Chapter 27

Arik

"She's been taken!"

Creed's roar had everyone in the inn jerking upright in their seats as the sound of a beast in their midst provoked predictable responses. Everyone except for the three of us. My veins pulsed with fiery lava that was moving slowly, too slowly, even as it burned me from the inside out. And so my head could only swing around in slow motion to see Creed launch himself from the first floor balcony and land with a smash on the table.

"She…?" Silas blinked, then blinked some more as his eyes and lashes fought a battle neither could win. "She…?"

"Jessalyn has been taken! My mate has been taken!"

Creed's snarl had my spine snapping straight. We were a pack, and our packmate had issued a call to action. I stumbled to my feet, the whole world swaying, as the innkeeper came running over, eyes wide.

"Taken?" he said.

"Your boy—"

Creed growled, shaking with fury, then gathered himself to lauch off the table. He no doubt would have torn the man's throat out but some deeply smothered instinct roared to life inside of me. I grabbed at his belt and stopped him from lunging forward. My brother's hands were held wide, fur prickling across his skin as his claws popped free.

"What boy?" There, that was the line of questioning I needed to pursue. That cool, hard thought was now my lifeline in this surging, red sea. "What boy, brother?"

That was the right word to use. He turned his head to look at me, not seeing me as aligned with the men, but as a pack member. He gazed at me steadily, man and beast staring as one, pleading for me to understand. And I realised it was the first time since we'd met the girl that he'd let slip free the truth of who she was to him.

His mate.

"The one that ran her bath." Creed's whole body shook, as a battle for control was fought between the wolf and the man. "The one that—"

"Rion?" The innkeeper seemed shocked, then angered by the news. "That little bastard. I'd heard he was trying to get in with the local bandits but—"

"What. Bandits?"

It was Silas, not Creed, who got his hands on the innkeeper first. He had him by the throat and squeezed it almost idly, his thumb moving up and down the man's windpipe.

"Beyond… the town…" the man rasped.

"Let him go, Silas," Roan snapped.

"The fuck I will—"

"Don't need to choke the life out of him, not when a sword will open his throat with just a twist." Silas relinquished his hold when he saw that Roan stood, sword outstretched, the point perfectly trained on the throbbing vein in the innkeeper's neck. "Now, I've stopped my friend from choking you to death where you stand." Roan's voice was as taut as a bowstring. "And Creed won't tear your throat out for you if you tell us everything you know, now."

People began to scramble to their feet, thinking to make for the door, but that wouldn't do. The fires of lust that had been raging in my blood transmuted into something else. Something hard and shining.

"None of you move a fucking muscle." I pulled my father's signet ring from my finger and held it up high. "By order of Prince Arik of Khean."

Every prick in the room froze to the spot, either because they knew me or because they knew my reputation. The Bastard Prince. I was initially referred to as such because of the nature of my birth, but when you're given a moniker like that, you couldn't help but try to live up to it. I tugged my belt knife free and stabbed the tip into the tabletop.

"If anyone walks free of here to warn those pricks we're coming, they'll do so with my knife in their guts."

"Or mine." Silas looked over at me with eyes of emerald ice. "Please let it be mine." He slid his cobra stare around the room. "My blades have been thirsting for blood for days."

"Enough of this." Creed strode across the table, kicking tankards and plates left and right. A serving girl screamed as the shards flew, but he didn't care. No woman mattered to my brother other than Jessalyn. It was finally clear to me that I had to face an uncomfortable truth.

Creed, Roan, Silas, and I had been thrown together as a unit. Only the gods knew why, but we'd found a reason to stay together. We were blood brothers. Our pack bond was recognised by the elders themselves and could be broken only by death. The leaders of the wolf shifters had prepared the rest of us for what was to come, giving us the kind of education that young shifter males got when their balls dropped, making clear how it would be. We wouldn't choose our wife, Creed would. We might dally with girls on our travels but never for more than one night, for Creed's beast would not allow it. His heart would always belong to one woman and that was his fated mate. When we tied our fates to his, we accepted that. I'd always thought it'd be some shifter girl that would turn his head, maybe one from a distant pack, but no… My eyes burned as I looked up at my brother, and then I shook my head.

