Pack Ruin (The Splintered Bond #3)

23. Home Sweet Home

23

Home Sweet Home

FLOR

“ W alk fast, keep your head down, and don’t make eye contact with any of the males,” the blonde shifter at my side whispered as we hurried past the door guards, her voice almost too quiet to hear.

I knew this woman, or I had, when she was a girl. Her name was Iris, and she’d been the closest thing I’d had to a friend back when we were both eight years old.

One day, she’d found me crying behind a shed outside the schoolroom at lunchtime. I’d been starving hungry, as usual. That wouldn’t have been enough to bring me to tears, of course, but the teacher had given homemade cookies in honor of the Alpha’s birthday to everyone in the class that morning. Everyone except me.

Iris had snuck over to me, a rolled-up brown bag in one hand, and whispered, “Flor? You want some of my sandwich? I’m not hungry.”

It had been a lie, of course; the unranked kids like us were always hungry. She’d shared her sandwich, though, and I’d hoped she would be a friend. But she’d been pulled out of class later that day and hadn’t come back for a month. When she did, she didn’t talk to me, or even look at me.

Bad memories. That was all this place held for me now.

We passed another guard who leered at us, and I added him to the mental list I’d been making all the way here. When it came time to leave, I’d need to know how many to kill.

As we climbed the stairs, I checked in on my bonds. Glen was sending confident, on-a-mission vibes my way, which was exactly what I’d hoped he’d do. I sent some back, or tried to. If he could find Luke and get him out of the Pack House, I could handle the rest. I’d lived in this pisshole long enough to know every single potential weapon, bolthole, and exit, so I had no fear of being trapped here again.

I was closer to Luke and Grigor now, so the amorphous ache that had grown so constant I’d almost forgotten about it didn’t really hurt, and Brand was pouring strength down the solid bond between us.

Finnick had finally stopped sending pain down our connection for the moment, thank the moon. If he’d been fucking around again—or whatever had made me feel like our bond had turned to acid and my brain to jelly—I was going to rip him a brand-new asshole at the very first opportunity. My mind kept returning to that moment back at the lake again and again, trying to make sense of it.

Maybe we weren’t real mates yet; maybe our bond wasn’t fully formed. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with a problem he’d need to fuck his way out of.

Though my wolf snarled when I even thought of him fucking someone else. And I had a feeling she was snarling at me . Maybe I had it all wrong.

Ah, well. No need to stew about Finnick. I had problems enough of my own.

Iris’s soft voice reminded me of that. “I’m taking you to my room. Your old one was trashed after you left. Holly was so pissed.” I’d bet she was.

“Why are you helping me?” I breathed the question.

“Because I can,” she said. I almost laughed. She hadn’t helped me—no one had—when I was a child being beaten and starved. No one had even spoken to me, not after that day outside the school. But I’d let myself be pissed about that later.

She knocked a short pattern on one of the doors, waited for the count of five, then opened it, half-pushing me inside. The room was dark, but my vision was so much better now, my wolf stronger.

I blinked, taking it all in. It was a standard dorm room, maybe a little nicer than the one I’d lived in for years, but not much. There was a single window, but it had been nailed shut. The two twin beds in the room were pushed against the walls, and the chest of drawers was missing. The bathroom was missing the door, and I could see figures crouched in there, staring out like frightened mice.

“Who is it?” one of them whispered.

“It’s me, Iris.” The girl nodded toward the bathroom, and I followed her inside, breathing through my mouth. The stench of fear, urine, blood, and vomit was almost overwhelming.

There were five girls in the room, two older ones wiping down a small, dark-haired younger girl in the shower, pink water dripping from her hairline, and one cradling another one on top of the closed toilet. In one corner of the room was a mop pail, with a mop and dirty rags stuffed inside, and some cleaner ones rolled up on the edge of the sink.

No, they were bandages. One of the girls on the toilet hopped down at a soft noise from the shower, handing a rolled-up bandage to one of the older shifters.

“Jeez, it’s Flor,” the girl croaked. “Look, it’s her.”

Every eye turned to me, staring so hard, I began to fidget. I knew their names, even if they had never spoken to me. “Hey, Tami. Hey, Deb. What’s up with… uh, is that…” The youngest girl, the one getting bandaged, dropped her gaze. In fact, all of them did.

“Delia,” Courtney said gently. “She’s just arrived tonight.”

“Arrived?” I almost couldn’t get the word out.

