Page 41 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 40

Late to the Party

GRIGOR

I ’d never run as fast as I did, returning to Eastern. At times, leaping over roadways and gullies, I was certain I flew.

“Help me to be what I should have been all along,” I whispered to the moon as I felt the blows my brothers were taking in that cursed ring. “Help me to be a protector. Give me the power to save her, save them, and I will devote my life to your children.”

I wasn’t certain if She heard my plea, but I knew that if we all lived through this night, I would spend the rest of my life trying to fulfill that promise. My feet bled, and I let the drops fall on the earth as a sacrifice to the moon. Tears streamed from my eyes in the cold wind, and I gave those away as well.

Maybe the moon accepted the gifts. All I knew was that as I ran, power began to flow into me directly from the full moon in a way I had never felt before. Clean, pure power, that seared my blackened soul as it healed me, and fueled me. I channeled every scrap of it into my race to save my mate, my brothers.

My pack.

In far less than an hour, I crossed into the Eastern packlands, drawing strength not only from the moon, but from tainted patches of land where evil deeds had been done, and left their stain on the earth. Healing the earth as I consumed the darkness.

An odd sensation began at my throat, like an echo of pain—someone else’s agony. Someone was shredding him. I knew it was Brand when I felt the powerful mind clamping down, cutting off the bonds, protecting us all from feeling the torture with him.

My gums burned as my teeth extended, rage filling me. No one touched my brother and lived. If he died… No. I refused to think of it.

Another few seconds,and I saw with my magical sight the powerful shielding spell Elina had created and triggered. It reflected the moonlight in a giant dome that arched above the trees and glittered against the sky. It was the reason I hadn’t been able to speak clearly to my bonded ones. I needed to tear it down.

Ahead, between me and the spell, however, there was an army. Hundreds of shifters, hiding just inside the tree line that stretched around the Mansion and Council ring. I prepared myself to cut a swath straight through them, obliterating any who stood in my way, beginning with the two who stepped out from the tree line. My arm was extended, claws out, red sparks already flying from my hands, as I realized my mistake.

“Leroy! Get down!” One of the shifters screamed the words and threw himself over the other, hiding him with his body, as I skidded to a stop and whipped my hand skyward, releasing the stored magic, almost too late.

In the next second, Sergeant was there, right behind them, his own claws out, his eyes burning. “Magician.”

I froze, my power making it hard to focus. “Alpha.”

“You’re hers.”

I was drawing a breath to answer when Flor whispered in my mind, her thought as soft as a butterfly’s wing as her anguish, and her love, managed to filter through the spell. If you’re gonna get here for the party, you’d better hurry. I’m afraid they’re about to turn the lights off and lock the doors.

I snarled at Sergeant, and at the hundreds of shifters who’d begun to emerge from the shadows of the tall pines, backing him up. “Let me pass. I do not want to hurt you.”

“The witch put up a spell, behind a barrier, a salt circle. I’ve been trying to get in, but these damned tattoos…” He indicated the patterns all over his body that cut him off from his magical birthright.

I didn’t have time to pity him. Flor was there, whispering to me. I want you to know, I love you, Grigor Dimitrivich. Even if you killed half the shifters in the whole world, I’d still love you. Does that make me evil?

No, beloved. It makes you perfect.

I exhaled, the moon’s magic still pouring into me, my own rage giving the pure energy a sharp, bloody edge. My little behrserk , evil? Never. But evil was what I was prepared to do if these well-intentioned shifters didn’t get out of my way. I held out a hand and gently picked up the two Southern boys who had fallen and were still holding on, waiting for their grisly end.

“Your magic would never work. I’ll tear it down,” I promised, already moving. “Follow me inside.”

Hold on, I told Flor.She was now professing her love to the others, and I could hear her desperation in the silent words.

I leaped over the trees and landed at the edge of the dome, cloaked in shadows. The spell had been made with the witch’s blood, but was being fueled by the ones inside. The innocents, the Enforcers, the Alphas… and my bonded pack. Their strength flowed through the ground and sky and into the dome, making it unbreakable. It was a diabolically clever, balanced spell, and would have worked, except for one thing.

Their blood was mine, too… as was Elina’s. And blood was the key.

I bit the palm of one hand savagely, then pressed it to the invisible surface, holding the other up to the moon. I opened up my tainted, murderous soul, let the moon shine her light into every dark corner, let it fill me… and then I let it flow through me.

