Pack Ruin (The Splintered Bond #3)

18. Hidden

18

Hidden

GRIGOR

F lor. Flor. Flor. Her name and her essence pounded in my heart, like a drumbeat, pushing the blood through my veins. I could feel her coming closer, and that was all that kept me from despair.

That, and the burning desire to kill the shifter, Torran, who had gotten tired of only torturing the Southern shifters and had started cutting into Luke’s helpless body during the day when I wasn’t in his room.

I wasn’t sure what had changed, but the Council Enforcers had taken the medical equipment out of his room five days before, leaving him without food or water. Only my power had kept the air circulating in and out of his lungs, the blood moving through his veins. I’d been forced to bind myself even more tightly to him, going so far as to graft a portion of my magic onto his faded soul. It was similar to what I’d done to my little mate, though I’d only left a thread of power there, linking us. The strands that bridged the gap between my own dark soul and Luke’s were braided tightly, and irrevocably.

I’d been shocked at what I’d found when I’d completed that task. His wolf spirit still fought for life, and I felt a growing respect for him. He wasn’t as useless as I’d thought, and if he survived, I knew he would do anything he could to protect Flor.

He needed to survive, for her. There was an odd connection between him and my little behrserk that I didn’t quite understand. A blood bond, it felt like, more than just an unrealized mating claim.

I’d sent a call to her the first evening when the machines had been removed. The next morning, I’d felt a lessening of the painful stretch in our own destined bond. I hadn’t doubted her for a moment. Even without a mating mark, I’d known she would come to me.

Luke’s abused body shivered on the bed. I was still in a significant amount of pain, but I tried to ignore it as I placed my hands on his wounds and pushed more of my magic inside him. He should have been dead. Without the permanent connection I’d placed there, he would be.

But his apparent unwillingness to die had roused curiosity. Torran had come to the pack with silver-laced blades, it seemed, or found some when he arrived.

From the evidence I found when I entered Luke’s room tonight, Torran had been slicing into the younger shifter’s unconscious body in some sort of macabre experiment, making deep cuts in places not easily seen: his armpits, the crease at his groin, behind his ears, even under his thick dark hair. Those would all scar, if he survived. I was concerned about what he might do if I healed Luke too much, but a few of the wounds might have been fatal if I hadn’t made the attempt.

I had a suspicion Torran knew that. What had he hoped to achieve? I’d assumed they’d been leaving Luke alive for some reason. Had his usefulness to the Eastern pack expired?

I may have miscalculated when I’d killed so many of the stronger shifters in this pack. If Luke died in this bed, and the old Southern Alpha was found and executed per the Council’s orders, then Torran would be the obvious replacement as Alpha here. Perhaps the only replacement.

I couldn’t regret my actions. So many of the males here had been Flor’s abusers. Their continued breathing had felt like an affront to my soul… and their entrails had made such lovely formations.

I panted shallow breaths, suppressing a groan as Luke’s wolf siphoned energy from me through our spiritual connection. I hadn’t been this weak since I was a child. My ability to keep him alive, while simultaneously preventing Flor from feeling the pain of the neglected mate bond between us, and concealing myself, was sapping my strength.

For the first time, I wondered if I might die. If Torran came upon me in this state, with silver in his hands… I shook the thought away. My mother had warned me not to dwell on possibilities. “Guard your thoughts, little Grisha. Those like us have a way of bringing dreams to life, for good or ill.”

I let my mind move to my own dream come true. Thought of her blazing hair, her sharp amber eyes, her rare smiles. The way she had smiled in her sleep as I sang to her in those nights when she dwelled at the Northern pack. I needed her.

Faster, I sent down the fraying bond between me and my mate. As fast as you can. I staggered away from the bed, heading for the window, but froze when I heard footsteps in the hall outside.

“Stay out here, Enforcer. I’ll just be a moment.”

That bastard Torran. I didn’t have time or energy to cloak myself in shadows, or slip out of the window undetected. I might have enough power to kill him, but not silently, or quickly enough. My hands were trembling with fatigue.

As the door began to open, I slid under the bed, cursing myself for landing in this position. I formed a bubble of silence around myself, though I was too late to fully cover the faint hint of magical scent, which smelled to me like burning ozone, before the male had closed the door behind him. I held still as he inhaled audibly, then exhaled, moving around the room to inspect the closet and the window, sniffing everywhere he stopped.

I allowed my claws to extend when he approached the bed, and dug deep into my waning well of power for enough energy to cloak myself. When he kneeled down, his eyes glinting as he stared directly at me, I wasn’t certain I’d succeeded. But he rose again, standing at the bedside.

I heard the sounds of a phone ring, then a woman’s voice. “What?”

“Alpha, were you here at Southern t—” he began.

The distant voice interrupted him. “I’ve told you not to call me that. Or to call me at all.”

The shifter chuckled. “My apologies, Mistress. I thought I caught your scent here.”

“Wishful thinking on your part. I should punish you for calling.”

The room filled with the thick musk of Torran’s lust, and he began to graphically describe the ways in which he wanted to be punished by the woman, all of them involving pain and blood. From the sounds, he’d pulled out his cock and begun to stroke it.

I felt my cheeks burn, not at their banter, but at the situation. I was Grigor Dimitrivich, the most powerful and feared shifter alive, reduced to hiding under a bed, eavesdropping on a worthless, twisted male and his dominant lover. How had I fallen this far?

“Love makes you weak,” my father had warned me centuries ago, as I lay broken and bleeding in his dungeon. His hands had still been wet with the blood of my mate, Anya . “Love is the true enemy.”

He had been so wrong. I’d never been stronger than after he took my love from me, took the only creature in the world who might have stopped me from killing not only him, but every single member of his pack. I’d burned them all alive, warming my cold hands over their ashes.

Though now I wondered if loving my little sharp-thorned flower had weakened me, knew that perhaps it had. But I was weary of living alone, in the shadows. And her brilliance, her indomitable spirit, made me long to warm myself in her glow from now on.

The male came quickly, his seed spattering the floor near my face. He groaned into the phone, “Mistress, when can I come to you? When can I see you again?”

“When the Heir dies, Torran.”

“I can make that happen?—”

“You cannot kill him. I told you he must appear to die of natural causes. Why hasn’t he already?”

“I don’t know. He’s breathing on his own. There’s no explanation, unless… perhaps he is mated.”

The woman’s voice grew louder. “He had no mate mark. You told me.”

Torran swore. “I swear he didn’t. You examined him yourself.”

“I ordered you to check again.”

“I did. I’ve gone over every inch of his body, as you asked. I’ve done it all; I turned off the machines days ago. He’s had no water, no food. His organs should be shutting down. Even a strong Alpha would be dead by now. He’s been healing, Mistress. I’m not sure how.”

“He must have a mate. It’s the only way.” She went quiet. “You said you thought you smelled me ?”

“Not exactly, but something like your scent,” he murmured, heading for the door.

“I’ll check on it. Make sure no one goes in or out of that room, Torran. We need that shifter to finish dying so you can be named the Heir. We need you to be Alpha.” The lock turned, and footsteps moved away.

It was safe to leave, but I was still too weak to rise. Perhaps I would stay here until my little blade arrived. If Torran returned to make his hidden cuts again, to hasten Luke’s death, I would need to be close to heal him. Close to protect the only one I had allowed to touch my magic, besides her … I drifted into a troubled sleep under the weakest of my Flor’s mates.

Though I wondered if that might no longer be true. My power had been drained until I felt like a starved wolf, lost on the tundra. I fell into the dream, the memory of when I was exactly that, and all I had to fill my belly was snow.

Faster, Flor.