The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (42 page)

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I love you. I’m sorry.”

A strangled breath escapes my lungs. My chest loosens.
 

Those words.
 

Before Lil, no one’s ever said them to me.

I’m silent.

Staring into my bloodmate’s beautiful eyes.

Just letting her words wash into me.
 

Feeling their energy. Their power.

Because Lily’s words
do
have an energy. My wolf senses it. He’s sitting on a mountain outcrop, looking across the mountains as blue-grey mists settle on the snow-capped peaks. He lives closer to his true self than me. He’s less corrupted by living in this polluted wreck of a world. Less shut down. He still
feels
. He’s still connected to the larger things around him: the sunsets, mountains, rivers and forests. My wolf understands—in his gut, not his head—how small and fleeting he is against these ageless things. He knows how cruel natural law can be. How meaningless life is unless we allow ourselves to love.
 

That’s what a pack is about.
 

It’s about
love
.

About being stronger together.

Not about dominating so an alpha can sit up high on his pyramid, looking down at those he’s beaten into submission.

Not about ego and greed and lust for power.
 

I’ve always been cynical about those who love. Laughed at them.
 

Believed saying the words meant I was weak.
 

A coward. A bitch.

What a fucking fool I am.
 

I’ve had it backwards.

Maybe I’ve been living in fear my whole life. Closed off from the rivers and sunsets. Closed off to
beauty
. Afraid of letting people in. Afraid of being hurt. And now, gripping my bloodmate’s wrists so she can’t harm herself, I understand why Lily’s animal submitted to me. Even though she’s a Risen, and stronger. The All Encompassing permitted herself be commanded because of love. Lily might lead her Risen packmates in the One War, but my animal leads the entire army.

“Will you let me help you?” I whisper, relaxing my grip on my bloodmate’s wrists. “Will you let me try?”

Lily nods. She’s still terrified. Still guilt-stricken.
 

But she doesn’t look…defeated.

The wounds on her arms have stopped bleeding, and her skin is slowly curling over them.
 

She’s healing.
 

I slide off my bloodmate. Search around and find my jeans and Pureblood cut. Sit beside Lily, rub my face, take a long, halting breath, and just as I finally start to chill out the forest explodes in flame—

I
BELIEVE
HIM
, I think as Aaron settles on the moss beside me.
 

I believe him, although I don’t know if it’s enough—

I’m still naked. Feeling really exposed and self-conscious.
 

I’m about to ask Aaron where my clothes are when the horrible red lightning forks down and hits a tree only a few yards away. My teeth hum and my bones vibrate. The tree explodes in flame and another lightning flash slams down, even closer this time. The explosive energy flings us both several feet in the air. Bulky black storm clouds churning overhead swirl into a shape I recognize—

“Oh god no,” I whisper. “Not now. I can’t do this. Not now. Please no—”

A hideous three-eyed mantis-wolf leers down at me from the clouds.

The First Fallen. My brother Vuk.

My beautiful sister—

My brother’s words scream through my head.
 

“He’s found us,” I scream as my animal shrieks at me to free her. She’s raging, her nostrils filled with her brother’s scent, her hackles rising in boundless hatred—
 

Not now. I can’t free her now.
 

I’m too weak. Too uncertain of my place.

She’ll overpower me.

My sons will be lost.

Aaron’s on his feet, his wolf rippling close beneath his tattooed skin.

But there’s no enemy to fight.
 

Only this brutal, malicious,
willful
firestorm.
 

The tinder-dry forest has ignited. A wall of orange-yellow flame races toward us. More red lighting crashes down, and then the storm clouds glow yellow-red and a massive bolt of fire shoots from the sky. It impacts about a hundred hards away. The earth shudders. Full-grown cedars explode into splinters. A shattered branch whips by my face, buries in the dirt at my feet. Another inch or two and it would’ve impaled me—

“We’ve gotta run, Lil,” Aaron snarls, grabbing my wrist. “The fire’s moving too fast—”

But I can’t move.
 

