Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) (6 page)

“A comatose alpha won’t do anyone any good,”
Nathalie chastised.

Eyes wide, I snapped my head toward her.
“I can hear you. And Dell. At the same time.”

“You’re pack now.”
She grinned wolfishly.
“We can conference call like nobody’s business.”

“You may release hands.” Graeson’s booming voice in my ears startled me amid the cerebral chatter. “It’s done.” Rolling gracefully to his feet, he prowled toward me and hauled me upright. Tucking me against his side, he addressed the others. “Welcome, kindred, to the Lorimar Pack.”

Lorimar. Lori and Marie. The two little girls whose deaths had brought us to this place, as these people, and who we would miss for always.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I flung my arms around Graeson. I buried my face against his ribs before the sobs clawing up the back of my throat tore past my lips. I couldn’t hold him tight enough. The harder I squeezed, the more certain I felt that I would be the one who shattered.

“Shh.” He wrapped me closer and nuzzled my hair. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Voice ruined, I sought his mind.
“You named the pack after our sisters.”

“
Our
pack.” He drew back to stare down at me. “Is this one of those things I should have asked you about first before making a decision?”

“No.” I laughed, a choked sound. “This was perfect.”

The tension locking his muscles melted under my praise, and I sprinkled impulsive kisses over his face, because Graeson was trying to treat me as an equal and not a weakness he must blindly protect. Compromise didn’t come easily to dominants, a truth I had learned well during my time with the Chandler pack, but he was putting in the work. This newest evidence of his devotion cracked open my soul, and I basked in the rightness of being with him. I pressed a lingering kiss over his heart, my new favorite spot, and breathed in the scent of his skin until fur rubbed against the underside of mine.

Inhaling the column of my throat, Graeson released a low growl. “Want to go for a run?”

I laughed at the mischief in his voice. “We just did.”

“You heard the alphas,” Dell crowed. “The race is on.”

White fabric billowed in the air as the pack shucked their pants and dresses and tossed them skyward. A few darted into the trees for privacy while the rest sank to the ground and gave in to the pain beside a friend. Bone snapped and cartilage popped until wolves filled the clearing. Tails swishing, they pranced and jumped and bit playfully at one another. Only Bianca remained unchanged. She sat where I’d left her and scratched the underbelly of a massive auburn-furred beast busy kicking his hind leg in ecstasy.

A melancholy ache radiated from my chest. “I can’t— Not the way you do.” They peeled aside their humanity and reveled in the untamed nature of their souls. “I don’t have a wolf.”

“Yes, you do.” Backing away, he arched his spine in the throes of change. “Let her come out to play.”

Agonizing moments later, a gorgeous sterling wolf with snow white splashes of color up his forelegs climbed to his paws and shook out the residual tingles from his change. He paused at the fringe of towering pines and glanced back at me, waiting, hoping, then bolted out of sight. The others followed, except for three of us.

Picking at the neckline of my dress, I twisted around to face Jensen and Bianca. “Are you coming?”

“I can’t, and he won’t.” Laughter rang out when he licked her chin. “I haven’t felt the urge to shift since my scent changed, and he can’t leave me unprotected. It goes against all of his instincts.” She ruffled his fur. “Even though he can’t help but answer the alpha’s call by going furry.”

“Will you two be all right?” The explosion earlier had me on edge. Charybdis thrived on preying on the vulnerable, and it didn’t get more defenseless than a heavily pregnant woman unable to call on her wolf. Jensen was fierce, but Charybdis was no ordinary enemy. “I can stay if you want company.”

“One babysitter is plenty.” She huffed at the wolf licking her ear. “Go. Enjoy yourself. Nip Nathalie’s tail for me.”

Requiring no further encouragement, I summoned my inner she-wolf. Recalled magic blasted through my veins with the punch of an adrenaline dump. Fur pierced my skin and rippled up my arms, across my shoulders and over my neck. My jaw cracked as it elongated, and my senses heightened in a rush that left me drunk on the moon.

Nostrils flared, I inhaled the musky woods scent of wolves,
my
wolves, and chased the heady lure of my mate deep into the heart of the forest.

