The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (35 page)

I pass Trish along the way. She’s moaning and clutching her bleeding head.
 

Lily’s still out cold, barely breathing. I pick her up and carry her into Tate’s den. She feels as light as air. I don’t know what Tate thinks of having me camping out in his
casa
now, and the truth is I don’t care. If he moves against me I’ll murder him. Same with Mia or Nash. And for the first time in a long while I feel certain of what I want. There’s no worrying over what’s good for the pack. No fretting over maintaining face and authority and control.
 

There’s only deciding what I want and taking it.

When I emerge from the den Mia’s gone. Bitch didn’t even stick around to see my brother off. Nash hovers at the edge of the boulders, watching me with clouded eyes. I’ll let him say goodbye to Sorry, then I’ll murder him if he tries sticking around.

It’s what I want.
 

F
LICKERING
RED
-
ORANGE
light and heat.
 

She’s still with me. Unleashed.

Please no. Leave me be. Please—
 

The animal screams and scratches at her cage.
 

Demanding freedom. Demanding a kill.

I feel her hunger. Her hatred. Her need for revenge. And more, buried somewhere low in her animal mind, a sadness that’s lived for millennia. Her father murder. Her mother raped.
 

By her own brother.

And now that brother is Becoming. Escaping the Bloodless Land he was banished to. He’s calling her. Demanding she kneel for him. Seeking a mate strong enough to continue his bloodline—
 

I open my eyes. A wood fire burning in a stone alcove. I’m lying on a ratty couch facing the fire. I cough, then wince. My throat’s tender, my mouth dry. I’m parched. My skin feels…sensitive somehow. Stinging slightly.
 

For a moment there’s relief…I’m
me
, Lily fucking Thompson, in my human form…then a wave of regret and longing slams into me. My animal. Her power. Beyond imagining. And she’s only half here. How strong would she be…if she was completely in this world? She’d be unstoppable. Connor told me the Purebloods aren’t gods. But fuck that. Call them what you want. Compared to the weak, lousy lives we humans lead…yeah.
 

They’re god-like.
 

I blink through the pain and shift on the couch, take a sharp breath as I realize how bruised and sore I am.
 

Everything in this life hurts.

From the moment we’re torn screaming from our mother’s womb to the moment our eyes flutter closed for the last time.
 

Life fucking
hurts
.
 

But when I’m with her? I’m beyond pain.

Some people shoot themselves full of poison. Pop painkillers by the dozen. Build obsessive habits—shopping, eating, fucking, you name it—because life hurts, and there’s no easy way around that plain truth.

You just gotta deal as best you can.

But me? I don’t think I’ll be needing my Adderol anymore.
 

I have something else to carry me through.

Something stronger.
 

A fucking wild animal howling and spitting inside me.

All I have to do is call her.
 

A quick smile plays across my lips. I’ve lived close enough to addiction to know it when I see it. And this power? Could it be habit-forming?

Hell yeah.

***

Aaron’s sitting cross-legged on the floor of the den, facing the flames, and just from looking at how his shoulders are hunched I know something’s terribly wrong. I try and think back. My recent memory…it’s a black mist, full of feelings and vague images more than anything specific. I see things…horrible, malformed creatures warring with one another. A snake-woman lifting a rock. An avalanche cascading into a valley. A blood-red moon—

My breath catches in my throat.
 

Sorry.

And there it is. The fucking hurt. My animal, sensing weakness, claws at me, threatening to surface. My skin warms. My heart pounds. I close my eyes and concentrate on keeping her locked away.

I failed him. Sorry’s gone.
 

I need to say something to Aaron. But what? What can you possibly say? And then suddenly I’m angry at him. For everything. Bringing me into this mess. Marking my fucking neck. I’m angry at him for things he didn’t even do: the abduction. The arsons. Kidnapping my son. I’m angry at him for those murdered girls with their eyes burned out of their heads. But most of all I’m angry at him for being fool enough to ask me for help with Sorry. Me. He made me call my animal. Put me—put us all—at risk. And now…I have to live with knowing I failed.

