The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (34 page)

“No!” I scream, but the harsh wind rushes into my throat, stealing my words.

The wind gusts from the other direction, picks Mia off her feet and slams her into the boulders. I try and run at the grinning she-wolf. Try and protect my brother. But the wind knocks me back, nearly tosses me to the ground.
 

The fucking bitch. I was wrong. Lily can’t control her animal. The silver she-wolf doesn’t give a fuck about my bro. He’s prey to her kind. A feed. All the Purebloods are. I feel her disdain, her hunger. She’d think nothing of slaughtering us all—
 

The sky-creatures hunt and leap and pounce through the black clouds, thousands of them, and from the swirling madness one creature separates from the rest, a giant wolf with eagle’s wings and the head and hooked front arms of a praying mantis. Three fractal black eyes shine in the mantis-wolf’s head. He roams across the steppe, hunting. His hunger is insatiable.

Seeing this mantis-creature feels…familiar somehow.
 

Like a stranger you see on the street and swear you’ve met before. No. It feels like meeting an old
enemy
. My wolf goes insane with fury and my neck strains against my collar—
 

The mantis-wolf issues a blood challenge. He’s finished bending a knee to his father, the original leader of the alpha pack. The Primal alpha. The son craves his father’s power. He ambushes his father alone by a fast-flowing river. The son has grown strong. The father fights, but soon he lies in the sandy soil, chest torn open, still living while the son feeds on his beating heart.

This is natural law.
 

The pack will be stronger with this powerful new alpha.
 

But then the son’s mother arrives, scenting the death of her alpha patriarch and the birth of a new one. The son turns on his mother, bleeds her into submission and takes her for a mate.

This is the Atrocity committed by the First Fallen.

I close my eyes. Block out the sight. It’s a fucking myth. A legend. But although I can’t see the creatures roaming through the black sky I can hear the wind and scent the mantis-wolf’s power.
 

I open my eyes. The shapes resume in the sky, and I have to wonder: is everyone seeing what I am? Or is the sky telling a story only I need to hear? Are we all experiencing our own mad visions?

I watch as two of the Fallen’s four siblings, the same winged she-wolf that’s crouching over Lily and a white, three-eyed bear, lead a brutal centuries-long war against the Fallen and those loyal to him. Many die during the war. Alpha and beta packs interbreed. Some take animals for mates. Bloodlines mix, diluting Pureblood until it becomes nearly impossible to breed.
 

Only a few of the original alpha pack remain loyal to the mantis-wolf, among them his remaining two siblings, a sleek spotted leopard and a buzzing yellow-black wasp.
 

The primal mother, a once proud matriarch now violated and broken, is forced to bear her son’s tainted brood.
 

They are the Stricken.
 

Red blood burned black by the First Fallen’s unnatural hunger.
 

The dark clouds begin whirling in a wind so powerful giant boulders are lifted from the ridge and sucked into the sky. The she-wolf hovering behind Lily turns her head and glares into the clouds, and there the alpha son, the First Fallen, peers down at her with his reflective mantis eyes and says:
 

My beloved sister.

The sound is a knife driven into my ears. I fall to the ground, writhing in pain, while the she-wolf howls toward the blackened sky in hate-filled rage.

More Stricken amass in the clouds behind the First Fallen, an endless army. They roam onto the steppe to challenge the unified alpha and beta packs for dominance. For centuries the two sides slaughter one another, black blood against red, until finally both are exhausted and a new natural order is reached, a kind of exhaustion that breeds temporary peace.
 

The One War.
 

Balance through bloodshed. It is natural law.
 

Then something happens. Something the First Fallen never expected.

One of his two loyal siblings turns on him. Betrays him.
 

Together the three united siblings battle the Fallen, and in their combined strength banish him to the dogfaced spirit-eater who rules the Bloodless Land.
 

Come to me now, my sister
, the First Fallen screams from within the shadows swirling overhead.
I forgive you. There is a place for you in this Age of Discord.
 

