Page 42 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 41

Taking His Place

GLEN

T ime stood still.

“Mom!” My scream seemed to go on for hours, Mom hanging in the air in front of my eyes, the sword jutting through her abdomen.She didn’t speak, though her mouth dropped open as the pain hit, but her eyes said everything.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Pride and sorrow, pain and even joy—that she had been able to save me. It flickered there as she fell, her swords dropping from her hands. I lunged forward, catching one of them mid-air, spun, and sliced across the neck of the Enforcer who’d struck her. His own eyes went wide with shock as his body and head were separated in the suddenly bright moonlight.

I tried to catch Mom, too, before she hit the earth, but at that very instant, a rush of power electrified me from head to toe. I opened my mouth in a silent shout as connections to a thousand wolves rushed into me. No, it was two thousand, and each one was a shifter I knew. I’d trained with them, fought beside them, protected them.

It was my father’s power, the Alpha power of the Northern pack.

How was this possible? I was a rogue. I’d abjured my pack. I’d left them…

An answer to my unspoken question flickered in my mind, a memory from one of the others, perhaps? Brand, or maybe Grigor. I wasn’t sure. Patrick had been declared the Heir, but the moon’s power had been blocked from this hellish place when Dad had spoken the words.

Somehow, I was Alpha. I fell to my knees, stunned, until a soft hand landed on my leg. Mom’s hand, the nails bloody and cracked, her fingers bruised and raw.

“Mom, be still.” She was alive, though the sword was still wedged in her body. I stooped lower, cradling her head in my hands, careful not to move her. The bonds kept rushing into me as I held her, and I trembled. I felt her, too, as part of the pack, inside me.

She smiled gently and mouthed the word Alpha. Her vow bound her to me, her fading power connecting with mine as that one word served as her pledge.

Her love filled my mind in a way I’d never felt before. I didn’t just know she loved me without condition—I felt it in my marrow, in my blood.

Connections kept pouring into me, every shifter in Northern being tied to me, to my soul, and I shook under the intensity of it. “How?”

She mouthed the word Alpha again, her hand going slack, eyes closing.

“No!” I shouted, desperate to save her. “Don’t go to sleep, Mom,” I demanded, and a hint of Alpha command was in my voice.

Her breath rattled in her lungs, but she obeyed. No, her wolf did. She blinked up at me, dark irises glowing slightly, the full moon that sailed above reflected in her pupils.

Command her, my own wolf snarled. The pack needs her.

Command her to live? I could. I was her Alpha; she had made her pledge. I could command her to do anything, though I wasn’t certain she would forgive me for it.

We need her.

“Mom. Keep breathing,” I tried, but I didn’t have enough Alpha power yet to stave off death, and she was truly dying. A part of her wanted to go, to be with her mate.

But my wolf insisted. The pack needs her still. It wasn’t clear what pack he meant, but he howled at me to act.

“Breathe,” I shouted, but the light in her eyes, still fixed on me, was fading.

Shifters poured into the ring all around me, and I recognized their howls as they began to fight. Northern was here, or at least some of them. Mountain as well, their outsized wolves tearing into the guards who had circled me and Mom.

Bullets whined, and bones snapped. The screams and snarls of battle surrounded us.

I heard Patrick’s howl of agony as he encountered our dad’s fallen body, and felt his rage deep inside me, in our pack connection. Patrick was the one who should have been Alpha. I called his name, and he was there beside me, kneeling, shock coursing through him as he saw how badly Mom was injured.Our eyes met, and a whole conversation passed in an instant.

I didn’t mean to take your place, little brother.

His wolf snapped. Alpha, it was always yours. The moon doesn’t make mistakes. Out loud, he said, “Alpha, I am yours to command.”

The connection was instant, his strength flowing into me… and trickling to Mom. Her chest rose again, the light in her eyes flaring dimly.

I needed the pack. “Pledge!” I shouted. “Northern, to me. Give me your vows!”

Instantly, pack members began appearing, shouting their allegiance. “Alpha, I pledge!” “Alpha, I am yours!” “Alpha, you are mine!” They fought their way to me, some of them touching me with one hand, each contact like a defibrillator, shocking my body. Mom jolted, too, though, and blood gushed as the blade shifted inside her abdomen.

I turned my head toward Patrick, though I couldn’t focus my eyes. “Take the sword out.” He did so carefully, quickly staunching the blood with a cloth that appeared in his hand, given by one of the Eastern kitchen staff who dared to come close enough to help. In the distance, I could hear shrill screams as other girls and women were injured and attacked. They had to be cannon fodder, warm bodies that Aidan had brought to the fight, and he was most likely using them just now as that.

I felt Finn’s rage and knew he was fighting his own father, trying to wrest control of the pack from him, and save the girls—save all of us. He was surrounded by enemies, even though reinforcements had arrived.

But I had my own fight to win.

More Northern pack members appeared, giving their pledge before flinging themselves back into the melee, forming a protective circle around Mom, Patrick, and me. There were at least a few dozen, and a few of them had true mates back at Northern, though it didn’t seem to matter that they weren’t here in body. Those distant mates whispered their vows through the bonds, each new strand a stream of pure energy filling me.

The vows made the power that had entered me with the moon’s brilliance flow like a turbulent river in a spring thaw. It felt as if the power was destroying a part of me inside as I channeled it, funneled it into Mom, chanting, “Live, breathe, you will stay for the pack. I command it.” It was like reaching into a flood to pull her out by one hand, or her hair, and instead of rescuing her, I was drowning myself.

Dying, alongside her.

But suddenly Grigor was there, in my soul, anchoring me. Grigor, and then Luke, Brand, and Flor. Even Finn, who I had been so angry at, for hurting Flor, but whose soul I could feel was fully devoted to her.