Courtney moved to the side, and I could see what had happened to the little girl. Her hands had been either cut or whipped enough times to make them a mass of bloody flesh. I saw bone through some of the gashes on the tops of her fingers, and at one wrist. She wasn’t crying, though, her expression almost resigned. Immature shifters, especially weak and starved ones, had the same ability to heal as a normal human, but the severity of the wounds she had made me wonder if she might lose her hands before she was old enough to shift.

“What did they do to you?” I breathed.

Courtney answered for her. “Silver-edged knife. Council fucker. She was caught taking scraps from the cans behind the dining hall when she was supposed to be inside.” I swallowed bile. Those wounds wouldn’t heal until she’d shifted. She couldn’t have been more than eleven. She’d be maimed for years, and carry the scars in her psyche for her entire life.

I leaned close so only Courtney would hear my question. “They cut her up for eating outta the trash?”

She nodded. Delia whimpered as Tami wrapped the gauze, but she looked up at me. “I was just so hungry.”

I was pissed. “Those cocksucking, motherfucking sons of bitch fuckheads! You point me out who did it, and I’ll pull his spleen out through his throat. I’ll take my knife and peel that toadfucker’s skin like I used to skin squirrels, one nice long piece so it’s useful to make something to wear when it’s cold.”

Delia stopped whimpering. Courtney stifled what might have been a laugh. “She can do it, too,” Iris said behind me. “One winter, my ma was… sick.” Her eyes met mine, and I remembered. Her mother had been mated to one of the low-level Enforcers. He’d cheated on her ma often enough that it had made her take to her bed from the pain, though she hadn’t gone crazy like mine. “Flor snuck over to our place and left a lap blanket she and old Del had stitched together outta rabbit and squirrel fur. It was the softest thing I ever felt. It was the nicest gift Ma had ever got. I always wanted to thank you for that.”

I swallowed hard, holding back a sarcastic retort. I didn’t need thanks; I’d have settled for a scrap of kindness the size of a mouse’s pelt. Instead, I said, “Well, if you let me know who did this to ya, Delia, I’ll skin him and make gloves for all of us.”

Delia’s eyes welled with tears, but her lips trembled into what wanted to be a smile. “You’d do that?”

“Nothing would make me happier,” I promised.

The other girls helped her stand and half-carried her out of the bathroom. No one spoke over a whisper, and from somewhere else in the building, I heard crying and male shouts and laughter. The other girls sat on one of the thin mattresses, and Iris gestured for me to join her, Courtney, and Delia on the one closest to the bathroom.

“Where have you been, Flor?” she asked. “After the… After you killed Van Blackside. Where did you go?”

“Northern,” I said quietly. “And then Mountain.”

Iris craned her head slightly, peering at my neck. “You have a mate?”

Deb let out a soft squeal. “Please say it’s the Alpha Heir from Mountain, please say it’s him!”

I almost laughed. “Yeah. He’s mine. But I have a…” I almost repeated Glen’s joke about having a mate collection, but stopped when Delia let out a sob.“Hey, what do you need, sweetie?”

“I need my brother back,” she said through her tears. “He went out the fence to get some meat for us. It’s just him and me now. Our pa’s been killed. Ma, too. Bo p-promised he was gonna find us some food.”

“Bo. Your brother’s Bo?”

“Was Bo,” Deb said, standing. She padded into the bathroom and brought out the mop, using it to sop up some of the blood spatters that were drying on the cracked linoleum. “Torran’s wolves tear any of us to shreds if we so much as walk in the direction of the back gate.”

“Bo’s dead?” Delia gasped.

I shot Deb a look. “No, he’s not. He’s fine, and he and his friend Leroy are the ones who got me into the compound.”The room exploded into whispered questions. I held up a hand. “They’re living in the woods with an Alpha I met up at Northern. His name is Sergeant.” I decided not to mention my mama, her being the Ghost Lady and all. “They’re fine. There’s a bunch of other shifters?—”

“You mean the rogues?” Iris asked, shocked. “They don’t have an Alpha. They’re feral!”

I shrugged. “They’re not really. The Alpha—he’s not the Alpha from Northern; this one is from the Western pack.”

There was another volley of whispered questions, which ceased abruptly at the sound of hard-heeled footsteps approaching in the hall outside. All the girls scrambled to the floor and kneeled in a line. Deb dropped the mop on the floor with a clatter just as the doorknob turned.

What? I mouthed at Iris, dropping to my own knees beside Deb.

