Page 16 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 15

Close Calls

FLOR

T he air was colder in New York, and I could see the puffs of my breath as I stared through a pair of borrowed binoculars across a heavily wooded valley. A few housetops poked out of the fall foliage, chimneys releasing their smoke into the early morning light to the north, but I had my eyes trained on the gleaming silver roofline in the distance. It was still ten miles away, down one hillside, and on the far side of the wide valley, or so the maps indicated. We’d hopped out of the Mountain pack van a few miles back and jogged just inside the tree line up a narrow, winding road until the Mansion had come into view.

“I can feel him,” Mama said, her voice cracking as she stared ahead. “He’s there.” She stood beside me, glaring toward the east. She had one hand pressed over her wounded abdomen, and the other clutched around an old short sword she’d brought from the cave at Southern. Sergeant’s face had gone pale when he’d seen it, and I had a feeling it was significant—maybe to our family—but hadn’t asked. I’d been too busy trying to convince half of the Mountain pack, all of Southern, and the Tenebris boys from jumping in their own trucks, cars, and vans and coming to Eastern as well. I’d only been partly successful.

I peered over my shoulder at Sergeant, who sat with the entire Tenebris pack, all of them in wolf form now, except for Leroy and Bo, who couldn’t shift yet. Leroy waved when he noticed me looking at him. Bo just blushed.

“Bringing them was a mistake,” I muttered. Sergeant had insisted on coming with me and Mama, and the Tenebris pack was too new to be without their Alpha—and loved my mama too much to let her go without them.

“I’m not about to watch my last living family walk into the jaws of death without me there,” Sergeant had stated the afternoon before, when I’d argued we needed a faster, smaller, quieter group, since we didn’t know if they had drones or cameras that watched this far out.

My “plan,” if you could call it one, had required Mama to be there. I’d welcomed Sergeant as backup, once he’d scolded me that magical traps existed. “Elina is a witch, and while she’s kept it under wraps for decades, she may use that power a little more overtly at home. I can still sense magic, even if I can’t use much. Lily can keep you hidden. My Tenebris boys will stay back and wait. You may end up going in alone, but all you have to do is howl and we’ll come running.”

I wasn’t confident that they could stay hidden. A pack of two dozen wolves would be impossible to miss. In the van, Bo and Leroy alone had made more noise than a flock of turkeys until Glen took steps.

“At least they’re quiet now,” Glen whispered from behind my other shoulder. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted the duct tape for, but you’re right. It did come in handy.”

He’d slapped a long piece over Leroy’s mouth in the van an hour before. He’d finally snapped when Leroy had asked for the fiftieth time if we were there yet. Bo had asked for his own piece of tape, “Just in case I start asking stupid questions, too.” It had made everyone else in the van—even Mama—smile.

It had been the last time any of us smiled. My bond with Brand had gone flat on that ride, as if it were being pinched off. There had been a moment of pain and sheer panic, before it had cut off. It was a familiar sensation, one of my mates clamping down on the bond to keep me safe. I hated it. Grigor’s bond was still numb, Finnick’s was frail, and now Brand… I could feel him growing weaker, fast. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but at least I knew he was still alive.

And he was with Finnick, Luke, and maybe even Grigor. It would have to be enough until I could get there.

Shifting the backpack with my supplies on my shoulder, I turned to Sergeant. He was a massive, grizzled wolf, with silvered markings on his dark gray fur, but his eyes were the same, sharp and watchful. I nodded at him, then took off at a slow jog, Mama and Glen right behind me. The three of us were dressed in brown camouflage clothing the Mountain crew had arrived with, and we’d already rubbed leaves and pine needles all over our bodies and clothes to hide our scents as much as we could. Mama had done some small thing with her magic as well, or at least she’d tried. She had gone around and touched all of the boys on the face, going pale by the time she got to Sergeant. He’d refused to let her touch him, and muttered something about her giving too much, too soon.

We heard the drone before we saw it, the tinny buzzing alerting us to its presence, though we were staying under the canopy. Mama crept away, or at least I thought she did. She’d obviously used a look-away spell, since only I was aware of her silver hair vanishing behind a patch of thick-leaved bushes.

Glen and I waited until the drone was gone, walked until we could see the fence in the distance, then climbed a maple to get a better look. The fence was tall, a black-painted steel barrier of two-inch-wide bars, topped with gleaming silver razor wire that stretched out on both sides as far as we could see.

