Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

Asha

Why does healing always feel like getting hurt again? I’m happy to have shared a moment with Braxton, but fuck, all the old wounds ache with new stings. Not only do I remember all my old mistakes and betrayals, but I was an asshole to Braxton after all he’d been through.

My thoughts rotate between the guilt I’d admitted for the first time and Braxton himself. The fact that my pack was killed because I wanted to go to fucking college as a twenty-something-year-old. I thought I was so fucking clever. I hadn’t given our exact address. Instead, I got a P.O. Box at the closest town and had all my college stuff go through it. From there, the Blood Mages managed to find the half-breeds they so desperately wanted to test on.

At least, that’s what one of the Blood Mages told me while he tested on me. He’d speak over my screaming, grinning down at me. Laughing about my application and how, without me, none of what they were doing would be possible.

And then there were the times I was tortured. When I broke and begged to be let go. They asked for the name of another member to take my place, and I gave in so easily.

No, not easily, but regardless, I gave it. I just wanted the pain to end, and at that moment, I didn’t care who took my place. Now, outside of that hall of nightmares, I’m ashamed of what I did. Knowing what happened to me, happened to them. Watching it happen to them and knowing I caused their pain. I should have been stronger.

“You okay?” Braxton asks.

I can’t tell if he’s worried about me, or if he’s worried about what he told me, but I answer by pulling him into a tight hug. He holds himself stiffly for a moment before he relaxes in my arms. And, as silly as it is, it’s perfect. I feel so damn warm and safe in his arms that it helps to push away the scent of burning and death.

If only by a little.

Then, Trouble is shoving between us, and I laugh, drying the rest of my face and petting the ridiculous beast. Braxton kneels down and pets him too, pushing his face against the dog and grinning like a madman.

These two really are perfect for each other.

“I’m not good with timing.”

We turn to see Orson standing awkwardly. “Did you want me to check out things now or later?”

Max’s mouth lifts into a half-smile. “Now would be good. We can continue this later.” But he also casts Braxton and me a reassuring look, and some big part of me is grateful that I don’t see revulsion in his gaze.

When Orson pulls out his computer, I’m glad to have the distraction. He sets it on the roof of a charred sedan and we all crowd around it. A swath of forest appears on the screen, surrounding a town, and in the middle of it, I spy four tiny dots in a semicircle beside the burned remains of a car.

Instinctively, I cast my gaze to the sky as if I’m going to see the camera staring back at me. Nothing but blue above. Creepy . As though reading my thoughts, Orson says, “Anytime, anywhere, someone could be watching. Wild, right?”

Max pulls his attention back to the task at hand. “I don’t suppose you have a way of scanning the area for?—”

“Movement? Yeah, one sec. I’ll check the current feed and the data logs.” Orson’s fingers dance as nimbly across the keyboard as a master pianist. A green line sweeps across the screen, leaving behind four red boxes that encase each of us. “Just us,” Orson confirms.

“As far as your eye in the sky is concerned,” says Max, his gaze leaping from home to home. “But there are still plenty of places a person could hide from a satellite.”

“I don’t care if anyone is out there. I’m going in,” I tell them.

If there’s any chance anyone from my pack is still here, still alive, I’ll find them. I don’t care what the others do because this is my mission. To save my people.

Max raises his weapon, and his brown eyes are protective as they land on me. “If you don’t want to wait for backup, Asha, then we all go together. It’s the only way this works.”

For some reason, it’s weird that I’m not surprised by his response. A strange feeling blossoms in my stomach, and that sense that we’re moving further and further from prisoner and Enforcer to a couple comes over me. It’s strange that I don’t know how to feel about it.

But also not my focus right now. There will be time for that later.

I pluck the pistol from the back of my pants and rack one into the chamber. “Fine.”

He nods. “We do this by the book. Stay close. Be alert.”

We move as a unit down the road, systematically clearing the block. For each home, Max instructs me to wait with Orson at the porch while he enters through the front and Braxton goes through the backdoor with Trouble at his side. I listen to the repetition of “Living room, clear!” “Kitchen, clear!” “Bedroom, clear!” while succumbing to reverie.

Who could have survived and been brought to this town as a slave? Cordelia June, the older woman who made the best pies in town? Franklin Bo, the head of the Bo household, who was responsible for building nearly every building in town? Zen, the little girl whose mom taught yoga classes every morning? There were so many people who colored every day of my life before the attack. Seeing any one of them would be… a balm for my soul.

Fuck. It would be.

It’s strange how much I need that. Something to ease the ache of loneliness inside of me. Something to wash away the hurt and pain from my past and bring something good to life.

I turn my thoughts over to the magic I’ve attuned to, like a background hum only I can hear. With the boost provided by the brothers’ blood, I listen intently, hoping it will expose its source. The longer I listen, the more certain a little voice becomes. This was Simon’s doing . But I’m just not yet convinced. Or maybe you refuse to believe .

“What group could possibly do this?” Orson mutters as we post up on the porch of a two-story house on a street corner. “It’s basically an extermination.”

“One person,” I correct.

