27. Cannon

Walking down to the kitchen,I wasn’t surprised to see Royce making coffee. “You’re up early.” He grunted as he filled the filter with grounds. “You sleeping okay?”

He gave me a flat stare. “Sure.”

I nodded. Right. “Yeah, I know.” I took a stool and watched my closest friend make the morning coffee. Was it morning? I hadn’t looked outside in days, not since we had returned to the pack. Beaten, battered, but not broken.

My bunker had far more prisoners in it than it was accustomed to.

“Any change?” Royce asked gruffly as we waited for the coffee to brew.

“I think her eyelid flickered.” He said nothing and I didn’t blame him. It wasn’t really a conversation starter. “You speak to Doc?”

“Yeah, his jaw healed faster than I thought.”

I nodded. I had punched him when I learned that he had let the two of them walk past him. Hard. It cracked something, but I was more inclined to believe it may have knocked some sense into him.

Maybe.

“He got anything?”

“A guilty conscience,” Royce snorted. “Hannah too.”

I didn’t meet his penetrating gaze. Doc’s actions came from Hannah’s insights, and I felt therefore that she was equally to blame. I had not punched Hannah. Not because I was a good male who didn’t hit women or some human reason—we were shifters, we fought—I didn’t hit Hannah because Royce had stepped in front of me and blocked her from me.

“Shaman?” he asked.

I shook my head. “He moves between the three rooms like a wraith, but nothing changes.”

“I sent out search parties for the druid.”

“Who was able to join a search party?” I asked sourly. The fight with the Anterrio Pack had been brutal, and while we had won, who was I fooling? No one. We didn’t win. We defeated Bale, but we lost.

We lost so much.

Almost too much.

“Leo,” Royce told me with a look I knew well. It meant he didn’t approve, but he wasn’t in a position to say no. “Ned.”

“Luna,” I huffed out a laugh. “That’s a search party I want to avoid.”

“Nikan.”

I nodded, breaking eye contact. “Of course.”

Royce placed a mug of coffee in front of me and picked up his own. “Do you think you will be able to see some of the pack today?”

“No.”

“Cannon…”

“I can’t.” I shook my head. “I walk out that door and—” I cut myself off as I took a sip of coffee.

“You aren’t abandoning her if you go outside.”

Placing my cup down on the counter, I stood. “Being down here is too far from her.” I gave him a shrug as pitiful and as hopeless as I felt. “I can’t.” I made to move to the stairs.

“Take the coffee with you,” he reminded me.

Silently I picked up my drink and slowly climbed the stairs, making my way to my room, where my mate lay in a dreamless sleep. Her body was unresponsive. She wasn’t even breathing on her own. Doc had hooked her up to a ventilator, and she just lay there. Doc told me her brain activity was low. He hadn’t said anything else, but I knew what he meant.

Kezia was barely hanging on. If she was even still in there.

Closing the door behind me, I settled into the chair that sat beside the bed, and I took her limp hand in mine. Every time I looked at her, I saw her body torn and ripped open, saturated in blood. I heard her screams as the silver embedded deeper into her bloodstream, her agony as we forced the final shift.

Leaning back in my chair, I tilted my head back and looked at the ceiling, not seeing the white paint but instead the night of the battle as it played on a constant rerun in my head.

After our first attack, the night we broke Kris and Cass free, Bale had ramped up his security. It wasn’t enough to stop us in our assault, but that didn’t mean they weren’t waiting for us. Leo’s patrol made first contact, and Bale had not taught his pack stealth. They had charged out of the compound like human brawlers from a pub.

With them being so unruly and undisciplined, the rest of us had charged in, and we’d clashed in a battle of ferocity and hate. Despite everything I had said to my mate, I had gone looking for that prick Landon. Kris too. It was an unspoken agreement between us. I had left my pack to find the limp dick twin.

He’d been chained to a wall, naked, sitting in his own filth, with a silver collar around his neck, two silver cuffs on his wrists, and so badly beaten his face was a swollen mess. Neither Kris nor I could break him free. Kris had shifted back to his human form, and using soiled blankets, he had used them as protective wraps for his hands.

It took both of us—with a lot of strength, cursing, and sheer brute force—to free him.

Kris had slapped him several times to get him to wake up and then forced him to shift. It was obvious he would need to shift several times, and Kris had told me to go back to the fight.

I’d been eager to leave. Landon was not and never would be my priority. I’d done this for my mate, and when she asked me, I would be able to tell her I got him. That was enough.

In wolf form, I had fought several of Bale’s pack inside the compound, separated from my pack. I had held my own as I searched the halls for Bale himself. He wasn’t there, and I had gone outside, ready to tear the place apart until I found him, vowing to myself that he would never hurt my mate again.

When I heard Leo tell me he had Kezia, fury unlike any other had descended over me. What the fuck was I fighting to keep her safe for if she was willing to throw herself into danger?