The camera on this side of the compound was supposed to be in a massive pine, and Glen pointed it out silently. It was only seventy-five feet or so ahead of us, and to the right. We climbed down and made our way silently to another tree, going up to get a better vantage point. I pulled a slingshot out of my backpack, tucked a stone into the pouch, and aimed at the camera. The sound of the rock hitting the metal casing was louder than I liked, and it didn’t do any good.

Sturdy fucker.

I motioned for Glen to stay put, then slipped down our tree and made my way to the back side of the huge pine and shimmied up, my nails extending slightly as I had to dig them into the trunk for a grip. I almost grinned. My wolf was so close to the surface, now that I was mated to four of my five guys. Well, mostly mated. I pushed the thought of the conversation I would need to have with Finnick to the back of my mind, focusing on the camera.

A small piece of duct tape over the sensor would be the easiest way to shut it down, but we’d wanted to make it seem like an animal or something natural had caused it to stop working. I laughed when I noticed a large glob of bird shit on a nearby branch. I used a small bunch of pine needles to smear the bird poop over the lens, making sure it covered the whole thing. Glen let out a short chirping sound, and I descended the pine as fast as I could without making noise, then rejoined him in the maple.

I was glad the red leaves matched my hair almost perfectly, as a drone zipped out from the fence line, followed less than a minute later by an Enforcer in a black uniform. He pulled out a phone, snapped a quick picture of the camera, then climbed the tree and cleaned the lens. In less than a minute, both the drone and the Enforcer were gone.

“Shit,” I whispered.

Movement below caught my eye. Mama stood there, a scowl on her face, one hand raised. She muttered something and waved one hand at the camera, and instantly, a small plume of black smoke rose from the device. She stared up at me and Glen. “Stop messing around, you two. We need to move.”

I cringed, following Glen to the ground. “Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?” I whispered when I stood next to her.

“Same reason Del let you fall on your ass a thousand times. How else are you gonna learn?”

Glen was stifling a laugh. I shot him the finger, then followed Mama. She led us straight to the gate, but we only had a few seconds to duck behind a holly bush as another drone shot past, going back to the broken camera.

The gate opened thirty seconds later, and two Enforcers came running back out, sniffing the air.

Now, Mama mouthed. She took my hand, and I took Glen’s, and we crept back around the tree and into the open. We were completely exposed, and I had a feeling my hair was a red candle in the morning sunlight. But no one came after us or called out.

I knew she’d done another look-away, a bigger one. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, even in the chilly morning air, and her hand trembled in mine as she muttered soundlessly the whole time we moved. Hand in hand, we walked straight to the open gate, and right through just as it began to automatically close. The two Enforcers who stood on either side of the gate didn’t even glance in our direction.

But the scent of blood from Mama’s wound got stronger as we moved, and her hand in mine shook like she was holding a live wire. “Help,” she whispered to Glen.He scooped her up with his free arm, and I held onto him as we ran across the clearing, toward the Mansion.

Glen knew where to go, and even though we didn’t see any more drones inside the fence, the grounds were teeming with Enforcers. Without Mama, we would never have had a chance. Finally, he slid to a stop beside a noisy air conditioning unit on the back side of what I thought was the garage building. I checked for cameras, but there were none. I could hear people in the distance, but there were no windows facing out by the industrial-sized AC boxes, and the closest door was the one that led in through the garage. The servant’s entrance, according to Glen.

“Drop the look-away, Mama,” I breathed. “Take a break.”

I knew when she did, since the sounds around us got a little bit louder, the air colder, and… my mates figured out I was close. My bonds started going wild, filling me with alarm and fear. I couldn’t hear their voices, but I could feel Luke, Finnick, and Brand going nuts inside the Mansion.

I reached for Grigor in my mind, but there was… Wait. Something twitched, in the place that had gone numb. The final not-quite-a-bond sputtered like a damp branch catching fire at last. Then it went out.

My wolf whined. I tried not to do the same thing out loud.

My skin itched, like it wanted nothing more than to turn to fur, attack, and run into the Mansion. My mates were inside, too weak to escape. I was strong, but I couldn’t take on a whole pack house, not even if the witch was gone for now.

I was good at waiting. I’d had to sit in treetops until I nearly froze, waiting for hunting males to give up looking for me. I’d had to wait years to escape Southern. But the idea of letting my mates sit in a prison cell for even an hour longer made my stomach churn. Time was running out; I could feel it.

Glen whispered, “What’s wrong, Flor?”

“We need to go. Now. Grigor needs me,” I replied as he gathered me in his arms. I let myself feel his love for a moment, then turned to Mama. “Mama, will you—,” I began, but I was talking to thin air.

She was gone.