Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (23 page)

It had taken everything in Beck, Mark, and Craig to stop me from charging in and trying to kill them all to get to her.  There’d been seventeen cougars by the cages, watching my females being locked up. 
Seventeen.
  I hadn’t spotted Tommy, but I had to assume that they’d have others watching him.  There were thirty of us including Jade, Tommy, and me.  I didn’t know where Tommy was exactly and seven of my wolves were now in cages.  If I was playing the numbers game, which I definitely was not doing anymore, I’d have to say our packs were close in numbers now.  We’d killed another thirteen of them during their tree jumping stunt, but there were still at least those seventeen left.

And then I saw Dominic lying on the forest floor, not moving, and I remembered thinking he was dead, and I felt as if I were going to throw-up.

“Yeah, Dom,” I said, swallowing hard.  “They’re in cages, and that means that the cougars want to keep them alive.  They’re probably safer there right now than they would be with us.”  I scrubbed at my face, and when I looked back at him, Dominic started to speak, but I held up my hand to stop him.  “I already thought I’d lost you once today.  Couldn’t go through that again, man.  I just couldn’t.  They would have killed you if I’d let you go in after her.  But they won’t kill her.  They need her to command our pack.”

That threw him off for a second.  His eyes went vague and unfocused.  His hands started to uncurl, and his lips parted.  “Is that …”

“Dominic,” I said, my voice deadly soft.  “What I need right now is you backing me, not fighting me.  That girl trapped in that damn cage means everything to me.”  I swallowed and I pushed off the wall, turning away from him, mainly because my eyes had started to burn and I seriously didn’t want him to see it.  “She’s my home.  I’m going to get her out of there.”

There was silence for a long second before Dominic cleared his throat.  “Um, is it safe to speak yet, or are you going to bite my head off?”

“What?” I asked, and all the breath left me in an audible huff with the word.

“Is that what you thought?” he asked, hesitantly.  “That I was dead?”

“Yeah,” I said, and damn, I had to squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.  I was fighting with all kinds of emotions — anger at Jade’s dad, frustration with the entire situation, fury that my dad had pulled Chris home before I was ready, outright fear that I was going to lose someone close to me.  So far not one of my pack members had died today, and it scared the hell out of me that that could still happen.

“Shit, that must have sucked,” he said, and laughed a little, but there was no humor in the sound.

“Yep.”  I turned to him and somehow I managed a small smile.  “It did.”

His blue eyes searched mine and I knew he could see the emotion, but he didn’t call me on it.  “So,” he said.  “I’m going to go shift a few times, see if I can fix the gaping hole in my back.  Five minutes and we should be good to go.”

He started for the door, then stopped, and grabbed me in a hug.  I rocked back a little from the impact, but I hung on for a few beats, and with a couple of back slaps we stepped apart.

“I thought you were dead,” I said, and damn, my voice was all choked, but I found myself saying it again.  “I thought you were dead.”

“Yeah, we established that.”  Dominic gave me a half smile that looked kind of grim.  “Come on,” he said.  “Let’s go see if they’re ready.”

****

I wasn’t sure if the pack that stood before me was ready exactly, but they were determined, and I figured that had to count for something.

The sun was starting to fall on the horizon, and with only
a couple hours of daylight left, we really needed to move.  There was no way that I’d leave the girls there over night, and by the looks set on my werewolves’ faces, they weren’t about to do that either.

There were twenty-two of us, all semi-dressed in a mix of camouflage and worn denim, that we’d found in the cabin.  The air was cool with a breeze, and the forest around us was silent and still.

I thought I should say something epic and probably something motivating, but as I stared at them watching me, waiting, the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “I love her.”

As it turned out, the pack thought those words were in fact, epic.  Cheers rose in the air, clapping and shouting, followed.  I heard rumbles about alpha pairs and love and true partnership, and something about a new dawn for our pack.  And for a brief moment, I was stunned silent.

