“Shh,” Kagen coaxed sweetly. “Silence your mind. Let go of your fears. Just be.” He held out his arms and prayed to Auriga, the god of his ruling moon, Please, just let her take this one, intractable step.
Arielle regarded him as if he were a stranger, as if she were seeing him for the very first time; and it was so painfully evident by the look in her eyes that she wanted this more than she had wanted anything in a very long time. She just didn’t know how…
How to ask.
How to allow it.
How to take the risk.
And Kagen refused to compel her.
“Arielle, come to me, sweeting.” It was a request, pure and simple, heartfelt but absent of coercion.
She blinked back tears, and her eyes darted warily around the grove before returning, once more, to his. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.” He almost groaned. “So badly it hurts.”
She sighed and took a cautious step in his direction. “And you won’t—”
“I won’t do anything but hold you. I swear.”
She looked down at the ground then. “I feel so…silly.”
“There’s nothing silly about it,” he said. “Come to me, Arielle. Please.” When she took two tentative steps forward, stopped in place, and then regarded him warily once more, he thought he might just come apart at the seams from the frustration of it all. “I would kill for you, Arielle Nightsong. I would open my veins and bleed if I thought it might ease your pain. Won’t you please just let me hold you? Just this once?”
He knew the moment she capitulated.
The instant her heart stopped resisting and opened up, the second she decided to let him in.
As silent as a mouse, she took the last remaining step in his direction, careful to remain impassive, to look at anything but him. She was determined not to meet his eyes.
She couldn’t.
It was just too vulnerable.
And that was just fine with him.
When, at last, she lowered her head to his chest and pressed her ear to his heart, he felt a non-erotic shiver course through his body. He gathered her softly in his arms and enfolded her in his warmth. He clutched her as tightly as he dared, and then he nestled his chin in her hair, refusing to let go.
He refused to breathe.
He refused to cheapen the moment with words.
And as she nuzzled in deeper, her soft, flowing tresses blanketing his chest in glorious waves of bronze, he tightened his hold and finally exhaled.
Arielle was in his arms at last.
Trusting him with her safety and her heart.
And then, to his utter amazement, she wrapped her arms around his waist, burrowed in even deeper, and spoke shyly into his chest. “Thank you, Kagen.” Her voice was thick with tears.
“Oh, my sweeting,” he whispered. He anchored his hand in her hair so he could hold her even closer. “My sweet, beautiful warrior.” He kissed her softly on the forehead—there was nothing more to say.
As a lifetime of tears began to roll down her cheeks, Kagen held Arielle like his life depended on it, like her life depended on it, and truth be told, perhaps it did. He blanketed her in his warmth; sent soothing energy radiating throughout her body; sent healing vibrations up and down her spine. He engulfed her in a cocoon of peace, even as he sought to draw as much pain and sorrow as he could out of her spirit and into his.
It was all he had to give, but he gave it to her freely.
Willingly.
Lovingly.
It would have to be enough…
For now.
sixteen
Just beyond the southern pack’s district boundaries, General Teague Verasachi threw open the heavy wooden doors of the secluded outbuilding. The old, dilapidated barn stood in virtual isolation at the south end of the Wolverine Woods and was still used from time to time for private meetings and other, less pleasant activities…
Such as torture.
The moment he entered the musty structure, he immediately spied his beta lieutenant Jacob Tansy and the three captured prisoners: the rebels Walker Alencion, Kade Burnett, and Echo Morgan. In their search for Arielle Nightsong, they had stumbled across the Rebel Camp quite by accident and managed to capture or kill all but a handful of fleeing humans. Unfortunately, the object of the king’s desire had not been present—there was no trace of Arielle anywhere. And so, they had brought three of the fiercest rebels back to the southern lycan district in hopes of coaxing further information out of the prisoners.
“Anything yet?” Teague asked Jacob, strolling across the disorderly space in three great strides.
