Chapter 18: Colt

Chapter 18: Colt

The mayhem didn’t end once Kiara and her friends escaped. They kept running, and some dragons and wolves took off after them, but I knew it would be futile. The Mythguard would keep them safe. Instead, all attention turned to Lothair ripping Muriel off the ground and away from the baby girl.

The dragon I’d been fighting with had pinned me to the ground and punched me in the cheek. Once he was distracted, I shoved him away and got to my feet. I couldn’t see what had happened to the child. People knelt around her, scooping her up off the ground and dealing with her out of sight. They took her away to where I couldn’t see. My heart hurt, fearing that she had become little more than a corpse. All that was left was Lothair hoisting Muriel up in the air, who had long since fallen limp, barely alive by the shuddering gasps of her dying body.

“Enough!” My father stormed forward, limping and bleeding from his fight with Everett. He shoved everyone out of the way. I followed him, standing as tall as I could despite the pain resonating through my face from the punches.

Lothair dropped Muriel to the ground and glared at David. “How could you let this happen?” he growled under his breath.

“You’re blaming this on him?” A voice rose up among the crowd. That same dragon with a fanged tattoo on his arm emerged from the crowd. His hazel eyes flared with anger rooted in everyone here. “David Hexen is not to blame for the chaos that left us all scrambling. You’re the one who did this! Abandoning us, disappearing without a word!”

“Sibyelle is dead, Kipling! I would rather lead in absence than lead in grief!” Lothair snapped back. “Sibyelle and my daughter are both dead because of the negligence of this selfish woman!” He thrust a finger at Muriel on the ground.

Nobody spoke up in defense of Muriel, who had no obligation to save the lives of the people who planned to sacrifice her for their own gain.

“I would rather serve a leader who places the needs of his people above his greedy heart,” said Kipling, the guard with the cut eyebrow. “You’ve become weak, Lothair. How can we trust you to carry out your promises once you perform the Lycan ritual? What are we even supposed to do once you become Lycan?”

The atmosphere within the mine became heated. I worried that Kipling’s fury was still attached to me. I felt nothing for my father anymore, no desire to protect him from the anger brewing in the dragons, no determination to prove myself to him, not since he had forced me to choose between killing Aislin and Billie. As the argument intensified, I backed away, slipping among the bodies in search of my own freedom.

“The Inkscales will integrate into the ranks of Dalesbloom. You already know this,” David spoke up.

“Our alliance with Dalesbloom has already cut our numbers in half!” Kipling rebuked. “I’m starting to think this moronic scheme will rob us of the greatness the Inkscales once had. Even if we were forced to run in the night, at least we ruled the night. What will we have once our current leaders are reduced to mindless monsters? A town crippled with fear of us? Targets on our heads from the Mythguard?”

I clung to the wall, sneaking away while everyone’s eyes were on Kipling, Lothair, and my father. Only once I felt the warmth of the sunrise coming in through the entrance of the mine did I pause, sensing Kipling’s attention suddenly on me.

“You expect us to serve, in your stead, your son? The one seduced by cowardice?”

Looking over my shoulder, I found myself spotlighted by the sunlight in the gaping entrance of the cave. Everyone stared at me, my flight on full display.

Kipling narrowed his eyes. He already knew where my allegiance lay.

“Colt,” snarled David.

But I had made up my mind. I wasn’t going to continue defending myself to a legion of killers who would sooner skin me alive.

Speaking nothing else, I turned and fled down the mountainside, making my escape from the mine. Nobody followed me. I ran and didn’t look back.

I could have run in any direction, but my paws took me after the trail left behind by Kiara. Up ahead, I knew their escape was hindered by the few shifters that pursued them. I could hear snarling and howling, and I had seen a couple of human corpses discarded in the trees and smelled the blood once I was far enough away from the mine. Having transformed into a wolf, I left my clothes behind for the weapons of my teeth and nails, and the instant I saw the human bodies of Gavin and Everett fighting unarmed against one last dragon, I lunged.

All the rage pent up inside me against my father guided my fangs into the spine of the dragon. Blinded by emotion I couldn’t control, I sunk my teeth into the dragon’s flesh just below its shoulders, its back arching as it tried to thrash me off of it. Gavin was thrown to the ground, and Everett stood back, shocked, as I ripped chunks of flesh out of the dragon’s back. When it dislodged me, I hit the ground and rolled to my feet, jumping back into the fight, but the damage I did to its spine had slowed it down too much for it to counter effectively. Its arms trembled, unable to hold themselves up. Its wings flared in the sunlight, but nothing intimidated me anymore. I wanted to destroy this dragon the same way I wanted to destroy all of the Inkscales for bringing so much death and destruction into my home. This was equally as much their fault as it was my father’s. My first act of defiance would be killing this dragon.