The dome was there in one blink, and gone in the next. Without hesitating, I stepped forward into a world made of pain, none of it my own.

My bonds flared, and I was awash in sensation, my skin being scoured away by it, screaming in my mind at the intensity of it all. Brand’s physical pain at being mutilated. Glen’s grief for his parents. Finnick and Luke’s agony as they were held back by sheer numbers from Brand and Flor’s sides.

But my little queen was in the center of the pain, her soul bristling with courage, her heart thumping with a relentless beat. Hope. Hope. Hope.

I was at her enemy’s back before the next beat, freezing her in place before she could finish cutting into my beloved with her silver blade, and whispered a greeting worthy of the boogeyman of all shifters.

“Boo.”

The witch would have jumped, if I didn’t have her immobilized by the shadows I’d flung around her. Her fear filled the air around us, her whimper as I crushed the air from her lungs, a sweet, high sound in my ears that sailed over the roar of the crowd.

I disentangled her hand from my queen’s red hair. “It’s time to die, witch,” I hissed, as I noted the strands she’d ripped free, and the blood on my little mate. “I only wish I could make it last.”

Before I could kill her, my feet shifted, or perhaps the world did. One last, wispy cloud moved away from the face of the moon, and I was jolted by a wave of energy. Where had that come from? My answer came quickly.

Flor. She’d come into her power, and the moon was acknowledging Her daughter. Flor’s eyes glowed with bright amber fire, her hair floating around her face like she was holding onto an electric current, sparks of silver light racing along her skin. She was transformed.

She was a goddess.

In the next breath, my bonds with the other males went wild, the combination of power and pain almost overwhelming me as they drew on the power to heal and fight. I had to help them, but how could I leave Flor?This close to the witch, even with her trapped, I couldn’t afford to lose focus. I wouldn’t be drawn from her side again.

I tamped down the connections, tearing my gaze from Flor. “Time to kill a witch.”

“There’s no time. Leave her to me. Help Brand,” Flor gasped. “Save him.” She was absolutely right. The Mountain mate had closed off our bond, but here, I could smell his death on the breeze. I may have waited too long already.

“Yes, beloved,” I replied, sending a burst of healing energy through Flor before I popped up at Brand’s side. “You.” Instantly, I flung more shadows around the magic thief, Ivan, wrapping his limbs in dark cobwebs. He fell to his side, his jaw wide, silver teeth coated with blood. His entire body was soaked, and Brand… I swallowed hard as I kneeled beside my brother, who lay on his side in his wolf form.

I’d done worse to my enemies than what the silver-toothed fiend had done to Brand, but not by much. I blinked away something—was it tears?—before I used my hands to try and fold his fur around him. His heart wasn’t beating, only quivering, and I had no idea how he was still alive. His blood was everywhere but inside his body, the dirt around his matted fur turned to mud with it.

I didn’t waste time on the magic thief, who lay struggling at my side, or on the others who milled around us in shock. I didn’t hesitate. I pressed my still-bloody hand to the heart of my beloved’s first mate, and sent my own blood into the wolf’s trembling muscle, pressing down gently.

My healing powers had never been as strong as my destructive ones, and I knew I might fail. But I had to try. I forced more blood from my body into his, extending my fangs and tearing into my lower lip to allow more to drip down into the gaping wound.

Live. Live, brother. Live for her, live for us all.

There was no answer. My beloved’s heart still beat with hope, though, and I let myself listen to that cadence as I squeezed gently, moving the fresh blood into the chambers of Brand’s heart. I fed her hope into my soul, and my blood into his body, and felt something in my own innermost spirit change.

There was always a price for great magic, a balance that had to be struck. Now, I sensed the price that was being extracted, one drop at a time. Brand might live or die; I still wasn’t sure. But to make this attempt, I would lose something I’d taken for granted. My immortality.

My wolf had kept us alive for the mate we knew waited for us. He had kept my heart beating during the years when I’d killed indiscriminately, lost to pain and rage after Anya’s death. When I’d been able to listen, to hear him again in our shared soul, he’d assured me that another mate—a wolf mate—would come.

Wounded, I’d harvested power from the light and the darkness for centuries, hoarding it so that I could stay alive for him, for her . Waiting for that promise to be kept. It had been worth the wait.

She was worth waiting an eternity for.