“I can’t promise you that we’ll all walk away from this,” I said, shouting over the cheers.  I waited for a second for them to tamper down and continued.  “And if you want to walk away, I won’t blame you.  You’ve all fought hard, and I’m grateful.  But I can’t ... I won’t leave without our females and those kids.  I won’t go home without my mate.”  I paused for a moment and scanned the crowd and then asked, “Are you with me?”

“Hell yeah,” Beck shouted.  “Wouldn’t miss a good fight for anything.”

But the rest of the pack was quiet, thoughtful.  I was starting to get a little nervous that they were going to give up and go home, and then, Phil walked up to me, and I had to admit that my nervousness tripled.  He wasn’t all for Jade being alpha, and he’d made that pretty clear in front of everyone when she’d walked into the headquarters with me after she’d moved out of her dad’s house.

He stood in front of me for a moment, his eyes giving nothing away, and then he smiled.  It wasn’t really a happy smile, but it was
an easy one.  He extended his hand, and I took it in a shake. “I’m with you, kid, till the end.”

More cheers, louder this time, and I smiled, a real, full smile.  They were with me, even after all the bullshit Jade and I had made them suffer through, they were with me.

~ JADE ~

The blankets were old and fraying, and they were really easy to tear.

The edges of the cages were wired together with more of the same sharp barbs that lined the walls.  They weren’t huge, at least not for three or four people, but they weren’t small, either.  The cage doors were chained closed with heavy locks securing them.  Breaking those locks was a no go.  I’d tried.  We’d all tried.  We’d also tried to bend the barbed wire walls, pulling and tugging, but we couldn’t break it.  The damn thing just bent, and with the way the wire crisscrossed in small squares, even with bending the wire, we couldn’t get an opening big enough to squeeze more than an arm through.

So now
we were tearing up the blankets, wrapping our hands, and slowly untwisting the barbs that held the cages together along the edges.  It was tedious and painful and frustrating as all hell, and I really didn’t think a human would have the strength in their fingers to do it, but we did.  And it was working.  So far we’d managed to loosen the top four inches on each cage door.

Erika hissed and jerked her hand back.  “They couldn’t have left us thicker blankets,” she muttered under her breath, glaring at the corner of our cage and sucking on a finger.  She huffed loudly.  “We’re never getting out of here.”  She sounded like she was fighting hard to sound normal, but she missed her mark.  I could hear the panic building in her voice.  I could
smell it, too.  And that bittersweet scent was choking me.

“Yes, we will,” I said.  I didn’t sound normal, either.  I sounded angry and hurt and betrayed.  I swallowed hard and attempted to ignore the sting that Aidan’s leaving me here caused.  He had his reasons.  I knew that.  If he thought he’d be able to get in and get us out safely he would have.  And I had no doubt he’d come back.  He wouldn’t just leave us here.  But it still stung.

Keep it together!  Be strong for them.
  I swallowed down the pain and whispered fiercely, “I’m going to get you all out of this.”  And I would, definitely, hopefully.

Erika shook her head.  “Jade …”

“I want cookies,” Laura blurted suddenly, and made a loud, frustrated sound from the back of her throat.  “You’d think they’d at least give us comfort food after locking us up in these stupid cages.”

I heard the shuffling footsteps coming from behind me and alarm shot through me.  I scrambled, just like the others were, to pull my blanket up around me and hide the torn strips under it.  Laura had
taken up the job as our lookout and since she loved to bake, she’d chosen c
ookies
as the code for
someone was coming
, claiming that she’d be able to ramble on about them easily if anyone came by.  She hadn’t been lying.  So far she’d given out five recipes, talked about oven temperatures for baking them, and she’d even listed off her favorites and why.

“Really, Laura,” Kristen said and rolled her
eyes.  “Cookies again?  Can’t you find something else to go on about?”

Laura laughed as the man stalked by us
, but it was a little strained.  She shrugged.  “What can I say?  I love cookies.”

