Alpha's Child (8 page)

The transformation was complete in two seconds, and the scent hit his nose before his front paws even hit the ground.

“Blood,” he growled. “Stay behind.”

Dee shifted as well. She gave off a different scent in wolf form, a coarse, earthy scent. Damien placed them in his mind by their presences. Dee stayed beside Julia as Damien ran ahead.

He quickly found the source, a damp wetness of blood underfoot at the edge of the trail. This was where Jordan had been attacked. The smell of blood was so heavy that Damien could taste it, rusty and nauseating.

Trying not to let anger overwhelm his senses, he plunged into the forest, his nostrils working feverishly as they skimmed the ground. Small branches lashed his face and he scraped against one tree trunk after another but he barely noticed. Julia was behind him—he could feel her mounting fright even as he tried to ignore all emotion. The trail. Stick to the trail. Find Jordan.

Up ahead, the soft rustling of foliage stopped — a clearing. No sooner had he noticed this than a fresh wave of scent washed over him—blood. Jordan’s blood. So much blood.

There’s no way he could survive that much
—

A half growl, half groan escaped his throat as he batted the thought away. He stepped forward into the clearing and his paw sank into wet ground. Blood-soaked earth, so wet it had turned to mud. The smell of other wolves was here, too, and the smell of fear. The smell of death.

A whimper up ahead made his heart clench and his head snapped up, ears rigidly upright. He hadn’t scented Jordan yet but it sounded like his voice just ahead, yes, just ahead of him. Damien’s head swam with both excitement at the thought of finding Jordan and terror at the thought of what condition his best friend might be in. Damien moved forward quickly, the danger of other wolves forgotten.

“Jordan?” Damien said.

Yes, it was him, sprawled in the mud, his body radiating sickly heat. His breathing was so faint that Damien had to bend his head down to hear it. He moved his snout over Jordan’s matted fur, assessing the damage. Jordan’s body was shredded with long gashes from which blood was still leaking freely.

“Jordan, we have to get you back,” Damien said. The tense quality of his own voice scared him even more. He heard Julia and Dee behind him but couldn’t smell anything. It was the blood, filling his nostrils so thickly that it blocked everything else out. “I’ll carry you back to the house. You can tell me what to do—”

“Damien?” Jordan’s voice was strangled, weak.

“I’m here, Jordan,” Damien said. “I’m here. It’s going to be okay.”

“Damien, love,” Jordan breathed. “Leave now. I’m dying.”

“No,” Damien said. “No.” He didn’t know what to do. He needed to stop the bleeding but didn’t know how, didn’t even know where to start. Jordan’s heartbeat was rapid and feeble, the flutter of sound coming muted through his wet pelt. Why were Julia and Dee not helping? Damien couldn’t sense them at all anymore. Everything was blood, blood.

“So many of them,” Jordan said. “Run…you need to run…”

“Wolves? How many?”

“More than twenty.”

“Twenty…” The word came out in a despairing, groaning exhale. Damien’s paws and snout were soaked, and his cheeks were wet, too, wet and hot with tears, and they ran down and mixed with the blood and he was pressing against Jordan’s body, what was left of it, trying to hold his dying friend together. Then for a single flashing second, he felt their connection, blazing between them like a supernova, and he felt the love emanating from Jordan and the pain, too.

“Jordan, please…”

“Run,” Jordan said, and Damien cringed at the fear in his whine. “Run.”

“Jordan, no—”

“Run!
”

The raw terror in Jordan’s voice whipped through Damien’s wolf body and made him intensely aware of the sounds around him. A high wind whistled through the trees above, the air seething through the branches.

Julia was in danger. He had to protect her. He had to protect
them
.

He rose from Jordan’s body, the wind chilling his wet fur and sending shivers skittering down his limbs. He tried to think and sense clearly but Jordan’s fear intruded and he had to push it away. There were no other wolves around now, not that he could sense. Still…

“Damien…” Jordan’s low growl was barely audible. The fear had dissipated, replaced by a peaceful ebbing of emotion.

“I’ll always love you,” Damien said.

