Page 37 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 36

Lines Crossed

FLOR

A s Finn’s father talked himself hoarse about how his son had failed him, something had happened. I’d started to feel… stretched inside, like an overfilled balloon. What was filling me wasn’t air, though, or water, or anything so safe or neutral.

It was rage in its purest form, similar to the feeling that had blanked out my mind and made time stand still in battle for me before. My head pounded, my eyes ached, my vision grew red-tinged, and my gums burned as my fangs descended slightly.

Kill them all, my wolf encouraged. Use me again.

Use me again? Those three words had me hesitating. So it had been her, during those battles. Her wildness, her strength and fearlessness. Her magic.

Yes. Kill them all. She was so certain she could do it, cut down every one of the shifters who stood in this circle with us, beginning with Ivan and Aidan, and ending with Elina like the cherry on top of a murder sundae. But that single-mindedness was something Del had trained me to fight against. He’d taught me to think about battles before I fought. Run when I had to. Hide. Plan, so that I would walk away, and my enemies would not.

A soft, muffled sob caught my attention. Vanya had fallen to the ground when Aidan strutted past like a fucking power vacuum, jabbering like a pompous fool in front of the Russian general, and stealing almost every scrap of her energy with a careless wave in her direction.

Del and Sergeant had taught me to plan so that the innocent didn’t get caught in the fighting.

Use me!

Not yet, I replied to my wolf’s silent urging, as the behrserker rage ballooned. But soon.

It was almost impossible to hold still, to keep from shifting into my wolf form and tearing into the shifters around me. But I managed, knowing the moment hadn’t arrived. We weren’t all here, and I forced my wolf to acknowledge that. Grigor wasn’t here yet.

She settled reluctantly, and the scar on my chest burned with liquid fire as the ballooning rage began to disperse, traveling down the arms of the scar somehow, and out. To my mates? Maybe. Whatever my wolf was up to, my vision returned to normal, and the stretching feeling eased a bit.

As I caught my breath, I noticed Vanya being pulled away from the front lines of the circle by hands—Becca’s, maybe. Then silently, as Niall stepped toward Finn, the servants who’d been closest melted back into the crowd, far enough back that I couldn’t see them.

We were surrounded entirely by enemies now, but my focus was a hundred percent on Elina. The Russian general, the Eastern Enforcers, that fucker Niall, even Aidan—they were all nothing compared to her. She’d gone too far, and she had to pay.

“Is there nothin’ you won’t do, Elina?” My voice was a growl as my lips moved almost without my permission. My wolf wanted to take charge, use a weapon? One of my best was my sassy Southern mouth, and I gave her the reins. “You got all these pack members nervous as cats in a room full of rockin’ chairs, can’t you see that? Bringin’ that creepy Ivan here and smilin’ like you didn’t just drop a turd in the punchbowl. You just gotta suck up every scrap of power, dontcha? I’d say bless your heart, but I wouldn’t mean it, and I ain’t all that sure you’ve still got one. Is there any line you won’t cross? Any crime you won’t commit?”

Elina tilted her head, like I was a monkey who’d done a trick. Curious like a wolf, though her eyes remained fully human. “Isn’t that what I should ask you? You’ve even ensnared my useless son, and for no reason that I can tell other than to add to your own power. Why did you claim them all? How could you do it? How did you?” The last question was the only one she wanted answered, and she waited as she held out a hand to the nearest Enforcer, who handed her his sword, moving like he was in a trance.

Wait a sec. She’d said that all out loud? I let my eyes flick to the guards around me, suddenly realizing they weren’t looking at her, or me. Aidan was talking behind her to the crowd as she approached, graceful even on the uneven ground. Ah, fuck a duck. She’d done some magic shit.

None of my mates were looking at her either, except Brand, who had Glen in his arms. He began to put him down, and I thought, as hard as I could, Don’t. Keep him safe. I’ve got this.

I hoped he couldn’t hear the lie in my voice. I so did not have this, but my wolf was raging that Glen had to be kept away from Elina. She’d done something to him to knock him out, and had a hold on him through the wounds on his neck, which meant he couldn’t defend himself. Brand was the only one in the world I’d trust to keep him safe right now. Well, him or Grigor.

Elina moved even closer, no one reacting as she did, so I figured she was using a look-away spell. Power practically poured off her with every step she took, and I wondered how she’d managed to hide it all these years. Might as well ask. I needed to stall for time, and if there was one thing a villain liked, it was the opportunity to monologue.

“How did you ?” I let my eyes go wide, like I really gave a rat’s ass. “You’re so damned strong. How did you manage to fool your pack, all the packs, for so long?”

She stopped moving, and another odd bubble formed around us as she smiled, the air between us and everyone else going weird and wavy for a split second. “It’s all about bloodlines, of course. I’m a direct descendant of the greatest coven that ever existed, and the Russian Alpha of Alphas, who was the strongest wolf ever born.”

She paused, and I sucked in a breath. Keep talking, keep talking. “Wait, that means…”

“Yes. You mated into my vastly powerful bloodline. You see why I can’t let you live.”