I close my eyes. Force a few breaths.
 

Man, am I ever being a shallow, self-pitying
bitch
. The man just lost a brother, for fuck sakes, and so I although I already know the answer I say, “He didn’t make it?”

My voice is weak and scratchy.
 

Aaron shakes his head no.

“I can’t imagine, Aaron. Losing a brother.”

Aaron doesn’t answer, and I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, but I say, “You buried him?”

Aaron fires me a vicious glare over his shoulder. “Burying won’t do it. His body would be dead in this world. But his animal would live on. Caged in the Bloodless Land.”

A chill trickles down my spine. “The Bloodless Land?”

Aaron shrugs. “Another fucking rumor.”

“Tell me.”

He hesitates, then says, “Remember the dog-faced asshole? The spirit-eater? Yeah. He rules the Bloodless Land. Captures the animal spirit of any Pureblood who only dies in this world. You want both animal and human forms dead forever? You gotta do a proper job of it. At least…that’s what us Purebloods believe. Course it sounded like bullshit, until—”

“He came for us.”

Aaron says nothing.
 

I hug my arms around my waist and think about what that means.

A proper job of it.
 

Aaron cut off his brother’s head, tore out his heart and burned them both.

“That fucking scar,” Aaron whispers, staring at his hands.
 

“What?” I ask, leaning forward to hear.

“It’s…fuck it. Nevermind.”

I decide to keep my mouth shut. He’ll talk if he wants to. Apparently it’s the right decision, because after a while he says, “It was way back. We were young. I guess…you’d call us teenagers.” Aaron laughs in the way a person does when they’re remembering an easier time and wondering what the fuck happened to it. “We used to roughhouse. Normal brother shit. At least it started that way. I guess…I think, you know…I think I used to pick on him. Bully him. He didn’t fill out until later. He was smaller than me for a long time. I was the older brother, and…”

There’s a long silence. The fire spits and hisses.
 

“I’m here, Aaron.”

“I wanted it. Alpha. I had this idea…this
fucked up
idea that being alpha meant, you know, beating everyone down. Even my own brother.”

Aaron’s shoulders tremble. Like there’s a flood of dammed-up emotion threatening to burst free. He laughs and cups his forehead in his hands. He’s still facing the fire. I can’t see his face. Which is…right now I’m not sure I want to.

“Just…
dominating
, you know. Our father was alpha. Not a very good one. No one respected him. He was strong. Real strong. But…distant. Like cold. No one connected with him. Our pack turned on him. I watched him get torn apart. And that’s when I knew I had to be stronger. Faster. Meaner. Fuck sakes. I made the same mistake my father made.”

“Tell me about Sorry.”

“You never even knew his birth name.”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Radulf. Wolf council. He hated that name. Never said why. But I knew. It reminded him of our father.”
 

Radulf
, I think, remembering the stocky, broad-shouldered biker with the easy smile and boyish good looks.

“So yeah,” Aaron says, shaking his head as if to banish the memory of his father. “I bullied my kid brother. Then…I guess it happened slowly, but I only realized it in an instant…Sorry grew up. Suddenly he was bigger than me. A challenge. Our playful teenage roughhousing grew…serious. Dangerous. Violent. My father saw what was going on, but he never intervened. Couldn’t be fucked, I guess. Sorry and me…we were on the shore of a silt-grey river. Biting and snapping and chasing. Things…they fucking took a turn, right? They took a
turn
. Sorry flipped me on my fucking back. Pinned me. Held me down. Looked me in the eye. He had me beaten. He could have made me submit. Could have hurt me until I bowed. Could have been alpha.”

Aaron takes a long, steadying breath. “But you know what he did? The fucking bastard? He let me go. I saw it in his eyes. He didn’t want it. Maybe because he knew how bad I
did
want it. So he let me go. He didn’t say a word, but I understood. ‘Here,’ he was saying. ‘You have it. If I have to do this, brother against brother, it’s not worth it.’ Sorry would’ve made a great alpha. The kind that gets named and remembered. But he chose me. Me! Over being what he was fucking
meant
to be.”

