Pack Ruin (The Splintered Bond #3)

3. Flowers and Weather

3

Flowers and Weather

GRIGOR

I had lived for centuries with a raging fire inside that wanted nothing more than to be let out to burn the world. The magical abilities my mother had passed on to me, combined with the cruel power and madness of my father’s line, had made me unstoppable once I killed him. I’d been uncontrollable in those early years, murdering indiscriminately.

I’d felt no remorse. Killing had felt good, like snapping a candle flame out with my fingers. It was almost amusing to watch the light fade in the eyes of those who were less than me.

In my childhood, against the wishes of my mother, I’d found a way to shape my magic. I’d assumed a wolf form the same color as my father’s, but hid my skill from him. Hid the threat of my growing power. I had only just grown strong enough to punish him for all he’d done to my mother and to me, when he struck out.

And lit the match of my rage. My madness.

He’d been the Grand Alpha of the Eastern Hemisphere, unassailable, an enormous wolf and a powerful Alpha. But he’d died like all the others, unaware of how strong magic could be when wielded by one with both witchcraft and wolfcraft in his veins.

To my surprise, over the years, I’d found my wolf spirit wasn’t an extension of my own spirit, as it was for most shifters. He was a complete, disparate entity inside me. A malevolent one, to be sure, but clever, with his own desires and needs.

His own madness.

He was with me now, fully present as we tortured a male we’d found in a rogue encampment, the only living shifter close enough to sense. He’d been gnawing on a human femur, utterly feral, unaware of my approach. But luckily for me, he could still speak.

“Please,” the rogue begged, his own eyes half white with insanity, the trickles of blood seeping from them a nice contrast against the creamy color. “Lemme go, I don’t know nothin’ more.” His teeth were long, almost curving out the sides of his mouth, distorting his speech.

This happened to rogues, when they’d been without a leader for too long. Their wolves became feral, desperate for structure. Eventually, they clawed their own throats to shreds, after they’d taken out their rage on as many others as they could find in their search for the safety and peace of a pack.

“You don’t know why the Sergeant at Arms from Northern stopped at your squalid little camp?” I squeezed his neck, allowing my nails to lengthen and pierce his flesh a bit deeper. “You have no idea what he wanted?”

I’d been following the Sergeant after his defection from Northern. My wolf had fought me at first, needing to be close to his mate-to-be. But I reminded him that we had courting gifts to arrange, and suggested that our perfect little blade would be far more likely to accept us as we were, if we sweetened the mating pot a bit.

I wasn’t the tallest, or the youngest, or the most handsome of her suitors. But I would prove to her that I was the most devoted and protective. My little behrserk loved blood, and I could show her my love in ways her other, more traditional males might overlook.

“You didn’t hear a single word? Maybe you don’t need those ears.” I moved one hand to the side of his head, cleaving away one of the useless appendages with a whip of magic.

The acrid stench of urine filled the air, along with the rich copper of his blood. “Flowers,” he gasped, his eyes bulging out. “Weather.”

I released the pressure, surprised. That was the truth. But it made no sense, unless… “Did they speak in some sort of code?”

“I dunno, I really d—” He let out a satisfying gurgle as his head sailed away from his neck, and I dropped his body, done here. Sergeant was probably at Southern’s borders by now, if that was his true goal. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to follow protocol and announce his arrival to the pack leaders, who were mostly Council Enforcers at this point.

The Mountain guards who had stayed when my mate left had been relieved of their duties after two dozen of the Southern Enforcers had been mysteriously slaughtered in the night, their remains arranged in a startling pattern. I smiled, remembering how hard it had been to balance all the skulls just so.

She would love it.

I looked around the deserted rogue camp, listening for any other heartbeats, or panicked breathing. Unfortunately, the Sergeant had already killed or chased away all the others in this group.

I broke into a jog and then a run, seeking out his trail, which was faint, almost indiscernible. I admired his skills.

I’d almost hate to kill him.

Southern had a stench all its own. Some of it was the kind of stink that offended the nostrils. Septic tanks that needed to be pumped competed with the natural bogs that dotted the length of the border between the inhabited areas and the forest.

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 little behrserk to 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 knew just 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.

I hesitated for an instant, but her pain tore at me. Quickly, I did what I had to do to save her and the rest of her mates.

Someone would die for this. Some witch had done this to the worthless mate, and endangered my little one, my bright shadow. I had to stay, and be the tool for her vengeance.

Incensed, my long-rabid inner wolf foamed at the mouth, snapping invisible teeth at the delay.

I slipped down the tree in silence, moving without leaving a single footprint or hint of my scent, and headed straight for the festering heart of the Southern pack.

Maybe I would save the witch’s teeth and make them into beads for my little blade to wear. She would like that, I was certain.

So many courting gifts, my sweet one. Such an expensive little mate.

Just as you should be.