"Where is she?" I asked in a far more even, more reasonable tone than my brother. "Where is the princess?"

"Princess…?" the innkeeper said. "If Rion has taken her to the bandits, then it'll be to one of the caves in the hills behind the town."

"That's all the information I need."

Creed yanked his breeches off and his whole body twisted. Where seconds before he had been standing there as a man, now he was a massive beast. In his wolf form, he was wrought from the powerful, dense muscle which made him such a lethal fighting machine, the likes of which were so valued by the king. He threw himself off the table and went slamming out the door. A long, drawn-out howl called us to follow and made clear the fate that awaited those who had dared take Jessalyn.

Everyone else's horses were trying to shy away, but not ours. Roan, Silas, and I leapt into our saddles, then urged them forward the minute we had our mounts under control. Our steeds were wolf-hardened, and they had no qualms running in the same direction as Creed towards our quarry, rather than away from him as the other horses' instincts urged them to do. There was no easing them into this journey. We'd been riding them for most of the day and they'd need a longer rest, but it wouldn't come yet. I flicked my reins against my horse's neck, urging him to run faster. Creed ran ahead in pursuit of his mate, just as fleet as a natural-born wolf, but with twice the stride, and we needed to keep him in sight.

I'd burned through some of the roseblood by the time we found the complex of caves that the innkeeper had spoken about. That little idiot, Jessalyn, must have drugged us to keep us off balance as she tried her luck with these pricks. And what good had it done her? Still following Creed, the horses picked their way through the trees that covered the low hills leading up to the caves. Once we were close enough, we dismounted quietly in the cover of the trees and tied off our mounts, leaving them to catch their breath while we scouted. Creed transformed into his half wolf, half man form and let out a low, sinister snarl. The reason for his anger was a familiar-looking bundle on the back of one of the bandit's horses. There, slung across the saddle like she was a rolled-up rug, was the princess. She was being pulled off the saddle and carted into the caves.

"There."

Creed's claw jabbed in the air in their direction.

"We know, Brother," I said, taking up position beside him. "But we need to be smart about this. There's more of them than there is of us."

"Since when does that matter?"

Silas' grin was wild and brilliant in the moonlight, filled with the kind of recklessness I hadn't seen for some time. He'd been assigned to me as a minder by The Guild when we were boys, but the relationship had evolved quickly into one where we both got ourselves into scrapes and then tried to find a way out of them. I felt like I was standing beside the boy again, not the hardened and somewhat cynical man.

"We go in, and they bleed," Roan said, his eyes following the movements of the bandits, noting the terrain and the route they took into the cave complex. "Just like our foes always do, then we go and get our girl."

"Our…?" The fur receded from Creed's face, as more of the man pushed forward. I saw the brown begin to bleed back into his eyes, right before he bared his fangs. "Ours. We get Jessalyn now."

"No strategising?" Silas drawled as Creed leapt over the rise and started running towards the caves. "Just the kind of fight I like. Better be quick, Brothers, if your blades thirst for blood like mine do. Creed is about to claim all the skulls of our enemies."

"The fuck he is…"

Roan and Silas jumped off the rise, running after Creed, leaving me standing there, wavering. Not from fear of the fight, but from a sense of uncertainty. This felt like the end of something, although I couldn't say exactly what. But the prospect that it might also be the beginning of something—something likely to make more ripples than a giant throwing a boulder into a lake—that terrified me far more than any two-bit bandits hiding in a hole in the ground. I shook myself out of my hesitation when I heard the others let out whoops of excitement. I did too and set off to join them. Any fight they were a part of, I knew I would always be there. It was the only way I could survive everything that happened.

But would we survive Princess Jessalyn of Stormare?

That I didn't know.