Pack Ruin (The Splintered Bond #3)

21. Sweet

21

Sweet

GLEN

F or the first time since I’d met her, my little mate seemed to be out of her depth. She’d dealt with everything life had thrown at her—fighting her way out of her abusive pack, leaving it and going to another, then repeating the process and finding her way at every turn—with a confidence that I’d assumed was unshakable.

She seemed composed on the outside, but standing a few short feet away from a mother who didn’t recognize her and a great-uncle who was a stranger, even if we both thought we’d known him, I could sense the wall of panic that was rising inside her.

Threatening to pull her under.

“Dream Girl,” I murmured in her ear. “We need to go, soon. Luke needs you.”

“Yes.” She gasped the word, like I’d thrown her a life preserver, and quickly squared her shoulders. “Stories later. We have to go. Sergeant, what can you tell us about the state of things inside the fence?”

The cavern went silent, except for a few smacking sounds from the two young boys from the forest, who were gnawing at pieces of dried rabbit with gusto.

“In the compound?” Sergeant asked at last. “We can help with the hunting grounds, but that’s all. We don’t go inside.”

“Can’t.” Flor’s mother raised her voice, surprising us all. “They’ve patched the fence.”

Flor swallowed hard, but didn’t look at her mom. I spoke for her. “Oh? Where did they patch it?”

“Where Del used to get through, to hunt. They found the hole and closed it.” She sounded lucid for the first time since I’d met her, and her voice was much like Flor’s. Her eyes met mine across the fire, and my wolf moved restlessly inside. Her dominance was incredible, more oppressive and wilder than Flor’s, but every bit as powerful.

But mine was a match for it, and more. Flor had given me that. I felt my wolf gently, inexorably, push Lily’s sharp-edged wall of power down.

She gasped. “Alpha?” When I shook my head, she blinked. “No, you’re not my Alpha.”

“No, ma’am,” I said softly as she crumpled to the cave floor, two of the males catching her before she hurt herself. I didn’t think I’d done anything to her to cause her weakness, and no one growled at me, so I assumed this sort of spell happened a lot.

Sergeant let out a dissatisfied grunt. “They’ve got triple guards on the main gate to the hunting grounds, and the patrols are out in force. And once you’re in, there’s no telling where Luke’s at, or what shape he’s in.”

“Oh, he’s fucked ten ways to Sunday,” one of the new boys volunteered, with a mouth full of masticated meat. I was pretty sure his name was Leroy. “A few days back, they done took him off the machines, and there’s all sorts of bets about when he’s gonna kick it.”

Shit. My blood went cold. We really had no time left.

“Um, ah, we got out, Sergeant, sir,” his friend stammered. “We know a place someone little can get in.”

Flor snorted. “Why should we listen to you? Last time I was here, you little rat’s asses were hunting me.”

They both dropped their heads. Leroy muttered, “You got no reason ta, I reckon. We’re sorry-ass sons of bitches, that’s a fact.”

The other one, Bo, choked out, “But we’re sorry, too. Sorry we helped them Enforcers hunt ya. We were just hungry. They was gonna give us food, and my ma died two years back. My little sister’s starvin’ just like us. Nobody’s got enough to eat anymore.” When Flor’s expression shifted to concern, he went on. “When you go in there, can you… can you maybe get her out, too? I mean, not just her. All the little girls, if you can find a way. That Torran’s doin’ bad shit to them in the dorms. He took my neighbor’s kid in, and she’s only eleven. Even if we go feral out here, this is better than what’s goin’ on inside.”

“Fuck,” Flor muttered. I nodded in agreement. I had a feeling our rescue mission had just been upgraded. “How do we get in?”

Bo squinted. “Well, you’re gonna have to be small. And wade through guts.”

“What?”

Leroy scowled at the jerky in his hand for some reason, then set it down, looking back up at Flor. “There’s only one place no one goes near, not even the guards. And one itty-bitty hole in the fence line. You’ll probably fit, but the big guy’s gonna have to shift.”

At that moment, Flor staggered, and I caught her arm. I felt an echo of pain in our bond, and swore. “What is it?”

“The chickenshit,” she panted. “Finnick’s…”

“Is he—” I began, but she shook her head.

“I don’t think so. Maybe. Feels… different. He’s being hurt? I think.”

“Maybe we should wait.”

She huffed. “Nah. It’ll give me something else to focus on. Bo, Leroy? You two show me the way in, and I’ll do what I can for your sister.”

Half an hour later, we stood a few yards away from the edge of a long, razor-wire-topped metal fence. Bo whispered, “See the hole? We cut it just big enough for us.” He wasn’t wrong about me needing to shift to get through; I was shocked anything bigger than a rabbit could squirm through it.