“M-mated?” I didn’t have to hide my shock. She knew I was mated to Grigor? That had just happened today. Those fucking cameras in the lower levels…

“You think I can’t smell you on my son? You marked his neck, but I could sense you’d claimed him before now, though I couldn’t tell how.” She waited.

“Ah. The tongue,” I said, like I was sharing a favorite recipe. Inside, I was cheering. She didn’t know about Grigor, thank the moon. “I bet you didn’t check inside his mouth.”

She blinked, then laughed out loud. “Very clever. I almost hate to kill you.”

“I almost hate to die,” I snapped back, circling a little as she stepped almost within arm’s reach. “I thought you came from some weak little pack in Florida.”

Her lip curled. “You’re not altogether wrong. My wolf father was a weak Alpha. My witch mother was the powerful one, though he never saw who she was. Well, not until she drained him.”

I didn’t ask what that meant, but I had a suspicion it was the same thing Grigor had done to the guards in the lower levels.

I let out an exaggerated sigh. “Seems to be a common failing of shifter males, I guess. They can’t see past their penises to recognize how strong the females in the packs are. Stronger than them, a lot of the time.” Her smile changed, almost genuine now. I rushed on, stepping casually to the side. “Your mama was descended from the Alpha of Alphas, then. I’ve read about that guy. He was the father of Grigor Dimitri?—”

She cut me off with a hiss, as her eyes flicked toward the Mansion. She still thought he was in there. She didn’t know he’d gotten out. “Do not speak his name.”

“Okay, okay.” Lady, I wanted to say. I’m not just speaking it. I’m screaming it, in my mind. Though with her this close, and the bubble of silence, I couldn’t tell if he was still on his way. What if he’d been hurt, or trapped again? What if he was just too far to get here in time?

Nothing will keep me from you, he’d promised before he left. I had to hold onto that. That, and my own damned skills at bullshitting and fighting, if it came down to it.

I let out a low whistle. “Yeah, but you’re descended from that guy. No wonder you’re so strong. But your mother, she was Verbena, right? Verbena Flock.”

A flicker of what might have been pain moved through her gaze. “Yes. She taught me everything she could before she died foolishly. One of the most important lessons was how to hide your true self. Your true name. It’s the only thing that kept you alive all these years.” She sneered, her arched brows moving into a scowl for a moment.

I shrugged. If her mother had been outwitted by my stupid fuck of a dad, then she’d deserved what came next. Not that I said that out loud, of course.

Elina was obviously still pissed about it. “When I learned what he’d done, I wanted to rip his head off to see if his brain rattled around like a peanut inside that skull. The only way he could have circumvented that vow was if he truly believed he’d fulfilled it. Florida Witch . What kind of an idiot names a baby Florida Witch?”

I still hated my name, but I might’ve liked it a little more now, witnessing how mad it made this bitch. But she was getting closer to attacking, I could tell. I needed to delay. I thought about what Del had taught me about bait, and distraction. I needed to give her a little fresh meat to keep her talking.

“You’re tellin’ me. Yeah, Callaway wasn’t the sharpest nail in the box. Good thing my mom was a badass, bein’ an Alpha Mother and all that.”

She went still. “That’s how. That’s where your power came from! She was from the Western pack, I discovered that. But now, it all makes sense. She was the last Alpha Mother. By the moon, I’m sorry she died before I arrived here. The power of her death would have fueled me for a year.”

This bitch here was talking about devouring my dead mom? She couldn’t die fast enough.

But it wasn’t time. I forced my wolf down, shoved the growing pool of power and incandescent rage back inside me, knowing if we attacked now, we’d lose. We were still too close to Glen, who was helpless right now, and she’d put up that second bubble, keeping us hidden away from everyone but Brand, it seemed like.

I also had to figure out exactly how I was going to take her down on my own once she got sick of talking. I had my steak knife, but I was pretty sure she’d have some spell that could melt the steel before it broke her skin, or something equally fucked up.

Elina swiped at me with the sword, giving an annoyed grunt when I ducked her quick stroke. But she wasn’t trying all that hard to kill me. Why not? “You would have killed Mama, then? Not just drained her, like you did your own children?”

“Oh, has Finnick been whining about that? And here I didn’t think he’d ever figure it out.” Her smile grew savage as she pulled a four-inch-long silver dagger out of an odd, dark arm sheath. I hadn’t scented the silver at all, though that may have been because there was so much of the stuff around already.

We’d circled to where my mother lay. I’d covered her up, but someone else had slid her sword under the shawl at some point. I’d noticed it earlier, though the cloth had obscured all but the very edge of the hilt. I could almost hear Del’s voice in my head, talking me through what came next. I would have to pick the right moment to grab the sword, and I couldn’t go for her throat. I had to be unpredictable.

“Perhaps I would’ve kept her alive. Mother taught me not to waste power.”

There it was. She didn’t want to kill me. She was hoping to capture me, turn me into a shifter battery for her magic. “My mama did the same. When you’re poor like we were, you learn to make do with less. To put up with hunger and pain. She gave me so much, lessons on how to keep going when you don’t think there’s any hope left.”

