Clarity

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Edition

April 2012

Copyright © Claire Farrell 2012

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Maritime-Alps,
France

May

Ryan

Ryan managed to squeeze one eye open, but it was a monumental effort. His throat might as well have been packed full of dirt, it felt so dry. One arm was numb, and he realised it was strapped tightly over his head, squeezing his blood flow so he couldn’t phase fully. He could try, but his arm wouldn’t change, and that would be excruciating. For an instant, fear and panic swept through him, but as he twitched the rest of his limbs, down to his fingers and toes, he found everything still where it was meant to be. Lucky.

He licked his lips and tried to clear his throat, but all that came out was a strange broken noise. His sight returned too slowly for his liking, but he sensed no anger around him. For the moment, he was safe.

“Here, drink this.”

His one good eye found
Willow
by his side, a cup in her hand. He tried to speak, but she shook her head. “Drink first.”

She lifted his head gently and held the cup to his mouth, tipping it so the gloriously cool water trickled into his mouth. He swallowed gladly, drank more, and was finally able to take the cup himself. Using
Willow
’s arm, he sat up as much as he could.

He watched her carefully over the rim of the cup, unsure of her intentions. She wanted him dead; he knew that. But when the werewolves punished her for her father’s sins, he had stepped in, unable to bear her screams any longer. Only one purple bruise marred her skin, but her hair was tangled and dirty, and he wondered how long she had been sitting by his side.

“Why?” she whispered, her eyes wide with that periodically present innocence. He should have been used to the shifts in her mood, but they never failed to unsettle him; the naivety reminded him far too much of the purity in his own young daughters’ eyes.

He tried to shrug, but it hurt too much. How could he stand by and watch someone else’s daughter be harmed for her father’s deeds? How could he do that knowing those very werewolves who had beaten him were waiting for their chance to do the same to his own daughters? He still had a conscience, no matter how many times Vin had tried to beat it out of him.

A silence shrouded them as he sipped and waited for something worse to happen. He recognised the room as the alpha’s very own torture chambers. The shack was so far off the beaten path, no one would hear the screams. Vin made his werewolves wait there while he decided what to do with them. Ryan had been taken there when the werewolves first found him, and the place hadn’t changed much. The heavy stench of fear and blood lingered, the kind of scents that intimidated the ones who shook within those walls. Ryan did his best to ignore the instinct to cower.

After the fiasco in
Dublin
, an enraged Vin had been too quick to punish, and even though Ryan had wormed his way out of Vin’s bad books, he had jumped straight back in to let
Willow
off the hook.

“I must be crazy,” he whispered.
Willow
glared at him, her eyes dark and wild, and he laughed, almost delirious with pain and hunger. “Not as crazy as you,
Willow
. Never as crazy as you.”

She thumped hard on his chest, causing him to hack up a dry cough that might have been a laugh. Ryan wasn’t quite sure himself. She stormed out of the room and left him on the narrow bed frame.

In his time with the pack, he had slept in worse places, but he needed to be alert when the others came back. They always came back. He wasn’t walking out of there. Crawling maybe, if he was lucky. Vin’s savage lust for power had become Ryan’s death sentence. Even with the best of outcomes, Ryan couldn’t see a way out for himself.

Although Vin claimed his orders were for the good of the pack, Ryan knew it boiled down to fear of losing power. As soon as Ryan had scented those werewolves in
Ireland
, he knew. The alpha strength was obvious among them, far greater than the tainted will Vin possessed. It had taken everything in him to even face the one he fought. They were as tame as
 
werewolves could be, but they didn’t need ferocity.

If the Evans family of werewolves decided to come knocking, Vin would have to bow his head in obedience. But even in the heart of battle, they hadn’t tried to force their will. That kept playing over in Ryan’s head. It made no sense. Vin never hesitated to use that alpha power against his pack, his method of keeping control.

Ryan sought the wallet in his pocket. Gone. Not the worst thing that could happen because they couldn’t take his memories. He didn’t need the picture in his wallet. His girls’ faces were imprinted into his mind, a part of his soul.

He dipped into his memories, trying to find a good one. Back before his family was taken by a crazy werewolf determined to keep his place as the alpha of all alphas.