The moment I got its throat in my jaws, I squeezed and took unnatural pleasure in crushing the life out of it.

When the dragon collapsed lifelessly to the ground, I backed away, staring at what I had done. I’d never killed anyone before. Not even when we raided the Mundy house and set it on fire—none of those deaths were me. I was just a bystander. But this dragon, dead at my feet, this was all my doing. Without looking back at those watching, my wolf ejected me out of its body.

I knelt in the grass, naked and panting.

Within seconds, two sets of hands each grabbed my arms and hoisted me to my feet. They turned me around, facing me against Gavin and Everett, their eyes hard and hateful. One after the other, they both punched me hard in the face, dropping me to the grass again.

“Fucking bastard!” spat Gavin, kicking me in the stomach.

Everett pulled Gavin away. “Why did you follow us, Colt?”

Groaning, I propped myself up on my elbows and stared blearily at the men towering above me, then past them, at the stragglers of the Mythguard—a few humans, unarmed, including that Sebastian Hicks guy and the girls. Aislin, Billie. Kiara, with her hand over her mouth, unwilling to relent to her tears.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” Gavin echoed incredulously. “After everything you’ve done, now you’re sorry?”

“I had no choice.”

“You always had a choice,” Everett fired back.

“He killed my sister,” I said hoarsely, glaring at Gavin, then looking at Everett. “What did you expect me to do? Forgive him and turn my back on the only family I had left?”

“Your father is a rapist,” snapped Gavin.

“And a killer,” added Everett.

“I said I’m fucking sorry!” Breathing hard, I sat up straighter, desperately climbing to my feet.

Gavin lunged to attack me again before Everett stopped him, guiding Gavin’s attention to Kiara behind us, grimacing from the pain through our fated bond.

I stood up and let my arms hang limp, too much of my body aching for me to clutch any one part of myself. “Look. I know nothing I do or say can excuse everything; I just… watched it happen. I can’t take back that I tried to mark Billie. I can’t… undo what we had done to Aislin’s family. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I let it happen. But I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. I can’t… keep… standing by… watching people suffer…”

The men stared hard at me.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me. You don’t even have to let me live. I know the Mythguard are going to exterminate me. I just wanted you to know I… I don’t want to be like my father. Please believe me.”

I already knew that by following them, I was resigning myself to death. The Mythguard would kill me on the spot, or if they spared my life, they would relocate me somewhere far from here. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that I escaped from Dalesbloom. I couldn’t be responsible for my father’s madness anymore.

Gavin and Everett retreated, sharing quiet words with the girls and Sebastian. I wiped the blood out of my eyes and forced myself to square my shoulders. As much as I tried to separate myself from my fated mate, I couldn’t help but look at her, and when I found her eyes on me, my chest quivered. Her eyes were red and puffy. She looked devastated, like the world had just been ripped away from her, and all I wanted was to hold her close. I wanted to atone for every terrible thing I had caused her to experience.

After what felt like an eternity, Everett and Gavin turned back to me. Billie gazed sadly over at me while Aislin frowned, displeased.

“You know we can’t trust you,” Everett said stiffly. “Nor can we accept you into our packs. But if we’re going to protect Kiara and stop David and Lothair from performing the Lycan ritual… we’re going to need to know everything that you know.”

I nodded. “I’ll tell you everything. Please. I want to help.”

But when I took a step forward, the group collectively bristled. “You can help by keeping your distance,” warned Aislin. “Remember, you’ve been just as bad as David. You creep.”

Her words slapped me across the head. My shoulders sank, and once more, I nodded. “Just tell me what you’ll have me do, and I’ll do it.”

Everett glanced over at Sebastian. “You still have those zip-ties?”

The taller man nodded and, without another word, approached me while withdrawing zip-ties from his vest pocket. It seemed they had come prepared to take those on their extermination list prisoner if necessary.

To prove my willingness to work with them, I stuck out my wrists, standing quietly while Sebastian secured them together. He grabbed my arms and nodded back to the group.

“Let’s go then,” said Everett, ushering the group back in the direction of Eastpeak toward his house.

I still didn’t know if I was even going to survive this. But at least now, everyone would see how desperate I was to redeem myself. They would know that I wasn’t the wicked monster I came off as by obeying David. I wasn’t like that. I wanted so badly to be better than that.

While we walked, I took comfort in the sight of my fated mate walking ahead of me. She was the only comfort I could find now. And every now and then, she glanced back at me, and I wondered if she understood my intentions, if she felt my guilt.

If I could embrace her one last time, in earnest, then I would die happy.