Page 5 of Pack Ruin
Some of it was a stench that ate at the soul. Despair and poverty, terror and pain.
Ignoring it all, I perched near the top of a loblolly pine, an odd lethargy creeping over me as I waited for my quarry to pass below me.
I’d scented but not seen a group of rogues I found here months before, the ones led by the feral woman. I had caught glimpses of her from a distance. She had what I assumed was white hair, though it was hard to tell through the grease and dirt. Back then, she’d worn rags and scraps of animal hides stitched together with burlap twine and silver tape. Gaunt and rangy, her muscles had appeared almost atrophied, like she’d been starved her entire life. She’d also kept her face turned to the ground, as if she’d been trained to do that at some point, or forced to. I needed to get a closer look at her.
The scraps of conversation and rumor I’d put together made me wonder who she was to my Flor, and I decided I would search for her and her ragged group of a dozen males if I had time. But that woman was not my prey on this hunt. The Sergeant at Arms was.
He’d been almost utterly silent as he approached the packlands, forcing me to expend magic to cover my own scent and the sounds of my breathing and heart. Once I’d done that,I’d moved into place, though it had been far harder than I liked to climb the tree. The distance from my little mate was wearing on me. I needed to kill this man, and go to her. She would be at Mountain now.
I extended my claws and readied myself for the leap, only stopping when he spoke a single word. A name.
“Lily,” Sergeant called out quietly as he moved through the dense Southern forest near the very farthest western border. “Lily,” he called louder. Then, “Lily Rain!”
Flowers and weather indeed.Lily Rain.
“Lily, come out. I smell you. I know you’re here.”
To my surprise, a cackle of laughter came from the ground itself. I watched, stunned, as the white-haired woman stepped out of a tunnel of some kind. The opening had been well covered with pine needles and leaf mulch, the opening at the base of a boulder. I smelled silver on the air, and a hint of magic.
“Lily,” Sergeant rasped, moving quickly toward her. But the rogue leader held up a blade. It was far cleaner than the woman herself. Her head swiveled upward as she turned at Sergeant’s approach, and I almost flinched when I saw her face more clearly.
What I had assumed were wrinkles were scars. The woman had been marked somehow, tortured by magic or by her mate. The marks were old, so they’d weathered into her skin. They began at her eyes, continuing down her face and neck where the ragged furs she’d fashioned into clothing began. Her arms had the same peculiar texture, the scars fine and numerous, like wrinkled skin on an elderly human.
Her voice wasn’t that of an old woman, though, and she spoke clearly. “No one here has a name, shifter. We’ve all had them stripped away, stolen and broken and torn out of us.”
“Your name is Lily Rain, though.” His voice cracked. “You don’t look like… but you’re her. What happened, Lily? What happened to you?”
Her eyes flashed a familiar gold before she turned her gaze back to the ground, muttering something. I leaned forward to hear the answer, but almost fell as something wrenched at me, like a bolt plunging into my heart.
I knew who was hurting: the only one I had allowed a connection to my soul.
Well, I’d more or less forced a connection when she wasn’t looking, but still. My perfect, bright blade was in pain, far away. I closed my eyes and sent my awareness down the secret thread of magic I’d hooked into her soul.
She was being drawn deep into an abyss of pain. Into a death that reeked of old and new curses, and more quickly than should have been possible. I scrambled to find a way to hold onto her, but the connection I had forged was too tenuous. I kept reaching, heard a chanting, “Live, live, live,” from somewhere, and at last, felt the shocked touch of another soul on mine.
The Mountain mate. He’d built a bridge between their wolves, a broad, solid connection that might save her. Or kill him as well.
He was channeling his entire soul into hers. “NO. LIVE!”he spirit-shouted as my queen, our queen, began to lose herself to the vortex.
Only he was keeping her tethered to this world.
Jealousy cut me deeper than silver. I needed my littlebehrserkto see me as the most devoted, not him. I almost grunted aloud as I sent as much magic as I could spare toward him and her, singeing my own bond to her in the process. I ignored the pain.
The Mountain mate worried that I was tainting them with darkness. I laughed, beginning to pull myself away. If he knewjust how true that was, he would have already killed me. Or attempted to.
Below me, Lily was leading Sergeant into the earth, into the tunnel. I would follow them later. For now, I had unpleasant, necessary work to do.
Well done,I sent to the Mountain mate as he sent even more of his wolf’s energy into our mate’s drained spirit, not sure if he could understand me.Hold her. I will try to save him.
To do that, though, I had to untangle us all. I examined the magical knots, growing angrier by the heartbeat. I could see the real trouble was here in Southern. There was no help for it.
I would have to stay and protect the worthless one. She was connected to him, and he was vulnerable.
I almost pitied him.
I threaded my own magic down into the tangle of bright and dark cords that stretched out in three different directions. The Southern mate’s silver-gray cord had become a suction. A curse had all but killed him, and would soon devour my mate-to-be.
Nyet.I would never let that happen. But there was only one way to save her. A distasteful solution, and one I had a feeling I would regret for the rest of my life.
