Chapter 1

Castor

Wyoming had nearly ten million acres of forested lands, but with one of the best trackers who had ever been born on their side, they’d found the remains of his twin brother in under ten days. They’d set up a home base in a piece of shit run down motel while they pieced together what the fuck had happened. Every question led to ten more, a spider’s web of lies and loyalties, but they were certain now they were ready for vengeance.

“They took your brother. We’re going to take one of them as repayment. What’s our next move, Hades?”

Hades. God of the underworld. Caretaker of death.It was a fitting codename. He liked it much better than the name his mother gifted him at birth. Castor, he hated that he was one of two parts.

One of twin stars in a constellation. Every time he looked at the sky, he couldn’t help but wonder if his brother was up there. The black of night was once a comforting blanket, but now it haunted him. As kids, they’d been obsessed with the stars, with the Milky Way, with the myths and legends, especially the ones they were named for. They’d loved the idea of those two brothers up there in the sky. Greek legends.

His name also meant pious. It happened to be one of the biggest jokes ever perpetrated. His mother clearly hadn’t had an ounce of foresight. She couldn’t have foretold that the innocent baby she’d held in her arms would turn into a cruel, hardened man who took mercenary jobs for a living after his time in the military was over.

Hades. Yes, that would have been much better suited. Everything he touched turned to ash.

The motel room wasn’t big enough for one man, let alone three, but since they took turns sleeping in shifts, the one bed was enough while the other two kept watch. Most nights, they didn’t sleep at all. The early July sun beat down hotter than normal and without any air conditioning, the room was stifling.

Castor longed to shift. He wanted to sit in solitude and let the peace and wisdom of the wolf wash over him and guide him. He trusted his animal spirit far more than he trusted the savagery of his human heart.

“We could take his kids. Nothing hurts a parent like having their children stolen from them.” Jax, code name Apollo, clearly relished the idea.

There’d always been something off about the guy. A bigger piece of shit the world had never known. His talent, other than being a first-rate asshole, was muscle. He was a big bastard, as large as he was annoying. If he could piss people off past their breaking point, he could also snap them clean in half. A better athlete and a finer hand-to-hand combat fighter probably didn’t exist. His forte was using his brawn, not his brain, and Castor was getting so tired of it that the urge to test the guy’s combat skills with his own might was getting more and more appealing as the minutes ticked on.

Castor rounded on the larger man. He grasped his sweat-soaked t-shirt in his fist, twisting and shoving him back into the wall. Apollo grinned back at him, a sick sneer that peeled his lips back away from his teeth. Castor snarled in his face, an animal in human form. “We don’t hurt kids. What kind of a monster are you? Only a sick asshole makes a kid pay for the sins of their father. The sins of anyone else.”

“Whoa. Jesus. I know what happened to you and Pollux as kids. I wasn’t suggesting that—”

“You weren’t suggesting anything because you’re going to shut your fucking mouth. Say another word and I’ll take you outside and throw you off the balcony myself.” The railing was shoddy wrought iron, twisted and warped to the point that it was more of a suggestion than a safety standard. It was only waist high. He could easily heave Apollo over.

“It’s fourteen feet in the air. I’d land on my feet.”

“Not with my axe sticking out of the back of your skull, you wouldn’t,” he shot back.

“You’d turn on your own like that?”

“Who knows. On this mission, at least, I’m the god of death.”

“I remember when you used to have honor.”

He shook Apollo hard, so his head smacked into the stained patched drywall.

“This is all about honor. My brother was taken from me. Do you think a child had the wherewithal and the strength to kill a grown man? A warrior wolf?”

“Those kids are probably ten or eleven years old. They could fire a bow. Shoot a gun,” Apollo snapped back. He had an overinflated ego that consistently told him that he was too big to kill. He was wrong.

Zeus, real name Ireland, was hands down the best tracker in their pack despite his youth. He was barely twenty, but a big man as well. He was tall and sleek, a good athlete, but it was his skills in seeing the unseen that made him so valuable. He had a sort of sense for things, the hidden and the other, that he’d proven time and again were real. It was like he could see into other dimensions and realms. Death and the past, even the future, held very little sway over him. He was quiet and attentive. Meditative would probably be a better word. He liked quiet and he was constantly playing the peacekeeper between his two other packmates on their mission.

