenient” with me. Magic numbers, magic words… Maybe he needed to be asked three times?

“Take my blood, Grigor Dimitrivich.”

His lips moved, and I fought not to flinch, but all I felt was an exhalation on my hand. “Noble pup. Thank you for your kind offer, but I will not take your blood. I fear I would take your life, and although I may yet do that, if your answers to my questions are not satisfying, I will wait.” I blinked, unsure what that meant. He exhaled again. “Can you release me from this cloth?”

“Ah, yes.” I scrambled to unzip him entirely, pulling the silver chains away from him, careful to keep my gloves in place. I’d put on thicker ones than the usual wetwork latex, and was glad for the protection, though the silver burned even through the thick leather of these.

I piled the last of the chains beside Grigor, glancing nervously at the camera, glad to see the red eye still dead. The room lights were dimmer than normal as well, I noted as I pulled the zipper down.

“By the moon,” I whispered as the man’s face became visible. He’d been beaten until he was almost unrecognizable, only his dark hair and the gleam in the one eye he could still open familiar at all.

“The moon had no part of this,” he panted, trying to push himself up. Quickly, I kneeled beside him and helped, carrying him to the wall and resting his back against it before grabbing the bag I’d brought down. It had water and food intended for the Hilliers, but Grigor needed it more. I uncapped the water bottle and held it to his trembling, bloody lips so he could sip.

When he was done, the water bottle was empty, and his face relaxed. I let out a shaky breath. “Do I call you Joaquin, or Grigor?”

He almost smiled. “Glen… calls me Joaquin. He says he cannot be bound… to the boogeyman.”

I shook my head. “Sounds just like him. So, you are bonded. Luke told me Glen allowed it to save you. To save Luke, and Flor.”

“He is very brave for one so young. Brave and generous.” Grigor’s eyes narrowed. “You should be stronger than you are. You have almost no magic. Your mother, though… Ah, I see.”

“Magic?”

“You are the child of both lines of magic. Yet I watched you in Northern, and never saw the connection. Even now, there is no magic in you.”

I leaned back, uncertain what he meant. “You think I should have magic from my mother? I was hoping my lack of it meant I didn’t inherit her evil.”

“I’m afraid you inherited mine, pup.” He placed a shaky hand on the wall. “One moment.” While my mind buzzed, trying to decide what he’d meant by me inheriting his magic, he closed his eyes. The light in the room dipped again, and I could smell something like ozone coming from him. He had on black pants, though they were torn in many places, but no shoes and no shirt. As I watched, static lifted the hairs on the few inches of him that weren’t covered with blood. What was he doing? When the swelling in his face receded, and his other eye opened, I had my answer.

Witchcraft.

“You can heal yourself with electricity?”

“I can. Power of any sort, though the easiest for me is the darkest kind.”

“Blood?”

He grimaced. “Blood magic, yes. I don’t drink it, or not anymore. It’s addictive.” He closed his eyes, smiling like he was remembering an especially pleasant dream.

“You don’t drink it, then?”

“I have. But I only need to spill it, and absorb the power in the pain and fear, the life force as it moves, as their eyes close…” His voice trailed off again. I held my face still, trying not to show how much his wistful tone disturbed me.

“Maybe this will help take the edge off.” I reached back into the bag, unwrapped a protein bar, and handed it to him.

“Apologies, pup. I would never drain your blood. Though your mother’s…” He took it and chewed slowly with one hand still on the wall, taking energy from two sources at once. “What was she like when you were younger?”

“As bad as she is now, maybe worse. Every week, she’d bring me outside, or down here, to one of these rooms, if she was worried about the pack witnessing my ‘training.’ Father said she did it to toughen me up, to make me worthy of the role of Alpha. I needed to learn how to bear pain, and how to give it.” I’d spent many of the darkest moments of my life in the lower levels of the Mansion.

“She forced you to kill as well.” He stated it in a compassionate voice, like he knew what it had cost me.

“Killing was the least of it. Once I could defend myself, she made me do things, they made me…” I choked back a sob. “I was their torturer for a while. But I made a far better whore. And if I wasn’t willing to do it, I had a little sister. So I did what I had to.”

The room went silent for a moment, until he took his empty hand and placed it on my trembling one. My mind spun. Grigor Dimitrivich was… comforting me?

“Your mother consumed your pain,” he whispered. “The blood, the sex. All of it fueled her, and drained you.”

“What do you mean?” I leaned forward to hear, and when I did, he raised that hand to my face, cupping my cheek almost tenderly.

“She should never have had so much magic. So much power. My blood and my wife Anya’s would be so diluted…” I blinked, a chill moving through me as the lights sputtered out. No, that was power. He was feeding electricity into himself, and then to me. “I never knew one of my descendants came to this world. I never imagined a coven existed who would know how to pull the power from the blood…”

I felt something, almost like wet kindling, trying to spark to life inside me, before he let his hand drop.

“What was that?”

“Me being a fool. When I have regained my strength, though, I will give you back your birthright.” Our gazes locked, and I knew what he meant.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to throw up, or weep, or pass out. “She’s one of your descendants. My mother.”

