Darkmoon (#5) (The Cain Chronicles) (25 page)

Rylie spread her arms wide in front of the door. “Don’t you even think about it,” she said in a low, deep growl. Her throat was thick with tears. “What did you do to Abel?”

“He’s dead,” Cain said.

It felt like she had fallen from the top of a building and impacted the street a hundred stories below. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.

The wolf was happy to take over.

Its hulking presence grew to fill her heart and mind. Without the smell of her babies to distract her, Rylie could instead smell pine trees, icy rivers, and the stones deep within the earth of Gray Mountain. She smelled musky fur and moonlight. “You’re lying,” Rylie said. She stumbled over the words. Her teeth were loosening in her mouth.

The Union still hadn’t moved for the door.

“I told you to go get the werewolf pups back,” Cain snapped, shoving one of his men forward.

The man moved to pass Rylie.

She lashed out with a hand that had turned to claws and ripped his throat out.

Rylie hadn’t even considered killing him—she was too busy fearing for Abel, and wanting to go find him to prove that Cain was wrong. But the wolf was satisfied to watch the Union soldier drop to her feet and gurgle out his last breaths.

She sucked in a gasp when she realized what she had done.

The cavern was completely silent aside from the rattle in the dying soldier’s chest. And then he exhaled a final time and went limp.

It had only been three years since Rylie killed Jericho, the werewolf who originally bit and turned her, in order to save Seth. At the time, she had thought that losing Seth would be the worst thing that she could ever dream of experiencing, but it had been worth it. She hadn’t wanted to have to kill again. Not after that.

But as Rylie stood in front of the doorway and faced down Cain with seven armed men at his sides, she didn’t feel a single doubt. She knew what she had to do.

Cain had killed Abel. He would take her children.

Rylie was going to kill them all.

Cain broke the silence with two short words: “Shoot her.”

She shifted into her wolf form, and it had never been so easy to surrender before. Her wolf body was larger than her human form. In the long months that she had spent as a human, unable to change, she thought that her wolf might have somehow become bigger, too. Even on all four legs, she was eye-level with the hunters.

Rylie peeled back her lips and growled. She didn’t need words to tell them that anyone who tried to pass her would die.

“Fire,” Cain said.

Rylie jumped toward them.

A half dozen guns began to fire at once.

She was faster than the wind, faster than lightning, and most of the bullets missed. She heard them strike the walls and ceiling. But a couple of them struck her, sinking into her pelt.

Silver bullets. They made her muscles burn and twitch.

Her anger was stronger than the pain.

Rylie ripped into the first man, gutting him instantly with her claws, and then threw him into the man by her side. She ripped the gun out of another man’s hands when he brought it around to fire at her and took one of his arms off in the process.

A shot went wild and struck the generator. There was a buzz, a pop, a crackle.

The walls began to shake.

“No!” Cain shouted.

The roof cracked, and a huge chunk of earth dislodged from ceiling, smashing into the desk with the workstations. The table cracked. Soil sprayed everywhere.

Rylie rolled underneath another falling rock and bit the legs of a Union soldier. The generator stopped whirring, but the rumbling continued, growing in intensity as the entire room trembled.

She was about to rip into another hunter when a piece of the ceiling fell on him.

The roof by the door began to crumble.

Panic filled her as she realized that the entrance to the Haven was starting to collapse—with Gwyn and her babies on the other side.

Two of the remaining Union hunters fled up the tunnel, leaving just one more to die under her jaws. Rylie threw him aside and then searched for Cain.

He darted around a fallen boulder and rushed toward the door.

She launched at him, snapped her jaws shut on his ankle, and flung him against the opposite wall. Rylie didn’t give him a chance to recover. She ripped into him, teeth and claws.

He changed underneath her. His body grew, popped, changed. Fur and fangs grew.

As soon as his mouth finished shifting, he bit her neck, and Rylie drew back with a yelp.

When Cain was a human, and she was a wolf, she easily had the upper hand. But once he had turned into his own wolf form, far more massive and frightening than hers, she was overpowered, outgunned, and staring down death.