Nerves were frayed from day one and it had been a constant war between Apollo questioning the orders of his leader, challenging him whenever he could. Zeus had been busier than he wanted to be, stopping fights and standing Apollo down when he became too much.

“Hades,” Zeus touched his hand. Despite his massive body, he had the strangest, almost delicate fingers. Fingers that they’d both witnessed do unnatural things. It was like the earth and the air, the water, the trees, the rocks themselves spoke to Zeus. One brush of those fingertips over the earth and he’d be able to tell them that just beyond where the Nightfall Pack lands officially started, Pollux’s blood had been shed.

He’d bled into that dirt. The life drained out of him in the very spot Zeus pointed out, just a nondescript stretch of field left for grazing. He’d been burned there too, his body turned to ash. The marks were long gone, but Zeus found them anyway, caressing the earth, bending his cheek to listen to the spot as if it whispered its secrets in his ear.

This was the first mission Castor had ever worked with Zeus. Ever worked with anyone since his military days. He was a lone unit. A lone wolf.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up at Zeus’s touch. There was most definitely something wrong with him, but it made him insanely valuable.

He backed off, letting go of Apollo. He didn’t bother fixing his clothes, just kept leering at Castor. “Could a child hide their tracks?” he questioned more reasonably, in control of himself again. “There were others. All in the same spot. Could two little kids kill an entire band of adult wolves who were seasoned fighters?”

“It doesn’t matter if they could or couldn’t kill anyone. They’d be held captive until the Nightfall Pack hands over the person who did. They’ll guard their own, unless it’s a matter of the alpha’s children. Then they’ll do anything to get them back.”

Apollo had pushed about as far as he could go, and he finally sensed that and shut his mouth. He shot Castor an infuriatingly taunting look instead. It took all his self-control not to reach for his axes in their leather sheath on the bed and make good on that promise to embed one in the bastard’s smug skull.

“Hades. We’ll do as you instruct us.” Zeus touched him again, this time no more than a brush of his hand on his shoulder, but it sparked a buzzing in Castor’s head.

Unbidden, an image of the woman who had been with the children two out of the four days they’d watched, glanced through his skull, so sharp and hot it threatened to split his brain in two like the pain of a migraine.

They’d arrived in the late morning, the woman and the children. They didn’t belong to her, but she was the alpha’s sister and so she was entrusted with their safekeeping while their parents got on with pack business. The woman looked nothing like her brothers. She was slight and willowy whereas they were tall and muscular. She did have their white-blonde hair. It fell nearly to her waist, a series of intricate braids and waves. She smelled like summer strawberries until she unpacked their picnic and pulled out doughnuts, and he’d realized that was the source of the delicious odor. He’d nearly made a sound and given himself away when the powdered sugar fell from the doughnut and rained straight down her shirt, dusting her creamy skin in sweetness.

“We take the woman,” he grunted, shaking himself. What the fuck had that been? Could Zeus put ideas into a person’s mind? Is that how it worked for him? No. The guy wasn’t magic. He was just a shifter.

Keep telling yourself that.

He’d had years to perfect an emotionless fa?ade while in the military, and he gave one now, revealing only anger and authority. He was the master of his body. He’d tell it whether it could react to a mere woman or not.

But despite his resolution to be the master of his mind, his thoughts returned to the woman. She appeared close to him in age, probably mid-thirties or older. But there was something sinfully sweet and innocent about her demeanor.

“We’ll hold her for ransom. If they don’t want to give up the murderer for us to have our justice, then we’ll keep her.”

Zeus’s brow arched up at that.