But now, eternity was the cost of living with her and my brothers. I would pay it gladly, to save the most honorable shifter I’d ever known.

“Take it,” I whispered to the moon, then bit deeper into my lip, the cut I’d made there already healing. Take it, and save him.

I didn’t remove my hand from his heart. Not when his fur began to shrink back, lying in place more or less, on his wolf form. I didn’t stop squeezing until I felt the heart resist my hand. Then, and only then, I withdrew from his chest cavity, still bleeding into him, pulling the shredded fur over the savaged torso. The moon spilled down on us both as I kneeled at his side, unsure if he was alive.

Dizzy from my own blood loss, I waited, hazily aware of a battle going on around me. Shouts of “Mountain!” and “Tenebris!” split the air. Guns rang out, and swords clashed. Wolves howled and barked, and shifters cursed, but I didn’t take my eyes off of Brand.

Not until he turned his own head to me and opened his eyes. Brother, his wolf spoke into my mind.

Brother, I replied, before I lay beside him, my hand on his side.

I felt… old. My muscles were sore, my heart aching like it had been torn out and reassembled. My arm trembled, and when an Enforcer raced toward us, I wasn’t sure I could rise to protect either one of us.

But I didn’t have to.

“Fight me, ya ratfuckin’ piece of cougar dung!” It was the boys from the forest, the one named Leroy and… Bo, I remembered. They had been the youngest of my queen’s hunters, and were the weakest of the Tenebris pack.

But they had the most valiant hearts. Together, they flung themselves at the Eastern Enforcer, Bo rolling himself like a bowling ball at the male’s legs. Not a second later, Leroy leaped on his shoulders, biting his ear and howling like a banshee.

The Enforcer wasn’t some young pup, though. In an instant, he’d thrown the one on his shoulders to the ground and had his sword raised, ready to strike.

I lifted a hand, hoping whatever magic I could muster would be enough, but the first boy stood, though he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a midnight black wolf, skinny and lanky, with enormous paws and a shaggy head, his trousers still hanging in tatters around his furry middle.

Bo had shifted, though from the dazed expression in his deep brown eyes, and the unconscious shiver of his new, dark fur, I was almost certain it was his first time. To my surprise, he shook off the confusion and bared his teeth, leaping silently for the Enforcer’s hand and tearing it off with a giant crack. The sword fell to the ground, and the wolf rose to the male’s throat, ripping it out as cleanly as he had torn off the hand.

Leroy was up in a flash. “Bo! You’re a wolf! You got your wolf!” He danced around his friend, who yipped proudly, rubbing his bloodstained muzzle on his friend’s pants leg. They both turned to me as I rose on one shaky arm. “Your Unholiness, sir. Mr. Flower Arranger,” Leroy stammered, pushing Bo behind his legs. “We, ah, didn’t meant to stop you from, uh, havin’ your dinner, sir.”

Bo grabbed the severed hand and carried it over to me with a low whine, like he was presenting me with a choice cut.

“The hunt isn’t over,” I groaned as I rose. I meant for them to go and kill a few more Enforcers, but from the sheer panic in their faces, I knew they’d misunderstood.

“Sergeant, save us!” Leroy screamed and ran off, leaping around small groups of fighting shifters.

Fighting. Shit. My power had diminished, and that meant the witch might have gotten loose. Flor? I reached into my bond and saw her power shining red. She was in her wolf form, fighting Elina.

Well, if being thrown around the bloodsoaked ground could be called fighting. Luke had fought his way to her, and was watching the battle carefully, alert for bystanders who might shoot at her or attack once she’d beaten the witch. Not that any shifter would dare approach. He practically glowed with power, his father’s Alpha dominance combined with our strengthened bond sending any wolf he looked at to their knees.

Do you need help, little behrserk ? I asked Flor anyway.

I’ve got this, Flor thought. Go check on Glen and…

Ah, yes. My heart sank. Glen’s parents. And Finnick was across the ring as well, his father still alive. “No rest for the wicked,” I murmured to Brand.

He chuffed and stood, his wolfish head at the same level as my chest. His fur was a patchwork quilt of thick silver scars almost the same color as his eyes… though his eyes had a slight red tint to them now.

Across the crowd, Glen cried out, and the pain in his voice echoed in our bond. I shoved as much power as I could spare toward him, feeling Brand do the same, and then we both ran to help.