Jacob frowned. He pointed to Walker Alencion, who was hanging from the ceiling, his wrists bound together and attached to a large iron hook. The skin of his back had been flayed raw with a leather lash, and there were several sharp metal spikes protruding through his feet, where Jacob had pierced the limbs through the soles, upward. “Nothing useful,” he bit out. “I have questioned this human trash a dozen times, and I continue to get the same answer: The last time he saw Arielle was two days ago, early Wednesday morning. She was heading to the banks of the Skeleton Swamps to collect healing herbs, and he hasn’t heard from her since.” He interlocked his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and rotated his head on his neck to release some tension. “It’s strange because it’s almost as if there is something else he wants to tell me, something he knows about her whereabouts, but he just can’t access the information.”
Teague circled Walker slowly, glaring at him with barely concealed rage. “What do you mean: He just can’t access the information?”
Jacob shrugged his brawny shoulders and shifted his weight from one large foot to the other. “Don’t know. Can’t explain. It’s like a part of his memory, maybe even his mind, has just been burned away.” He pointed at a particularly hideous gash in Walker’s left side—the wound was bubbling with thick, coagulating blood and already oozing pus. “I’ve packed salt, poured alcohol, and even inserted poisonous thorns into these wounds. He screams like a stuck pig, but he still doesn’t talk.” He grasped Walker by the chin and dug his nails into his cheeks, causing him to gasp in pain. “I don’t think he’s that strong. It’s almost as if he would tell us…if he could. But he can’t.”
Teague grunted in displeasure and turned his attention to the second male, Echo Morgan. “And this one?”
Echo was bound to a high-backed torture chair—the crude implement was fashioned like any other stool, only there were manacles attached to the base for the ankles; the back was wrapped in thick strings of barbed wire; and the seat itself was a bed of sharp, protruding spikes that jutted upward from the seat. Everywhere an occupant’s flesh touched the chair, he or she would be pierced with sharp, rusty stakes.
“Same thing,” Jacob said, pausing to hawk some phlegm from his throat and spit it on the ground at Echo’s feet. “He’s far tougher than the other one. I think he would be willing to take his secrets to the grave, but just the same, I don’t think he knows the female’s whereabouts.”
Teague crouched down in front of Echo and flashed a vicious set of canines in his face. “Ever had your throat ripped out by a lycan?” he whispered. “Ever had your flesh consumed one piece at a time?” When Echo simply glared at him in disgust, Teague smiled. “It can be arranged, Mr. Morgan. It can be arranged.” He reached out and slapped him so hard that the chair fell over, driving two- and three-inch barbs deeper into his sides. “Pick him up,” Teague ordered Jacob, sauntering over to the final prisoner. “And what do we have here?”
Kade Burnett was kneeling on the ground, his face hovering over a barrel full of water, his hands and arms bound behind his bloodied back. His dirty-blond hair was soaked from repeated dunking in the drum; the pupils of his dazed brown eyes were dilated with shock; and his skin looked like a checkerboard made of white and red squares, from where Jacob had carved uneven slices of flesh from his body and dropped them in the barrel.
“He
says he last saw Arielle on Tuesday night, that she and Walker returned to the camp after midnight. Swears he hasn’t seen her since.”
Teague held out his giant hand and gestured toward the thin filet knife attached to Jacob’s belt. “Hand me your blade.”
Kade’s eyes grew even wider and he grit his teeth—but he didn’t speak out.
“I’m going to carve your spine out of your body, rebel,” Teague growled. He held up the five-inch blade and rotated it in the lantern-light. “I will start at your neck, slice down, along your left side, make a cross-wise slash at your tailbone, and then gut you from your waist back to your shoulder, along the right side. When I am done, you will no longer be a warrior, a rebel…or a man. You will be a pile of meat and bones, unable to move your limbs.” He slashed him swiftly across the cheek with the tip of the blade, licked the blood off the steel, and moaned. “Is there anything you would like to tell me in order to procure a swifter, easier death? Where is Arielle Nightsong?”
