Page 35 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 34

No Father of Mine

FINNICK

F lor’s eerie howl gave me time to shake off the stunned Enforcers who had me hemmed in, but I knew not to wait even a second longer to act. I vaulted myself over the one who’d tried to stop me with his now-broken arm, as I shouted my challenge.

My father’s reaction was predictable. Scorn, and dismissal. “What did you say, boy?”

“I said, I challenge you, Father. You’re not fit to lead the Council, or any pack. Bradley was no traitor. You, on the other hand…” The words stuck in my throat, and our gazes clashed. He tried to force me to drop mine, and for a moment, as his fists flexed and his eyes went a darker shade of green from his wolf, I was tempted to do just that. Crumble under his power and disdain, as I had every time before.

He had always been my worst nightmare, my abuser, and my primary torturer. It was second nature to fear him, to flinch.

As he trembled with suppressed anger, I was back in the lower levels as a child, under those fists—which had seemed incredibly strong, hard, and large—as they beat down on me again and again. Hearing his voice in my memories. “This is how you get strong, Finnick. You learn to take the pain and transform it. Own it. You have to be hurt again and again, and only then will you conquer that weak part inside you. Only then will you have nothing left but strength.”

I could almost feel it now, the pain that had buried me alive, not only when Father had punished me, but when Mother had come afterward, to run her hands over, and often through, the wounds he’d left. I’d thought it was her attempt to comfort me. I knew better now. They had made me weak, and as he lifted those hands that had tortured me for so long, daring me to come closer in the ring, I knew that familiar, broken piece of me would never be healed.

It had to let go of my deep longing for a father who would love me. Not one who made sure I knew love was the weakness I needed to have torn out of me, one slice, one stab, at a time.

Finn.

Flor’s voice was the faintest whisper in my mind, and I blinked away the remembered pain. Was I hearing her, or imagining her voice? We were bonded, but the magic here was cut off, and our bond wasn’t complete, not in every way.

But maybe… Grigor had given me my birthright. My mother wielded magic, but according to Grigor, I did, too, now. Wolf true mates could pull power from one another. Maybe magical ones could do something similar?

You’re my mate, Finn, and you are strong, and kind. You’re a protector. Protect your pack now, from him. Her soft inner voice, filled with confidence in me, with something that might even be love, had me straightening. It didn’t matter if it was my imagination, or her inside me. She was right. I was strong, and I had lived my whole, broken life as a protector of my little sister.

My father wasn’t strong on his own, not without calling on the pack’s bonds at least. I’d grown taller than him years ago, and bonding with Flor and my brothers, and Grigor, had given me an even deeper core of power. Why was I still afraid of him? It was time to put aside the Finnick I had been—Finnick McDonnell, son of a weak Alpha.

I was Finnick Dimitrivich, brother mate to the most feared of all shifters.

Father flinched as I allowed my wolf to peek out through my eyes, assessing him. “You dare?” he hissed.

The crowd around us was growing quieter again, the drama unfolding here more than they’d believed possible. I was almost certain half of Eastern was laying bets on my death. Why wouldn’t they? I’d laid down for Father like a dog for my whole life, to protect others. Now, I had to do the opposite.

A cold burst of wind whipped through the crowd, and Father’s eyes went wide, his fist clenching twice at his side. His trap, whatever it might be, was about to be sprung.I tensed, but replied firmly. “I do dare, at last. How shall we fight, Father? In skin or fur?”

For some reason, more than one shifter in the crowd coughed, and it sounded like someone stifled a laugh. Father’s eyes cut across the gathering, forcing them to silence, and when he turned back to me, his face was as red as his hair. Was he ashamed ?

What the hell?

My mind spun. Father almost never shifted into his wolf in public, and hadn’t for years. He wasn’t the most physically imposing shifter in his human form, not a behemoth like Brand, but he was strong. His wolf hadn’t been weak either, or at least I didn’t remember it being so. Though it had been years since I shifted with him, at least five years now.

Why would anyone in our pack dare to laugh at that simple question? I blinked furiously as it dawned on me. I’d assumed he’d taken fur for pack runs during my absence, but maybe he hadn’t. Maybe his wolf had grown weak. I thought of the time I’d walked in on Mother with two lovers, and it clicked. Their infidelities had consequences, it seemed.

“I don’t need my wolf to kill you. You’re a weak fool.” Father stripped off his shirt, then gestured for help. “You two, drag this trash away,” he spat, meaning Bradley.

Flor snarled from where Brand held her in the circle of Enforcers, but the two who came to take the dead Alpha away lifted him respectfully, one of them dropping his eyes to me as well, though he made sure Father didn’t see.

