Alpha's Child (9 page)

“Supposing you won, you can have our females. There are only two, but they understand the pack’s needs quite well.”

Damien frowned again. “I don’t want your females.”

Now it was Grath’s turn to sound puzzled. “What?”

“If your females want to join my pack, they’re more than welcome, but—”

“
Welcome?
” Grath hissed. “They would be
yours
.”

“
My
females decide for themselves which pack to belong to. They’re in my pack because that’s their choice.”

“We do things the traditional way in this pack,” Grath said, and Damien could hear his disgust. “The
right
way. So if you want to keep your territory, you’ll fight.”

Finally it made sense. Grath wanted Julia and Dee. But he would insist on going through the ritual as though it was a fair fight. That way none of his wolves would see his actions as wrong.

“We don’t need to do this,” Damien pleaded.

“
Please
, blind one,” Grath spat. “You’ve been around humans for too long. My wolves and I are not civilized weaklings, we’re predators. We take what we want. You’re a pathetic excuse for an alpha. Nevertheless, the tradition must be observed. If you want to keep your females—or I should say, if you don’t want me to take them—you’ll fight.”

“And if I don’t agree? Will you just kill me?”

“I think you’ll agree.”

“If I don’t?”

“Then you will desecrate thousands of years of tradition that has been faithfully kept in this land.”

He leaned forward, and Damien smelled the dead flesh in his teeth as he spoke again, could feel the hot putrid breath of the shifter in front of him.

“But you
will
agree.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Julia

The tears felt like drops of ice by the time they got halfway down her cheeks. She shivered. Dee curled her body more tightly around Julia, enveloping her in warm fur. They were huddled on the damp stone floor of a cell.

They were going to hurt Damien, Julia was sure of it, maybe even kill him, and there was nothing she could do about it, absolutely nothing, she couldn’t even
see
anything. The darkness was so thick it seemed to physically press against her eyes. It was like being in a coffin.

As soon as this thought popped into her mind, she tried to shove it back out, but it was too late. The walls of blackness began to close in around her and suddenly her lungs felt constricted—she needed more oxygen—she sucked in a ragged, panicky breath but she couldn’t seem to get enough, there wasn’t enough in the air—

The door flew open and blinding gray light filled the world. Julia cringed reflexively against the back wall of the cell.

The silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man split the streaming light. He stepped into the cell, followed by the figure of a child.

Dee snarled, but the snarl turned to a whimper as her body twisted on the ground. At first Julia thought that Dee was being hurt, but then she realized that her grandmother was shifting back into human form. Without wanting to. She lay naked and breathless on the ground.

The man tossed a bundle of gray cloth at Dee’s feet. A tattered, grimy dress.

“Dress yourself,” the man said. “No one wants to see those saggy wrinkles.”

Julia glared at the man, hate seething in her gut and helped Dee with the clothes. Tired, Dee pulled the dress up over herself with trembling hands.

Julia turned to the witch, who was watching her with big, bright, blue-gray eyes. These eyes were somehow too innocent, like a cartoon version of a child. Julia recognized the face.

“You…you helped me before,” Julia said to the witch.

“You,” the man growled, pointing at Julia, and cocked a thumb at the door. “Let’s go.”

Julia had no choice but to obey. Dee started to follow but the man shoved her back.

“Dee!” Julia cried, but the man shut the door and pushed Julia out with a cruel expression of joy.

They stepped out into the pack’s den, a patchwork of thatch-roofed huts and log houses surrounding an expansive, grassy courtyard. The sky was a flat slate of clouds, harshly bright through the clouds. Julia had no idea where the sun was. The forest encircling the den was a dense, dark wall, the sky seeming to seep down in the form of mist along the branches.

“Please,” Julia tried again. “Please. You helped before—”

“How did I help you?” the witch said. Her voice was just like her eyes, so angelic it raised the hairs on the back of Julia’s arms.

“You lifted the curse,” Julia said. “You made me able to shift.”

