Page 89 of Pack Rage
Not five seconds later, Luke appeared on my left. He hadn’t grown taller, but his newfound power made him seem more substantial. “Alpha,” I greeted him. He dipped his chin in reply, and we turned together to watch the fight. We both hummed in appreciation as Flor cut a long line down her opponent’s arm, then spat a bloody wad into her face, blinding her for just long enough to carve a matching one on the other side.
“Dirty,” he said of her technique.
“Effective,” I replied. “Can you believe we thought she was a boy when we found her in the woods?”
Luke chuckled. “As Flor would say, it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
I found myself smiling, until Mother’s lips started moving, though no sound emerged. Was she trying some kind of spell? I wasn’t sure. She could just be whispering. Flor was watching her lips, though, and her face went pale as the seconds ticked on. Then Mother dropped her sword.
This was it. Her move.
My teeth lengthened, and my claws extended as I narrowed my focus, readying myself to shift if I needed to cross to Flor fast. I was good at seeing strategies and patterns, knowing what an enemy was thinking sometimes before they did. It looked like Mother was surrendering, but my wolf ran purely on instinct, and right now, something had him panicking.
Luke stiffened as well. “She’s up to something.”
“Can you hear her?”
He snarled. “Not well enough. Was that sword her only weapon?”
Fuck.“Not a chance.”
I knew Flor believed that almost anything could be used as a weapon. Mother had often expressed a similar sentiment, sometimes jokingly, often when she was wearing a provocative cocktail dress that left nothing to the imagination.“No one would ever guess how many weapons a shifter like me can carry,”she’d bragged. No one ever would guess, because no one would believe just how many deadly items she kept on her person.
“She’ll know.” Luke grabbed my arm when I took a breath to shout, or run to Flor; I wasn’t sure which. “She’ll know it’s a trick. Don’t distract her.”
“I have to save her,” I snarled. If I had to tear out my own mother’s throat to keep her from hurting Flor—however she was doing it—I would.
Luke’s grip grew tight on my arm. “She’s saving us, you idiot. She’s saving you. Let her.” He sounded certain. Proud, if pained.
“What?” When I couldn’t shake free of Luke’s grip, I reached for the newly strengthened bond between me and Flor, trying to understand what she was thinking.
Her thoughts were filled with regret and sadness. A few words made it through.Fool me once, shame on you.
Amber eyes met mine across the dark-stained earth, and I realized what she must be remembering. The pain I’d given her, only a few weeks before. It was still there in her gaze, still a bruise on her soul.
Fool me twice…
Shame filled me, then horror, as Mother pulled a long silver wire from her hair and looped it over Flor’s neck.
Chapter 43
Fool Me Twice
FLOR
There was a moment in every fight when you won or lost, and it had nothing to do with what moves you made or which strikes connected. Del had told me over and over that the real battle was in a fighter’s heart. The memory of the last time flooded my mind.
“That’s why you’ll never lose, if you don’t give up. Even if you’re trapped. Even if they get you down. You will get back up.” Del held a cold cloth to the goose egg swelling over one eye, while I squeezed a five-inch gash on my left bicep closed with a clean kitchen towel.
He’d found me a few minutes before inside one of the kitchen trash cans—shoved inside, with trash covering me almost entirely, my arms and legs bound with duct tape, and a piece over my mouth and half of one nostril—when he came in to do his shift. He didn’t bother to ask who’d done it. It was the same shit, different day. I still smelled like old coffee grounds and rancid meat.
I was feeling sorrier for myself than usual. Mama had been running around naked by the fence line, yellin’ about hiddentreasures, and I’d been stupid. Instead of keepin’ my head down, I’d run after her, tryin’ to get some clothes on her. She’d slapped my face for my trouble.
That had hurt more than the wolf’s claw that caught my arm when Trevor Blackside’s gang of fucknuggets had jumped out from where they’d been starin’ at Mama.
“How many times am I supposed to get back up, Del?” I sniffled as he got the kit out to stitch the deepest gash. “Is this all life is, being shit on a thousand times, waking up to worse every day? Why should I even bother?”
He let out a long sigh, then turned back, wrapping his arms around me as I sat on the long table and cried. “Girlie, here’s why. This world needs you. It may seem like it doesn’t; you may not believe it now. But I’ve never met a shifter with a heart as big as yours. With as much fire in her belly. All you gotta do is wait for your day to come. Or your night, under the full moon. Someday, you’ll look around and see that everyone in spittin’ distance will be looking at you, maybe not all of them with love. But with respect.”