For some reason, he wasn’t paying attention, instead strutting past the gathered Easterners. I was instantly suspicious. He was stalling for time, and I knew why when I saw a dozen shifters sag as he passed them, pulling their power into himself. Shit, he was draining his Enforcers… Wait. It wasn’t just his Enforcers who made up the first line of gathered shifters. As he passed by a second time, more than one young woman in a maid’s uniform was pushed forward. Some of them fell to their knees as he walked in front of them, their energy fully drained. One of them passed out, and was kicked behind the row by a burly guard I knew well from the lower levels.

A small whimper from one of the other maids reached my ears. “She’s dead. He killed her.”

Fuck. Shifters could heal from almost anything, under the full moon. But the moon didn’t reach inside this spell.

I needed Father to get angry with me and start the challenge fight before he could siphon enough power from the gathered pack to defeat me, or before he drained the vulnerable past their ability to heal inside the spell.

“Stalling, Father? Are you afraid?”

He scoffed. “You were born a fool, and you’re about to die one. This pack will never be yours.”

“Maybe that’s for the best. This pack is almost entirely corrupt,” I replied calmly, pulling off my own shirt. “Maybe I should burn it all down and start over, once I’ve put you in the ground.” His eyes widened in shock when he saw the bite mark Flor’s wolf had put on my neck, close to my collarbone.

“The whore’s fucking you, too?” His question was a hiss, but the shifters around us heard.

“Flor, you mean? No, never,” I answered honestly, and swallowed hard. I needed to fight his control, so at least the shifters nearby would hear the truth in my next words. They needed to doubt him.

I am Finnick Dimitrivich , I reminded myself. He is not my Alpha. To my surprise, I realized it was true. The Alpha bond was a wisp of a connection, nothing more.

Of course it was. After an Alpha challenge was made, the Alpha could not draw on the challenger’s bond, if they were from the same pack, which meant… Holy shit. The commands I’d been burdened with, not to share what went on in my pack, my family, were nothing but thread, easily broken.

I could speak the truth out loud now, and let everyone hear.

I raised my voice. “Though you would ask that kind of question, wouldn’t you? I’ve walked in on your true mate fucking more than one other male how many times now? At least three, and from the sounds and smells in the Mansion, Mother has been unfaithful for a good decade. As have you.”

That was all it took. My father’s eyes blurred into a mixture of his and his wolf’s, and he readied himself to attack.

“Now, now, dearest son, is that any way to speak of your mother?”

Brand whirled on his toes, snarling as he faced the source of the words, and I saw just where Niall had gone.

He marched in front of Mother now, escorting her to Father’s side. But not just her, a group of males I recognized, though two of them shocked me. Armed with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other, Niall sneered as he approached, but my gaze was on the shifter behind him. One with silver teeth that glinted when he lifted one lip as he passed me, then carefully concealed them again, ducking his head.

Ivan, the Russian wizard. She’d brought him into the heart of our packlands. Behind him marched four dozen shifters dressed in strange camouflage, with Cyrillic writing on the shoulder patches. They smelled of silver and blood, and the rest of the crowd shrank back as the stench grew thicker.

The air itself grew warmer, as if the weather outside had been cut off again. Wait. It had been. The bubble that kept the moon’s power from reaching us, that had kept Luke from taking on his father’s Alpha strength, had opened for her, then closed again. I needed to break that spell, somehow. But first I needed to understand what she’d done to create it.

Wearing the black vicuna wool pantsuit she loved best, with heeled black boots and an odd, ragged fur stole I’d never seen before, her hair done up in an immaculate bun, Mother stopped in front of me, assessing. Her lip curled, at the state of my clothing, I assumed. Or maybe it was at the mate mark on my neck. She didn’t speak, though. She’d taught me that the first one to break a silence was the loser of the battle of wits.

I didn’t care. I wasn’t fighting her way anymore, not measuring myself against my parents’ bloodthirstiness or intellect. What mattered was my heart, the bonds to my mate and brothers. What mattered now was saving them, and all the shifters in our care, from this Long Hunt. The vulnerable and the young who were not here now, and who could never stand up to her innate evil or magic, were what I fought for.

“How?” I asked. She tilted her head, waiting for me to elaborate. “How did you cut the Council ring off from the rest of the world? What kind of sacrifice did this take?”

Her smile was the one she had given me so rarely, when I’d done a particularly thorough job of torturing one of the shifters she’d assigned me during my training, as her tool. As part of her evil. “Always such a clever boy. It took time, and blood, of course. Almost too much of mine to recover. But I had to have the power to forge a new future for our family, after all.”

Her voice was strangely muffled, and I could tell no one heard her words but me. Then she flicked a tassel at the neckline of her black stole. It was fur. Wolf fur, and I recognized the scent that rose from it when she touched it.