“I did nothing you could not have done yourself.”

Desperate frustration built up in Julia and tears stung her eyes. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping them?”

The werewitch didn’t answer.

The man moved them along, directing them into a hut that was actually a covering for a wooden staircase. The steps plunged underground, lit by a weak, flickering torch set into the wall. They were precariously narrow and there was no railing. Julia felt like she was descending into a tomb. Maybe she was.

“Please,” she whispered to the werewitch, hoping the man wouldn’t hear; she had to keep trying, there was nothing else she could do. “You can help us, I know it…”

Julia voice trailed off into a gasp as they reached the bottom of the staircase and rounded the corner into a huge cavern. Studded with stalactites, the ceiling of the cave was high and arched, the point of the roof retreating into darkness. The many wall-mounted torches gave the air an orange-red hue.

Damien was chained to one of the walls, his arms strung up at his sides.

Before Julia could process any of this, the werewitch said, “Now? Now I will help you more than ever. Ak-kar-ali-ma!”

And as she said this, her angelic voice became cracked and phlegmy, the voice of a shriveled, spiteful hag, a crypt keeper, and Julia’s body was frozen still. The witch snapped up one hand to Julia’s face and forced a vial between her lips. Julia screamed and thrashed and tried to wrench her head sideways, but the witch yanked Julia’s head back and held her chin shut. Acidic liquid filled Julia’s mouth. It burned, oh it burned!

Julia tried to spit it out but to no avail. She choked as the burning liquid slid down her throat, hot and sinister.

The witch snapped her finger and Julia fell to her hands and knees, coughing, retching.

“Julia!” Damien strained against his chains, wrenching his body out toward her; the jangle of the iron links echoed in the open space like a grating cackle. “Don’t do anything to her! I’ll fight! I’ll—”

The liquid scorched down Julia’s throat like a shot of extra high-proof alcohol, but unlike alcohol, the burn didn’t fade. It intensified, it spread. Icy flames of agony licked through her body. Her skin broke out in sweat and gooseflesh at once as the angry fire branched through her chest and down, down—

Down to her womb.

“No,” she breathed, pressing both hands to her stomach, the pain abruptly forgotten. Time seemed to freeze, trapping her in that initial moment of incredulous horror.

The steady soft beating of the twins that had become so much a part of her own self had suddenly stopped. She searched within herself for the sense of their presence, but her body was hollow, empty.

“
NO!
” she screamed, her fingers scrabbling across the skin as though she could find them by hand. “What have you done?!
What have you done
?!”

“Julia
!” Damien cried hoarsely. “Julia, what is it? What is—”

“
What have you done?!
”

The two shifters standing guard grabbed Julia’s upper arms and began to drag her away. Her body twisted as if in death throes, her legs dragging along the ground, her mind a sucking void of anguish. She screamed so hard her throat felt like it was tearing.

“YOU! What have you done!!!
”

The witch stood watching her, once again a grotesque caricature of childlike innocence.

The men wrestled her up the narrow staircase and into a room, hurled her into a barred cell, and slammed the door, locking her in blackness. But this wasn’t the cell she’d been in before, no, Dee was not here, where was Dee?

“Dee?” Julia moved to the bars, her trembling hands fluttering over the cage that held her in darkness. “Dee!”

Her screams turned into sobs and she slumped against the bars of her cell, her cries coming hoarsely. She lay on her side and clutched her knees to her chest, sobbing into them.

“Damien,” she whispered. She could not sense him at all. Her stomach cramped and ached, and she bent over, trying not to let herself imagine the death of her two babies inside of her. There was no blood, but she knew. Gone, gone, they were all gone. All gone away. She had nothing now. Nothing…

All of the energy had vanished from her body, and she did not know if she slept or if she was awake, it was so perfectly dark and silent. It might have been hours or days. Once she slept, and she dreamed that she was a wolf, running through the forest, looking for a stream.