I’m standing frozen and transfixed while the world burns, staring into the glowing clouds at my fallen brother’s shifting shadow.

My beautiful sister—

He’s not trying to murder me.

He’s inviting me to
join
him.

“He’s close,” I say, my words nearly lost to the roaring rush of flame. “He believes two of three Risen will stand beside him—”

“Two?” Aaron screams, lifting his head to glare at the sky. “Shiori? And that prick in Mexico City?”

“He’s calling me,” I say, my voice distant. “Inviting me to be the third to join him. We’re too late, Aaron! Someone’s gathered my Risen packmates at my brother’s side. He’s Becoming—”

“Tell him to go fuck himself!” Aaron snarls.

Three wolf shadows flit between the trees.
 

Aaron’s called the turquoise amulet’s shadow-wolves.
 

I reach my animal mind into the world. Grey-black smoke filters through the trees around us, burning my lungs, making my eyes water. It would be so easy to summon her. Become my animal and walk into the flames.
 

Accept my brother Vuk’s invitation.

Let this madness and struggle end.
 

What I told Aaron is true. I’m tired. I can’t fight anymore. Not for myself. Not for my friends. Not for this shitball world. Not even for my lost sons. My brother’s stronger than me. A true wildborn apex alpha. He deserves to lead. It’s natural law. The strong rise above the weak. All I have to do is summon my creature and walk into the flames and kneel for him and this will all be over—

“Lil?” Aaron shouts, gripping my shoulders, screaming at me, his face inches from mine.
 

I let my eyes flicker red.

Aaron freezes. Looks at me with horror.

“Lil?”

“Release me, Pureblood,” I say, my creature’s hot breath slipping between my lengthening fangs.

Aaron lets me go. Staggers backward.
 

Raises his hands to his chest, touches the smooth burn scar.

“Remember, Lil?” Aaron asks. “What you are? Your
role
? The All Encompassing? The choice you make determines everything.”
 

“Fuck you!” I scream, furious at having this horror placed on me. “I can’t fight him,” I say, my voice growing raspy. “Aaron…I can’t fight
her
.”

Something snaps at the base of my spine. My bones lengthen. My muscles bunch and shift. “I don’t
want
to fight anymore. It’s the Age of Discord. The time of Risen. It’s too late. There’s nothing I can do—”

The desire to accept my brother’s offer and become the third Risen packmate to join him is overwhelming; a hot needle drilling into my skull.

Let him rule. Let him lead.
 

I never asked for this.
 

I’m not strong enough.
 

Maybe his reign won’t be so terrible. Are we wrong about him? Have the legends made him out to be a monster? Maybe if I roam beside him I can influence his rule—

“Fight him, Lil,” Aaron screams, whirling to face the burning woods. “You’ve got to
fight
—”

“We’re too late,” I say, my voice soft and resigned. “He’s already won.”

“Bullshit,” Aaron yells. He lifts his fists to the shadow-creature sprinting across the storm-sky and screams, “I’m here, you fucking coward! The One We Answer To. I offer a death challenge. Reach down and grab your nuts and man the fuck up, mantis boy. Animal against animal—”

A bolt of crimson lightning shoots from the sky.
 

Aaron leaps to the side, smashes into a burning tree and lands in a crumpled heap, groaning and shaking his head while the lightning strike burns a gaping crater in the earth.

“We’re too late,” I whisper, sinking to my knees.
 

I release my animal.
 

Maybe she’ll fight him. Maybe she’ll kneel.
 

It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m finished—
 

The vision arrives from my animal’s wildborn mind, carried on the scent of fire and more, a scent I recognize, my brother Vuk’s scent, and suddenly I see my father’s corpse lying in a mountain meadow. His beautiful pearl white coat stained red. Vuk’s leaning down, tearing at my father’s entrails, his wings fluttering behind his massive wolf body. I emerge from the forest, paws silent in the grass, scorpion tail whipping in the air behind me, drawn by the scent of blood and a newly ascendant alpha.