Then again, Ryan hadn’t been raised by wolves. Born in
Glasgow
, he had grown up to be a carpenter, hiding his little secret from everyone but those closest to him. With only his werewolf grandfather for guidance, he had created a perfectly ordinary life with a trade that managed to somehow soothe the wolf.

He could almost feel the wood against his calloused fingers.

Not working.

A fun memory maybe. One where his girls squealed out they loved him. Christmas. Pink and purple bikes. Glittering strings from the handles. And his girls, so excited. Their faces.

Yes. That moment, right there. That was the one to get him through the pain. The adoration in their eyes had been obvious. That one look could get him through anything.

“Still dreaming?” Vin’s harsh voice hacked through the memory, dissolving it into fragmented echoes of reality.

The pain came back. Ryan glanced over at his leader, the one who had persuaded him to hunt down little girls not much older than his own. He hated the man with every cell of his body. “Always a dreamer,” Ryan croaked, surprised to see Vin fully dressed. The man was more wolf than human. On two legs, he moved awkwardly. Less intimidating really, Ryan tried to convince himself.

“Never been good for a wolf to dream.” Vin stared at Ryan for a couple of minutes.

Ryan avoided Vin’s eyes, an instinct that was inbred, no matter how often he had been told by human adults it was wrong. He had learned the hard way to trust his wolf when Vin was in the vicinity. The Italian werewolf was educated, fluent in a number of languages, and capable of organising werewolves scattered around the world, yet he hid his wolf and ruled with violence. Ryan had yet to figure out why.

“You’re so good at finding things, Ryan.” Vin settled onto the stool
Willow
had vacated. Ryan sensed her standing next to Vin’s mate by the door. “If you had followed our ways from the beginning, you could have been quite the tracker. It’s such a pity you can’t follow through. But I’m willing to give you one more chance, one last chance, to save the lives of those pretty little girls of yours. Although, I’m not so sure killing them would be a good idea. With werewolf blood in their veins, they might make excellent mating material.”

Ryan convulsed at the idea of Vin’s gnarly hands on his daughters. Biting the inside of his cheek until blood flooded his mouth, he tried to calm himself, knowing Vin didn’t need much of an excuse to punish him. “There isn’t an ounce of wolf in those girls. I’m not wolf enough for that, remember?” He referred to Vin’s past insults. The older wolf had never managed to breed himself, but it was his favourite insult, intended to call the lower pack members out as lesser wolves, lesser men. Ryan had once hit back at the hypocrisy. His first punishment had been the most severe.

The way of the pack wasn’t working anymore. The wolves couldn’t breed successfully, and Ryan was pretty certain it was due to the level of inbreeding over the years. The packs had stupidly decided to close ranks long ago, so there were rarely viable candidates for forced change. Biting any old human didn’t work, and nobody could figure out why.

Except for old
Jakob
Evans. He had managed to turn his mate and produce two healthy werewolf sons, two
healthy
werewolf grandsons.
Jakob’s
success probably bothered Vin more than anything.

Vin spat on the floor. “Ha. Not wolf enough. I thought the same about your mother, and look at you. You might have been magnificent if the humans hadn’t stolen and kept you for so long.”

“It doesn’t work like that anymore,” Ryan bluffed, having no real idea if his daughters were cursed by his blood. “Our breeding days are over.”

“And yet, some have no problem with it. They could strengthen us all if they had a mind to.” He shook his head, but Ryan knew the truth of it. Vin was terrified of the Evans family, terrified of the strength coming from the males. Each generation appeared to be stronger than the last. Ryan had heard the stories of how one of them had taken down three strong wolves before his enemies finally managed to rip out his throat.

If the Evans wolves knew how to focus that willpower, and if they felt like taking over a larger pack, there would be no place for Vin. He talked the talk, filling the pack with hate and ideas about mixing the blood for the greater good, but really, he wanted that family distracted enough to weaken them, so he could one day destroy them all, probably as punishment for some kind of made up treachery. Ryan had a talent for finding the truth, too. Vin had slipped up a few times, making it clear he had known the oldest wolf in a past life.

“What’s the plan then?” Ryan asked wearily.

“You’ll have some backup, and as soon as you’re healed, you can leave. Last time, you let the woman die; this time, you’re going with wolves I can trust to stick to the plan. You’ll lead them to the family, directly to the girls. They’ll do the rest. I can’t have you screwing everything up a second time.”