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

Chapter 3

Running out of Time

FLOR

M y bond with Glen buzzed like a plucked guitar string as Brand’s meaning sunk in. Glen ran a hand through his mussed blond hair, pushing the loose strands away from his face. “Killing an Alpha outside of a challenge would be against Council law. Pack law. Aidan is bound by that, by his own oath.”

“That Alpha has never been bound by a law he couldn’t find a loophole in,” Sergeant replied calmly. “He could have Bradley executed by order of the emergency Council tomorrow night, or have him killed beforehand in the lower levels by one of his minions. But I think he’ll wait. If Bradley dies on the full moon, with no Heir in attendance, there’s a strong chance Aidan could receive the Alpha power over Northern. It’s not how the Council normally does things, but it’s legal, as you know.” He nodded when Brand sat up in his chair.

Shit. “Brand was Samuel’s Heir. That was different.”

“Shifters without an Alpha will turn rogue,” Sergeant said, playing devil’s advocate. “I’m sure he would claim he was doing it for the good of the pack.”

“He’s right,” Brand whispered. “In the absence of an Heir, the power can be given to another Alpha. Glen was still the official Heir when the Hilliers were taken, but he was declared rogue. As good as dead, according to pack law.”

“What about Patrick?” I asked. Glen’s brother was ready and waiting to be named the Northern Heir. He was young, but would make a fantastic Alpha someday.

“Declaring a new Heir has to be done before the full Council. The last one to do that was Callaway, with Luke,” Sergeant replied. Luke had been adopted into the pack when he was a child, when Bradley was the Council Alpha. Back when no one knew Callaway had a mate who could even bear him an Heir.

“Fuck a damned duck.”

Sergeant’s lips twitched. “Exactly. We have to assume the worst. Not only that Aidan might take Bradley’s Alpha role after the meeting, but that he in fact is planning to. That he may even use Margarette’s safety to force Bradley to step neatly into his trap.”

I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to scream, rage, shout every cuss word I’d ever learned, and cry all at the same time. Brand’s hand closed around my wrist, and I realized at some point, I’d taken my steak knife out of my belt and was gripping it, ready to use.

Glen let out a shaky breath, and I grabbed his hand. Both of us were shaking as Brand spoke. “We’ll assume Aidan has held onto Callaway as insurance, as Sergeant suggested. That if Luke refuses to go along with Aidan, he’ll be killed and the Alpha power will remain with Callaway. Aidan might even find some way to force Luke back into the role of Heir and use Callaway’s Alpha power over the remaining Southern shifters to assign his own handpicked leader. The older McDonnell males were all cut from the same cloth. They wrote many of our laws, and Aidan will have every loophole and technicality ready to use.”

We all went quiet. It was becoming clearer by the second to me that the Council needed to be destroyed entirely. And maybe not rebuilt.

“Can we just… act like the Council doesn’t exist? That we’re just fighting Finnick’s asshole parents and their pack? There’s more of us than them, right? Mountain and Northern won’t go along with them. Even Southern—what’s left of us—won’t support Aidan.” Saying Finnick’s name aloud made the claiming mark he’d left on my neck ache slightly, but I ignored it.

I zoned out of the conversation for a moment, thinking of my Eastern mate. Wondering what had made our bond feel so painful, and now fragile, almost as if it was fading. I pressed my hand to his mark and sent a thought to him, or tried to. We need you. I need you. Hold on.

I might have been imagining it, but I thought I felt something bounce back, like an echo. Yes. He would help us from the inside, if he could. At least I hoped so.

Brand murmured, “Hope is good. Finnick is as well. Don’t doubt him.”

“Stop reading my mind,” I whispered back.

Glen and Sergeant were arguing about the political ramifications of attacking Eastern and taking over the Council. Glen got up and started pacing. “Aidan was the one assigned to liaise with the Alphas from the other countries. He’s the one with the connections. If Brand goes in there with an army, with the biggest pack in the world, and with those silver eyes, you know what they’ll say. They’ll say he’s the next Alpha of Alphas, and they’ll all come for him. For us.”

The Alpha of Alphas had been Grigor’s father, centuries ago. He’d been a true monster and a despot, forcing all the packs on that side of the world to bow to his perverted rule. Grigor had killed him and gone on to become even more of a legend, though I was certain he didn’t deserve a reputation as blackened as his was. For the few months I’d known him, he’d only killed shifters who more than deserved to die.

Sergeant nodded in agreement. “Six thousand shifters, you said? That’s almost a quarter of all the wolves left in the entire world. I wouldn’t be shocked if Eastern has allies on their side, lined up and ready to move against us.”