Jordan’s emotions wrenched through Damien in one last surge, then faded into nothingness. It wasn’t a weakening of the connection. He was simply gone.

“Jordan?” Damien rested his snout on the still body underneath him, turning to hear. Jordan’s heart was silent.

Damien would not have been able to see even if he were not scarred, for tears filled his blind eyes and streamed down his cheeks. Jordan was gone
.
Jordan, the wolf who’d nipped his ears when they were both pups and had just learned how to shift. Jordan, who’d come with him after he lost the fight that cost him his eyes, who’d saved him from death time and again. Jordan, his best friend. Damien could never have imagined losing him, could not have fathomed it, and now…now he was gone.

Damien raised his head and howled, the cry rising into the pines and twisting into the dissonant wind. The sound seemed like it might go on forever, but finally it faded.

As he lowered his head, Julia called his name, a hushed, uncertain call. Strange—he could not feel the connection to her as well as before. It seemed to flicker in and out. Perhaps his connection with Jordan had temporarily interfered with—

The thought jolted him like a full-body electric shock.

Why was Jordan left alive?

“Damien!” Julia cried, and then the full force of their connection slammed back into place. Her fear gripped him at the same time that the scents swirled in his nostrils. A dozen—no, two dozen—no, more—

Wolves
.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Julia

Julia’s legs stopped moving of their own accord well short of the tree-line, refusing to enter the scene that awaited them in the clearing beyond. The ground around Julia’s feet was white with frost as though it was winter, pure and glistening, but in the clearing there were great swathes of scarlet, like some grotesque art installation. The centerpiece was a motionless mass of tattered fur, sprawled in a steaming bath of blood. Julia instinctively put her hands across her belly protectively, her throat gagging.

Damien was in the clearing, sniffing the ground. He had not yet reached Jordan. It tore at her heart to see her mate groping his way toward his lost friend. Damien probably still had hope that his friend could be saved. He couldn’t see what Julia did. Couldn’t see that there was no hope.

Julia’s maternal instincts screamed at her to flee from this place of death as fast as she could, but she could not leave Damien here, not now, and Jordan had been her friend too.

She took a step forward, but Dee moved in front of her. “Let him say goodbye,” she whispered.

Damien was now standing beside Jordan and moving his head back and forth over the body as if he didn’t know what to do. Julia tried to send him her love across the distance between them. She tried to feel his anguish in a desperate attempt to take some of the weight off his heart.

But something strange was happening. She’d thought she understood the Calling by now, but the connection that had been growing ever stronger between her and Damien had frayed as they followed Jordan’s trail. Now it was flickering in and out. Or was she imagining it?

Damien howled. The sound seemed to tear its way out of his throat, so raw and full of anguish that it froze Julia’s blood. Dee stiffened at the sound, her hackles rising.

But no—Dee wasn’t reacting to Damien’s howl. She was looking in another direction.

Julia whipped her head in this direction and found herself staring into a pair of yellow eyes glowing through a tangle of bushes just ten yards away. She turned to bolt but there were eyes that way too. They were all around her.

Lithe, sinewy wolves slinked forth through the trees, jaws dangling open hungrily, eyes burning out of their jet black fur like hellish embers.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Damien

Julia. The twins. He had to save them. Damien’s mind raced but it had nowhere to go. He considered attacking the pack as a diversion, sacrificing himself in hopes of allowing Julia and Dee to escape, but that was hopeless.

And yet, if the pack intended to just kill them, they would have pounced by now. What did they want?

“My pack is larger than yours,” Damien said loudly, on the meager hope that this was not Trax’s old pack but an unfamiliar one. “If you kill us, they’ll hunt you down.”

“We know who you are,” said a cold voice, “and how many you are.”

The wolves were in a broad ring around Damien, some of them growling deep in their throats. Their bloodlust was palpable, but they came no closer.

Except one—presumably the new alpha of one of Trax’s splintered pack. This wolf’s stride was slow and casual, almost languid, his paws dragging slightly along the grass with each step. Damien could sense the bulk of his weight as he strode across the ground.

