Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (25 page)

When my human body solidified, I got up to my feet and rolled my shoulders.  I let out a slow breath, surveying the group.  There were only nine of them, plus Jeff, by the cages, but I figured the others would come running the moment we attacked.  Actually, I was counting on it.

Dominic growled and made a chomping sound with his teeth.  He was looking up at me, and gave me a lopsided dog smile.  He was ready to go.  I just smiled back, although it probably looked a little feral.  “Find the kids,” I said.  “Keep them away from the cages.”  And then keeping my human form, I strode forward.

The werecougars seemed confused.  Maybe they thought I was crazy, walking out into their midst; I wasn’t sure. 
But then they looked past me and alarm replaced the confusion.  One of them made a startled sound, and they started to move, drawing back and flinching as my pack followed me, moving in from every direction.  We moved in calmly.  None of my wolves threatened.  No one attacked.  They were just there, a quiet, deadly presence at my back.

“You won’t be keeping them, Jeff,” I said with a lazy smirk, stopping a few feet from his back.  “Step away from them before something ... unfortunate happens.”

He didn’t seem to care one way or another that I was standing there, which was odd, I thought, and definitely stupid.  He barely even looked at me, keeping most of his focus on Jade.

But Jade was looking at me.  Her eyes raked down my body and a flush shaded her cheeks.  “Hey, baby,” she said, and laughed a little.  She sounded pretty close to insane, breakable, and stressed
. Really, really stressed.  She gave me a look that was half warm and half cold and crossed her arms, ignoring her father completely.  “Took you long enough.”

I grinned and shook my head.  “Sorry, sweetheart.  Won’t happen again.”

“You’re darn right it won’t.”  Her nose scrunched up, and she waved a hand widely around her.  “Can you believe these guys actually think keeping me in a cage will convince me to force our wolves to join them?”  She huffed.  “And guess what else?  Our females are supposed to be their reward for hunting you guys down.  Dad here even said you were here and he was going to let me see you if I let his beasts have our girls.”

I chuckled.  “Is that so?” 
She was good at this
, I thought.  Good at acting, as if everything was normal and that she had the situation under control, when really, she was coming close to full-out panic.  I could smell it.  I could hear it in her laugh and see it in her eyes.

“Yep,” she said
, and grinned.  “But you don’t look like you’ve been hunted down and caught, so I’m thinking he’s full of crap.”

A couple of my wolves pressed in closer to the cage beside Jade’s, forcing the werecougars back with a few low growls, and as they moved further away from the cage, the females sprang free and quickly melted in with the rest of the pack.

“Sweetheart,” I said gently.  “You can go on and shift now.  I’ve got this.”

“Aidan,” Jeff said, and finally leaned fully out of the cage and looked at me.  He sounded annoyed as if the last threads of his patience were thin and about to snap.  “Don’t encourage her.  She’s not leaving this camp.  None of you are.”

“Step away from my mate, Jeff,” I said, and took another step toward him.  I gave him a second, only a second, to obey, and then I lunged forward, grabbed his ankles, and yanked him away from Jade.

He shouted, just a small, quick burst of sound.  He kicked out at me, but it was too late.  I already had him flipped onto his back, and pinned to the ground.

Realization that I wasn’t just here for my females must have dawned on him as my bones began to break and change.  He looked up at me wide-eyed and pretty obviously scared.  His fear smelled bittersweet.  He tried to slide out from underneath me, but his panic made him slow, sloppy, and completely uncoordinated.

“What are you idiots waiting for?” he shouted.  “Get this beast off me!”

~ JADE ~

I couldn’t shift.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, because I did.  I really did.  And my inner-wolf, well, she wanted out and she wasn’t being quiet about it either.  My skin was crawling and raw adrenaline was pumping through my body, but I just couldn’t do it.

There was chaos all around me.  Wolves and cougars.  Snarling and hissing.  My pack was taking them down faster than my brain could process.  None of the cougars were running to help my dad.  Okay, that wasn’t entirely true.  They were trying to get to him, but my wolves were taking them down before they reached their target.