Kade trembled where he knelt, his broad, muscular shoulders straining with the effort to hold his damaged body upright. Despite his valiant attempt at courage, his eyes filled with tears, and he shuddered. “I don’t know,” he bit out angrily. “I swear by the ancestors—I don’t know!” He grimaced and squinted, as if suddenly seized by a violent headache, and then he shook his head, as if trying to clear his vision. “Please…” He swayed in a circular motion. “Please.”
Teague turned to Jacob and shrugged. “Please.” He mocked the prisoner callously. “Make the weak one watch.”
Jacob strolled across the earthen floor until he stood directly behind Walker, and then spinning his body like a carcass drying out on a rack, he turned him to face Kade. “Watch and learn, rebel,” he said, licking the side of Walker’s jaw and growling like the supernatural creature he was, even in human form.
As Teague began to carve out Kade’s spine, the man writhed and screamed in agony. At first he shouted in defiance, and then he just pleaded for mercy. Until, at last, he slumped over the barrel and died, his face floating morbidly in the tainted water.
Walker shook from head to toe. “Oh shit,” he mumbled beneath his breath. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! I swear, General Teague”—he addressed the lycan directly—“I don’t know where she is.”
Teague frowned and took a careful step in Walker’s direction, menacing the pathetic human with nothing more than his gait: his smooth, lithe, mongrel stride. He pulled back his lips and snarled, allowing his lower jaw to begin shifting, before he reined it back and, once again, donned the persona of a man.
Walker began to urinate, trickles of pungent yellow fluid streaming down his legs. “Please,” he begged piteously. “C’mon, man…please.”
Teague turned up his lips in disgust. “I’m going to remove your testicles, Walker.” He laughed out loud. “And then, I’m going to make you watch while I feed them to your buddy, Echo.”
Echo whimpered mechanically, breaking his stoic silence.
“No!” Walker cried out, blatantly horrified. “No…I swear…I’d tell you if I could. I swear.” His mouth began to work in small little O’s, like a fish that had just been scooped out of water. He twisted and turned and yanked on his bonds. “I would give her to you if I could. I swear it. She’s never done anything but reject me anyways. I swear!”
Now this got Teague’s attention.
So the redheaded human had a thing for Arielle Nightsong, and he had been spurned by her on more than one occasion. This might be something he could work with. “Arielle is a whore,” he whispered harshly. “Do you know what she used to do in the slave encampment, during her teenage years? The favors she used to bestow on King Thane’s soldiers? I was one of them,” he lied, “and I can tell you honestly, she loved it.”
The human turned the color of ripe tomatoes. In his weakened state of pain and privation, he couldn’t discern the truth from a lie, and apparently, he was too stupid to understand that King Thane would have murdered any soldier who had dared to place a single hand on a female he had chosen for a bride.
No matter.
The words were having their desired effect.
Walker writhed in pain, even as he jerked in anger. “That bitch,” he whispered, nearly biting his own tongue. “She lied to me.”
“Of course she did.” Teague taunted him. “But all is not lost: Tell us where she is, and we will seek vengeance for you.” He smiled as if they were merely having a congenial conversation. “I give you my word as a general.” It sounded good anyway.
Walker shook his head sadly, his dangling feet swaying in the air in response to the motion. “I swear to you, General Teague. The last time I saw her was early Wednesday morning, right before she left for the banks of the Skeleton Swamps to pick herbs. But”—he quickly rushed the words—“but there is something important that you don’t know.”
Teague raised his eyebrows and practically held his breath. He brandished the knife in front of Walker’s face, dropped it low to hold it between his legs, and snarled. “Do tell.”
Walker swallowed hard, causing his Adam’s apple to bob up and down several times, before he continued. “She makes regular trips back and forth to the slave encampment. To the royal district.”
Teague drew back in surprise. “What? Why?”
“To visit the vampire—the slave—Keitaro Silivasi.”