I thought of Ivan. “Allies like the Russians? Ones with magic? Witches, even?”

Brand shrugged. “I would put nothing past him.”

Glen paced faster, cursing under his breath.

“If it wasn’t us about to get buried under a whole ocean’s worth of shit, I’d be impressed with his planning,” I said. “This kind of hunt for power? He’s been planning it for a long time. It’s evil, but it’s clever.”

“Too clever,” Glen muttered. “Aidan isn’t the genius in that family.”

“No,” Brand said. “That would most likely be Elina, Finn’s mother.”

“Elina?” My mind started to spin. The woman who’d been here, who’d showed up during the battle. Torran had called her Mistress. She was his boss.

Elina was Finnick’s mother. I let myself remember her high-heeled shoes, and her icy voice, calm even as she stood in the middle of a bloodsoaked field.

“Yes,” Brand said, seeing her in my mind. “That’s her.”

“Sergeant, have you ever met her? Did you see her at the battle?”

He frowned slightly, probably wondering why I was asking. “No. She was gone by the time the Tenebris pack arrived. To my knowledge, she never came to any Conclaves at Northern. And I never traveled to one after Bradley’s father gave me sanctuary.” I wanted to ask a whole lot of questions about that, but now was not the time. “All I know of her is that she mated Aidan at the Conclave Eastern hosted eight years after the Betrayal.”

The Betrayal. He had been there, had witnessed everything. “The Southern Conclave, where all the shit hit the fan and Western was thrown under the bus? You wrote about it, but the details of exactly who did what to cause the fight were sketchy.”

Sergeant let out a long, slow breath. “I’ve never spoken about it. I couldn’t, not when almost every shifter in the pack had been commanded not to speak of Western, or magic. But I didn’t want to speak about it either. No one knew I was from there. Your parents hid me, in exchange for my help with… many things.” He and Glen exchanged a solemn look. “Some of which I should not have done. I gave up honor for safety and solitude.”

“You’ll have a chance to regain it,” Glen replied.

I tapped the table, something bothering me. We were missing a clue, and I had a feeling it was all tied into that old Conclave. If Aidan wasn’t the smart one, Elina was. And if she was as good at strategy and planning as Finnick was supposed to be…

“How old is Elina?” I wondered aloud.

Brand answered. “Older than my parents. Older than Aidan as well. She must be close to sixty.”

“Sergeant, you wrote about the fight. You said your father was killed with silver. By treachery. That your mother went mad with grief and…”

“And led the rest of our pack to our doom. Yes.”

Brand’s voice was quiet. “Can you tell us the story?”

Sergeant’s brow furrowed, and his voice was gruff. “Someday. But now isn’t the time for stories. We have to act.”

Glen ran his hands through his hair in frustration, pulling my attention back to the here and now. “We need more time to plan. We can’t go racing in there with Enforcers, and get slaughtered. Maybe end up facing guns again. They’ll have traps ready for us. We’ll lose every advantage. But if we wait, my parents will be…”

“They’ll be fine. I’ll start out for Eastern today,” Brand said, his moon-bright eyes on mine. “And I’ll go alone.”

“You said—” I began, then bit my tongue to keep from sounding like some whiny brat. I knew he had to go. We couldn’t let the Hilliers die.

“Flor. Wildflower.” Brand’s voice was raw as the others stepped away, giving us a moment. “If there was another way…”

“I know.” He’d promised he would stay with me from now on, and I could see in the lines of strain on his face what this was costing him.

I also knew it was necessary, but I couldn’t get the words out. Then I remembered I didn’t have to. I get it, Bearman, I thought to him, as the others quietly spoke about the logistics of feeding and housing the Mountain troops once they arrived. I’ll be okay. Save Luke. Save Margarette and Bradley. Get Finnick to help. And… you know. If you can.

His eyes gleamed with love and resolve. “I’ll have to start out as soon as possible, and drive through the night. The rest of you can plan. I’ll find a way to delay the vote. I’ll buy your parents some more time, Glen.” He sighed. “And yes, my love, I’ll try to find where they’re keeping your psychotic little stalker.”

“How will you delay it?” Glen asked.

“I can pretend that I’m considering putting my pack under Council rule again, but insist on a revision of some of the wording of the vow.” Brand smiled. Well, he bared his teeth, anyway. It was a terrifying expression.

I loved it.

“If that won’t work,” he went on, not smiling now, “I can tell them the truth. That my pack doesn’t support the new ways, and that the North American packs stand to lose three thousand Mountain shifters if they won’t work with me.”

“Three thousand?” I asked. Mountain had six thousand or so shifters. “What about the rest?”