Beck, a large dusty-gray wolf, stood at the cage door.  He was whimpering, and nudging at the bottom side of my foot, urging me to come out.

But I couldn’t make
myself move.

Those monsters were going to take my girls and I hadn’t been able to do anything to stop them.

Suddenly Aidan let out a war cry and threw a hard elbow right into my dad’s jaw, and then he shifted.  It all happened so quickly, I almost missed the change.  His body hazed, bones broke, bent, changed, midnight black fur replaced tanned skin.  He was snarling, growling, and pinning my dad down.

I watched it all and I felt nothing.

This was it.  My mate was going to kill my father and I felt nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

I expected to feel something.  Sadness or relief or anger.  Something.  Anything.  But all I felt was numb.

Was it wrong that most of me wanted him to die?  He was a monster.  He’d kidnapped, raped, and killed, or he at least organized those horrible things, and his victims were innocent people
— humans, that had no chance of defending themselves against his pack.  He deserved death.  They all did.

Erika and Laura were nudging at me, trying to push me out of their way without hurting me.  They wanted out.  They wanted to help our pack, but I was frozen, caught up within my numbness, and blocking their exit.

Aidan’s jaw was opened wide, and he was lowering, ready to rip-out my dad’s throat, but suddenly he made a painful sound, somewhere in the middle of a snarl and a whimper, and stumbled backward, rolling off my father.

Dad scrambled to his feet.  He was holding a sharp looking pocketknife in his hand that was stained and dripping scarlet liquid from its blade.  He was bloody, too, and he looked weakened, but he was moving and the sight sent my inner-wolf into a rage-endured frenzy within my chest. 
That man — my father — had been about to offer my wolves to his pack of beasts as a reward.  He didn’t deserve to be moving.

And that’s when I felt something.  Something dark and a little crazed and it compounded into something that was totally insane.

I scrambled from the cage, the barbs tearing at my knees and catching at the blanket that was tucked snuggly around me, almost ripping from my body.

My eyes were locked on the knife clasped in my dad’s hand.  “Who the hell brings a knife to a shifter fight?”

Dad didn’t answer, but then I guess I didn’t expect him to.  He wasn’t paying any attention to me, and he didn’t seem to notice Erika and Laura, either.  The girls were pressed to my side, snarling at him, as I advanced.

“Stand up to them!” he cried.  He looked around, frantically waving the knife.  “Make them submit.”

The cougars were shifting, and more were coming.  Running across the small yard, tearing off their clothes.  The sound of bones snapping, so many at once, was a sickening sound, echoing back from the cabin and the forest walls.

“You’re destroying everything, Aidan,” Dad shouted, turning as Aidan got back to his feet and stalked toward him.  He held his hands out, still clasping the small knife in one, as though his hands could stop my mate from coming closer.  “Your emotions are clouding your judgment and stopping you from doing your job.  You’re supposed to be leading them, not fighting for a girl.  Alpha pairs aren’t about love.  Strength and dominance is all that matters.”  His voice was rising, tinted with fear.  “You said that yourself not so long ago in my living room.  Be the dominant male you’re meant to be and control your mate!  Stop fighting me for a girl!”

Aidan’s lips curled and he let out a vicious snarl.  I couldn’t see his wound through his thick black fur, but I knew it was there.  I could smell it, his pain and his blood, but he didn’t let it show.  He stalked toward my dad and that was when my dad stumbled back, crashing into the cage that had held me captive.  He dropped his knife, and it clattered through the wire, just as the cage bent, and then collapsed under his weight.  He let out an agonized cry as the barbed wire tore through his clothing and ripped into his skin.

“No, Dad,” I said.  “You’re wrong.”  I quickly rushed to Aidan’s side, pressing my leg against his fur.  He glanced at me, just a quick look, before letting out another growl at my father.  “His emotions aren’t clouding his judgment.  They’re making him see what’s important.  Leading a pack isn’t all about power and control.”