“So tragic.” Elina lifted her sword, turning so the silver dagger was slightly hidden. I knew I had to lay out my own bait, and hope it was enough to stop her from trying to chop off my head for at least a couple seconds.

“Ya know, she wasn’t the last Alpha Mother.” I dropped to one knee and placed a hand on Mama’s chest for an instant, hoping Elina hadn’t noticed Mama’s sword under the shawl. “She gave that honor to me before she died.”

“ What? ” Elina breathed the word with amazement, like I’d just given her proof Santa Claus was real. She had to have heard the truth in my words. Even if I didn’t think anything had changed in me when Mama said it, I could tell it meant something huge to this bitch. “You, an Alpha Mother?” She lowered her sword slightly. “Put down your little knife, and come with me. I won’t kill you; I swear it.”

“What, so you can suck me like a crawdad head for the next year? I was born at night, but not last night. No fucking thanks, lady.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you die, my son could as well. And possibly Brand, Luke, and Glen. It’s a waste of so much potential.” There was no mistaking what she meant. A potential power source for her to feed off of. “Come with me back to the lower levels. I’ll let you live, and your mates.”

“You know somethin’?” I chewed at my lip and screwed up my face in thought, acting as dumb as she obviously thought I was. “My mama was crazy as a June bug almost her whole life. She never taught me much. But there was a guy who worked in the kitchen named Del. He taught me plenty.”

She had no idea where I was going with this. “How to cook?”

“Nah. But he did make sure I knew how to take out the trash.”

I snatched up the sword and drew my steak knife in the same instant, leaping away from Mama toward my enemy. I struck fast, almost knocking the sword out of Elina’s hand and avoiding the quick, perfect parry she executed with the silver knife.

“Ah, shit. You can fight, too?” I grumbled. Was it too much to hope I’d only be fighting a witch, and not some kind of a trained warrior one?

Apparently so. She struck out again, her moves as fluid as Finn’s had always been, but each one that connected, our swords and knives clashing, sent a shock up my arm that almost numbed me.

Was she stuffing her blades with magic? Probably so. Maybe I could… I almost laughed. I might have magic, and I might be bonded to more than one magic wielder, but I didn’t know how to use it. We parried a few more times, the crowd around us moving away, still seemingly unaware of the battle going on in their midst, until I managed to score a hit on her arm with my steak knife.

The scent of her blood filled the air, and I smelled… Glen. Glen, and a little bit of Finn, and a dozen other shifters I didn’t know. And not one hint of wolf.

“You’re not a shifter,” I gasped. “You don’t have a wolf?”

Her laughter was the only pretty thing about her as the realization hit. “Oh, I have a little wolf left. Just enough to keep Aidan alive.”

The cloud that had been over the moon moved, and the light that fell on me felt like a warning, and a command. What she had done was a crime against nature itself. I thought of the things my great-uncle had written in his diary about the imbalance between witchcraft and wolfcraft, and how that had been the reason all shifters were suffering. The North American packs had swung one way—exterminating any wolf who had witch magic, and cutting off the Western pack to keep their packs “pure.”

Elina had done the opposite. She’d nearly killed off her own wolf, giving her witchcraft all the power.

My heart ached for a moment. Her poor wolf. “Why would you do that?”

She cracked her neck. “You believe I should have let my weaker half rule me? I may have been descended from magical royalty on my mother’s side, but I was sired by the weakest Alpha alive. His weakness in me was like an infection. I flushed his blood out of me one drop at a time, little girl. If you weren’t such a fool, you’d see it’s the only way for a female to get to the top in this world.”

She really believed it. More than that, she hated her wolf side—so much that she’d suffocated it somehow. The fight between witchcraft and wolfcraft had been lost a long time ago in her soul.

As clouds passed overhead, beams of moonlight flickered on her face, sending ominous shadows that made it look like she was rotting on the inside. She was, I supposed. Half of her, or more, was dead.

Flor , Brand whispered in my mind. My heart leaped to hear him, though his voice was faint. She’s draining Glen.

Can you stop her?

Maybe.

I could tell he was worried, but I believed in him. I sent my faith in him, to take care of what needed to be done while I fought, down the bond. Do it.

He sent back a ripple of love and rage. Make it fast.

“Shut up and fight, Elina,” I snarled, shifting my stance. I had to end this bitch, and I couldn’t wait for Grigor to return.

For a moment, she had the same glint in her eye Finn had when he’d challenged me at Southern months ago, in the ring. Eager, and excited. She dropped back into a fighting stance, the sword in her left hand, the silver dagger in her right.

I mirrored her, glad that my wolf had finally settled down, the rage that filled her not pressing quite so hard on my insides. I could tell that Brand was about to blow a gasket, though, but he’d moved away enough that Glen wouldn’t be in danger.

Glen was moving, his head shifting in the corner of my vision, and my heart felt the tiniest bit lighter, though I knew better than to give him more than a sideways smile. I was facing a skilled, psychotic, magical opponent, who was watching me like a hungry hawk. If I lost my focus for even a second, I could land us all in a heap of steaming shit.

I gripped my steak knife and my mama’s sword tighter, and prepared to fight for all our lives.