Page 2 of Rising Reign (The Wolves of Crescent Creek #3)

KINGSTON

I stared into the fire as it crackled. It should’ve been too warm to have one, but the Colorado mountains had turned bitterly cold surprisingly early this year—as if the mountains, too, were grieving the loss of Wren, crying out for her return.

My wolf howled inside me, raging against the walls I’d constructed around him.

There was no way I could set him free right now. I didn’t trust him not to turn feral and run straight for Louisiana. He’d head right to Wren and get us all killed in the process.

The pacing footsteps behind me grated, with their panicked quickness and desperate back-and-forth. I didn’t think Puck had stopped moving since Wren disappeared. “We need to move,” he growled.

I didn’t turn; I just kept staring into the fire as if it held all the answers in the world. “We need a plan. We need to know for sure if Wren is on pack territory, and we need reinforcements. ”

To anyone else, my voice would sound as if it held no emotion at all. Only I knew that each word was filled with agony. Failure. Guilt. Emotional destruction of the highest order.

The clicking sound intensified, spurred on by my words. “I’m trying,” Locke growled. “Their system is good, but if I can hack into their security cameras, I’ll at least know what we’re walking into.”

After the fire, we’d tracked the Red River wolves to the airstrip north of town.

But that’s where their scents—and Wren’s—had disappeared.

Locke had done his thing and hacked into the flight records.

They’d tried to cover their tracks by flying to Texas and then Kentucky, but the private plane’s final destination had been a small town several hours outside New Orleans.

I knew in my bones that Bastian had taken her back to Red River.

A fresh wave of agony slammed into me. Wren, at the hands of a monster, the same man who had done such damage to my sister that she’d taken her life. My mind couldn’t help but invent the worst images of Wren enduring all that and more.

My fingers tightened around the edge of the stone fireplace mantel. A crack sounded, and the rock beneath my hand crumbled to dust.

A palm landed on my shoulder, fingers squeezing. I knew by scent that it was the one person I least expected, Brix, the man Wren had healed in untold ways. Someone who’d been so averse to any touch that wasn’t painful now sought to comfort me.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered.

I shoved out of his hold and stalked away. Puck may have had it right with all the pacing. “Ender, anything from your source?”

He shook his head, his expression completely impassive. “He’s pulling all his usual lines. I’ll hear back as soon as he has something.”

Fuck.

Every second we did nothing was another that Wren lived in agony. My vision went blurry as fury surged. I moved without thinking, letting out a roar as I grabbed the antique coffee table and hurled it at the wall .

It splintered into countless pieces, shattering glasses of drinks and plates of uneaten food with it. The whole room went silent. The only sounds were the pieces of my destruction settling and the fire’s crackles and pops.

My chest heaved as I dragged in ragged breaths. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was. I’d failed Wren in the worst possible way, and now she was paying the price.

I charged toward the hutch against the wall, needing to shatter that, too. Puck, Brix, and Ender all moved in, Brix and Ender grabbing my arms as I battled against them, snarling and snapping.

“Fuck,” Puck muttered. “Should I get a tranq?”

We kept them in the medical room in case one of us slipped into a feral state, but the idea of him injecting me with one now only had me fighting harder.

Ender cursed. “Yes. Get it. Now!”

“Wait!” Locke yelled. “I’m in.”

Those two words ignited the barest amount of hope in me. A lead. Information. Something that could help us get Wren back safely.

The urge to fight slid clean out of me. Brix and Ender kept a hold of me, waiting to see if it was a false submission, but it wasn’t. After a few seconds, they released me.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m sorry. I?—”

“Bugger off,” Puck muttered. “I hated that table anyway.”

I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t make the sound. Instead, I rounded the couch, wanting to see the computer. The others followed. Locke’s fingers alternated between typing and using the trackpad. And then they stilled altogether.

“Fucking hell,” he swore, then expanded a camera view.

Wren stood before Bastian, who was on a goddamned throne, but that wasn’t what had Locke panicking.

It was Wren’s back. She faced away from the camera, which had to be tucked in a tree, and wore an oversized T-shirt that should’ve been white, given the color of the sleeves.

Instead, it was stained pink, red, and brown, with a mixture of blood and mud.

Wren’s scars played in my mind. Evidence of all the torture she’d endured at her father’s hand. And now she was back there. My back teeth gnashed so hard I was fairly certain I’d fractured a molar. But I didn’t give a damn. I only had eyes for Wren.

“We have to get her out,” Puck rasped. “We can’t leave her there.”

Brix’s breaths came quicker, more ragged. “I…am going…to kill…each and every one of them. I am going to bathe in their blood and put their heads on pikes.”

“Locke,” Ender said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Map out every camera location and watchpoint.” He looked at me. “They’re right. We can’t wait any longer.”

I knew he was right. It didn’t matter that we were up against a pack thirty times the size of ours. We’d find a way. “I’ll ready the plane.”

My phone rang as I pulled it out, but the sound was a notification for the gate. I frowned and tapped the screen. A familiar face poked out of an SUV window and filled my screen. “Hera? What are you doing here?”

Her pale-green eyes were hard as she stared back at me. “I know how to get her back.”