T
highs screaming
with each flex of burning muscle, I jogged back to the ceremonial site to check on the lovebirds. With nips and short barks, the wolves begged me to stay and play, but their animals were fresh, just hitting their stride. Thanks to my earlier jog-a-thon, my knees were the consistency of overcooked elbow macaroni, and I couldn’t feel my feet. Two legs were no match for four, and now that I was done for the night, the others could chase the horizon instead of holding back for my sake.

I pinned a sappy curl to my lips as Graeson’s mind brushed mine, his approval that I had circled back to check on our most vulnerable member warming me. Spreading my awareness, I luxuriated in the ability to touch each mind in the pack. The wargs vibrated with energy and poured their emotion into the scrabble of claws on dirt. They might not know it yet, but their new alpha planned on running them until they dropped in their tracks.

Panning my thoughts toward Bianca, the better to locate her, I slammed against a mental wall that blasted me with a headache so powerful I staggered and tripped over an exposed root. “Bianca?” My temples throbbed with my pulse, but I fought the blinding pain to search for her mate. “Jensen?”

After the worst effects subsided, I pushed to my feet and leapt to the creek bed, following it around a bend and past the candlelit area where the ceremony had taken place. For a span of seconds, I thought the migraine pounding between my ears had affected my color perception, but piece by piece the whole picture came into view, and bile stung the back of my throat.

Legs crossed and expression serene, Bianca sat in a pose identical to the way I last saw her. Upon hearing my approach, she tightened her grip on the handle of the ceremonial dagger. Its tip rested on the lip of her navel, and she pressed down until bright crimson spread across the splattered fabric of her dress. Calling on the dregs of my magic, I brought my wolf aspect forward and drew on her heightened senses. A copper tang prickled my nostrils, and I understood the crusted brown stains weren’t mud from wandering the creek bed. They were blood.

Her irises, usually a denim blue, shone as black as her pupils in the patchy moonlight and grew somehow darker at my approach, as though her eyes were filled with a starless night sky.

“Hey.” I came to a full stop several feet away from her crossed ankles and endeavored to sound casual while my heart jackknifed against my ribs. “Maybe I should hold that for you.”

“Hello again, Camille Ellis. I will keep the knife if you don’t mind.” Her unblinking stare pierced me. I had held a gaze hardened with the same vacant malevolence in another innocent face a few days ago. “The babe is insurance, you see.”

Reaching for Bianca through the pack bond on reflex, I dunked my mind into an icy blackness that sent tendrils of cold eternity seeking through our connection. “Charybdis.”

A delicate roll of her shoulders shifted the blade deeper. “As you like.”

So much blood on her. Where had it all come from? “Why do you need insurance?”

“I am vulnerable when my entire awareness is present in one being, but I cannot risk bringing an avatar so near your wolves or I would lose her and endanger my current level of autonomy. This was the only way for us to meet. Therefore…” Bianca twisted the blade until the richness of her blood hit the back of my throat with every inhalation, “…I required leverage.”

As much as my palm itched to drive the knife through the real Charybdis’s cold heart, all the act would accomplish at this moment was ending a woman and her unborn child. I had as much faith in him revealing true vulnerabilities to me as I trusted a coiled rattlesnake not to bite.

Holding steady, I reached through the pack bond to alert Graeson then mentally swept the area once more for signs of Jensen. I found none. “How did you possess Bianca without an avatar to act as your vehicle?”

“Bianca spent a great deal of time with Emily, learning what to expect from a warg pup I imagine. A pregnant female is a vulnerable female and a valuable asset.” She let her delicate shoulder rise and fall. “I laid claim to this body to, as you say, keep my options open.” Her grin chilled me. “It seems I was right to mark her. Never had I dreamed she would lead me straight to you.”

Harlow had initiated contact with Emily, the Chandler alpha’s daughter, to trick her into performing small tasks for her. Did this mean Emily was infected too? I saw no other link between Harlow, his current avatar, Emily and Bianca. How his contagion spread gnawed at me, but I knew better than to ask a second time.

