20

kestrel

I WASN'T EVER sure about Paladin when he got like this, which wasn't often. He could slip out of it at any moment, that was the thing. Sometimes, he'd regress and forget everything he'd done.

It was funny, right, that I was the leader of this pack?

Lazarus could have done it, but he was too guilty.

And Paladin was really the brains and the strategy and the reason we even were a pack in the first place. But he was usually too traumatized to even remember whatever it was that he'd done.

We got to Liam's place, and the lawn leading up to the house was dotted with bodies. There were clumps of fur in the grass, but the bodies looked human now, having shifted back in the morning light. They were even healed up, perfect and pristine, no marks on their bodies, even though they were still dead.

Paladin led the way, and Lazarus and I went behind him. It was extremely weird knocking on someone's door totally naked.

No one answered, though.

However, we could hear movement from within.

Paladin tried the door, which was locked, and he started yelling into the house and banging on it.

One of the other wolves in the house, a guy named Ezra, opened the door and said they were on their way out to go to the compound.

"What?" said Paladin. "How many of you are there?"

"Four now, because they killed Mick," said Ezra. "Liam's on a rampage, though—"

"Take me to Liam," said Paladin, pushing his way into the house.

Ezra looked us over and then looked at Paladin in that way that people looked at him sometimes. "Fine," he said.

We went deeper into the house, into a small room that must have once been a pantry or something, but was now an arsenal, lined with ammunition and various guns. Liam and his guys on this farm had made it their business to hoard all the guns they could find. They would buy any guns that anyone had for exorbitant trades—the kind of things you couldn't resist, right? I'll give you enough food to last you the winter when I know that you had a blight that took out your harvest and all I want is your measly little gun. That kind of thing.

Liam was in the room, sorting through the guns he had available. "You get rid of them, Ezra?" he said without looking up.

"Not exactly," said Paladin.

Liam turned around. His gaze went from Paladin's head all the way down to his toes. "More of you than I was hoping to see this early in the morning, gotta say."

"We were hoping you might spare us all an extra pair of jeans each or something," said Paladin. "We came straight here, didn't go back to our house for fear they're watching it."

"They would have sent more people to you," said Liam.

Paladin considered. "Maybe."

"I'm going to get my girl back," said Liam. "So, sure, fine, Ezra, get them something to wear, but then meet me out front because—"

"We need to be smart about this," said Paladin.

"I have the guns," said Liam.

"Red's got guns," said Paladin. "We know he does. Hell, he's traded with you for firearms."

Liam blinked. "I cannot talk to you with your dick just there ."

Paladin glanced down at his crotch with a little grin. "Sorry?"

"Ezra," said Liam to the other guy.

Ezra scurried off.

Liam looked around the inside of the pantry arsenal, sighing. "You got a plan, then, Paladin? Something brilliant and chock full of carnage?"

"Not yet," said Paladin. "Why? You got a plan besides, ‘I got the guns'?"

Liam sighed again. His shoulders slumped. "I just want her back. I don't care what happened or what they did, or anything else. That's all. I'm going to shoot my way in and get her and shoot my way out. That's it. That's the plan."

"That's a great way to get yourself killed," said Paladin.

"Fuck you," said Liam.

Ezra was back with pairs of sweatpants, mumbling something about not knowing what sizes we were or he would have brought jeans. We took the pants, pulled them on, tightened the inner drawstrings.

I felt a good thirty percent better with my junk covered, had to say.

"So, what are you thinking?" said Liam.

"I think we need to go scout the compound out," said Paladin. "We need to see what's going on there, find out what's going on with our mates—"

"We need to get our mates out of there as quickly as possible."

"Agreed," said Paladin. "But we need to survive it. We need to be smart about this."

"You know what it's like there," said Liam. "It's a fucking free-for-all. They just check the women out like library books. I need to get my girl out of there. Now."

"Agreed," said Paladin. "But recon first. I'll go on my own. You stay here and inventory your guns and ammo. When I get back, you should be able to tell me how many people you can arm."

"You think you're in charge, huh?" said Liam, folding his arms over his chest.

Paladin folded his own arms over his chest. "You want to fight over that, Liam, or you want to get your mate back?"