He dived, they tore into each other, and Rylie surrendered to instinct.

She kept her head tucked to her chest so that he couldn’t tear open her throat, but it made it difficult to see. Rylie didn’t notice when he positioned his legs to rabbit kick her gut open.

His paws ripped through her stomach.

The flush of healing fever fixed it almost instantly—she was Alpha, and he would have to do much worse to hurt her. But it left her shuddering. Weak.

Cain rammed her into the wall and smashed her skull against rock.

They wrestled, and there was so much blood, so much pain, that Rylie couldn’t tell what parts belonged to her, and which belonged to him. It was like fighting Jericho at the top of Gray Mountain all over again. But now she had years of experience and fury on her side. She didn’t need to drop him off a cliff to kill him.

Rylie closed her jaws on Cain’s neck and bit down. Her fangs ground against bone.

She loosened her grip long enough to snap down again, tearing through even more of the meat, and she worried her head back and forth in hard shakes. There was a pop as his spine disconnected from the back of his skull. Cain lost control of his legs. They jittered under him wildly, losing grip on the earth, and her weight shoved both of them to the ground.

Rylie clamped her jaw closed on his ear and ripped his head off.

The entire roof had been threatening to collapse, and now it did. The wall crumbled on top of Cain, smashing his body into the floor. She leaped back just in time to see a boulder smash on his severed skull and pulverize the remains.

There was no way he could heal from that.

The cave continued to shake. As she shifted back in the tunnel, she watched the ceiling finish crushing the Union’s equipment, and all of the bodies inside. Her human muscles trembled from the silver bullets. Once she had fingers again, she dug the slugs out of the wounds and waited for the quaking to stop.

When everything fell silent, the cave was dark. Everything except a six foot square around the tunnel had collapsed.

She stood on shaking legs and pushed through the rocks, but there was no way to get to the door.

Haven was sealed away.

Rylie had bigger worries for the moment. She dragged herself toward the surface, toward Abel—and away from the collapsed cave that separated her from her family.

T
WENTY-
T
WO

Unified

Rylie staggered out of the
cave, limping and weak and single-minded. The iron tang of blood filled her nostrils, and her gaze fell on Abel beneath the crisscrossed branches of trees. For a moment, she couldn’t make sense of what had happened to him—there was no way that such a mess of raw meat and organ could be Abel,
her
Abel, but it was. She could have picked his scent out anywhere.

He lay on his back with his arms spread to either side, blood pooled under his body, and a knife in his heart. Rain dripped onto his face.

It took a lot of damage to take down a werewolf—especially an Alpha. But Cain had done his best.

Screams welled up in Rylie’s chest as she dragged herself to his side.

Her hands hovered over his gutted stomach. She could hear his heart trying to beat around the blade of the knife, but it was painfully slow. Even an Alpha’s body couldn’t do that much about silver driven through his chest.

Rylie reached for the hilt of the knife, but Abel’s hand lifted weakly and stopped her.

She gasped. “Abel!”

His eyes opened to slits. His skin was slick with moisture. “Rylie,” he said, and a tiny, weak smile flitted across his lips. “Alive.”

“That’s right. I’m alive,” she said, pressing his hand to her cheek.

“Cain?”

“Dead,” Rylie said. “I ripped his head off.”

Another half-smile. “That’s my girl.”

His face slackened as his heart skipped a beat. He was right on the edge. Just moments from death.

He tried to stop her as she grabbed the knife, but there was no chance he could heal with that in his heart. She ripped it free, hissed at the burn of silver, and flung it into the trees. Abel couldn’t fight back. He barely managed to groan.

She waited for him to start shivering with the healing fever, but it didn’t come. The silver had been in too long, and the damage was too great.

“You have to change,” Rylie said, smoothing a hand over his eyebrow. Her fingers were covered in his blood now, too, but neither of them cared. Hot tears rolled down her chin and dripped onto his cheek. “You’re going to die.”

His eyes rolled into the back of his head.