Bianca tilted her head, absorbing every detail of my disheveled appearance. “Ask me what you truly wish to know.”

It was a trap. I knew it. I walked right into it anyway. “Are my aunt and cousin still alive?”

Eyes rolling back, she inhaled until her stomach rounded, then exhaled on a sensual moan. “Where would the pleasure be in telling you?”

I bit my lip, hating I had exposed the pulsing heart of my weakness.

“How you ache with their loss.” Bliss wafted off her skin, and she flared her nostrils wider. “How it eats you up inside to know you failed to save them, the same as you failed to save Lori.” Cruelty glinted in her eyes. “You are weak, Camille Ellis. You always have been, and you always will be. It will cost you all you love, and then, when you are broken and beg for my touch, then I might—
might
—bestow my blessing upon you.”

The mention of her touch called to mind the shell that remained of Marshal Ayer after bearing the burden of such a blessing. “You’re offering me a position as an avatar-in-waiting?” Did she expect me to stand in line until her magic burned out Harlow? “I’m afraid I must decline.”

“How much further must I push before I break you,” she mused. “It is such an individual process, one can never truly estimate the threshold until one crosses it.”

Tamping down the fear and guilt, the worry and regret, I shut down my emotions the way I had trained myself to when the burden of carrying Lori’s ghost in my bones weighed too heavily on me. The change in Bianca’s expression was instantaneous. I had cut off her supply and slapped her back to attention. Now all I had to do was keep her focused on me and not the wolves I sensed circling us.

“What is your purpose here? Not just in this forest, but on Earth?” I deserved that much at least. “Why did you leave Faerie?”

“There is much game to be hunted here.” The thing inside Bianca exhaled on a lusty sigh. “Varieties of fae exist here that Faerie has long since forgotten in her eagerness to purge her excess into this realm.” She pointed a stained finger at me. “Gemini have been reduced to lore in Faerie.” A laugh fluttered past her lips. “What other forgotten gems might this Earth have to offer?”

A sick feeling pooled in the pit of my gut. I doubted she meant
game
as in
animals
. She meant people. Humans. Fae. All of us.

“Earth is not your playground,” I growled.

“Yet.”
Bianca drew herself up taller and sent her gaze searching past my shoulder. “It won’t be much longer now.”

“Wait.” Sensing the pack’s nearness, I lurched forward. “Why risk this visit? You gained nothing from it.”

“Wrong.” A chill permeated the word. “This visit is a gift. Treat it as such.” Her knuckles whitened on the dagger’s handle. “I can reach you anywhere, Camille Ellis, through anyone. I will hunt you as you have hunted me, until my vengeance costs you everything, as your ambition has cost me.”

“Ellis.”

A flash of bare skin drew my eye as Graeson ran naked into the clearing with the wolves panting at his heels. Faster than my lips could form a warning, Bianca reared her arm back and hurled the dagger. The cruel blade sheathed itself between his ribs. Clutching the handle with a snarl peeling back his lips, he sank to his knees, and blood flowed in rivulets down his chest.

Mind gone numb with shock—this wasn’t happening, I wasn’t losing him, not now, not like this—I fell back on my training. Lunging for Bianca, I captured her wrists and twisted them high and tight behind her back until her swollen belly protruded. I pinned them at her spine with a Word, laid her on her side, a position she couldn’t rectify without help, and bound her ankles together too.

Charybdis couldn’t have planned his moment any better if he had cracked a whip over the wolves and driven them to exhaustion himself. Fatigue overwhelmed the pack bond. Shifting back to their human skins, with human hands to help, took a lifetime. One Graeson didn’t have to spare.

Threat neutralized, at least for now, I ran to him. Skidding through the loose dirt on my knees, I caught him in my arms as he toppled forward. Sticky warmth plastered the gauzy dress against my chest. The dull bump of the dagger’s handle against my ribs sickened me. Gently, so gently, I guided him down to the ground on his side. The blade was serrated toward the handle, and he was pierced clean through.

“I need to examine him.”

