Page 4 of Rising Reign (The Wolves of Crescent Creek #3)

WREN

Music blared from somewhere outside, carrying with it the sounds of drunken revelry.

It took a lot of alcohol to get a wolf shifter drunk, but the Red River pack was always up for the challenge.

Bastian’s bloodlust must have been satiated by whoever battled after me, turning him on to different entertainment.

I lay on the bed, knowing I should try to sleep but terrified to shut my eyes. Hera’s words echoed over and over in my mind. “Be ready.”

I was scared to let hope find a home in my chest. Afraid to believe the guys might be planning some sort of rescue mission.

Just thinking about it had fear grabbing hold.

The Arcane pack had five wolves. Red River consisted of almost one hundred now.

It was no contest. The guys would be slaughtered.

Everything in me twisted, pulling taut. I couldn’t be responsible for something happening to them. Couldn’t handle a world without them in it.

My door swung open, and I leapt to my feet. The knife Hera had given me—tucked into my side beneath the jeans someone had laid out for me—flared hot with my awareness of it. But I didn’t reach for it. Not even when Marcelle strode into the room.

His upper lip curled. “Your father wants you at the party.”

I didn’t say anything. Figured that was my only weapon at the moment. But I braced, ready if Marcelle made a wrong move.

He grabbed my arm and hauled me downstairs. “Bastian thinks that healer knows all, but I think we could beat you bloody, and you could carry my young all the same.”

I did everything I could not to shiver as nausea rolled through me at his words.

Marcelle waited for me to say something, anything. When I didn’t, he let out a low growl and dragged me outside. “I’ll be hearing you scream in no time.”

His words sliced through the loud country music, and I knew they’d live in my nightmares forever. Marcelle hauled me through the crowd as people danced and drank. Couples made out or ground against each other—a few were even having sex out in the open.

Bastian sat on the dais again, watching it all, Lilli at his side and Hera hovering nearby. My stomach flipped. I wanted to believe I could trust her, but trust didn’t come easily to someone like me.

Marcelle continued shoving me through the crowd until we reached something that hadn’t been there earlier. A fucking cage. He grinned at me. “Your father wants you here, but he’s not taking any chances this time. Get inside.”

I didn’t move at first, still too shocked by the metal bars that looked like something from the Middle Ages.

Marcelle hauled open the door and shoved me inside, then turned the lock and pocketed the key. “I’ll be seeing you, Little Flower . ”

The music got impossibly louder, making my ears ache. The other wolves here likely didn’t care because of their drunken states. Bastian seemed unaffected by it; he simply sat and watched the debauchery play out in front of him like his favorite show. Bastian loved two things: pleasure and pain.

At times, I wasn’t sure which he enjoyed more. But looking at him now, I knew it was pain. He looked on as his wolves drank, danced, and rutted, but he didn’t enjoy any of it as much as he did the brutal fights.

Movement caught my eye, and I managed to duck at the last possible moment as a bottle flew at my head.

“Might be a traitorous bitch, but she’s fast,” a man I vaguely recognized slurred.

Bastian cackled. I knew the sound so well that I could pick it out through the music and voices. Pleasure in others’ pain. That made him the happiest.

“Cunt,” a woman accused, throwing whatever was in her cup at me.

Some sort of red punch splashed over me, sticky and smelling sweet with a hint of alcohol. I gnashed my back molars, and my knife burned a hole in my side. My fingers itched to pull it free.

“Traitor!” a man yelled, hurling something at my cage. I managed to duck again, realizing it was a fucking rock.

Bastian howled with laughter. “Tell me, healer. Could you cure someone with a hole in their head?”

Hera’s lips thinned. “That steps too far.”

“Pity,” Bastian muttered. “I’d so enjoy seeing it.”

A familiar whizzing sound pricked my ears—something so faint I almost missed it. And then they fell. The man who’d thrown the beer bottle. The woman with the fruit punch. The man with the rock.

They all collapsed to the ground, arrows sticking from their chests .

My gaze flew to the trees, the only place the projectiles could’ve come from, and I thought only one word: Ender.

Chaos erupted. Enforcers raced for my father, moving to get him into the house, and he ran like the coward he was. But only after barking orders at everyone else.

Other Red River pack members began to fall, but only the ones taking up fighting positions. Many of the wolves simply fled because they had no true loyalty to Bastian.

The mountain man who’d offered to fight me shifted into an equally massive brown-and-gray wolf and ran for the trees. My stomach sank at the thought of him going up against one of the guys. They’d be okay. They had to be.

Sounds of fighting past where I could see erupted, and the panic dug in.

A familiar wolf with piercing green eyes ran at a Red River man, pointing a gun at the tree line.

Puck leapt into the air, grabbed the man by the neck, and shook him like a rag doll.

A second later, the man fell, his eyes vacant as blood dripped from Puck’s mouth.

Movement flashed in my peripheral vision. Another familiar figure emerged, but this one had dread pooling low in my gut. Marcelle prowled toward my cage.

“You think you’re going to get free, little bitch?” He slid a key into the lock and jerked open the door. He was fast—so fast I had no chance to block him. The blow to my cheek had me staggering back, and then he grabbed me by the throat. “I’ll kill you before I see you free.”

“No,” I wheezed. “I’ll kill you .”

I grabbed the knife from my waistband, flipped it open, and shoved the blade deep into Marcelle’s chest. His eyes went wide with shock, and his grip on me loosened.

And then he fell. I kept a hold of the knife as he crumpled to the ground.

Blood seeped through the material of his shirt and spilled onto the dirt beneath him.

Dead. I’d killed him.