She’d left my pack defenseless. She was an alpha now, and I had trusted her to serve my pack as I did.

I still remembered her guilt and regret as she cowered at my feet. Part of me knew I was harsh, but my pack was everything. They were here fighting for her, and she had thrown it back in their faces.

My eyes closed as I remembered the way she had looked at me. If I had been softer, gentler, and kept her with me, she wouldn’t be lying in this bed, unmoving and lifeless.

When I had left her, I’d seen Ned struggling with three pack against him. I saw the glint of silver, and I’d charged forward. When I got there, another two enemy shifters attacked me. I heard Cass scream.

I snorted in the quiet of the room. Luna herself would have heard Cass’s scream.

A wolf almost as big as me had taken a chunk from my leg, and as I spun to face him, I saw her. A white wolf streaking across the battleground. She dodged and evaded everyone. She was mesmerizing. I fought to see what she was racing towards, and I saw Bale with his children defeated at his feet, and then I saw the crumpled form of Kris’s wolf.

I had no recollection of how the shifters who fought me died. I saw Kezia pounce and tackle Bale to the ground, and I fought like a man possessed to clear a space to get to her. Royce told me later that I took down so many he’d never seen anything like it, but I could only see Kezia. When Bale threw her away from him, I saw nothing but his death.

He should have been taken prisoner.

We should have contained him.

He needed to answer for his crimes against pack law. He held the answers to so many questions, but when I saw her white coat turning red with blood, all I’d seen was his death.

I didn’t regret the fact I’d killed him. I’d kill him over and over for what he had done to my mate. But I couldn’t. He was dead and Kezia lay unmoving beside me.

Her body… I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to erase the sight of her broken and bleeding in front of me, but the picture wouldn’t fade no matter how hard I tried to rub it away.

I’d made her shift. Over and over. I didn’t think of the silver. The weapon he had used against all of us, and I had forgotten about the silver. His claws were tipped with it. I didn’t know how that was possible, I didn’t want to know how it was possible, and yet it was.

When he had sliced into her tiny body, again and again, he’d poisoned her with silver.

Silver binds.

It was a miracle I got her to shift as many times as I had, and then when she was unable to shift again, Kris told me we needed to combine Wills. I didn’t know we could. I doubted he did. It was a move of desperation, and I wasn’t sure it worked.

She’d shifted to her wolf, and the magic of Luna healed more of her body, and we’d forced the shift back, but when we did, Kezia was gone. I didn’t know where her spirit was.

Where was my mate?

The body that lay in the bed was a shell.

Her soul was gone, and I had no idea how to get her back.

I wokeup to see the shaman in the room. He looked frailer, older. He looked like he had fought the pack war.

“Any change?” I asked him, straightening in my chair.

“It’s been two weeks, Alpha,” he told me, crushing herbs with a pestle and mortar. “I’ll let you know when there’s a change with Kezia.”

I bit my tongue. He was older and frailer and also grumpier. He’d also unhooked her from the ventilator and snorted when Kezia breathed fine on her own. Doc hadn’t returned after witnessing that.

“Your pack is restless.”

“My pack is fine.”

He looked at me with a disapproving stare. “Your pack needs their alpha.”

“I’m right here,” I snapped. Drawing a breath, I looked at him. “Sorry.” He said nothing but continued to crush his herbs. I watched him in silence. I’d never asked him why he had let them go. He had given them a potion to mask their scent, and while I was grateful they had been undetected, I was still pissed that he hadn’t given them a potion to knock them on their asses and keep them in the safety of my pack.

“Your anger towards me is justified.”

My head jerked up and I looked at him. Had I spoken aloud?

“I can sense it,” he told me with a small smile. “I am Luna’s vessel.” He gave a sigh, placing his tools down. “As I have done with so many things, I followed the signs and never questioned. The belt buckle. The need to protect two young wolf cubs. Teaching a young wolf how to be an alpha in a pack that had a weak ruler. Leaving a potion for two strong-headed females who could cause trouble in an empty den.”

“You did it for Luna?”

If he could have, he would have rolled his eyes. “Everything I do, I do for the Goddess.”

“Why?”

He pointed at himself with a smirk. “Shaman.”

I actually chuckled at his attempt at a joke. “Why would Luna want them there? They were safe here.”

“Were they?” He shrugged. “Kris tells me not all of the Anterrio Pack have been recovered.” He picked his tools back up again. “Where are the others? The fighters? Only women and children remain in the pack we called home. Where are the soldiers, Alpha?”

I studied him for a long time. “How is Kris?”

“He healed quickly. Cass is more delicate. She maintains her own bedside vigil.”

