Page 90 of Cruel Revenge
An oath. For whoever heard it and anyone who didn’t, Heath gave his oath.
“No matter what?”
Heath slowed so he could properly look at his middle child. Battered by life, bruised by it time and time again. He saw the child in his eyes, a vulnerability that Landon hadn’t given him in so long.
“No matter what,” Heath swore. “I will do everything in my power until the day I die to keep her among the living.” Heath reached out with one hand and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “Now let’s go save our girls.”
He pushed the pedal to the floor, and the truck worked hard to get to the speed Heath wanted. It cut the travel time down to mere minutes, then he swung into a parking spot. Landon and he were out of the truck in seconds, grabbing everything they needed, gearing up to fight.
He could smell her. Jacky. Wild and peaceful. Her scent was wild yet peaceful. Shewasn’traging. The odd combo made himthink of a full moon, running through the woods, a deer running ahead of him. Wild.
And he was focused on what he was doing. Everything for the kill. There was clarity, calmness, knowing what to do and how to do it.
“She’s not raging like a berserker… She’s hunting,” Heath whispered into the wind.
“And she’s damn good at it. The blood in the air is thick,” Landon said, his words not pondering and mystified like Heath’s, but viciously proud.
Heath sniffed the air again, this time forcing himself to ignore the magnetic scent of his lover. The blood was thick. Too thick to figure out how many had bled.
It was their guide. The wind direction gave them their location. Heath and Landon, guns raised, approached. Heath listened, focused on the door, and heard the muffled sounds of screams that no human would catch. The building was secured enough to keep the prisoners inside from letting anyone else know what was happening.
Heath figured it was their way of hiding his daughter and the boys he promised to care for and lead. Now it was hiding their screams as they paid for their transgressions against one very angry werecat. The screams were loud to him as he focused, but after a moment, he caught her.
Jacky’s growl. It was off. It was a werecat’s growl from a human throat. Not the growls every moon cursed did in their human forms, which could be impressive, but never on the scale of their cursed animal forms. It was somewhere in between. It was both right and wrong.
“She’s still alive,” he said softly, getting to the front door of the discreet building that looked like so many of the others. There was a single-story warehouse area that dominated the building’s first floor and part of the second floor, but severaladmin areas as well on the second and third floors, offices and the like.
“I’ll tell her parents,” Dirk said softly on comms.
“Good. Let’s go. Dirk, we’re not going to be relaying every little thing. We’ll tell you when something big happens.” Landon breached the door, and Heath followed him, knowing his son should have gone second. With Landon, there were times he had to lead, even if he wasn’t a leader. His natural inclination was to run ahead alone and might need backup.
So much like Jacky, truthfully. She tried to make sure she had back up, but Heath knew most of the time that she was trying to be smart, even when her instincts wanted something else.
“Help!” a woman yelled, looking up from behind a desk in a little front office space. “There’s a… there’s a…”
“A monster?” Heath asked, looking at her, smiling. The woman finally realized who had entered the building. “Why didn’t you just leave through the front door? It’s right there.”
She didn’t have the chance to answer. She started to try to cast something, though, the scent of magic wafting off her.
Landon shot her.
“If Jacky is killing everyone, we might as well make the job easier for her,” he said, no regret in his eyes as Heath looked at him. “We didn’t bring anything for capture, anyway. They’ll just run when our back is turned, then we'll have to hunt them downagain.”
“Fair enough,” Heath said. “She was a witch anyway, and any witch in this building is the enemy and can’t be trusted.” There was no denying that everyone in the building was involved in kidnapping Carey, Arlo, Benjamin, and Kody. That also made them responsible for killing Stacy.
He would make all of them pay for all of it.
If Jacky doesn’t beat me to it.
Together, he and Landon started to move in the best formation they could with only the two of them. They were in step with each other, years and years of being father and son, Alpha and second, partners as they fought against the world.
If Richard were there, he would have been in step with them as well. He’d never been the most dominant werewolf, but he had been one of them, an Everson. He’d failed Richard. He wasn’t failing Carey today.
And now she’s a werecat…
She’s going to live forever.
Heath finally let it sink in as he walked with decades of experience with Landon. One day, Carey would be in step with them. She would also be in step with Jacky, living the wild energy that now permeated the building.