She woke up, her arms tightly wrapped around her belly, already crying. If only she’d never started this, any of this. If only she’d accepted herself in human form and left it at that! Why had she wanted to shift? It was that which had led them back into this territory. If she’d stayed at home, stayed human, none of the wolves would ever have known about her or Damien’s pack. If only she’d stayed normal, Jordan would still be alive. Her twins would still be alive—

Julia balled her hands into fists and pounded them against her head, crying hoarsely through her tears. She tried to shift, her fingers scrabbling against her clothes, but nothing happened. She screamed and nobody came.

Lying on the cold floor in darkness, Julia cried and cried and wished that she would die.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Damien

A piercing shrill of fear and fury filled Damien’s head. What had they done to Julia? What could have made her shriek and sob like that? The answer loomed up from the blackest corner of his mind but he refused to accept it.

“What did you do to her?” he snarled at Grath. He could feel the veins standing out in his arms and neck. He strained against the chains even though he knew he had no chance of breaking through them.

“You said you will fight, did you not?” Grath said.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?”

“That female is no longer your vessel. You will have no children in my pack”

“
What?
”

Damien could hear the amusement in Grath’s voice; he was relishing this, the utter power he had over Damien. “Your unborn litter,” Grath said, “will remain unborn.”

Damien’s non-comprehension held for one last, sweet fraction of a second. Then the understanding came tearing through him.

“Will you fight?” Grath asked.

Damien threw his head back and screamed in an unadulterated blend of agony and rage. The sound caromed off the cavern walls, multiplying and warping.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Grath said.

Damien’s body sagged. The cuffs dug into his wrists but he was barely aware of the discomfort, barely aware of anything except one bottomless, inescapable notion: His children were dead. Killed. It was his fault. He hadn’t protected her. He hadn’t protected them. His babies.

He screamed again.

They left him hanging, and all he could do was talk. He pled sometimes, pled for his life and for Julia’s. Then he threatened to kill, to torture. Finally he was reduced to hoarse cries that he could not even hear over the roaring in his ears. All he could say was her name. He apologized over and over again.

“Our babies. Julia,” he cried, the words splitting through his cracked lips. “Julia, our babies. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Julia. Julia...”

The rage and grief swirling inside him gradually became so twisted together that they were one emotion, one raw, all-consuming emotion. His chest felt as if his heart had been scraped away, and at the same time adrenaline blazed through his muscles in preparation for killing the monster before him.

A monster who’d murdered his best friend and his children.

Grath and two other shifters took him off of his chains and led him up the stairs. They walked outside for a bit before Grath opened a door. Damien heard whimpering inside.

“Julia?” Damien said.

“Damien,” Julia gasped, and Damien stretched forward. He hadn’t sensed their connection in this place.

There was a series of small metallic clangs, which Damien guessed was Grath unlocking Julia’s cell, and then Julia flung herself into his arms. She clung to him the way a drowning person would cling to a rescue line.

“Damien,” she sobbed. “The babies…”

“I know,” Damien said, not wanting her to have to say it; somehow that would make it worse, even though it didn’t seem like it could get any worse. Damien didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing he
could
say, nothing anyone could say that would make a dent in the pain.

And now he had to tell Julia, who’d just lost her babies, that she was about to lose her mate too.

“Julia…I—I have to fight Grath.”

“What?” Julia said blankly.

“Grath wants our territory.”

“Then he can have it!” Julia cried.

“He won’t listen to reason. The tradition is that he has to fight the alpha.”

“You have to fight him all by yourself?”

“Yes,” Damien said, and forced himself to add again, “To the death.”

He felt Julia flinch at the last word.

“But—but you’re
blind
!” she said.

“Yes.”

“That’s not fair at all! That’s ridiculous!”

“He doesn’t care about fair. He only cares about tradition.”

Julia was beginning to grasp the implications. Damien could her breathing quickening.

“Damien, you can’t.”

“I have no choice.”

“Give him the territory!” Julia cried. “Just give it to them, we’re moving anyway—”