I pressed my lips together to stop my sneer. Landon still suffered the ill effects of the silver. He was still unable to shift to heal. Kris had tried to will him to shift, but as he was not his recognized alpha, it hadn’t worked. Kris had tried to force him, but Landon had made such a fuss that Cass had begged her mate to stop. Even when he was incapacitated, Landon was an ungrateful prick.

Tapping my fingers off the armchair, I shook my head in defeat. “A vessel of Luna you may be, old one,” I said as I got to my feet. “You’re still a sneaky meddler.”

The shaman smiled widely. “I serve the packs.”

At the door, I hesitated. “If she…”

“When Kezia is ready, she will wake,” he told me solemnly.

“Will she?” I heard my doubt and I hated it.

“We have to believe that she will.”

Right. I left him to sit with her and walked down the hall, rapping my knuckles briefly against the door before opening it and seeing Kris and Cass both turn to look at me. Landon lay in a deep sleep; the shaman kept him drugged as his human form healed slowly.

“Kezia?” Kris was on his feet.

“No.” I glanced at Cass, but it was hard to look at her and not want to shake her. “Got a minute?”

Kris looked at his mate, dropped a kiss to her temple, and left the room with me. In the hallway, he looked at me with something akin to relief.

“Hard going?” I asked him quietly as we went downstairs.

Looking over his shoulder, he checked we were alone, and as the doors of the study closed, he let out a loud sigh. “I swear the fucker’s milking it.”

His frustration echoed my own, and it made me smile properly for the first time in weeks. “He’s a deceptive asshole. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Slumping into a chair, Kris looked up at me. “What do you need?”

“My mate awake and shooting off her smart mouth?”

He nodded sagely. “Never thought I’d want one of her eye rolls.”

We mulled in silence until I remembered what I’d dragged him away from the twins for. “The shaman tells me we’re missing some of the Anterrio Pack?”

Kris sat up straighter. “Yeah, I asked Royce if he could ask your scouts to find them, but so far, they’ve seen nothing.” He looked slightly uncomfortable. “I hope that was okay? To ask?”

I waved it off. “We need to find them. Ned and Leo and some others brought everything they could find at the second location back here.” It was my turn to be uncomfortable. “I haven’t gone through it yet.”

“Other things on your mind,” he said, brushing it off, then coughed. “But…”

“When the Pack Council arrives, and they will, it would be nice to have the evidence we need to overthrow them.” Scratching my head, I tilted my head back and groaned. “I’ve neglected my pack.”

“Your pack is more than able to function without you for a few weeks,” Kris said gently. He then looked at me with his own guilt. “I need to be back at Anterrio Pack and explain something to them, but…”

I laughed. “What a pair of alphas we are, right?”

He stood. “We should be better.”

“Yeah.” I looked out the window. “I’ll call for the others.”

The speed with which my brother, Royce, Leo and Ned arrived shamed me. I watched Ned look around, obviously feeling out of place. It was rare I took him into these meetings. He was more a follow-orders-and-not-question shifter, but he had been an invaluable help at the compound. He’d kept his head when I had lost mine.

“Sit,” I directed him. Kris hovered near me and eventually retook the chair he had been in when he first came in. “I owe you an apology,” I started. “She’s…” I swallowed. “She’s the same, no change. But my pack has changed. We have faced losses.” Five of my pack hadn’t made it back. I had gone to their families, but I recalled very little of what I had said, my concern for Kezia overriding everything. “We uncovered a mess, we confronted it, and I have failed to clean it up.”

“You’ve had a lot going on,” Royce said gruffly.

“Yes,” I agreed. “But I need to remember I am an alpha, this is my pack, and my duty remains to my mate and my pack.”

Nikan watched me. “What do we need to do?”

“We need to find the missing pack members of Anterrio, we need to go through the documents Ned brought back, and we need to go to the Anterrio Pack and try to clean up the mess Bale left behind.”

Leo looked at Royce and grinned. “Sounds doable.”

“We also need to put out feelers to the other packs, see who will talk to us, who knows anything, and anticipate when the Pack Council will come and try to try us all for violation of pack law.”

“I’ve already sent out communications to a few packs,” Royce said.

“I’ve been documenting the shit from the compound,” Ned told me. “It’s in some kind of code. I’ll get it though.”

Kris looked at him. “Code?” He flicked his gaze my way. “We used a code in the security team. I might be able to help.”

Ned nodded slowly. “Appreciate it.”

“You’re wary of me,” Kris told him bluntly. “Cassandra is my mate. She is the only one of Anterrio Pack I am interested in protecting.”

Ned looked around the room and grinned. “Good.”

“I can form search teams,” Leo told me. “Nikan and I have been scouting, but it’s a vast mountain range, and they had those tunnels?—”

“They could be anywhere,” I agreed. “I’ll join you.”

“And the Anterrio Pack?” Royce asked with a glance at Kris.

I met my beta’s stare. “It’s my first stop.”