His eyes snap to mine. “Just one person?”

I nod. “A member of my Blood Pack, given terrible new powers by the Blood Mages.”

“One person,” he whispers, surveying the carnage that riddles the intersection. Men, women, and children were murdered all the same. He’s visibly disturbed at the implication. One person ripped through town like a twister, enough rage to keep them going until every last soul was cleaved from its flesh. How did these kinds of horrors start to feel normal?

“Can you do this?” he asks, those mismatched eyes of his finding mine.

I hesitate, then decide to be honest. “I don’t know, but I don’t like dark magic.”

A shiver rolls through me. Not liking it is an understatement, but the mention of it brings to life those black wispy things at the edges of my vision. The ones that whisper to me. The ones that urge me to use the powers inside of me to fix… everything. To make my life better. To free myself from all the pain and all the sorrow.

I shudder. Fuck.

“I don’t like it either,” he says. “I realize that response isn’t logical and that power like this could be useful in a good way, just as much as it can do something like this, but some deep, instinctual part of me doesn’t care.”

“Same,” I tell him, surprised. Everything the fucking wisps whisper is true, but it doesn’t make my instincts calm down. They scream to stay as far away from any power that can do this as possible.

He coughs and pushes his face into his shirt. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m not used to anything like this.” Then, he makes a retching sound that makes my own stomach give a flip in response.

The smell is horrendous, a stench that entwines fire and death. This is what hell must smell like , I muse. It’s inescapable, like a noxious vapor choking the town. Yet, after all I’ve been through, the smell is manageable if I don’t breathe through my nose. Not pleasant, but manageable. As a shifter, I can’t exactly stop smelling things altogether. The sense is just too important. I can just try to focus on what’s important.

A trace of something else catches my attention. It’s familiar, harkening back to the days before everything went to shit. I feel the color drain from my face as I inhale, identifying the scent to my shock. It’s a member of my pack. Who, I don’t know, but I don’t care, as long as they’re alive.

The problem? I need to follow the scent alone. As close as I’m becoming to these men, my people are still my main priority. I can’t risk what any of them will do if the person is dangerous, or even if they’re not.

Will my pack member end up behind bars no matter what?

I can’t risk it. I need to get away from this group and follow the scent. Even if I feel a wave of guilt because of what I intend to do.

We move on to the next house, moving like a well-oiled machine, where two parts are working perfectly and two parts are standing around with their thumbs up their asses. Okay, not the perfect example, but that’s how it feels. Max and Braxton prepare to enter, starting to split off from our group, and I realize this is my chance.

“This would go faster if you actually used your new monkey instead of keeping him on babysitting duty,” I say to Max, pointing at Orson.

“She’s right,” Orson agrees without missing a beat.

Max looks at Orson, then back at me. “Is this because you want us to clear the entire town before backup arrives? Because it will take however long it takes, if we’re careful, which we have to be.”

“If anyone’s left, time could be of the essence. One of my pack members could be bleeding out as we speak.” He stares, and I try a different tactic. “The three of you all have some training when it comes to this shit, so why not use all three of you? Any time you save is time you can save lives, and you’ll be just as careful.”

“ He doesn’t have training.” Braxton points out the flaw in argument with irritation.

“Although prison did teach me how to take care of myself,” Orson says, followed by a shrug.

Max’s eyes darken as they focus on me. “What if you run into trouble?”

“I’ll scream like a delicate girl,” I tell him, fluttering my lashes, then stand up a little taller. “I’ll use my incredibly dangerous powers to take them down or, you know… shoot them.” I indicate the Glock still in my hand.

Max sighs. “Fine, but you stay right here, and you do scream if you see anyone.”

They all disappear into the house and I don’t hesitate, slipping away from its porch, scenting the Blood Pack member I know must be lurking in the woods nearby. I stalk past the border of the woods, moving silently through the underbrush. Their scent grows stronger. I’m close. I peer into the greenery, seeking movement, but I don’t see anything.

I look back over my shoulder and realize I’ve come quite a distance into the forest, certainly too far for Max’s comfort. Anything farther than his wingspan is too far . I’m going to have to figure out this scent and hurry back if I have any chance of not being discovered.

Just please let them be alive.

Please.

The scent increases with each step I take until it smells like I’m on top of the person. It’s honestly strange, so I slow, trying to figure out what the hell I’m scenting. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I look up, expecting to see a body hanging over me. But, thankfully, there’s nothing.

So where are they?

My foot slips and I nearly plummet into a small hole previously covered over with foliage. Confused, I look down to find a girl cowering in the earth. A girl. The source of the scent. And she’s alive!

She flinches as leaves and dirt rain down on her, then pinches her eyes shut. I stare down at her, trying to remember her. She has brown hair that’s long and tangled, looking like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. Her face looks like it might have been round once, but is so thin that the bones in her face seem to stick out in ways they shouldn’t. Nothing about her is familiar to me, but time can be cruel.