“If he didn’t want it then it wasn’t meant to be.”

“You don’t understand a fucking thing,” Aaron mutters, and the disdain in his voice makes me shiver. “It’s
unnatural
for the strong to bow to the weak. What Sorry did…releasing me…I fucking
hated
him for it. Imagine playing at alpha and knowing all along your kid brother could best you? You’re a fucking pretender. A fake. And as he released me I saw it. I knew he’d remain loyal to me even though I didn’t deserve it, and I fucking hated him. So I leapt up. I leapt up and I…I snapped at him. No, I fucking
tore
into him. I wanted to
kill
him, understand? I caught his skull in my jaws and I crushed down and tasted my brother’s blood—”

The tears come. A breaking storm of sobs, and Aaron’s doing his best to keep it in, bottled up, but there’s too much, and so I slip from the couch and wrap my arms around his strong, shuddering shoulders and I hold him, just fucking hold him while he hangs it out in the open, and I know he hates himself for letting it out, believes he’s weak for feeling so hard and so strong…but that’s
bullshit
, and I tell him that, it’s okay, I say, it’s okay—

“Sorry didn’t fight back. He would’ve let me kill him. I tasted his blood warm in my mouth and I…I stopped. I let him go. He fucked off for a while. Vanished. When he returned he was healed except for that scar across his head. I saw it every single day of my life. A reminder of what a cruel bastard I am. A reminder of how little I deserve to lead. We never spoke about it. Never. Eventually I became alpha. And you know what? Once I was I realized…Sorry had been
right
. It wasn’t worth it. Nothing is worth…”

Aaron’s voice trails off. He’s spent. He lights a smoke with trembling hands. Shakes me off his shoulders.
 

He’s closing up. Falling inside himself.

“Your brother gave you a gift,” I say. “You rewarded his generosity by hating on him.”

“I know,” Aaron says. “And the bitch of it is…fuck! The years passed. I realized how wrong I was. How bad I fucked up. And I didn’t tell him. I never said how sorry I was. I’m a fucking coward.”
 

“He knew how you felt. He had to. Or he never would’ve stuck around.”

“Maybe. But I should have said something.”

He’s right. He should have. Something like this…it can ruin a person. Eat at them from the inside. I guess I could say something easy, like: you have to forgive yourself. But I think back on my son Lachlan.
 

How I gave him up.
 

People have said that to me before. You have to forgive yourself.
 

And when they say that all I want to do is smack them straight in the face.

There’s a pitcher of water and some stale-looking bread and canned sardines on the floor. I sit up and drain half the pitcher in one gulp. The water stings my raw throat.

“Where are they?” I ask after a while, fearing the worst.

“Nash and Mia are gone,” Aaron says, his voice heavy. “Tate and Trish are here.”
 

“Gone?”

Aaron nods.
 

“Dead? Did I—”

“You didn’t do a thing. They’re alive. But they won’t be around anymore. Ever.”

His brother dead. His pack destroyed.
 

“Because of me.”

“No,” Aaron sighs. “Because of
me
. I lost them. You can only lead your pack over a cliff so many times before they start feeling they can do better on their own. And they’re
right
. Mia and Nash will do better without me. I failed them. Like I failed my brother.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t shown up. You guys were doing fine. It’s my fault, Aaron. I should be the one to leave. Me.”

“You’re wrong, Lil. Don’t overestimate yourself. A pack can only dissolve from the inside. Like a disease feasting on something beautiful. Slowly, inevitably. Until one day the beautiful thing closes its eyes for the last time. It seems sudden, but the disease was there, eating away at it for a long, long while, weakening it, leaving it vulnerable.”

I listen to the flames spark and pop, then say, “What happened?”

Aaron shrugs. “Your girl saved your life, that’s what.”

“Trish? How?”

“Ask her. I’m done talking about it.”

“What happened…with me? When I called her?”

Aaron shakes his head.

I slide from the couch and crawl beside him. The effort leaves me breathless. “You have to tell me,” I say. “You owe me that much.”

“You…Became.”

“Became what?”