He nodded slightly. “And you as well.”

For what could have been a minute, or an hour, I merely stared at him. “I’m… You’re…” I couldn’t get the words out. It seemed preposterous, but there was no hint of a lie in the air, and none in his gaze. “We’re family.”

The shifter who sat with me was infamous for being cruel. But the dark eyes that glinted with flecks of red and blue in their depths wore the kindest expression I’d ever seen directed at me. “I’m afraid so. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone if you choose not to. Unless our little queen asks me directly, I will even keep it from her.” One side of his mouth turned up in a rueful smile as my own jaw worked, trying to put my emotions into words. “I can imagine you are feeling horrified right now.”

I wasn’t horrified. I was hopeful.

I reached out and laid my hand over his, looking for some resemblance in the shapes of our fingers. There wasn’t any, but the slight zing of energy that arced between us like a strong static charge, felt comforting again, not frightening. Finally, I let out a breath and sat against the wall next to him, not sure if I could stay upright either. It felt as if my whole world had tilted on its axis, and I was relearning the horizon.

“I was a little boy when she first started… draining me, I suppose. They called it lessons, for when I was Alpha someday. I was to stay still while she or Father… did things. Hurt me, or others in front of me. I was not to react, but keep all my emotions hidden. Never to cry. When they were done torturing me or their victim, Mother would comfort me. Well, she’d lay her hands on me for a few moments. She never helped me up. Never promised to make the pain stop.”

He let out a soft growl. “She was feeding on your pain as well as your magic.”

I thought for a moment. “That makes sense. She never loved me. Neither did he. They never said it, and they never pretended. I learned to disassociate, to distance myself from what was happening. When I was very small, I would daydream about what it would be like, to have a different mother or father. To have a family who was strong, but good. Who didn’t think I needed to learn to hurt others in order to be a strong Alpha.”

“Truly strong Alphas only hurt those who would attack the innocent, the vulnerable. They don’t need to prove their power. They are power.”

“I’ve seen that with Samuel, and Brand. I used to wish I really was his brother. I wondered what it would be like to be a Becker, or a Hillier.” I let out a short laugh. “I was whipped once, when I was twelve, for writing my first name with other last names in the back of a notebook, dreaming of being someone else’s child. I thought Finnick Becker had a nice ring to it.”

“It does.” He went silent, his eyelids closing. I thought he might be sleeping until he said, “I wish I had known of your presence in the world. I wish I could have… been there, for you.”

“I wish I could help you now,” I replied. “If you won’t take my blood, can’t we do something else? You have a bond with Glen, and Luke. I’m strong. I can help you heal, help you escape.”

“We don’t need a bond, pup. We already have one.”

“We have… a bond?”

He smiled then, for a moment, his eyes still closed. “Of course we do. You’re my blood, my descendant. We have the deepest kind of connection that exists outside of a mate bond. We are already bonded. We’re family.”

I swallowed to ease the tightening in my throat. “Not that just saying it out loud does us much good.”

His eyes opened as he sucked in a sharp breath. “It could do some good, actually.”

“How?”

He managed to turn his head toward me. “Words have a magic of their own. You know this?”

I frowned. “Words like?—”

“The vows shifters take. Alpha commands. The words uttered when a pack is joined, or left. When a mate is?—”

“Rejected,” I finished for him. “Words do have power.”

He took a moment to breathe, then said, “Take my hand, Finnick, son of my bloodline.” I did, turning until I was on my knees, facing him. “I said I would restore your birthright, and I will when I am able. But for now, I can give you one thing. A new name.”

“A name?” My heart was in my throat. “What do you mean?”

“You could still be Finnick Becker someday. But I would offer you mine, though I am ashamed to say it might be as bad as your own.”

“I could be Finnick Dimitrivich?”

“Or Finnick Grigorovich, if you like,” he suggested. “I’m afraid… if you go by Dimitrivich, no one will invite you… to their dinner parties.”

I almost laughed, but he was falling down again, so I gathered him up. He felt frail and light in my arms. “No, I like Finnick Dimitrivich.”

“Then that is your name. The moon may not be visible in this place, but She sees all. By Her power, I name you Finnick Dimitrivich, child of my line.” He repeated it two more times. At first, I didn’t feel anything change, though my heart was lighter. But after a few seconds, something did seem… odd. I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensations.

Flor’s bond with me was where it had been since she bit me at Northern. But now, there was something else—a misty, elusive connection, like someone was calling my name from very far away. It was a welcoming sensation, a settling in.

It felt like, for the first time, I’d come home.

“I can feel it,” I told him. “Our bond.”

“Already? That’s good. That’s a facet of our magic, our bloodline. We’re good with bonds. We can manipulate them, use them. Create them. Draw power from them. Eventually, you will be able to use bonds for healing as well.” His voice dropped to no more than a whisper. “She won’t be able to draw your power now, Finnick Dimitrivich. She has no hold on you, though your father, as Alpha…”

“Right.” Getting rid of his last name was the easy part. Getting rid of him would be much more perilous.