I crouch down and breathe her in, trying to identify her scent. Fear radiates off of her so strongly that an age-old instinct whispers the word prey to me, and it’s so powerful that it’s hard to pick up on anything else. She thinks I’m here to hurt her. But after seconds pass and she isn’t killed, she opens her eyes for a peek at her presumed killer.

“Asha?” she asks, her voice imbued with cautious hope.

Though her features are obscured by dirt, I think I recognize the teenage face underneath and the light voice. “Janie?”

“Yes,” she whispers, then a sob explodes past her lips.

She scampers out of the hole and into my arms. We squeeze each other tightly, clinging to one another fiercely. Family. Pack. The words fly through my mind, and my heart swells. Alive!

“Oh my god, you don’t know how happy I am to see you!” she says, her voice trembling.

“The feeling’s mutual,” I tell her, breathing her in. As I hold her, I can feel her legs shaking. Fear and exhaustion have drained her. “Come here. Let’s sit up against this tree.”

I help lower her and then sit beside her.

She holds my hands the entire time. “I didn’t think I’d ever leave this forest alive.” The last word cracks, and she squeezes my hands tighter.

“What happened?” I ask, then clarify. “After the Raven Pack and the Blood Mages attacked our lands, and you were taken.”

She takes a deep breath, and I sense that this story is one she’s thought about often. “There were about a dozen of us here, forced to do things for the Raven Pack. I had to clean their houses all day. I know others were made to chop wood, fix cars, whatever they wanted.”

Slavery . Those bastards enslaved my pack members. And, it finally hits me. Is that what the Blood Mages gave them for their help? A shudder rolls through me as my wolf claws to be released.

But it isn’t time for that. Yet.

I breathe her in again and get my second surprise. She smells, more or less, the same way she did before. There’s no dark magic on her. The silver lining, I suppose, is that Janie seems untouched by dark magic. The Raven Pack didn’t experiment on them like the Blood Mages did me.

“What happened next?” I don’t think I need to say, when the town was destroyed , I just stare and wait.

“The strangest thing happened. Your brother Simon came.” Of course, it had been Simon. The inevitable conclusion I’ve been staving off hits me like a Mack truck, but I retain my composure as Janie continues. “He just started killing the Raven Pack like it was nothing. Like he was squishing bugs. Nobody could stop him, though they tried. It gave all of us an opportunity to run away, so we hightailed it into the woods.”

“You all got away? None of the Blood Pack were hurt?”

Janie shakes her head. “They were all too busy trying to fight your brother.” She doesn’t realize my true fear, which is that Simon attacked our own pack with the same indiscriminate violence. It’s a small relief he at least spared their lives. Perhaps he hasn’t completely lost himself to the darkness . “Did you find him?”

“Simon?”

She shakes her head.

“What about the rest of you that escaped? Where did they go?”

She turns her head to indicate the forest. “They’re out there somewhere.”

My heart races. “Who? Adults or just kids?”

“Adults and kids. At least fifty of us.”

Fifty? I want to cry. It’s hard to breathe for a minute, but I push through. If I don’t act fast enough, I’m going to lose them after they’ve done so much to survive.

I take hold of her shoulders. “Janie, the Enforcers are on their way here.”

Her eyes widen with fear. She knows as well as I do that doesn’t bode well for her or the others. The Enforcers will take one look at the situation and presume they helped my brother. Which would be justified if all the victims had been of age. But the wholesale extermination of the town won’t be written off as a defensible slave revolt. They won’t want to listen to any of that though, because, well, any excuse to be rid of half-breeds.

“We’ll be thrown in jail. Or… killed ,” she whispers.

Smart girl. “Janie, listen to me. Do you think you can scent the other pack members?”

She nods.

My brain starts working as I remember uncharred vehicles in the town. “I don’t think Simon destroyed all the cars. You can take them and get out of here.”

She squeezes my hands again, eyes wide.

“Listen to me. You need to drive out of here as fast as you can. Don’t look back, okay?”

“And go where?” she asks, like she’s truly forgotten there is anywhere outside of this nightmare.

My thoughts spin, and I recall the satellite feed of our old pack lands. “Home,” I tell her. “Someone’s been rebuilding there. I don’t know who, but they must be friendly, if not some of our own. You should be safe there.”

“Okay.” Her head’s nodding like a broken bobblehead, not that I blame her. She’s doing really well given all she’s been through.

Digging into my pocket, I pull out the little money I have. “This should help get you there. And take anything you can grab along the way to the cars that has any value, but don’t go looking for things. There isn’t time.”

She takes the money and shoves it into her own pocket, then stares at me.

And something hits me. “Someone is still in our town. I don’t know who. Make sure you guys are ready, just in case.” Though he’s rebuilding the town, so chances are he’s not dangerous to us.

Her eyes widen. “Okay.”

“Go, Janie. Fast,” I say, before hugging her tightly, trying to remember the scent of a living pack member in my mind forever.

She rises, then takes off, following her nose through the forest. I watch as she disappears into the green recess, allowing myself a moment of glee. I’ll have to lie again to Max and Braxton, and I don’t feel good about that, but members of my pack are safe . And nothing can steal this moment’s victory from me.

Nothing.