“I see the hole, but what the fuck is that? ” Flor replied, staring past the fence at a stack of something pink. It looked like entrails from here, arranged somehow, but there was no scent, no flies, no carrion birds circling overhead.

“The Flower Arranger’s been makin’ those piles ever since the end of the Conclave,” Leroy squeaked. “It’s, ah… the guts of all the males who hunted ya, Miss Flor.”

“The guts?” Flor breathed, moving closer to the mound. “Whose?”

Bo looked like he might throw up, but he answered bravely. “Well, we’re pretty sure this ‘un is one of the Enforcers, a guy named Lyndal.” He shot a look at Flor. “Nobody knows who’s doin’ it. Ain’t been caught, has he? But everybody knows he’s doin’ this for you.”

“Why do you think that?” Flor speared the kid with a cold look.

He shrugged. “Well, he writes your name on the… You’ll see. There’s at least twenty other piles like this, all inside the fence. Some of them are more than one. One of ‘em is nothin’ but skulls, all cleaned and shiny and stacked up like a… a weddin’ cake or something.’” He swallowed hard, like he might be sick. Flor was eyeing the mound of entrails, but not with a look of disgust. She seemed fascinated.

“How can you tell who that is?” I whispered, stripping my clothes off and stuffing them in the pack that Flor would carry through the hole in the wire.

Bo wiped his hand down the front of his t-shirt. “Lyndal had a scar on his thumb, from messing around with a silver blade when he was s’posed to be doin’ inventory inside the armory.”

I didn’t understand what he meant until I shifted into my wolf form and followed Flor through the hole. I left more than a little fur on the sharp wires, but the scratches healed within seconds. I was so much stronger than I’d ever been, but I had a feeling I would need it in the next few hours.

Bo and Leroy moved quietly back to Sergeant’s side, and the older man nodded to us. I nodded in return, but Flor was already nudging the mound of guts with one sneakered toe. I padded over to her side, touching my nose to her leg and breathing in her cinnamon and jasmine scent.

There was still no odor of blood, and though the scene was violent, it also held some macabre beauty. I’d heard something about this at Northern, back when reports had still been coming in from the shifters who were loyal to my father, before Torran had tightened his control. Brand had confirmed the rumors.

But seeing it was something else.

Someone or something had taken a shifter apart here, and created a strange tableau out of the remains. Bouquets, was what they’d called them, and that was exactly what they were. The pink entrails made the petals, with femurs, tibia, and fibulas as odd stems, helping to give the bouquet a three-dimensional shape. Although the lack of scent or decay was a pretty clear indicator that magic was involved as well.

“Why haven’t they cleaned them up?” Flor wondered aloud. I couldn’t answer and tell her about the magical shields we’d heard speculation about, but seeing it made it clear that was exactly what was going on.

I felt slightly ill as I noticed the care that had gone into the placement of the teeth, ears, and other parts as details on the petals. When I looked at the bottom of the bouquet, I recognized four letters spelled out with fingers and thumbs—one of them scarred, just as the boy had promised.

“He spelled my name,” Flor whispered. “That’s so sweet.”

I whined and nuzzled her leg, but when she didn’t respond, I grabbed the pack in my teeth and carried it with me across the open ground to the dark cover of some trees, hoping she would follow.

The boys had made sure we knew that only Torran’s Enforcers were allowed to shift, so I needed to change back into my clothing before we headed any further. According to Bo, there were work squads of two to three shifters, whose job it was to check the fences. That’s how he and his friend had escaped. From a distance, we might be able to pass as workers on our way home after a long shift.

Flor had left all her own things back in the cavern, except for her steak knife, of course, which was in the bag I dropped on the ground. The sword had to be left behind, since it had been too bulky for the small pack. I could tell my mate had hated to leave her things, but we weren’t going to be inside the pack’s fence for long, and it would be hard to disguise, even from a distance. She had tucked the small, lethal “pen” that Brand’s grandmother had given her into her back pocket, though she’d seemed oddly conflicted about taking it with her. When she’d described how it worked, I’d been relieved and repulsed in equal measures. It was always good to have an extra weapon, though.

I’d brought my clothing and some packages of dry crackers and jerky, just in case it took longer than a day. But if we could hide out in the sewers that Flor knew about until dark, and sneak into the Lodge where the boys said Luke was being held, we hoped to get back out before daylight.

If Flor could hold it together, that was. She let out a string of nearly-silent curses from where she stood by the preserved entrails, and staggered, her hand plastered to the mate mark that was hidden under her shoulder-length red hair. I could feel the pain of whatever Finn was doing—or what was being done to him—leaking through the bond, and an increased sense of urgency filled me. She would need to be at her best to make it across the compound without being seen.

Of course, I’d no sooner thought that than someone did see her.

“Hey, you! What are you doing out here? On your knees!”