Liam sighed heavily, hanging his head. "Fine," he muttered. "But so help me, if you don't live up to your reputation here—"

"I will," said Paladin. "This is headquarters. We plan from here, and you have your guys upstairs, watching for any of Red's people trying to intrude. They can shoot off warning shots to scare them off—shoot to kill if they seem to be a threat."

Liam nodded.

I spoke up. "I'm coming with you."

Paladin shook his head. "I need you and Lazarus to go and get what's left of the other packs who were affected by this. Bring everyone who wants to fight here. Can you sort that out between yourselves, who goes where?"

I nodded. "Yeah, not a problem."

"Good," said Paladin. "I'll be back very soon."

paladin

THERE WASN'T MUCH to see outside the compound. The place was as ugly as I remembered it. Why they decided to build onto that McMansion instead of just expanding into the nearby houses, I would never know. It seemed stupid to have everyone on top of each other.

If I'd been running this show, I would have given all my guys their own house and their own woman and made that shit inviolable. There's a way to inspire loyalty by giving people their own agency and there's a way to make people loyal because they are dependent on you.

On the other hand, giving away women, that wouldn't have flown with Madrigal when she came to the house with Griff, and maybe it was beneath me, too. I doubted that Clementine would approve if she heard me say that .

At this point, I just needed to find Clementine, though.

Getting into the house was kind of insanely easy, something I tucked away as an advantage, something I could use.

The doors were not locked and people were coming and going, so after I observed this happening, I just walked up to the front door and let myself in.

I figured that I'd be recognized if I wasn't careful, so my first stop was the hallway closet, where I found a hooded windbreaker jacket. It was hopelessly big on me. I was swimming in it. I put it on anyway. Didn't zip it up, pushed up the sleeves, and pulled the hood down over my forehead. I made my way through the hallways.

I overheard bits of conversation coming from one of the rooms. "… not even worth it, considering the way their snatches smell."

"I know, right? I couldn't even nut. I tried three of them before I just gave up."

So, they raped the mates. I mean, I knew they had, but hearing it made me twitch. Was it good to know that the scent had made it difficult for them?

"I don't even want one of them, that's what I'm saying."

"Even the ones with dead mates didn't lose that scent ."

That was weird. The mating scent lingered?

I waited, listening, to see what else they'd say, but one of them just turned on a TV. Griff had somehow spliced into some old cable out here to get broadcast television, something that wasn't supposed to be available on the other side of the walls.

They put on some football game and I moved on.

Shortly after that, I found the mates, all ten women, in a room with bunks lining the walls. I watched them through a crack in the door. They weren't talking. Most of them were staring off into space, looking sort of blank. A few were sleeping. I thought about whether I could get them out, all by myself, right now.

I thought about trying to get them past the room where the guys were watching football. I'd have to take them both down, and I didn't have a weapon. I could have brought a gun from Liam, but I hadn't. I would have preferred a weapon like a knife, one that didn't have a limited number of bullets or whatever. You could stab infinite times as long as you didn't lose the knife. But I didn't even have that.

Recon, I reminded myself.

Anyway, that was when I realized Clementine wasn't in there.

I panicked.

I showed myself. I went into the room and grabbed one of those women and asked about Clementine, but she was terrified, and she didn't know anyone's names. I described her, and the other woman were all swarming around, alert now, and one of them said that Clementine had gone off with someone named Noah, which confused me, because somehow this Noah person was also a tithe, but then it became clear to me that Noah was trans or whatever.

That was when someone heard the commotion in the room and came in to check on what was going on.

I took off, making a beeline out of the room, and I might have gotten away, too. I was outrunning the guys coming after me.

But someone caught me at the door.

They pulled my hood back and they recognized me, and that's when it turned into a free-for-all. It was four of them on me, all of them hitting me at once.

I did what you do in that situation, which is to taunt their prowess. I laughed and spit out blood while they punched me in the face and said, "Such a big man, aren't you, beating up on someone half your size with all of your friends."

It worked.

Sort of.

They stopped hitting me.

They tossed me in a tiny little room with one window and said Red was coming to talk to me.

Fucking perfect.

"Great job at recon, Paladin," I muttered to myself as I dripped blood on the carpet in there .

Anyway, I guess it was a compliment that I didn't have to wait very long for Red to show up.

He came into the room and took me by the throat and propelled me back into a wall and pinned me there. He had huge fucking hands.

"Paladin," he hissed into my face.