All of them tethered me as I fought to withstand the pull of power, and death, and grief. I let them hold on and used every scrap of the Northern flood to push life into Mom, as Patrick held the cloth to her stomach.

“Live,” I commanded again, my voice a crack of thunder in the night. I set my hands next to Patrick’s on her chest, envisioning the power that I’d been given, even if I didn’t deserve it, flow into her. “Live for the pack.”

Her chest rose and fell once, twice. Then, in a flash, her eyes snapped open. “Alpha.” There was accusation and allegiance in her tone.

I knew why. She’d been close to joining Dad, almost in his arms again. But I knew how to force her to live. “Mom, they’re killing the girls, the servants. The women. They have no one to protect them. There are too many enemies, and not enough protectors.” The words felt cruel on my tongue as I spoke them, but I had to. “Get up, and protect the pack.”

She let out a rage-filled scream and rose, her face pale, the scar that stretched across it as silver as the glint in her light eyes. I blinked, wondering if her eyes were like Brand’s now. But then she’d turned her face away, swords retrieved from the ground, and was wiping her own blood from the blade that had eviscerated her on her trousers.

She snarled at my brother, who blinked up at her, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Defense, the way we trained with pups this fall. We need to get them together here, then take them… there.” She pointed to the edge of the ring, with two tall pines that had grown together. We all knew what she meant. The trees would act as protection from rear attacks, and if we formed a double circle, a shield of warriors, in front, the girls would be safe behind us as we traveled to that patch of relative safety. In the fall, Flor had worked with our youngest on climbing and hiding in the treetops. We all knew this drill.

Reaching into the pack bond, I sent a command out to Northern. “Protect the girls, the women. Gather the vulnerable. They are pack.” I pictured the twin trees and called out, “Follow the Alpha Mate.”

There was slight confusion as the wolves stumbled, unsure. Oh, shit.

Flor was the Alpha Mate now.

“My mother,” I repeated. “Go! Follow my mother!”

Someone shouted, “ Alpha’s mother! ” and the wolves all swiveled their heads to her.

Mom snarled again, like the phrase hurt her. I growled back. There was no time to argue. My pack members darted into the battle, then Patrick and his fighters whistled for Mountain troops to help. They began working in tandem to trip up the Easterners—and even some of the strangers—who had grabbed girls and were using them as shields. As soon as the fighters tripped, smaller shifters, dressed in ragged clothing, darted in and grabbed their fallen weapons. Even the guns.

“Tenebris! Tape the guns!” I knew that voice, though the order made no sense. I nearly smiled as I grabbed a fallen dagger. Sergeant was here, fighting with his Tenebris boys.

Well, fighting or doing a craft project. I watched one of the rogues peel up the end of a roll of duct tape he wore on one skinny wrist, and wrap it around the gun a dozen times, until the weapon was useless, trapped in a ball of dull gray tape. While he did that, another two boys did the same thing around the fallen Enforcer’s ankles and wrists, ending the job with a solid strip of tape around the cursing Easterner’s mouth.

“Sergeant!” I called, but just as he turned to me, something punched me in the back once, twice, then a dozen times.

It was agony, but one I’d felt before, and with my newfound power, I wasn’t in any danger of falling. I screamed in anger and turned, knowing what I’d find: a shooter, standing close behind me.

I was wrong. It was a firing line, three Eastern Enforcers, holding their guns on me, still firing. Half the bullets were hitting me. The other half flew wide, peppering the Tenebris boys and even the crowd of girls who’d been huddled together.

The night split with fresh cries of pain from young throats.

The rogues flung their bodies over the girls, some taking the bullets in their backs, others grabbing the maids and running with them toward the trees. Then, as suddenly as they’d begun, the bullets stopped. A giant shadow fell over the gunmen, and another smaller, darker shadow appeared beside them, wrapping around their throats and slitting them all in the space of two seconds.

My brothers. They stepped up to me, each one placing a hand on one of my shoulders. I looked up. Brand was… changed. His skin was patched together like Frankenstein’s monster. I wasn’t sure how he’d survived what had been done to him, but then I saw the way Grigor gazed at him. Protective and with a warmth that was unusual and unexpected.

Brand’s silver eyes glowed so brightly, it almost hurt to look at them. Grigor’s were red as blood. Creepy little fuck.

“Little brother.”

“Hey, Joaquin,” I replied weakly, the silver inside me making me tremble. “Know any magic tricks for making silver disappear?”

“As a matter of fact…” He sent a pulse of power through my body. All the bullets that had been caught inside me were ejected suddenly. It hurt like fuck, before the power of my pack rushed through me, healing me instantly.

“How is Margarette?” Brand asked. “Where—” But Mom had loosed an unmistakable howl from the edge of the fight, drawing the enemy to her, while the others got the girls of Eastern and the boys of Tenebris to safety.

“She’s angry but alive, and I’d like her to stay that way,” I replied, before shifting into my wolf form.

“We’ll make sure of it,” Grigor said gently, but then went still. “Brand? Help Glen. I may need to assist Finnick.” He was gone before Brand could reply.

I nudged Brand with my snout. He responded by shifting into his own wolf form, massive and dark brown, like the loamy soil of the deep forest, but with silvered scars intersecting all over his coat. Proof of what he’d suffered to protect the pack so far.

I howled my promise to do every bit as much, if I needed to. The abuses, the imbalance—it had to end here tonight. And it would start with us keeping the smallest members of any of the packs from suffering even one more injury or injustice.

Thirty wolves howled along with me, through muzzles as well as human-shaped mouths, and the battle began to shift as Northern did what it had failed to do for years.

It protected the weakest ones.