The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (29 page)

Maybe that’s enough for now.
 

I want an end to this killing. I want Trish safe. I want my sons returned.
 

My chest tightens when I think of my boys. Lachlan, my firstborn, the son I never knew. I want to tell him I’m sorry.
 

Maybe it was the right decision at the time. Maybe not.
 

But all I know is now…if I had the chance…I’d hold him. I’d hold my baby boy in my arms and hug him and never let him go.
 

The tightness builds in my chest and the next thing I know I’m tearing up, clamping my lips closed, trying not to sob. This pain in my heart. It’s ripping me wide open. I cup my hands over my barren belly, bite my lower lip and try to breathe. I’m walking slightly ahead of Mia. She’s busy scanning the forest for whatever’s out there waiting to kill us, so I don’t think she sees me losing it.

But I cup my belly and I think about my unborn son. The child stolen from me.
 

No. That’s not exactly true. He wasn’t stolen.
 

I
traded
him.
Abandoned
him.

The Dog God will not keep him forever. I swear it.

I’m only thankful Aaron isn’t around to discover what I did. The truth would break him. He was an outlaw, but he was fiercely loyal to friends and family.
 

Two sons. Each abandoned. Left alone to fend for themselves in this wreck of a world. Tears stream down my cheeks as the guilt and self-hatred hits home. What kind of a person am I? What kind of a mother? I don’t deserve to see either of them again.
 

But it’s what I want.
 

Everyone has a plan for me. Connor. Mia. The First Fallen.
 

Fuck them all.

I want to see my sons. Lachlan. Child of brutality.
 

And my unnamed, unborn son. Lost in the Bloodless Land.

Aaron’s son. Child of love.
 

That’s what I’m fighting for. Why I need to live. Why I need this pack. That’s why, if my father is the First Fallen…I’ll kill him. And even if he’s not, but he tries to stand in my way…I’ll kill him.
 

The tears stop. My chest loosens.
 

My shoulders, slumped low, begin to straighten.
 

I have something worth living for. I
believe
in something.
 

There are wrongs I have to try and right. Maybe that’s not possible. Maybe some wrongs cut too deep to heal. But I have to try.

Aaron’s son
, I think, ducking under a heavy cedar bough. And then I realize how badly I miss the outlaw.
 

You fucking dog. I believe in you. Too late, I believe in you.

And I’m sorry.
 

***

Gunfire shatters the silence.

Mia raises her arm, halting our advance. We stand motionless, straining to hear, the dread-filled stance of all prey.

The forest returns to silence, then Earl’s voice drifts through the trees. Mia’s second-in-command is yelling something I can’t quite hear.
 

“An attack?” Trish asks, eyeing the dark woods.
 

“Something spooked them,” Mia says, handing Trish her Glock and giving me a questioning look.
 

I shake my head no. I don’t scent anything either.

“Let’s move,” Mia says. “They’re a little far off for my liking.”

We push through the forest at a half-run. Branches whip against my face, stinging. I stumble several times, fall into a carpet of moss, stagger to my feet, carry on. Pimniq’s struggling to keep up. I slow down, hold her arm and lead her forward. Mia shoots me an angry glare. This is your fault, her glare says. Whatever happens now is on your head.

So be it. I know what I want.
 

There’s another burst of gunfire, then another, then a booming sound so loud it shakes the earth. The forest lights up in brilliant white flash. For an instant everything is illuminated: I see the fear in little Pimniq’s pale, thin face. The determination in Trish’s eyes. How she’s holding the Glock like they trained her to at the academy. How brave my best friend is.
 

Mia’s black leather outfit gleams in the white light. Her body lithe and lean and strong, flowing effortlessly through the dense woods, like water running downhill.
 

Then the forest goes black, and I’m running again, blinking, white spots dancing in my vision, holding tight to Pim, pleading with my creature to come if I call her.

Another boom. Louder this time.
 

Followed by another white flash.
 

Someone’s screaming.
 