The silver she-wolf hovering above Lily digs her paws into granite and shrieks so fiercely it shakes the mountainside. Avalanches cascade into the valleys below. I clamp my hands over my head, trying to silence her shrill, piercing wail, full of rage and bloodlust and desire for vengeance. The she-wolf’s scream blasts the black clouds wide open, sending the shadow creatures spinning into an endless night sky. They dissolve into darkness and soon the wind quiets and the clouds disperse, and as the mantis-wolf’s shadow fades he growls:
 

If not you then another, sister. Our siblings won’t resist forever. You won’t resist forever.
 

Then the Fallen vanishes, and when I look to Lily she’s gone as well…or rather she’s
changed
.

Lily’s animal, the All Encompassing, sister to the Fallen, daughter to the First, looms over the ridge, fully born, her magnificent silver fur glimmering in the crimson moonlight. My wolf howls at her power. Then the winged she-wolf turns to me, her red eyes full of sadness, and says, “Your brother will not permit me save him.”

Her words hit me harder than any blow.
 

Lily tried.
 

She summoned the full power of her animal and my brother denied her.
 

Sorry’s choosing to die. To leave this life. To leave me.
 

The wolf-creature flaps her silvery blue-green wings, lifts into the sky and hovers over us, then says, “I am the All Encompassing. Darkness and light. Chaos and order. Death and life. Kneel to me now and live.”

Her mind presses into me. The urge to bend to her will drives me from my true self.
 

She’s a Risen. My natural alpha.
 

But I will not bend a knee. I will not submit. Not to this creature.
 

Not to anyone or anything, ever.

I close my eyes and wait for death.
 

The All Encompassing opens her jaws.
 

A shimmering wave of heat blasts into me, driving me against the boulders.
 

Fuck her. I’m ready. Hold on, bro. I’m coming with you. Soon we roam together—
 

Then the creature stops, settles to the ground, raises her head to the sky and howls. Her muscles ripple and her wings retract and her scorpion tail folds in on itself and vanishes and I know Lily is fighting to return the animal to her cage. The she-wolf wails, thrashes her head from side to side, rakes her massive claws into the granite and still she changes; her bones snap and her skin ripples and her jaws crack and recede and then there’s only Lily, lying curled on her side beside my dead brother, naked and coughing blood.

“You fucking bitch,” Mia screams, lifting a stone in her hands and rushing at Lily. “You fucking
murderous
bitch.”

“Wait! Mia, no!” I yell, but there’s no stopping her, Mia’s face is long and snake-like, and she’s lifting the stone above Lily’s skull, seconds from crushing my bloodmate alive—

A blast of gunfire.

Mia drops the stone and staggers to the side, clutching the hole in her belly.

Trish walks toward her, raises the Glock and looses six more rounds right into Mia’s chest.

Mia stumbles backward, absorbing the bullets, then grins, takes three quick, sinuous strides and leaps at the Skin chick.

I pile into Mia as her hands settle around Trish’s throat.
 

“You stinking Skin
bitch
,” Mia hisses, her long, hollow fangs dripping deadly venom.
 

Much as I need the Skin dead I can’t tolerate Mia disrespecting a direct command. I rip her off Trish and fling her to the dirt. She rolls away and springs to her feet, hissing and spitting.

Trish sits up, gasping for air, reloads her Glock with shaking hands.
 

“Give it to me,” Nash says, looming between Trish and Mia and putting a hand out for Trish’s gun.
 

“Go fuck yourself, skid,” Trish says. “You saw what your snake-friend was about to do. Brain my girl while she’s passed out cold.” Then Trish shrieks at Mia: “Why don’t you try that when she’s awake, you chickenshit bitch!”
 

Nash bends down, snatches the Glock from Trish’s hands, flips it so he’s holding the barrel and pistol-whips her clean across the cheek before Trish even realizes she’s not holding the gun anymore.

Trish crumples into the dirt.

“You kill her?” I ask.

Nash toes Trish’s ribs with his boot.
 

“Don’t know. Maybe.”

“You chose
wrong
, Aaron,” Mia says. “
You
betrayed us. Not your dead brother. You. We’re your
pack
. Your blood. You know…what she is. What she’ll do. She has to die, Aaron. Right now! Before she wakes up. She has to die!”

“No.”

“She has to die! The Risen! Her fucking
pack
, Aaron. They’ll turn on us after the Fallen is gone. They’ll fucking mate and breed and—”

“No.”
 

