Page 35 of Pack Rage
He moved to the wall, keeping the silver manacles away from my exposed skin. “Reach into my pocket. Finn left some sort of energy bars there.” He lifted his arms, and I did as he instructed, then unwrapped the first of three narrow bars. It tasted of chalk, sugar, and chemicals, but I ate it with gratitude. I offered him the next, but he shook his head. “I choked down as many as I could before he brought me here.” As I ate, he brought me up to speed on what was happening in the house above, and with Flor.
“She said something about coming here before we got cut off on the phone,” he growled. “But my friend Dean is bringing the Mountain troops to Southern, and that should give us at least a couple more days. We need to keep Flor clear of this place, and the witch Elina, until the battle is over.”
I almost choked on the energy bar. When I could speak, I had a hard time hiding my amusement. “Have you met our queen? I half-expected her to tear a hole in the wall here, or tunnel through the floor, any second. She is a wonder.”
He pushed up his sleeve and rubbed at his arm, and I froze as he went on. “You don’t need to tell me that. The only thing keeping me from losing my shit entirely is knowing the witch is away for now. I just need to get a little stronger.”
“You won’t, though, not with her mark on you. May I see it?”He grumbled, but rolled up his sleeve and let me lift the arm to my nose, though it took all of my strength to do so. “She’s still draining you, but Luke did well to offer to mate bond you. I had no idea such a thing would work.”
“It’s not a fucking mate bond!” he half-roared, then stopped as he saw my smile. “I didn’t expect an ancient, evil serial killer to have a sense of humor,” he grumbled as he settled. “You and Glen will get along like a house on fire.”
“Glen and I get along very well, though he prefers to think of me as Joaquin. I think it makes him feel safer.”
We both chuckled at that, and then we spoke, haltingly at first, of the one we both adored. Flor.
He shared the story of her introduction to the Mountain pack. I shared how I’d been drawn to the continent when she was kindled in her mother’s womb. He spoke of his lake, and how she loved it. I shared stories of Anya and our son, finding myself able to speak of them for the first time without pain.
“Finnick is my descendant, you know. Elina is some great-great-granddaughter.”
He wasn’t surprised. “No one gets to pick their family,” he said. We both glanced at each other, knowing that wasn’t entirely true. Hours passed, and we grew closer in the way that prisoners must. I slept a bit more, then he did.
“Her scar,” Brand said simply when I woke, the electricity humming in my veins now. “What do you know about it?”
“I believe pieces of her soul were set loose the day it was made, marking her for the ones she was destined to find.”
“You mean the one. Only one of us was meant to be her mate. Was it you?”
“Does it matter?” I was truly curious. He appeared to be as steadfast and unmoving in his affections as the mountains he called home. Would learning that he wasn’t her moon-destined mate alter that love? If it were even true. There was no way to know which of us would have—in another, more peaceful world—been her only bonded mate.
“Not to me. But if knowing would make any difference in protecting her, if it was witchcraft that caused it…”
“It had to be,” I mused aloud after a long moment. “I had thought perhaps a moon blessing, like your eyes. But when I saw the scar, after her fight at Southern, I knew it came from a darker root.”
He waited patiently, and I considered how much to share about my conjecture.All of it, I decided. He might need the whole story, especially if things went the way I feared they might. I would not be here to tell it to her myself.
“I told you that my soul was broken, somehow. Split into two halves.” He nodded. “I believe Flor’s soul was split as well.”
“Her scar has five points.”
“Five arrows to find her mates,” I agreed. “Five mates to help her change the world. Flor’s and her mother’s magical legacies were far too powerful for one witch, even a strong one, to overcome.” I almost smiled, my next thought amusing me morethan it should. “I believe Flor drank down the witch’s power, fed on it while she was still unborn, and that it became that part of her that fights so brilliantly. She used it to fight to hold her soul together in the womb. To stay alive in her wretched pack as a child. To bind Luke to her, when she needed her first protector, and the rest of us when she found us. We make her stronger. She makes us whole.”
His brows furrowed. “Do you believe she will die if one of us does?”
“As true mates do?” I shrugged. “I should have died when Anya did. Instead, her death gave me the strength to do unspeakable acts. The strength to stay alive, to wait for Flor.”
“That doesn’t make sense. She wasn’t born yet.”
“I know. Hybrids like me can live many years past the normal span, though I am the oldest I’ve heard of.” I shifted under his assessing gaze. I had wondered if the sheer number of lives I’d taken, all the blood I’d spilled, had turned the moon against me. Made me unwelcome to ever run with the eternal pack, for my crimes. I hadn’t understood exactly why I was so long-lived, but I’d felt certain it was not a gift. “I thought my long life was a curse, until I felt her soul descend to the earth.”
The waiting had been a terrible penance, a fitting punishment. Only the moon’s monthly promise, as she waned to nothing, like my sanity and my soul, then grew full again, kept any hope alive of finding her.
“I did what I could to make the world safer for her, when she came,” I whispered. “Searching for her, I sensed her arrival. And then, days later, I felt her spirit break apart, and go still.”
“You thought she was dead?”
“No. I was frantic, hunting for her. I scented her blood on the wind, years later. When our brave young Luke saved her.”
“Our Luke?”