His pack was a ragtag band of wolves, all with a warrior ethos and varying degrees of morals. Their numbers had been depleted over the years, sometimes in hunting accidents, but mostly from fighting with other packs. They had no stupid rules like some of the packs here seemed to have, about only the alpha pair being able to bear young. That would deplete the pack so quickly they wouldn’t survive past a single generation. They had no hard and fast rules about blood either. Many wolves were stolen in raids as babies or young children and raised with them. As a result, no one looked the same. Not like the Nightfall Pack they’d kept a close eye on when they realized that it was one of those wolves, perhaps more than one, who had killed his brother.

Zeus was darker. He had auburn hair cut into a shorter style. He was clean shaven most of the time and wore smart clothes, like he worked in an office for a living instead of spending most of his time out in the wilds tracking people, animals, and shifters for hire. “Keep her?”

“A life for a life.”

Castor swallowed the bitter acid burning in his throat. His own mother was taken when he and Pollux were four years old. They were kidnapped with her by another warring pack on a raid. She’d been killed there, right in front of her two young sons. They’d eventually been ransomed back to their pack. How could he even contemplate taking a woman, when his father had sworn justice for his mother and a few years later achieved it in a bloody slaughter that both he and Pollux took part in? There he was, also claiming that ten-year-olds were innocent when he’d killed his first wolf at the same age.

But this wasn’t about what he personally wanted. This was about the job he’d been tasked with by his father and his alpha. His brother had left the pack to join the Rangers, a betrayal in itself. But the fact that he had been killed, meant that a payment had to be made and blood had to be spilled. He had his orders, and though his time in the military might be long past, his alpha’s word was law and his promise to obey was his bond.

“You’d kill her? A woman?” Zeus kept his gaze trained on him like he was something that couldn’t be trusted.

Castor was known to have a nasty reputation with blood on his hands. You didn’t become a trained killer and expect a clean conscience, dove white palms, and an unstained soul.

“That’s not for me to decide,” he stated firmly. “We’ll make a gift of her, if her pack doesn’t want her back. To my father, to replace his son. He needs a mate. Or anyone else in the pack who wants her She’s not ugly and she’s from a good bloodline. She’d be forced to bear the young of her mate. A mate from our pack. She would be giving life in exchange for the death that was already had.”

Agnar, the pack alpha had killed their old alpha in challenge. Vespar had done nothing but bring grief and bloodshed to their pack. They lost more wolves under him than ever before. His time as alpha, though a brief two years, was the most devastating any of them could remember. Agnar, in contrast, tempered his physical prowess with wisdom and goodness. He’d brought them a tenuous peace that had held firmly for the past three and a half years. He’d stopped the bloodshed, the raiding, the wasteful and endless stream of slaughter and death. His instructions to them had been clear.

Bring back the murderer, or another who could stand in his stead so he could pass judgement.

The last thing they wanted was more war, especially with an unknown, powerful foe they’d never faced before. It wouldn’t be said, but there would be no war started over Pollux. A restless soul who had left the pack and gone searching for death with the Rangers.

Castor didn’t believe in anything he was saying, but he had to remove himself from the situation. All this time, his anger burned so bright it was like a furnace, threatening to turn him to ash. While it was tempting to go down in flames and be no more, he had his vengeance to seek. It would remain unsatisfied as long as his brother’s killer was out there. As many times over the years as he’d thought about death, thought of it as the sweetest release, he believed in being a warrior and dying honorably, preferably in battle, whatever that looked like. Combat, challenge, a knife coming at him in the middle of a cold, dark night that he wasn’t swift enough to dodge.

No woman was going to be payment enough. It made him feel like a beast to even think of taking an innocent and forcing her to pay the price. He was disgusted with himself, but anything else meant war, and that was unthinkable. His pack had their own innocents. Women and children. The sandy soil of their lands was already stained red with their blood. No more, Agnar said.

So, Castor had travelled north with two other pack members to seek out his brother’s killer and ensure that the proper dues were paid. Then, he could head home… and do what? He had no idea, as he’d fought all his life.

Again, the vision of the lovely, blond woman entered his mind unbidden. He sighed and shook his head, as if to rid it of those errant thoughts.