One of the men guarding us, a boy really, maybe late teens, his soft, rounded face contrasted against his camouflage outfit and the grenades on his belt and the gun in his hands, scans the forest as he runs.

A creature steps out from behind a tree. Wraps its scaled arms around the boy soldier. A Stricken. Some kind of hideous, unnatural hybrid: a rodent’s head with a rack of antlers and red-grey scales covering its body. The creature seizes the boy’s throat. It’s fingers are long and thin and end in ghost-grey claws. The boy goes limp with terror, like a bird in a hunting dog’s mouth. Like something switched off in his brain, and then I see the Stricken open a mouth lined in jagged teeth—
 

The world goes black as the white flash blinks out.
 

There’s a wet choking sound and I know the boy is dead and all I can think about are my sons, my beautiful boys, and did they die like that…brutally, horribly? With a mind so terrified it went blank? With a body that refused to obey?

Pim’s hand trembles in mine. Something’s changing.
 

Pim’s
changing. Her hand feels…soft. Downy. Like feathers.

“Pim, no!” I scream, but too late.

Pim’s hand slips from my grasp and in the dim light beneath the forest canopy something leaps into the air and rises into the sky, cawing fiercely.

The soldier standing next to me shouts a warning, raises his gun—

I slam my shoulder into his arm, knocking the gun from his grasp.

“Fucking bitch!” the soldier screams as we crumple to the dirt.
 

A quick sound of metal sliding from leather. A blade shines over me, flashes down, stabs into the soil inches from my ear. The soldier rolls to the side, springs to his feet. Brings the blade down toward my chest.
 

My mind empties.
 

I call her. Come to me, I plead. Come to me.

Silence. Cold and merciless.

The blade falls.
 

A gunshot rings. The soldier jerks to the side.
 

Stares at the blood seeping through his bullet proof vest.
 

There are weak points in a kevlar vest.
 

Trish has been trained to find them.
 

The soldier falls dead. I’m on my feet, not bothering to thank my friend, conscious only of the need to find Anik and Shiori and Pim. My packmates.
 

The gunfire’s constant now. Bullets zip overhead, punch into trees.
 

I scream at Trish to stay close. For her protection or mine? I can’t tell. Bright flashes light up the forest. The Stricken are closing in. I see them flitting through the trees around us. Hear their foul hoots and shrieks and bellows. Feel their hunger for red blood.
 

Me and Trish burst into a clearing. My knees weaken. At first I can’t even comprehend what I’m looking at. Hundreds of the makeshift pole pyramids. Even more decaying human corpses. Anik on his knees in the middle of the clearing, frozen, wide-eyed, staring at something in the pole structures.
 

A burst of machine gun fire to my right.
 

Someone shouts a warning.
 

Mia’s crouched on her knees, the machine gun lighting up in her hands. She’s firing into the structures. But there’s nothing there. Only swaying dead bodies and poles tied together at odd angles and…I notice something moving inside the structures. A shifting shadow among shadows. A swarming black cloud.

Shiori
.
 

A Stricken pack emerge from the woods. Oh god how many? Seven at least. Hideous, malformed things. Lions and bears and lizards. Their eyes gleaming red and yellow and cold blue. The Stricken snarl and howl and leap into the clearing. I’m certain they’ll charge us, but instead they turn toward the pole structures, raise their arms and roar in triumph.
 

The sound freezes my blood. The Stricken are celebrating.
 

“Lil?” Trish cries. “Lil!”

I want to tell Trish my creature is near. I want to say it will be all right. But I might be too weak to risk calling her, and now my friends and I are doomed to die in this stinking wood and I’ll never see my sons again—
 

A white raven caws from high overhead.

Please fly, Pim. Please! Fly far away from this hell.

“Shiori…don’t do this!” Anik screams, still on his knees. “Why? Why desert us?”

The buzzing black swarm swirls from within the pole structures as Shiori’s wasps come together to form a delicate, finely featured face, and from the face a voice speaks, disembodied, heartless, and the voice says, “Because I have seen truth.”