Whipping my head toward the voice, I barely restrained myself from snapping at the man’s hands, which were raised in a nonthreatening pose that still managed to piss off my inner she-wolf who wasn’t so inner at the moment. At some point I had fully shifted to my warg aspect, and I was salivating at the taste of violence in the air.

“He’ll die unless you let me help,” the man said.

A whimper got caught in my throat, and then Dell was there, wrapping me in her arms and holding me steady while the man approached. His sweat stank with fear, of me or for Graeson, I wasn’t sure.

“This is Abram.” Dell tightened her grip as the steady rumbling in my throat revved louder. “He’s our healer, the best in the Chandler pack. Bessemer was pissed as hell to lose him.”

Breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, I hung on to sanity by my pinky nail.

There was so much blood, too much blood, and Graeson’s lungs made a wet noise when he drew in air.

Competent hands made quick work of the examination. Abram finished testing the entry and exit wounds with light fingers and made a ticking noise behind his teeth. “This has to come out, and all I’ve got in my bag is the contents of my medicine cabinet from home. Bessemer kept the rest. My supplies, equipment, all of it.”

“Can you save him?” My voice came out raw but steady.

“Yes,” he said earnestly. “It won’t be pretty, and I can’t trust your wolf to behave herself while I work. Getting that dagger out of him will hurt, and she may not trust that I mean her mate no harm.” A kind smile curved his lips. “She almost maimed me for looking at him while he’s wounded. While I admire the depth of her commitment, I’d also like to keep my hands attached if you don’t mind.”

I tossed my head against Dell’s shoulder. “I can’t leave him.”

“Hon, listen to Abram.” She stroked my back with her fingertips. “He’s treated Meemaw for years. She says he’s got magic hands.”

“Save him if you can.” I swallowed the lump clogging my throat. “Run and don’t look back if you can’t.”

Failure was not an option. The feral awareness growing in my middle, warped by sorrow, vowed blood would answer for blood.

“Understood.” His rough hand clapped me on the back as he shared a deep look with Dell. “Get her out of here and don’t let her peek until I give the all clear, okay?”

“You got it, Doc.” Dell’s hands bruised my arms with the strength she used to contain me while helping me to my feet, as though not quite trusting I would leave in peace. She was wise to doubt. Her iron grip was all that kept me from snapping my teeth at Abram before she turned me on my heel and marched me in the direction of the RV park. “Focus, and you can keep tabs on Graeson through the bond.” She urged me past two men wobbling to their feet while more wolves struggled to find their human skins. “For now you’ve got to keep calm, or your panic will seep into the pack bond. If Graeson picks up on your distress, he’ll fight Abram’s healing to get to you. Right now you need to send him peaceful vibes, okay? Let him know you’re okay. Can you do that?”

Several steps into the cool darkness of the woods, I faltered at the keening wail of a heart shattering into a million infinitesimal pieces.

“Jensen,” Bianca screamed until her voice quit.
“Jensen.”

“Oh gods,” I murmured. “He stayed behind with her. I couldn’t locate him through the bond and then—” She’d attacked Graeson, and Jensen became the least of my worries. “We have to find him.”

“Are you up for this?” Dell’s fingers dug into the meat of my upper arms. “Tell me the truth.”

“I can do this.” I owed it to Bianca to find her mate. “I need to do this.”

The hunt for Jensen lasted all of five minutes.

We found him, what was left of him, behind a moss-covered boulder. He had been ripped into glistening strips of meat with the apparent ease of a child shredding tissue paper. Teeth and claw marks, most interchangeable on such a devastating scale, left no doubt he had met his end at the jaws of a fellow warg.

Part of me mourned that I had seen so much death that more didn’t gut me the way I wanted it too. The way this should have. I hated being able to analyze the scene when a normal person would have fallen to their knees weeping and retching as Dell had beside me.

“Alpha?”
Haden’s voice rang in my head.
“Are you all right? The bond feels…wrong.”

“Leave Bianca with Nathalie.”
For the sake of her baby, and her own mental health, she could never see this free of the blinding fog of Charybdis’s influence.
“Bring the others, and come find us.”

We had kin to mourn and defenses to ready.