Castor believed in peace too. So, while he wanted nothing more than to feel hot blood flowing over his hands as he ripped out the insides of the man who took his brother’s life, he forced himself from the stifling room, out onto the crumbling cement balcony. He stared out over the gravel parking lot and into the distance, where, out in those hills, amongst those woods, his brother had breathed his last.

Taking the woman as hostage and bringing her back as a gift, if her pack refused the exchange of the innocent for the guilty was a solid plan. It might not get him the vengeance he desired, but it would bring a sort of closure, if there was any to be had.

“It seems like a solid plan.” Zeus crept out onto the balcony with him and leaned with his elbows on the metal railing. It didn’t look like it would hold. He stared off into the same distance, seeing things that Castor couldn’t. “We can always come again. Take again. Take another and another until they finally hand over the one we want.”

“As soon as we take the woman, they’ll double their security and their guards. It would be harder to get in.”

“Harder? That’s the fun of it.” Zeus gave a salacious grin that spoke to just how much fun he was going to have disabling the current guards when the time came.

“Either way, we take the woman. She comes to the woods every day with the kids. She’s the best bet.” He’d already decided, but he continued like he had to convince Zeus, when really, he only needed to convince himself.

“I still think we should fight our way to the heart of the pack. Take on the alpha himself.” Apollo wasn’t content to stay inside. He had to insert his hissed opinion like a snake into the heart of them. He leaned against the pink stucco, crossing his arms over his broad chest, but there was still a challenge in his eyes.

“This isn’t about starting a pack war that spans the entire nation. This isn’t political. It’s about avenging my brother’s death. I’m in charge of the mission and you will obey, or you’ll find yourself waking up on the wrong side of the turf, and by waking up, I mean you won’t ever see the light of day again.”

“You’d kill your own?” Apollo questioned again, but he was trying to goad Castor into a physical fight.

He was too carefully controlled to do anything more than roughly remind Apollo that he was in charge. There would be no fight. Ever.

“I’ll do what it takes to make you listen to leadership and follow orders. Make no mistake, you’d be nothing more than collateral damage and my actions would be warranted. You’d be the one to go rogue. If you don’t like my plan, bow out now and go home with your tail tucked between your coward legs.”

“Fuck you, god of no death.” Apollo shook his head and stormed back into the room, slamming the door behind him.

Zeus’s throat worked like he wanted to say something. He eventually did, facing Castor down, but with a gentle understanding. He always looked like that. Like a shining example of what yoga could do for one’s health and countenance on the surface, while being a maelstrom of destruction on the inside. “You saw your brother through those hellish tours. You served a country that would have been happy to do nothing more than exterminate you. I heard once, like a legend, that when you got back you wanted to set it all aside. That it was your dream to settle down, find a mate, raise some young.”

He shrugged. Pollux never could settle. He’d left parts of his soul back there, hidden in the fine, shifting grains of sand so different than the red dirt of home. He’d seen too much death and violence, and it was a poisonous corrosion slowly eating at his soul. He’d needed an escape. He was restless. It had indirectly led Castor down the same path, he was always pulling his brother from scrapes, finding him in dangerous situations. Castor’s first job after leaving the military was extricating his brother from some such situation, his services in exchange for his brother returned to him whole and unharmed.

That restlessness eventually led Pollux to a band of wolves who needed that same escape, the Rangers. Did that make them wrong? Volatile, yes. Violent, very likely. Disloyal? No.

No matter what happened, Pollux always wrote. The last letter came postmarked from the snows of Wyoming’s Yellowstone, all the way through to the deserts and bluffs of Arizona.

His brother always liked the sound of nothing at all best. Wide open spaces and empty expanses.

Where was he now? In the stars they’d been named for? At home, feasting with their ancestors?

Those were old beliefs. Beliefs that Castor didn’t hold true, even though he’d never say so. He believed that death was the end. A black finality of nothing. Peace and rest, one could only hope.

“We take the woman tomorrow,” he ground out roughly before he turned and charged down the rickety metal staircase.

He needed a run. Didn’t matter that it was broad daylight. Nothing would keep him from his ultimate purpose. Somewhere out there, maybe where his brother’s spirit finally ran free, it was written in the stars that it would happen.