“My name is Grath,” he said. “And you are Damien, the Blind One, are you not?”

“Let the females go,” Damien said. “This doesn’t concern them.”

“I beg to differ,” Grath said. He was walking around Damien in a small circle, no doubt relishing how helpless Damien was.

Out of desperation, Damien considered lunging for Grath’s throat. If Damien killed him, the others might not know what to do; they might accept Damien as their new alpha. On the other hand, they might rush him without hesitation and tear him to bloody shreds.

“Are you not the alpha of your pack?” Grath said with something like disgust and something like skepticism in his growl.

“I am.”

“And you were…
crying
?” The wolf said the last word as if he’d never imagined having to use it.

Rage boiled up inside of Damien.

“He was my friend,” Damien said.

Grath gave a low grunt of distaste, and Damien could picture his sneer.

“An alpha does not have friends,” the wolf said. “He has subordinates. Subordinates, mates, and enemies, and that’s it.”

“How I run my pack is none of your concern.”

“Perhaps, but how you conduct yourself in certain other matters of leadership
is
my concern.”

“What do you mean? What do you want?” Damien asked.

“Not here. The whole pack must bear witness. Start running. North.”

“Whatever you want from me, you’re not going to get it if you hurt them.”

Grath gave a bark of laughter as if the notion was ridiculous.

“The females will not be harmed. Now shut up.” He rose his voice to address the pack: “Others of his pack may try to track us. Be prepared. Let’s move.”

They started cantering north through the woods. Damien followed the sounds of the wolf directly ahead of him as best he could, but he still frequently slammed into tree trunks and crashed through bushes. Every time he did, the wolves surrounding him would cackle. Damien was pretty sure the wolf ahead of him was purposely passing as close to trees as he could and hurdling bushes just so that Damien would collide with them.

It was humiliating, but when he slowed down at all, the wolves behind him snapped at his haunches. Soon his sides were bruised and aching and his face was bleeding from scores of scratches.

Julia and Dee were behind him but he said nothing to them, not wanting Grath to know how much he cared about them—he would be more likely to use them as leverage. Grath had said the females wouldn’t be harmed, and Damien had gotten the impression he wasn’t lying. He took some short-term comfort in this, but not much.

Even though he was not interacting with Julia, and even though their connection was still flickering for some reason, all he could think about was her. Thoughts of her forced out the fear and drove him onward with teeth-gritted determination. He didn’t know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he did know he would stop at nothing to keep her safe. Ideally he, too, would survive for her sake, and for the sake of their unborn children…but that was not his priority.

What did Grath want from them? What was he planning to do to them? He’d said the whole pack had to bear witness. To what? Was he going to execute Damien as a show of force, maybe torture him first? Whatever Grath had in store for them, it wasn’t good.

Throughout the journey, Damien racked his brain for some brilliant plan, but none came. He was outnumbered, blind, powerless; it was maddening. All he could think to do was try to reason with Grath. Short of that, his goal was simply to stay alive as long as possible and hope that an opportunity to escape would arise, or that Mara, Katherine, and Kyle would track them down and figure out a way to rescue them.

Finally, the pack and its captives slowed down as they approached a heavy concentration of wolf scent, presumably their den.

“We fight later,” the wolf said.

“Fight?” Julia’s voice was scared.

“Fight?” Damien asked. “Fight who?”

There was no response.

The alpha was huge in human form, his weight thudding audibly when he stepped.

“Will you fight?”

Damien frowned; it was a strange question. If Grath wanted to fight, there was nothing stopping him from attacking Damien. But if there was any hope of resolving this, it would be through negotiation and words.

“There’s no need for us to fight,” Damien said. “You have your territory; my pack has my territory—

“That’s the question here, isn’t it?” Grath asked.

“There is plenty of land to go around.”

“Not many females, though.”

Damien’s blood chilled and simmered at once. “You can’t have them.”

“Then you’ll fight?”

“If we fight, I’ll kill you,” Damien said, filling his voice with a cool confidence he didn’t feel at all.