The Stricken pack shrieks in answer.

“It’s not who you are!” Anik screams, his face wet with tears.
 

“Poor Anik. I have ascended the Pyramid of the Sun,” the voice within the swarm says. “Stood beside the Lord of Near and Nigh. Been blessed by the Carrion Cloud.”

The Stricken fall to their knees, press their foreheads to the ground, prostrate themselves before Shiori and the pyramid.
 

The Stricken weren’t hunting us.

Shiori
summoned
them.

She betrayed us.

Two bodies are sprawled on the ground beside Anik. I recognize Earl. Mia’s second. His body half stripped of flesh. Partially consumed.

“There is a place for you, Anik,” the voice within the swarm says. “A place beside your
true
brothers and sisters. Join me. Join me and live free.”

Anik turns to stare at me, his face wracked with indecision and doubt.

He’s considering it. He’s lost his way.
 

“Lily…I don’t know…please? Tell me? Please?”

I open my mouth to speak. But no words arrive. There’s nothing I can say. Sometimes leading is about more than commanding. Sometimes its about saying silent. Anik needs to let his heart guide him, and in my silence his face crumples and his shoulders slump.

“This alpha is
weak
,” the voice in the swarm says, rising in volume until the sound makes the soldiers at my side cover their ears. “A liar. An impostor. She’s weak. A
failure
. She doesn’t care about you, Anik. She never has.” The buzzing sound softens. “But I care. You know I do. We carried one another, Anik. Like true packmates. Like lovers. We carried one another from Sedna’s lair. Across northern forests. We held one another warm against the cruel wind. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Anik says, his voice halting and heavy.

“Think of the pain our sister caused…” Shiori says. “Judge by her actions. Not by what others claim she is, or what she claims she is. What has she done, Anik? To help you and Pimniq? To
protect
you and Pimniq?”

“Nothing,” Anik growls, casting me a seething glare.

“Then abandon the weak. Join your packmates at the Temple of the Sun. Bring your beautiful sister. And after, you may both return home. The north will be yours alone.”

“I miss my home,” Anik stammers. “The cold blue ice. The…clarity. I miss roaming free.”

“I know you do,” Shiori says. “I understand how much—”
 

There’s a clicking sound, then a whoosh of air, then one of the soldiers screams a war cry. I whirl to see him fire an anti-aircraft missile directly at the pole pyramid. The missile steaks across the clearing, leaving a white-orange trail behind.

Part of the wasp swarm detaches from the main host and flies at the streaking missile. The missile hits the black cloud and deflects high overhead, arcs harmlessly through the sky and explodes into the woods several miles away.

The soldier drops the rocket launcher and flees into the woods. A few seconds later there’s a horrible, pain-filled shriek, then silence.
 

The remaining three soldiers look at one another.
 

And that’s when I realize Mia has vanished.

“Destroy her, Anik. Your animal spirit stalks near. I scent him. Destroy the failed alpha!”
 

Anik’s body shudders. He lifts his head to the sky and moans. Digs his hands into the dirt, and when he lifts them they’ve widened into powerful, claw-tipped paws.
 

Tornarsuk the Three Eyed Bear. The Indestructible.

“Rise now,” the wasp swarm says. “Rise now and feed.”

The Stricken pack stand.
 

Turn to face me and Trish and the three Skin soldiers.
 

But it’s not them I’m worried about. It’s Anik. He’s rolling on the ground, his body shifting and swelling, the immense polar bear’s massive muscles bunching tight across Anik’s shoulders and chest, his face broadening, and then something swoops from the sky, a flash of brilliant white beneath the silver moon.

Pimniq.
 

The soldiers’ machine guns blaze.
 

The Stricken charge at us, a wall of bloodthirsty death.
 

Tornarsuk rears on his hind legs and roars so loud the ground shakes and trees topple and my breath flees my lungs. But he doesn’t move to defend us.

Shiori’s black cloud screams in triumph.
 

The Stricken plough into the remaining New World Order, rending them limb from limb.

The white raven arcs low.