I was choking, so I couldn't really say anything. I wanted to struggle against him, to flail out, try to hit him, to scrabble at the place he held my hands. I knew all of that was going to be ineffectual. Judging from the difference in our sizes, I had basically one shot at downing him, so I waited, staying still, biding my time, losing oxygen, while he told me that he had Clementine and that he was going to claim her for himself and that he was going to make me watch him force himself on her and a bunch of other shit that did not make it easy to concentrate on waiting for my moment.

He knew her name.

Clementine.

He said it like five times.

Anyway, eventually he opened himself up for it, and I took my shot.

I kneed him in the balls.

Not a sporting sort of move, but fuck it. He was a lot bigger than I was.

He let go of me, face turning purple.

I punched him in the face and kicked his chest and he collapsed against the far wall.

If I'd had a fucking knife, I would have danced over there and stuck it in his temple. Done.

But I didn't.

Could I kill him some other way? There was nothing in the fucking room, but there were curtains on the window. I ran through grabbing them, trying to roll them up and wrap them around his neck and—

No.

Instead, I just advanced on him and kicked him under the chin, hard enough to make him dazed, hard enough that he grunted .

Then I left the room.

Out in the hall, I thought, Check him for weapons, you dumbass.

I hesitated for two seconds. Could I go back in there?

No, he'd be up by now. I ran. I ran down the hallway and toward the front door.

There were wolves on the door.

I leapt up over the railing of the stairway, vaulting onto it, and scurried up the stairs while they were still sputtering and tripping over themselves.

At the top of the steps, I grabbed the first thing I could find—happened to be someone's laundry hamper. I don't know why it was sitting in the hall. Guess they were sloppy here at the compound—and shoved it down the stairs.

That didn't hurt them, but it got in their way, and I ran further into the house, thinking to myself that I had seen this fucking horror movie and why had I gone up the stairs?

But then I smelled her.

I stopped, going entirely still, and turned.

Then, slowly, deliberately, sniffing the fucking air like a dog, I turned and went after her. I went around a bend and crossed into an area of the house which had obviously been built on.

I found her in a room with a guy—a slight, short sort of guy who scented like a tithe, except… not right exactly. There was another element to the scent, like the mates downstairs, I realized, something that said that this person belonged to some other wolf.

Clementine leaped off the bed and ran for me.

She collided with me and caught my face in both of her hands. "You're bleeding," was the first thing she said.

"Who is Noah mated to?" was the first thing I said, eyeing that guy, because… because maybe I knew from the scent or maybe I'd puzzled it out, because it took someone with pull to have gotten Clementine out of that room with the other mates, and—

"Red," said Clementine.

"Clementine," said Noah .

I kissed Clementine full on the mouth. "Perfect," I said and extricated myself.

Noah was backing up, because he got what I was up to.

I advanced on him.

"Paladin," said Clementine. "What are you—?"

I grabbed Noah around the waist and he and I struggled. In terms of overall strength, he and I might have been pretty well matched. I was taller than he was but not really much broader and Noah had the muscular physique of someone who was trying to bulk up. I was not trying to do that. Of course, I was doing actual manual labor on the farm. Well. Sometimes.

But I got my hand up to seize Noah's neck and I said, "You're coming with us. You're my fucking shield, Noah."

Noah struggled. He elbowed me in the ribs.

I coughed, but I squeezed Noah's neck. My hand spanned his neck like nothing. I felt strong with his fluttering pulse right under my fingers.

"Let him go," said Clementine to me.

"Get behind me, Clementine," I said to her.

She obeyed me right away, but she was protesting the whole way. "Noah is my friend, and if you hurt him, I will never forgive you."

"Define ‘hurt,'" I said, squeezing Noah's neck. "Forward, Noah," I breathed in his ear. "We're going forward."

"What do you mean, you know what ‘hurt' is!" Clementine yelled from behind me.

"Well, how about if I promise no lasting damage," I said. "That good enough?"

"Oh, my God," said Clementine. "Do I even know you?"

I decided not to answer that. I tried to force Noah to walk, but he wouldn't, so I put pressure against him and forced his ankle to bend in a weird way. He cried out and then complied to walk, moving his feet of his own volition.

We walked out of the room and down the hallway, and there was Red.

"Hey," I said with a big smile. "There you are."

"Fuck," said Red .

