Page 32 of Pack Rage
I knew I wasn’t going to like this.
Finn turned away. “Luke, you’ll stay here. Brand, I’m going to lock you in a cell when Father calls me into the city to help—” As he spoke, a light on his phone started blinking. “That was fast.”
Luke and I blinked at each other as Finn took the call, his father’s voice strident on the other end. For some reason, Finn headed to the bathroom and returned with a roll of some sort of silver tape, pressing it into my shaky grip. It smelled odd, but not like real silver.
“I’ll make sure he’s taken care of. Where’s Mother... Really? All right, I’ll be there in twenty,” he said to his father, then put his phone in his pocket. “Perfect. Mother is on her way upstate to meet with what’s left of Ivan’s ‘rogues.’ I have to take a car to meet Father.”
“You’ll be okay?” I asked as Luke helped me stand. I didn’t need the help, but having him beside me made me feel so much stronger, like our bond amplified my strength with every small contact.
“Absolutely. I’ll keep him busy for the next couple of days. Then, the moon will be on our side.”
“What if your mother returns, and tries to reestablish her hold on me?” I didn’t want to admit how much that thought frightened me. “Or Luke?”
Finn sighed. “Luke isn’t a threat to her. He’s worth more as an Alpha she thinks she’ll control. He’ll be safe.”
Luke cursed. “But Brand won’t be, if he’s trapped in a cell!”
Finn grimaced slightly. “I’m pretty sure the cell I’m going to put him in is the safest place in the Mansion.”
Aw, hell.“Don’t tell me?—”
Finn cut me off. “We don’t have time for this, Brand. The only one who can fight my mother and win is Grigor Dimitrivich. And it’s time you two met, for Flor’s sake. He is hers as much as I am. There’s no other way.” His voice rang with truth.
There was no way around it. I was going to have to meet the asshole.
Chapter 15
Close Calls
FLOR
The air was colder in New York, and I could see the puffs of my breath as I stared through a pair of borrowed binoculars across a heavily wooded valley. A few housetops poked out of the fall foliage, chimneys releasing their smoke into the early morning light to the north, but I had my eyes trained on the gleaming silver roofline in the distance. It was still ten miles away, down one hillside, and on the far side of the wide valley, or so the maps indicated. We’d hopped out of the Mountain pack van a few miles back and jogged just inside the tree line up a narrow, winding road until the Mansion had come into view.
“I can feel him,” Mama said, her voice cracking as she stared ahead. “He’s there.” She stood beside me, glaring toward the east. She had one hand pressed over her wounded abdomen, and the other clutched around an old short sword she’d brought from the cave at Southern. Sergeant’s face had gone pale when he’d seen it, and I had a feeling it was significant—maybe to our family—but hadn’t asked. I’d been too busy trying to convince half of the Mountain pack, all of Southern, and the Tenebris boysfrom jumping in their own trucks, cars, and vans and coming to Eastern as well. I’d only been partly successful.
I peered over my shoulder at Sergeant, who sat with the entire Tenebris pack, all of them in wolf form now, except for Leroy and Bo, who couldn’t shift yet. Leroy waved when he noticed me looking at him. Bo just blushed.
“Bringing them was a mistake,” I muttered. Sergeant had insisted on coming with me and Mama, and the Tenebris pack was too new to be without their Alpha—and loved my mama too much to let her go without them.
“I’m not about to watch my last living family walk into the jaws of death without me there,” Sergeant had stated the afternoon before, when I’d argued we needed a faster, smaller, quieter group, since we didn’t know if they had drones or cameras that watched this far out.
My “plan,” if you could call it one, had required Mama to be there. I’d welcomed Sergeant as backup, once he’d scolded me that magical traps existed. “Elina is a witch, and while she’s kept it under wraps for decades, she may use that power a little more overtly at home. I can still sense magic, even if I can’t use much. Lily can keep you hidden. My Tenebris boys will stay back and wait. You may end up going in alone, but all you have to do is howl and we’ll come running.”
I wasn’t confident that they could stay hidden. A pack of two dozen wolves would be impossible to miss. In the van, Bo and Leroy alone had made more noise than a flock of turkeys until Glen took steps.
“At least they’re quiet now,” Glen whispered from behind my other shoulder. “I wasn’t sure what you wanted the duct tape for, but you’re right. It did come in handy.”
He’d slapped a long piece over Leroy’s mouth in the van an hour before. He’d finally snapped when Leroy had asked for the fiftieth time if we were there yet. Bo had asked for his own pieceof tape, “Just in case I start asking stupid questions, too.” It had made everyone else in the van—even Mama—smile.
It had been the last time any of us smiled. My bond with Brand had gone flat on that ride, as if it were being pinched off. There had been a moment of pain and sheer panic, before it had cut off. It was a familiar sensation, one of my mates clamping down on the bond to keep me safe. I hated it. Grigor’s bond was still numb, Finnick’s was frail, and now Brand… I could feel him growing weaker, fast. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but at least I knew he was still alive.
And he was with Finnick, Luke, and maybe even Grigor. It would have to be enough until I could get there.
Shifting the backpack with my supplies on my shoulder, I turned to Sergeant. He was a massive, grizzled wolf, with silvered markings on his dark gray fur, but his eyes were the same, sharp and watchful. I nodded at him, then took off at a slow jog, Mama and Glen right behind me. The three of us were dressed in brown camouflage clothing the Mountain crew had arrived with, and we’d already rubbed leaves and pine needles all over our bodies and clothes to hide our scents as much as we could. Mama had done some small thing with her magic as well, or at least she’d tried. She had gone around and touched all of the boys on the face, going pale by the time she got to Sergeant. He’d refused to let her touch him, and muttered something about her giving too much, too soon.
We heard the drone before we saw it, the tinny buzzing alerting us to its presence, though we were staying under the canopy. Mama crept away, or at least I thought she did. She’d obviously used a look-away spell, since only I was aware of her silver hair vanishing behind a patch of thick-leaved bushes.
Glen and I waited until the drone was gone, walked until we could see the fence in the distance, then climbed a maple to get a better look. The fence was tall, a black-painted steel barrier oftwo-inch-wide bars, topped with gleaming silver razor wire that stretched out on both sides as far as we could see.