Dad tried to stand up, but he couldn’t.  Each time he moved, Erika and Laura snarled and snapped, pushing him back down.  Dots of blood began to well up from where the barbs had dug into his skin.  The more he struggled, the worse it got.

“You asked me about the women,” he said.  “This is why they aren’t changed.  This is why they don’t live with us.  He’s going to lose everything because of you.  Because he thinks he loves you.”

I almost corrected him.  Almost.  But I didn’t.  It wasn’t worth the breath to tell him that Aidan didn’t
think
he loved me, he knew he did, just like I knew with him.  I almost asked him about Mom, too, but again, I thought I probably didn’t want to know.  I didn’t want to know if he actually cared about her or why he’d married her.  I was sure the answer would only make me sick.

Instead, I looked over my shoulder and said softly, “Look around, Dad.  We aren’t exactly losing anything.”

And we weren’t.  In minutes, my pack had taken down over half of Dad’s forces and they were still attacking with vehemence fervor.

That was when a cougar broke through my wolves and charged at us.  He hit Laura first with a hard knock into her side that threw her to the ground.  Erika spun away from my dad, baring her teeth, but she hesitated.

We all hesitated.

Because it wasn’t a werecougar.  It was a shifter.  It was Jason.  In mid-leap
, he shifted into a bird, a big ugly looking bird.  He flew upward and disappeared into the forest.

His little stunt gave Dad an opening.  Dad launched from the cage and rushed at Aidan.  He started to shift, and it cost him his life.  Aidan might think twice about killing someone in human form, all of us would, but once the shift started, it was over.

I thought Dad knew that, too.  He glanced at me, just a quick look that was cold and emotionless, and it told me he didn’t regret anything he’d done, and then he was taken down.

Beck and Erika, who’d been circling around us, lunged forward to attack, and they latched onto his calves, causing him to fall.  And then more wolves descended, biting into him and tearing at his flesh.

He started to scream, but it sounded all wrong.  His voice wasn’t human.  It was rough and pitched and screechy.  His face wasn’t his anymore; it was something else, something not quite human and not fully animal, as though it had frozen in mid-shift, and I wasn’t entirely sure what he’d intended to turn into.

I clamped my hand to my mouth, holding in my own scream.  I wanted to look away but I couldn’t.  It was as if I needed to see this, even if I didn’t want to.  I needed to know the terror he’d caused was over.  I heard his last breath, and I saw his struggle stop.  It was fast, and it was deadly, and it was a horrible way to die, being torn apart.

~ AIDAN ~

It would have been better if Jade hadn’t watched.

Jade wouldn’t look away, even after her father took his last breath.  Her eyes were wide and filled with horror.  It was as if she were frozen, not wanting to watch and not able to move.  I could hear her heart pounding within her chest, and her scent was thick and bitter.

A sickening crack filled the air, and she flinched, but still, she didn’t look away.

I trotted over to her side and rubbed up against her leg, nudging her and nipping at the torn wool blanket that was wrapped snuggly under her arms.

Her hand fell to my head, and that’s when she finally tor
e her eyes away from her dad.  They hit mine, and the horror faded into something that looked like worry.  But she smiled a little.  “I’m fine, Aidan,” she said, and her body trembled through a shudder.  She gave my head an absent little pat.  “Go help the others.”  And then she turned and started to walk away.

I opened my mouth and let out a loud growl, protesting.  She didn’t look fine.  She looked lost and kind of defeated, and if she looked around, she’d see that the pack didn’t really need my help.  The cougars were falling quickly, and the last few that were still fighting were battling against the team.  Some of our pack had even started shifting back to human.  The fight was pretty much over.

She stopped short at the sound of my growl, and spun back to face me.  “Don’t growl at me,” she said, placing a hand on her hip.  She smiled tightly, the strain showing clearly in her features.  “Go on.  Find Tommy.  I need to go and meet the kids.”