He didn’t come close to the cages.  None of them had yet.  Not since Jason had been here.  This one looked a bit older than Jason, but of similar build and height.  He didn’t smile.  He didn’t frown.  His expression was as flat as his muted brown eyes.  Those eyes, though, stayed fixed on the girls right up until he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

At least they were leaving us alone.
  It was the best we could hope for, really, but it was also the one thing that knotted me up the most.

Because if they were leaving us alone, it meant that they were busy doing something else — like hunting my mate.

Once he’d turned the corner, Erika reached out for me, clutching onto me as if she thought that if she let go, she’d fall.  Her head bent, and she rested it on my shoulder.  She was shivering, and the shudders went right through me.

For a second I was shocked, because well, it was Erika, and we weren’t really on hugging terms, but the shock faded.  I pulled her closer and held on just as tight.  “It’s going to be okay,” I said.  “I’m going to get you guys home.”

She leaned back and looked at me.  Her eyes were rimmed red, and she looked hollow and exhausted.  “Jade, I-I’m so sorry.”

I blinked in surprised.  “You?  Sorry?”  I studied her for a second.  “Sweetie, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“Yes I do,” she said.  “I’m sorry for ignoring your calls and for messing around with Aidan and for being a crappy beta.”  She wiggled away from me and grabbed the edge of a blanket, tearing off another strip.  “I shouldn’t have let him in that day.  I should have answered the phone.  I shouldn’t have told you I was studying.  I was just …”

“Erika, stop,” I said, taking her trembling hand and squeezing it.  “Just stop.  It’s over.  We’re good, okay?  None of that matters anymore.”  I meant it and by the look she gave me, I knew she was aware that I was serious.  Whatever happened before was over, done, buried.  The whole thing seemed kind of ridiculous now, given our situation.

I squeezed her hand one more time, and then I snagged up one of the strips of fabric and quickly wrapped up my fingers, before shifting back over to the corner I’d been working on, and starting in on the next barb.

She was silent for a moment, and then almost awkwardly, she said, “When Aidan showed up at my door he looked so wrecked, and you … you were being so stupid.  God, Jade, you walked away from him.  He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.  We all saw it.  The way you looked at him like he was
it
for you, and he saw you, too.  It was like no one else existed for him except you, and you just walked away.  I was so mad at you for that.  I would have killed to have what you two have.”  She laughed then, a strangled kind of laugh.  “Turns out I did, I just didn’t realize it until it was too late.”

I looked at Erika, really looked at her, and I saw something.  It was something in her teary eyes that made me feel a little helpless.  And guilty.  Crazy guilty.  The truth was that I kind of hated me, too, for walking away.  If I had have stuck it out, forgiven Aidan sooner and worked with him to stop my dad, instead of unknowingly helping Jared inflict his revenge, we probably would
n’t have been stuck in a cage.

I didn’t even know what to say.

But I did know who she was referring to.  Craig.  I knew she was really hung up on him, and I thought the other women knew that, too.  They were all looking at her with that
you poor thing
look, and all I wanted to do was fix it for her.  It was ... weird, and really unexpected, but she was mine.  My female, my wolf, part of my pack, and it tore me up seeing her so ... sad.

“It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?” I said.  “Loving someone that much.”  I shook my head.  “I wasted so much time with Jared, you know?  Time that I could have had with Aidan.  At first I told myself it was because I wanted to stop my dad and Jared was the way to do that, but really it was because I was scared.  Terrified, actually.  Aidan lied to me, manipulated me into fighting for him, for the pack, and for you guys.”  I laughed once.  “Turns out it was probably the best thing he’d ever done.”

“Yeah,” she breathed.  “It’s freakin’ terrifying.”

I looked back at the corner and started twisting the wire again.  “If you want my advice, don’t stop fighting, Erika.  Never stop fighting.  Life is too short not to spend it with the person who makes you whole.”