Page 98 of Mated By the Pack
Idied staring into the eyes of my brothers, knowing I had failed them.
I draw my next breath in front of those same brothers, now looking at me like… well, like I’ve risen from the fucking dead. My father has the same look on his face—stunned silence behind a piece of shattered wall.
Calla collapses behind me and I call my wolf, feeling the first gasp of life since the knife went in my back.
“Well, what are you waiting for? No leaders, right?”I growl across our mental link.“Do we need to vote or can we just start killing these motherfuckers.”
“It’s you!”Caleb says, so much emotion in his voice, I can sense it, even across the link.
“Welcome back, brother,”Knox says, turning and tearing into a peace officer.
“Calla gave us a way out, let’s use it!”Jace snarls, turning toward the daylight on the other side of a mass of rubble.
I go after the closest peace officer. Blood in my mouth. Seeping past my teeth. I’ve fucking missed this. Hunks of flesh, torn from the bone, from something that truly deserves it. The peace officers have shock batons and rifles, but they’re confined here. They don’t have open ground to their advantage. We make good use of that, cornering, weaving, and tearing limbs away from weapons.
Dad pushes past the peace officers, with the boy who betrayed Calla behind him. I want vengeance, but I let them go, because I can’t abandon my brothers. I can’t abandon Calla. I stand guard near her, evening the odds for my brothers as needed.
I love my brothers, but I’m bigger. Faster. I’m the fuckingAlpha, leader or no leader. I destroy what I bite. I shatter what my claws hit. By the time Gideon starts to stir, we’ve painted the room crimson, and the only things left are the gasps of deaths echoing around us.
“Check on Calla,”Vance says, shifting and rushing to her side, moving a few strewn pieces of flesh from her body.
“She’s going to be weak,”I transmit, then shift and say my first words as a man. “She isn’t strong enough to use the power she called. I’ll carry her. We need to move quickly, because Dad will be sending more of those so-calledpeaceofficers after us.”
“Okay, what the fuck did I miss,” Gideon asks, hopping across the broken wall. “Silas?”
“Gideon,” I chuckle, hoisting Calla up.
“Is Calla okay?” he asks, glancing at the woman in my arms as I wrap her in a blanket.
“She will be, if we get her out of here,” I say. “So shift, brother. Let’s finish this.”
Gideon shifts and shakes off the effects of the shocks he took. Then he takes the lead, and I hang behind Knox, clutching Calla close to my chest. I can feel her heartbeat. Her gentle breathing. She’s pulsing with The Aether, something I know well. I’ve been a lost soul, surrounded by it. A suffocating haze, until she stepped through for the very first time.
I felt the longing, even after death. What I feel now is different. I’m at peace. Content. Able to breathe and breathing her in is better than tasting oxygen again.
We push across the broken wall, dodging a few shots and taking out the peace officers. There aren’t as many now, so we might be working our way through whatever reinforcements were nearby. There’s daylight ahead. We’re almost free.
“Keep going,” I say, holding Calla closer. “Kill everything.”
My brothers tear apart the peace officers. There’s not enough of them to put up much of a fight now. We push outside, and I see more of them. I also see our father and the boy who betrayed Calla. They’re behind the peace officers, like they expect their forces to win this battle, even after everything they’ve seen.
A shot rings out, and I turn, putting Calla on the ground behind some rubble before I shift.
“Those are live rounds!”I transmit as a few more ricochet around me.
“Good, don’t let them get a clean shot!”Gideon growls.
I guess Dad doesn’t care about subduing us anymore. Not after a woman erupted into golden fire and started blowing up his lab. He doesn’t realize that bullets hurt, but it’s a lot harder to get a kill shot. We demonstrate that easily as we weave through his soldiers, gnashing, tearing, and biting chunks of flesh.
“I’m hit!”Knox calls out, and I see him go down with an eruption of blood and platinum fur.
Live rounds can kill, but Knox is okay. He’s just hurt. The bullet went in his hip, based on his whimper and limp as he ducks behind some rubble. I catch a bullet in my front leg, but it passes through without doing much damage. Several graze Gideon’s fur, but it doesn’t slow him down.
“Caleb, watch out!”I yell across our link when I see a peace officer taking aim.
Caleb spins, ducks the shot, and lunges, tearing the peace officer open with a bite.“Thanks, Silas. I’ve fucking missed you.”
Vance is staying close to Calla, making sure no peace officers get to her. I take advantage of the help and take out several peace officers. Their ranks are thinning, but they aren’t stopping. They remind me of zombies. Zombies that don’t know how to do anything but follow orders.