“What? You fucking…
fool
! You asshole fool. Did you see that?” Mia shrieks, pointing to the sky. “That…creature? The First Fallen, Aaron! It’s all true. The myths are true. He’s Becoming! He’s returned to gather his pack for the final hunt. She’s one of them. She’s his
sister
.”

“Maybe. But not only. She’s still Lily to me.”

Mia’s face twists in disgust and outrage. “Oh, I see. You get your dick wet and now she’s your soulmate? You’re loyal to
her
? Not the pack you’re supposed to
lead
?”

“Fuck leading, Mia,” I say. “Fuck this pack. And fuck you.”
 

Mia paces in a tight circle, her skin rippling to mottled blue-green scales.
 

“I don’t want to hurt you, Mia. But I will.”

Mia laughs. “I know you will. I believe it. Can’t you see what’s happening? What she’s doing to us? We’re coming
unravelled
, Aaron. Undone. Because of an ugly piece of ass.”

“Her creature fought the First Fallen. You saw her!” I shout. “She stared him down and shrieked so loud he fled. I don’t know what that means, but I know I won’t leave Lily to face him alone. And I tell you what: you want to blame me for this pack coming undone, fine. Fuck it. Whatever helps you sleep. But from where I’m standing it’s
you
who’s tearing us apart, Mia. The alpha commands. His pack
obeys
. It’s natural law. Yet here you are, dropping fang at me—”

I leap at Mia, backhand her so hard her feet leave the ground, and before her head’s even hit the stone I’m standing over her, glaring down, my wolf gnawing himself raw in his bloodlust, aching for me to kill her, kill the insurrecting bitch because no alpha should tolerate her, and I drop my claws and am about to plunge my hand through Mia’s chest, and you can bet your ass there’s fear in her eyes when she looks up at me.
 

“We’ve had a good run, Mia. But now—”

“How long, Prez?” Nash says, real slow and cool. “Think on how long we’ve run together. A hundred million years? Take the long view, Aaron. We’ll make it through this bullshit. We always have. Just…step the fuck back from Mia.”

There’s a growling edge in Nash’s voice I don’t like at all. Maybe Sorry’s death has upset some internal dynamic of the pack, some fine balance thrown off kilter. Maybe both Nash and Mia were never loyal to me, but they knew Sorry would stand beside me against them and they knew no one could take us both down.
 

Maybe I’m not such a hot shit after all. Maybe the only reason I’m alpha is because Sorry had my back and times were easy, Stricken blood flowed fast and free and we were all full-bellied and well-fucked. But there’s lean years ahead, a lot of them, and my pack is crumbling around me, and isn’t that a fucking laugh, living my life believing I’m a badass while my packmates bide their time, waiting for an opportunity to take a shot, and the hardest part of this is the suspicion and lack of trust, and in that moment I know it’s over.

The Pureblood Predators are dead.
 

You have to trust your packmates without question. That bond must be beyond doubt, no matter how long it’s been since a kill, no matter what long-dead legend appears howling in the stormy sky.

My pack is dead.

I’m not alpha of anything.
 

I can’t even lead myself, for fuck sake.

“We’re finished,” I say to Mia and Nash and Tate. “I’m gunna bury my brother. Then I’m gone. Got it? You don’t like how I lead? Perfect. Because I fucking
hate
leading. I’m finished.” I light a smoke, take a deep drag, then say, “Once Sorry’s in the ground I don’t want to see either of you again. Ever.”

“Don’t, Prez,” Nash says, shaking his head and choking back tears, “it doesn’t have to be like this. This shit’ll pass, man. We can make it—”

“No Nash. We can’t. This pack’s been fucked for a long time. It was fucked before Lily arrived, it was fucked before Sorry betrayed me, and it’s fucked way beyond repair now. It’s done.
I’m
done.”

Mia scoots backward, stands, brushes herself off and says, “You’re a chickenshit coward.”

“Open your mouth again, Mia, and I’ll strangle you with that fucking snake tongue.”

I turn my back on them and walk to my brother, check his pulse, close his eyes.
 

Then I head for Lily.