"Yeah," I said. "Funny thing, when you threaten someone with how you're going to violate his mate in front of him, it's a good idea to make sure your mate is pretty secure? Or, uh, does no one know you're mated to a man?"

Red's smile was tight.

"You know, there's nothing wrong with being gay, don't you, Red?" I said. "You don't have to be ashamed. Is that how it was with you and Griff, actually? Are you—"

"Shut up," said Red. "Let Noah go. You can walk the fuck out of here, but just—"

"How about I walk the fuck out of here and then I let Noah go," I said.

"Fine," said Red.

"And I'm taking Clementine," I said.

"Yeah, fine, fuck, whatever," said Red. "Please." His voice cracked.

I let out a giggle. Couldn't help it. "Hear that, everyone? This is your fearless leader, the one who decided to serve you up a dish of pussy that smelled like someone else's property. He's about to sell you all out for a woman . A woman with her tits cut off."

"Jesus, Paladin!" said Clementine.

I pushed Noah toward the stairs. There, waiting, on the steps, were several of the wolves who lived in this compound.

"Might want to reconsider your loyalties is all I'm saying," I said to them.

"Is it wise to taunt them like that?" said Red in a low voice. "After all, if they stop obeying me, then I don't think Noah's of much use to you."

Well, I mean, he wasn't wrong. Red wasn't dumb. I pushed Noah to the steps.

Noah struggled again, but then he started to go down the stairs with me holding him. Clementine was right behind me.

I spoke to one of the wolves conversationally. "You know how many wolves I killed before, with just me and two other guys, right? You've heard the stories? "

The guy's face went white.

I smiled. We continued down the steps. I took Noah along. "So, anyway, it's not just me and my pack. I have Liam and all his guns, and all the men whose mates you raped, and they are not pleased."

Two of the other guys flinched.

"So," I continued, as we got to the bottom of the steps, "might want to think about whether this is worth it or not. I swear to you, though, you surrender, you come over to my side, it's a one-time offer, but I'll keep them off you. You don't show up by nightfall tonight, I'm going to let those women's mates eat your faces off."

It was dead silent.

I pushed the front door open. I could feel Noah's pulse jumping in his neck. He was terrified.

"Is it true?" called one of the men. "Did you really figure out how to shift when there's no full moon?"

I gave them all a wide grin. "What do you think?"

They shrank, all at once, together.

I pulled Noah through the door.

"Let Noah go!" called Red from inside.

"Clementine, shut the door," I said to her.

She hesitated, and then she did it.

I was really planning on letting Noah go, at that point, I was.

Except, well, there were a bunch of men out front who all looked at us, and some of them had guns. So, I had to pull Noah in close and yell out that Red would not like it if this one was hurt.

And then Red burst through the door and started screaming that we'd had a deal, and I was a liar, and I had to double down.

"Keep it up if you would like to watch me snap Noah's fucking neck right in front of you, Red," I shouted.

Red went stiff and still, clenching his hands into fists. "Please," he said again. He looked like he might start crying, which sort of freaked me out.

"Give us a fucking car," I said. "And I'll let him out when we're clear."

"You're a fucking liar," he said to me.

"And you are in no place to do anything but to give me what I want," I said, digging my fingers into Noah's neck.

Noah did start crying. "Don't kill me," he breathed. "Shit, come on, there has to be something you want from me—"

"Paladin." Clementine was against me, pressed into my back. "Paladin, you can't do this."

Red's voice was raw. "If you hurt him—"

"What did you do to her? " I said, jerking my head at Clementine.

Red bowed his head.

"How could you do it when you know? " I said to him. It was one thing when Red wasn't fucking mated. This was another level of shit. It made no sense to me.

"Let him go," said Red.

"Car," I countered.

Red seethed, and then he yelled at someone named Dirk to get him the keys to the Subaru. Dirk came forward with them, and I told him to give them to Clementine.

The Subaru was green, scratched up on the passenger side door, but otherwise serviceable. It was parked outside the garage, half on the driveway, half on the grass.

I told Clementine to go get in the driver's seat and she scurried over to do that.

I backed up, still holding Noah, until he got to the car. I pulled Noah with me into the back seat. "Drive, baby, drive now."

"But Paladin, you have to promise that Noah—"

"Drive," I said to her.

Clementine started the car.