“Torran?” I managed to ask, though bile rose in my throat. “Your lover?”

Her lips curled into a smile, but her eyes were pained. “A true sacrifice has a real cost, son. As you’ll discover soon enough.” I had no idea what she meant, but I knew I had to do whatever it took to make sure I never found out. “Hello, Aidan, darling. Sorry to be running late. Are we dealing with traitors and rogues yet? Because I found one that our Council has been looking for, lurking right outside our pack’s border.”

Niall snapped his fingers, and two of the Russians stepped from the back of the newcomers, hauling Glen between them. He was unconscious, blood running freely from small wounds on his neck, but still breathing, from what I could see and hear. There didn’t seem to be any other obvious wounds, but the ones on his neck were enough.

“Give him to me!” Brand snarled, and the Enforcers did just that, half-throwing Glen onto the bloodsoaked earth of the ring where Brand and Flor were being guarded. Flor started cursing as she crawled to Glen, her hands moving over his body, hissing when she noted the blood that ran from his neck only to vanish. It was the same type of wound Brand had worn; it was feeding Mother’s power.

“Bearman?” Flor asked, her voice strained.

Brand growled louder and lifted Glen off the ground, cradling him in those massive arms like a baby. Flor stood at their side, her teeth bared as she stared Mother down.

My own wolf was beyond rage, entering the cold, calculating place I’d built from years of torture and harsh lessons. My only goal was to kill every one of my enemies. Every hand that had been lifted against Flor, or Glen, or any of our loved ones.

I thought of the “arrangements” Grigor had described. I understood it completely now. We’ll have flowers for the rest of our lives , I promised my wolf silently, waiting. Watching the most dangerous enemy, the one who needed to die as soon as possible, and who would be the hardest to kill.

Mother. The sacrifice she’d made had given her evil a strength that was sickening. To my wolf’s eyes, she glowed with power like a dark moon. No, like a red moon, pulsing with stolen blood.

I couldn’t take her on alone. Not even with Brand by my side, and the others. Cut off from the moon’s power as we were, trapped in this circle, surrounded by silver and enemies, we had no way to win.

Mother was a psychopath. But she could channel her power into Father, now that she was here, and help him in that way in the fight against me. I could defeat him, possibly even after he’d juiced himself up on the strength of our gathered pack. But both of them, when Mother was bloated with magic, wearing her own lover’s pelt on her neck, and carrying his strength in her veins?

Fuck. I’d waited too long to start the fight.

We needed our own unhinged brother, and fast. I reached in my mind for Grigor again, pushing at the bubble that cut us off from him. I could almost feel him, racing toward us, reaching for me. Listening to my thoughts—no, my heart. He couldn’t read my thoughts right now, but maybe my magic, our shared blood, would cross the divide.

I sent a call out in my blood— run, run, run —each beat urging him to go faster, filling the command with urgency so he would know.

“What is that?” Mother sucked in a breath and peered up at the sky above us, then back at me in suspicion. She stepped toward me, greed twisting her features. Hunger.

I blinked once, then dropped my eyes, even stooping over as I used to when she was doing what I now knew was feeding off my power. I let my hands tremble and tilted my head to one side submissively.

I needed her to think I was as weak as ever, though I could feel the strength in my blood now. Her gaze flicked back to Father as the crowd began to grumble, even our own pack’s Enforcers uneasy with the introduction of our sworn enemies in the middle of what was meant to be our most sacred place.

“I brought some unexpected allies with us,” she announced, dropping a cool kiss on Father’s cheek and taking up her place at his side. “Ones who have sworn themselves to the North American pack, under your leadership. They want nothing more than to move past the ugly history we shared, and forge a strong alliance for the future. I would like to introduce General Ivan, our newest ally.”

The general, dressed in fatigues I’d seen before when he’d struck me with magic outside the Northern packlands, marched across the clearing to kneel at my father’s feet. No, he kneeled between both my parents, his gaze moving between them. “I come willingly, Alpha, with no purpose but one: to join with you and your Council and lend you my pack’s power in your time of need.”

I’d known he was working in collusion with my parents, but seeing him march into the very heart of our packlands, boldly passing through the crowd to appear before the Council Head? My own shock was echoed in the deep, fearful silence that came from all those around us. Not even the whisper of a breath could be heard as the general bowed his head.From one side of the shallow bowl of the Council ring to the other, the entire gathering stared at the two of them, wondering what was happening.