She gave a shuddering sob as she tried to push her hands against the wounds on his stomach. Cain seemed to have had fun cutting him open. It was a mess. “Change, Abel,” Rylie said, reaching into him with all of her energy so that she could pull his wolf out. But he wasn’t the only one weak and injured. She couldn’t change him the way that he had changed her.

Another shake of his head. “Can’t. Never have.”

“You forced me to change today. Do it for yourself.”

He focused bleary eyes on her. “Seth will take care of you,” Abel said, so quietly that she almost couldn’t hear him.

His ragged heart gave a weak beat…and didn’t beat again.

“No,” Rylie said. Her hands moved over him, searching for the way to fix him that wasn’t there. She couldn’t change him. Couldn’t heal him. Couldn’t save him from death. “No. Abel, please—”

He whispered something. She couldn’t make it out. Rylie lowered her ear to his lips. “Love you,” Abel said with a final exhale.

And then he was still.

Rylie covered her mouth with her bloody hands, shaking her head over and over.

It was so silent in the forest. Even the rain had started to die off. It was like the whole world was mourning him. Rylie’s heart was the only heart that beat, and her lungs were the only lungs that drew breath.

But he couldn’t be dead. He
couldn’t
be. They were going to the Haven together, and they were going to be a family. “But you’re the father,” she said, voice ragged. “Abel, the babies are
yours
.” She dropped onto his chest, covering the wound in his unmoving chest with her cheek. Her fingers dug into his shirt. “And I’m yours, too.”

Thump.

Rylie sat up, staring at his chest. His heart had beat.

“Abel?” she asked tentatively.

His skin shivered.

The change started out slowly. Rylie watched as his knees reversed and his fingernails were replaced by claws. His head fell limply to the side as his face extended into a muzzle. But the change began to speed as his heart beat again. The pace increased to a steady drumming in his chest. Fresh blood poured out of his wounds, flushing dirt and silver from the injuries.

Fur swept down his skin, and he curled onto his side as he finished changing into the massive, hulking black wolf. Blood matted his fur. His eyes were still closed. His tail was curled over his nose.

“Abel?” she whispered.

His eyes opened and fell on her.

His head slid forward, she stretched out her hand, and his wet nose nudged her fingers.

With a cry, Rylie collapsed on his neck, hugging him close as he continued to shudder with the healing fever. One hand slid down his chest, searching for the stab wound—closed—and then she checked his stomach. He was whole. Complete.

Alive.

Rylie bowed her head to his, pressing their foreheads together. His breath was hot on her neck. “They’re yours,” she said again, hanging tight to the ruff of fur at his neck. “You were right the whole time.”

He couldn’t respond, as a wolf, but she could feel the pleasure radiating from him.

The rain began to fall harder, washing away the blood and mud to leave Rylie cold. But Abel’s fur was warm, and they sat together for a long time.

Eventually, Abel turned human again.
He didn’t look like the same man that had been gutted just a few minutes earlier. Something had changed, but it took Rylie a second to realize what, exactly.

The scars were almost gone.

They had been healing for months, bit by bit, with every phase of the moon. But this final change had cleared the skin on his cheek, his jaw, the corner of his eye. Rylie had barely paid any attention to the scars before—they were just a normal part of him, some feature that was interesting and different. She wasn’t sure if she liked having them vanish.

Without thinking about it, she reached up to touch the new, smooth skin. Abel turned his cheek into her palm. “Did you mean it when you said that you were mine?” he asked, capturing her fingers in his.

After a moment of hesitation, Rylie nodded.

He kissed her then, very gently. They were both too tired for him to kiss her the way she wanted. But he was grinning when they parted.

“Let’s get to the Haven,” Abel said, getting to his feet with Rylie’s help. He looked a lot stronger, but he was still gray-skinned and shaking. Even without wounds, the strike of a silver knife was a tough thing to survive.

Rylie bit her bottom lip. “There’s only one problem with that.”

She led him down the tunnel into the half-collapsed cave. He looked just as stricken as Rylie felt as he took in the sight of the destruction.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Cain brought the Union with him,” Rylie said. “They were shooting at me, and they hit the generator. I don’t know what happened after that. It made the whole cave shake, and then the roof came down, and…”