Inspection, she mouthed back.

I wanted to ask who was doing the inspection, but I didn’t have to. I knew the sound of the voice that came from the hall outside, shouting a room number and a command to open up.

Holly Grier.

Ah, snakeshit. She would drag me out of here and get me stuck in the holding cell—if I was lucky—faster than I could spit.

Before I knew what was going on, a piece of cloth that smelled like piss and mop water had landed on my face. What in the chicken-fried fuck, Courtney? I mouthed.

“Wrap!” she hissed back, motioning to my face.

I understood at once. Grabbing the roll of cloth, I unrolled it quickly around my face, covering it like a burn victim. Just as I’d tucked the end behind one ear, Holly opened the door.

“God, this room smells like shit.” She stepped inside, a metal rod the size of a rolling pin in her hand, and the room went utterly silent. She grunted as she moved closer, taking in Delia’s hands. “Stealing, I see. Well, I bet it’s the last time you’ll try that.” She tapped the end of her metal stick on the little girl’s wrist.

Holly looked healthier than she had before I left, her hair shiny and her arms fleshier, like she’d been eating better than ever. Next to the starved children in this room, her obvious health was obscene.

Delia chewed at her lip furiously, clearly trying not to cry. My muscles had tensed, my wolf inside waking up more fully than she ever had before, ready to tear out our enemy’s throat. I flexed my fingers, trying to keep claws from forming, though my nail beds itched as they began to lengthen. Damnit, this was the worst time for my wolf to come out to play.

Holly stopped walking in front of me. “Who the hell is this? Uncover your face.”

“She’s new, she and Delia both. They just got the bandages on; they shouldn’t take them off,” Iris volunteered.

Holly pivoted on one heel and shoved the baton into the center of Iris’s torso. “Did I give you permission to speak? What did I tell you would happen the next time you gave me any lip?” She waited, her breath loud in the dead silent room. “Well, tell me what I said.”

Iris struggled to inhale, but managed to speak. “You said… you’d break… my jaw.”

“That’s right. You had fair warning. So put your hand down and your chin up, you little bitch. We’ll see how much lip you give with no teeth.” She pulled the baton back, raising it high over her shoulder.

Aw, hell no. I didn’t even have to think. Del had taught me well, and though I was too far to grab Holly’s arm and stop her from striking, I was right next to one of my favorite weapons of all time. A mop.

I’d snatched it up before the baton had started to descend, and swung it with all the rage I felt at this bitch hurting little girls and women, and thriving while this whole pack was suffering. Dying.

Luke was gasping for breath across the compound, and here I was, having to deal with her shit again. She needed to die. But I’d start with teaching her a lesson.

The mop handle wasn’t strong enough to break the baton, but it was plenty strong to break her arm. I shifted to a low crouch and brought it up fast and hard, relishing the sickening sound of her humerus snapping.

She sucked in a breath to scream as she dropped the baton. Iris caught the metal stick before it could hit the ground and make a noise. I kicked Holly’s knees out from under her and had her in a chokehold on the tile in two seconds.

She screeched once. “ Flor? ”Her face was equal parts rage, fear, and shock as I rolled her onto her stomach and threaded my arms through hers, one knee pressing into her back, the other on the floor. I yanked the bandages off my head, quickly stuffing them into her mouth before she could make a second sound, or call out to the guards.

In this position, my face was close to hers, and I whispered, “Don’t even try to get away. I’ll break your other arm, and then your jaw. Hell, I’ll work my way down your whole body, break every fucking bone like I’m snapping green beans. I’ve got plenty of time and years of bad memories.”

“Let me break some,” Iris said quietly. “And the others. Tami and Deb.” Something in her tone had me twisting my face away to see hers. The other girls were frozen, staring at Holly like she was a rattlesnake that might still bite them, even though I was smashing her face to the floor.

I was about to give suggestions on where to start breaking when, suddenly, the bond between me and Glen lit up with fear, like he’d been taken by surprise. Shit. He might need me. I didn’t have time for Holly.

“She’s yours, then. As far as I’m concerned, y’all can spend the rest of the night playing with this old bitch. I’ve gotta go.”

“We can’t keep her alive,” Iris breathed in my ear. “We have to kill her.”

“We?”

Iris’s eyes were haunted. “Tami and Deb at least.”

They both gasped. Deb let out a sob.