Teague’s jaw tightened, and he ground his teeth in annoyance. “Tell me more.”
“She prepares healing herbs and salves, and she sneaks into his tent at night to try and give him comfort.”
“How often does she do this?” Teague asked.
Walker tried to shrug his shoulders, but the weight of his body prevented them from rising. “I don’t know. It depends…on a lot of things. Whether or not she can get away. The weather. A lot of things.”
“And when was the last time—”
“The last time she was there was Tuesday evening, just after full moonrise. I think.”
Teague could hardly believe his ears. So Arielle Nightsong had been right under Thane’s nose all this time, moving boldly in and out of the slave encampment, only hours from the heart of the royal district, only a full day’s journey from the arena, and all for the sake of that degenerate vampire. King Thane would be murderous; perhaps it was better if he didn’t know.
Of one thing, Teague was quite sure: The information would lead to her capture once and for all. Now, it was just a matter of placing a sentry outside of the circular clearing, on the narrow path that wound between the Mystic Mountains and the slave encampment. Sooner or later, the woman would rear her arrogant, rebellious head.
And Teague Verasachi would be waiting.
He turned to regard Walker Alencion with fresh, new vigor in his heart. “Is there anything else?”
Walker sighed in visible relief. “No, not that I can think of, but I swear, I would tell you if there was. I will tell you if there is. If I think of anything else.”
“Very good,” Teague said. He turned to face his beta lieutenant and barked out a formal command: “Lieutenant Jacob, I want you to send the third squadron, the elite pack of Omegas, to the circular clearing just outside the slave encampment, on the northern side of the Mystic Mountains, with the mission to set up surveillance in the thick of the woods. To capture Arielle. Tell them to prepare for a long deployment if necessary: I don’t give a wolf’s damn how long it takes; they are not to leave their post. Tell them the information is classified. The mission remains hush-hush, between you, the squadron, and me.” He wrung his hands together eagerly. “How long will it take to get them into position?”
Jacob massaged his brow, thinking. “At least one hour to mobilize and twelve to travel: They should be there by tomorrow, no later than eleven AM—noon, in the worst-case scenario.”
Teague nodded his head in approval. “Fine. I want you to position them in the thicket, just beyond the clearing—we can only hope she doesn’t know Keitaro has already be
en moved to the arena.” He tilted his ear toward his shoulder in a gesture of chance. “If luck is on our side, she will try to visit him once more, before Sunday’s games, and we will be waiting.”
“You really think she would be crazy enough to go anywhere near the slave encampment—or the games on Sunday—knowing that King Thane will be looking for her, scouring the countryside to find her?”
“Just do it, soldier!”
Jacob Tansy stood to attention, saluted his general, and took a cautious step backward. “Yes, sir!”
“And hurry,” Teague snarled, beginning to lose his composure. They were so close now. He didn’t dare risk losing a chance to capture Arielle due to needless procrastination. He pointed brusquely at Echo Morgan. “And cut the defiant one out of the chair. I want the Omegas to take him with them; they may need to use him as bait. She obviously doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the redhead. Maybe this one, she at least respects.”
Walker began to object in earnest, and Jacob started to answer—but Teague didn’t hear either one.
He had already shape-shifted into the form of his wolf.
The matter settled, he rose to his hind feet, sprung deftly at Walker, and savagely tore out his throat.
At least he left his testicles intact.
seventeen
The next morning
The day was overcast and dreary, not quite as dark as the night, but with a thick, inky fog settling over the land like a skeletal hand of mist, it felt just as foreboding.
The Silivasis had packed up their camp in silence, the weight of what was to come weighing heavily on each male’s shoulders; the knowledge that they were less than an hour away from the slave encampment, eleven hours away from the arena, had left them all in a contemplative if not downright surly mood. They didn’t expect to find Keitaro in the despicable slave hut; but still, to actually see where their father had lived, where he had been kept for so many centuries like a captive animal, was more than any of them could bear.