My brother’s scent is powerful in my nose.
 

Vuk lifts his head as I approach.
 

His blank, reflective insect eyes glare at me. He bares his bloodstained teeth and growls. Fear freezes my blood. He’s always been my rival. My older brother by minutes. Part of a litter of five. The alpha ascendant.
 

Two creatures circle around Vuk.
 

A spotted leopard. A giant wasp.

My packmates. My brother and sister.

They snarl and growl and hiss as I approach, guarding Vuk.

“We’re too late,” someone says from close beside me.
 

I look up into the eyes of a massive white bear.
 

Anik
.

My loyal brother.

Our pack surrounds us. They see their dead alpha.
 

Some weep. Others kneel for their new leader.
 

Then a powerfully-built tawny red female wolf races toward her fallen bloodmate.
 

My mother.

The leopard and the wasp make to block my mother from approaching, but Vuk commands them to step aside. My mother walks to her murdered bloodmate slowly. Sniffs at his remains. Nuzzles her nose against his forehead, mewling and crying softly.
 

“Kneel to me, beloved mother,” Vuk commands.
 

My mother whirls to face her eldest son. Tears stream from her sky-blue eyes. She stares at her son for a long moment, burning with hatred, then turns and makes to abandon him.
 

She intended to desert her son without a word. That was my mother’s decision. She saw what her son had become. A vile, power-hungry abomination. And she wanted no part of it.
 

“Kneel!” my brother shrieks as my mother tries to flee.

My mother brushes past the buzzing wasp. Meets my eyes. She’s walking toward me and Anik. She intends to give one of us her blessing as the pack’s true alpha. Her words still carry weight. More of our packmates will rally around her, and then either Anik or I will howl a death challenge to our brother and more blood will spill—
 

“Seize her.”
 

Those two words.
 

Seize her.

The words that named my brother the One Without Value.

That spawned a twisted, unnatural black-blooded species.
 

That began a centuries-long war, a war that never truly ended, a war of extinction that’s beginning again—

My wasp-sister and the spotted leopard spring at my mother. Knock her to the ground. She tries to resist but is quickly overpowered—

My creature explodes with fury. I race to help my mother but the pack closes in around Vuk, protecting their new alpha. A hundred snarling, spitting faces. My former friends and packmates turned enemies.
 

“Run, daughter,” my mother screams. “You’re everything. The All Encompassing. You must live to rise—”

My mother’s words are cut short as Vuk bites her neck, overpowers her and forces her head to the ground.
 

Blood and lust-scent rises in the cool mountain air.
 

Anik and I share a long, frightened glance.
 

Our former packmates edge forward, making to surround us, and through the living wall of their bodies I see my brother mount my mother, violate her, and my mother’s wails echo across the narrow valley as Anik and I and the few packmates who chose to deny Vuk’s abhorrent reign sprint into the woods.
 

My mother’s pained screams and Vuk’s manic grunts and howls follow us through the trees and up a riverbed and over a mountain range.
 

My brother’s scent lingers in my nose as I flee.
 

Smoky and foul…but somehow cruelly attractive in its near-boundless power.
 

I’ve scented my brother Vuk before.
 

In this age. When I was a young girl living on the streets of Seattle, frightened and alone after my mother’s murder and it was night and strong hands reached from the darkness—
 

“It was
him
,” I say, heat rising to my skin as I cradle my hollow belly.
 

The wind picks up, carrying a wave of red-hot embers into me and Aaron.
 

The fire has crowned over our heads.
 

My creature has almost subsumed me. Silver hair grows from my skin. My wing-buds emerge from the base of my neck. But now she pauses, as if she’s realizing a terrible truth in the same moment I am, and in that moment of hesitation I summon my strength and command her leave me.