“What did she do?” I asked. When no one spoke, I shook Holly’s arms, grinding the broken one under my now-clawed hand. “What did you do, you walking piece of dogshit?”

Of course, she couldn’t answer with her mouth full of dirty cloth, but her eyes flashed with something like panic.

Courtney finally sucked in a breath. “She sold us. She’s taken food and presents for… for all of us. Even the younger girls.”

“Who?” I was shaking with rage now. “ How old? ” I let my grip on her other arm tighten until blood spilled out from beneath my claws, and heard the smaller bones in her other arm break. “Give me that baton, Iris. I’ll make sure she can’t go running for help anytime soon.”

“You said you had somewhere to be,” Iris said, smacking the baton on Holly’s skull neatly and knocking her out, like she was conking a catfish on the head. “We’ll take care of this one.”

Within seconds, Deb and Tami had tied Holly’s arms behind her back, and dragged her into the bathroom with Courtney’s help. Iris sat next to Delia on the bed, who stared in fascination through the open bathroom doorway as the two girls went to work.

With a heavy sigh, Iris picked her up and turned her away from the grisly scene.“Thanks again,” she said to me as she rocked Delia on her lap like she was much younger than her age.

Unable to stay still, I was already up and at the window, cursing when I saw it wasn’t just nailed, but welded shut. I’d hoped to get out and escape by way of the treetops. My wires and cord should still be there, probably in decent enough shape to get me down from the dorm roof. Getting out through the hallways would be a lot harder.

For a moment, I listened to the sweet, muffled sounds of Holly being tortured by three girls who were discovering one of the least appreciated, yet most effective forms of therapy available. Getting bloody, thorough revenge.

Then I turned back to Iris. What had she just said? “Thanks… again?”

“Of course again. You think the girls in this pack like me don’t know how much we owe you?”

“What?”

“The food. The squirrels and rabbits in the lean years when you were still a kid yourself. The rice and grain from the kitchen after you started working for Del. Ma and I would’ve starved more than once without the extra you brought us.”

Oh yeah. I remembered dropping two rabbits off on her porch one December, when I’d heard her mother coughing from three streets away. Shifters rarely got sick, but that year, too many weak ones had died of starvation and the cold.

“So thank you again , Flor.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat, my heart aching. “I wish you’d thanked me then,” I said quietly. “I wish anyone had.”

“We weren’t allowed. You knew that, right?” She sounded shocked.

I was, too. I shook my head. No one had talked to me; no one had ever befriended me since…

I blinked as she pulled the neckline of her shirt lower.“You probably don’t remember, but when we were eight, I shared a sandwich with you at lunchtime. The teacher caught me and turned me in to Blackside. He used a hot silver poker to give me a necklace.” She angled her neck so I could see a row of irregularly spaced, permanent welts—about the size of a cigarette end—placed along her collarbone and disappearing behind her long, dark hair. “Our whole class was warned that if anyone so much as smiled your way, they’d get far worse.”

I wanted to throw up. Of course Blackside had done that. “I guess… I can’t blame you for not helping me after that.”

The last thing I expected was for her to laugh. “Not helping?” She patted Delia’s hair and smiled down at the girl, who was now sleeping somehow. Then she glanced back at me, her dark eyes gleaming with a fierce, stark fire. “We helped you for four years, Florida Wills.”

“What–what do you mean?”

“You know what they say. The pack protects, right? Well, the males in our pack did a shitty job of that. But the females? We did everything we could, even if you never knew it. We cut the hole in the fence back at least five times after someone on patrol mended it, making sure it looked like some animal was digging it out. They eventually gave up fixing it. We made loud noises when you were running along the dorm rooftop so Holly wouldn’t hear you. We brushed dirt over your footprints, and swept bleach over the spots where you holed up that had your scent. The ones we could find, anyway. You were really good at hiding. Maybe just not as good as you thought.”

My jaw was hanging open, but she kept on. “We made sure you had cinnamon to cover your scent, even when the kitchen was running low. Some of us even grew the ghost peppers Del dried for your secret weapon in our backyards. You think you stayed safe all on your own? Every unranked female in our pack helped keep those bastards from catching you. And we’ll do it again now, if it means you get clear of here.”

She met my gaze and held it for longer than any other shifter besides my mates had been able to, since Brand claimed me. “We’ll get you free tonight, but you have to promise me one thing. Don’t come back. Don’t ever let them catch you. You’re our hope, do you understand? Hope is the only thing we have left, and we can’t lose it now.”