When my father reached out a hand and helped Ivan to his feet, a stern, benevolent expression on his face, no one but me could see the glint of victory in his eyes. “I welcome your assistance, General Ivan. Alpha Ivan.” He clasped the man’s arms and pulled him close, both Alphas staring into each other’s faces. It was an even match, and when Ivan dropped his gaze to the ground, the gesture was obviously perfunctory.“Who did you bring with you to our alliance, Alpha Ivan? Who can we count on for assistance as we root out the true danger to the North American pack? The power-hungry, lawbreaking shifters in our midst?”

“I bring the East, Alpha McDonnell. I bring a final end to the old war, and a true alliance with the pack who have been reaching out to you for over ten years, hoping for a partnership.” His voice rang with truth, but he had to shout over the crowd to be heard as he finished. “I come on behalf of the Alpha of Novosibirsk, to offer any aid you request, in exchange for a permanent alliance.”

A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Of course he was working with the same Alpha my parents had sold Tana to. The Long Hunt meant they had made promises and forged connections at least a decade ago that were only now coming into play.

“That alliance is a gift. In return, and as a sign of our new relationship, our daughter Tana will join your pack as Alpha Mate.” For a split second, I feared she had been found, but the sour pursing of Father’s lips betrayed the truth. She was still safe, though perhaps not for long. If Ivan knew Tana had vanished, he was careful not to react.

Niall made some sort of complaint, but fell silent. The crowd exploded into noise for a long moment, but it was no louder than the sound of my own heart beating. I understood what this was. The Hunt was over. My father had gained control over the North American packs, made certain there was no one to challenge him, and then delivered us into the hands of our enemies. His secret allies.

The gathered pack members, even our own Enforcers, were clearly horrified, but there was nothing that could be done. The Alpha’s rule was law, and they listened helplessly as Father went into detail about how this was possible, legal , quoting obscure changes to pack law that had made it so. Changes he had quietly, consistently introduced over the past two decades as minor amendments, ostensibly to protect the North American packs. But put together, they subverted the intent of the law to keep us from allying with the Russians. I’d known the changes were part of his Long Hunt, but had never once imagined the depth of his treachery. Or his stupidity.

The Russians could never be trusted, not even if there were a thousand mate bonds connecting our packs. As Ivan slid his eyes to me, his teeth carefully hidden beneath his lips, I suspected there was another, even more repugnant deal that had been struck, one that would not be announced. Mother was a magical ally, and with so few witches left alive, her spells must have been delicious bait for the insane, revenge-hungry general.

The only thing that kept despair at bay was knowing that Tana was safe, somewhere in Europe. Well, that and the voice of my brother mate, Grigor, who was whispering—not into my mind, but into my blood itself—as the Russians bowed, giving their vows of allegiance to my father one at a time. I come. Delay. Prepare.

I whispered the words into Flor’s mind, and to my great relief, her head dipped slightly, though the Enforcers tightened their fingers on the triggers of their guns at even that small movement. She could hear me. Brand was holding still, his wolf enraged, but perfectly in control as he protected Glen. He wouldn’t do anything to risk him, or our mate.

But it wasn’t only her in danger. Grigor had whispered to delay, but I could feel my father’s power increasing as each Russian vowed to follow and protect him and join our pack.

When they were done, Father turned to Luke.“Now, you can join us as well, and bring the impoverished, beleaguered shifters of Southern into this powerful alliance. Luke Callaway, you have earned the name of Alpha of the Southern pack. Come and make your pledge, then receive the power of Alpha as well.” His words were carefully chosen; this was a transaction, the power conditional on Luke’s vow.

Luke’s hands trembled at his sides as he stepped closer to Ivan, though not with fear. He was so filled with righteous rage, he couldn’t contain it. But when he bared his teeth and drew in a breath to reply, Mother cut him off.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Aidan. He’s bonded to a witch. One who’s ensnared more than one hapless Alpha Heir, claiming them all as her ‘true’ mates. As if one could hold that sacred bond with more than one. She’s here now, possibly controlling them all for some wicked reason.” She called out over the crowd, “Isn’t that right, Florida Witch Wills?” Father’s outward expression was one of deep sadness, but I could almost smell the satisfaction as one more trap was sprung.

“You callin’ me a witch, bitch?” Flor replied every bit as forcefully. The shifters around her were backing away more frantically than they had when Ivan had entered the ring, which I found ridiculous, though my wolf approved. She was far more dangerous than any Russian army.

“Aren’t you?” Mother replied, shrinking back in mock fear, even stepping slightly behind Father.

I should have known what would come next.

“This may be painful to hear, Elina, but look at our son. He challenged me, and made terrible accusations. I’m afraid her corruption has struck at the heart of our family, our pack. Perhaps if she is taken care of, we can still save him.”

Somehow, Mother managed a tear. I watched it roll down her face, as false as the moonlight that shone without any power on us all.