Brand’s smile turned to a full-blown snarl. “They seem to have forgotten, when they insisted I come now, that only half the pack calls me Alpha. They’ll be greedy for the whole pack.”

“Half the pack is on its way here, Alpha,” Dean said. “What do we do with them when they arrive?”

“Whatever Flor says. She’s their Alpha Mate.”I sputtered, until he stopped me with a kiss. Then he stood, with a nod to Dean. “Call Dad and Patrick on the sat phone and tell them what I’m doing. See if they have any good ideas.” Dean nodded and jogged off. “Sergeant, I’ll stall for as long as I can. I’m going to need you to plan some sort of attack, or rescue mission, if I get stuck inside. Work with Flor. Listen to her if she has one of her wild ideas. She’s sneaky.”

I grabbed his arm as he tried to step away. “Brand. What if we can’t come up with a way to get you out? To get all of you out? What if they lock you up, like the Hilliers?”

He hesitated, his eyes gleaming a tiny bit brighter for a second. “I don’t think Finn will let that happen.”

“That piece of shit,” Glen snarled.

Brand kissed the top of my head. “Finn is a lot of things, brother, but?—”

“A cheating asshole for one,” Glen interrupted. “We can’t trust him. Flor, you don’t trust him, do you?”

“I do,” I said, surprising myself as well as Glen. “I know he hurt me. But I could tell… I think he was being hurt. Hurting himself worse. Whatever he did wasn’t his choice.” I wrapped my arms around Brand for one last kiss, then whispered, “Tell him that for me, when you see him. Make sure he knows I get it.”

“How can you be so forgiving?” Glen asked as Brand pulled away.

“I lived a long time in a pack where people had to do terrible things to protect the ones they loved. Where pride and dignity were as out of reach as… I don’t know, filet mignon. Don’t get me wrong—if it turns out he chose to do that, without being coerced? I’ll snip his balls off, dry them into raisins, and wear them as earrings for the next few decades.”

I forced myself to turn away as Brand left the dining hall, not sure I could watch him walk away. Not sure I could bear not being with him.

But I would have to.

I felt a surge of love in our bond as the door shut behind him, and then Glen’s arms around me. I pulled away after a moment, knowing I needed to keep busy, or I’d collapse. I’d slept the night before, but was still exhausted. Fear had a way of sapping energy, and I had been afraid for my mates and myself for a long time now.

“Break it down for me, Sergeant. What resources do we have, if it comes to a battle?”

“Half of Mountain will be here in the next few days. We could divert them to Eastern, but it will still be after the full moon. Our own troops are nowhere near ready. We have thirty-two starved Southern males, seventy-six untrained Southern females. The Tenebris pack has twenty-four left alive after the battle.”

At least six of their small group had died. “I’m sorry for your losses.”

“They died with honor, serving their Alpha,” Glen said quietly. “The moon will sing them home.”

Sergeant nodded. “We still have three gravely wounded. Flor, that number includes your mother.”

“Mama?” I remembered Torran stabbing her with a silver blade. I’d assumed it was a superficial cut, since she’d kept on fighting like she was fine. When I said as much to Sergeant, his eyes gleamed with pride and sorrow.

“Lily’s pain tolerance is higher than any shifter I’ve ever seen. She was tortured for years by your father.”

“Don’t call him that.” Callaway had never done anything to deserve that title.

“By her mate, then. Torran sliced across her midsection with silver. Her liver is compromised. Flor, she may not live through the week.” His expression was haunted. My mother was his niece, and he’d only just found her again.

I’d only just found her again. “I need to see her.”

“Of course.” Sergeant didn’t meet my eyes.

Glen took me by the hand as Sergeant led us down a hallway to a room that I’d been in before, after my first battle at Southern. There were two rogues standing outside, both armed with swords. They nodded at me and Glen, murmured, “Alpha,” to Sergeant, then let us in.

“Mama?” I asked quietly, uncertain what kind of reception I’d get. Sometimes I was a stranger to her now, sometimes an enemy. Once or twice, she’d seen me as her daughter. Of course it had always been hard, with Mama. Even when I was a little girl, she’d looked right through me more often than not, her mind broken by her mate’s infidelities.

She lay on the bed, white bandages wrapped around her abdomen, and a sheet up to her hips. Her hair, almost as white as the sheets, wreathed her face on the pillow as she gazed out the window.

But when I spoke, her golden eyes swung to me. Taking me in.

I held my breath, until she asked, her voice shaking, “Is that you, my baby girl?” Her lined face creased into a smile as she recognized me. “I’d know those eyes anywhere. I’ve missed you so much, sweetheart. So much.”