An Hour of Need (16 page)

I
felt
like an animal being led to slaughter as I returned to The Woodlands with the Mortclaws. My new
family
. My gut clenched at the word. Sendira and Vertus calling themselves my mother and father made me feel almost nauseated.

We arrived in a mountainous region of The Woodlands that I had rarely frequented, and that I hadn’t even known was habitable. The pack led me through a hidden entrance behind a cluster of boulders—the entrance to an ancient tunnel. We entered and wound our way along it, moving deeper and deeper into the mountain. My mother claimed this was the mountain I had been born in. My old home.

On reaching the end of the tunnel, we arrived outside a rotting oaken door which led to a network of chambers and caves. We had no torches to cast light upon our path. We moved through the gloom by our night vision. My mother, grasping my hands, led me into a circular chamber that she explained was our old room. Coated with blankets of dust, it looked like it hadn’t been entered for many, many years. A large bed took up most of the space, and at the end of it was a wooden cot, whose blankets lay upturned.

My mother led me to it and clasped the edges of the cot, her chest heaving. She turned to me with glistening eyes. “Bastien,” she said in a soft voice, “here was the last time I saw you. Before you were taken from us… You were such a perfect, beautiful cub. Your clear eyes, shiny black fur… I still remember nursing you like it was yesterday.” Her voice choking up, she approached me and wrapped her arms around me, planting a kiss on my cheek.

I sensed her warmth and affection for me, and I wished that I could return it… but I felt cold inside. Empty. As much as I could not deny our innate connection, my soul was backing away.

How can I love someone who insists on holding me in chains? Who refuses to accept my love for someone other than the one she has ordained? Who refuses to open her mind to the possibility that my happiness is more important than her long-held traditions?

But I had gotten past trying to argue with her. I might as well argue with a rock.

When I didn’t respond to her embrace, she pulled away. Melancholy infused her expression. “We will find each other again, Bastien,” she said. “We will overcome the rift caused by all our years apart. You will understand me, your father and your family. And you will come to love Yuraya, deeply and truly. I promise.”

I felt sick.

“Would you like some time alone?” she wondered. “Some time in our old room?”

I nodded. The
only
thing I wanted right now was to be alone.

I was relieved when she backed away to the door. “Very well,” she said. “In the meantime, we’re going to go… out for a while.”

I couldn’t even bring myself to ask where as she exited, closing the door softly behind her. I gazed from the cradle to an old rocking chair in the opposite corner of the room. There were no windows in here through which I could gaze out at the sky to experience at least the illusion of being free. Just stifling darkness. I sank into the rocking chair, even as it creaked beneath my weight.

This room… This mountain… It was where I had started my life. Perhaps, if I had never been kidnapped, and never been taken away from the Mortclaw pack, I would be happy in this moment. I would be conditioned to their way of thinking. Perhaps, over the years, I would even have already fallen in love with Yuraya. But I could not rewrite history. I had grown up a Blackhall, and I had met Victoria. My past was a part of my being, and my mother expecting me to forget it and just start afresh… It was impossible.

I thought about my mother’s threat—that if I ever saw Victoria again, they would not relent until they had tracked and hunted her down. That I had to forget about her, cast her from my mind, if I wanted her to remain safe. If I wanted her to remain
alive
.

Even if I had the ability to fly away from The Woodlands and make it back to The Shade on my own, I loved Victoria too much to put her in that kind of danger. I could not etch a black mark on her for the rest of her life, leave her with fear in her heart every time she stepped out of her island’s proximity.

My mother had already scented Victoria, and even if we met for just a short while, she would detect Victoria’s scent on me. The Mortclaws’ senses were parallel to none.

I couldn’t bring such a risk to Victoria. Which meant that my last memory of her—her standing in my room at the top of Blackhall mountain, covered by Aisha’s protective halo—would be my last memory of her, ever.

I closed my eyes, recalling her terrified face, her cry as my mother had leapt toward me.

I wished that my last memory of her had been different than that. I wished that we had been alone. That my hands had been trailing through her hair, my lips claiming hers, before we whispered goodbyes.

But, again, I couldn’t rewrite history.

I had to be content with the days and nights I’d had the privilege of spending with that sweet human girl. I supposed it was more than I had ever hoped for, anyway. I’d never expected love or romance out of life. It had been Victoria who had given rise to the realization such things even existed… and now that she was gone, I supposed that it was only fitting that they should vanish too.

And they would vanish. Even if, as my mother so confidently claimed, Yuraya was a perfect match for me, I would rather spend the rest of my life alone, cast adrift in the ocean. I would rather become a wanderer. A nomad, living on the memories and dreams I’d collected during the brief period when I had been free and in love.

That ought to be enough for me. My body might still hunger for Victoria, but that ought to be enough to feed my mind. I could spend the rest of my life in a fantasy, living what could have been. Anything was better than the reality my mother had chalked out for me.

Opening my eyes, I rose abruptly to my feet. I balled my hands up into fists.

I have to get out of here. I have to run. Away. Far away.

Away from the watch of my family. Away from Yuraya’s waiting arms…

Because if Victoria can’t have me, nobody will. 

* * *

I
had
no idea where I would go. My mother’s sense for me was uncannily sharp. Maybe I would never fully escape her—maybe she would chase me to the ends of the world.

But that would not stop me from running.

I waited in the chamber until the sounds of werewolves retreating from the mountain faded. I could still detect a few wolves around, but… I couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t know how long the rest would be gone for, and for all I knew, this could be as alone as I was ever going to get.

So, easing the door slowly open, I slipped out, my eyes wide and alert as I scanned the hallway. I headed down the route toward the exit, passing rooms and tunnels quickly, not daring to glance through any of the doorways. I moved like a shadow, silently, swiftly, until I reached the main exit.

“Bastien?” A voice spoke before I could pass through the main door.

I froze, twisting slowly to find Yuraya standing behind me.
Speak of the devil
. Her sleek black hair was braided, her bright green eyes sharp.

“You’re still here,” I murmured, my throat dry.

“I… I hoped to catch you alone,” she replied.

Without warning, she strode forward. The next thing I knew, she was gripping my right hand. She raised it to her mouth and planted a moist kiss on the back of it.

Disgusted, I jerked my hand away and staggered back.

A smile curved her lips. “Don’t be shy, Bastien,” she said. “I won’t bite… Our bonding rituals will begin tomorrow, and we will be sharing a bed within a week… You might as well start getting used to me.”

Horror surging within me, I whirled around and raced away, even as she called, “Where are you going?” My pounding footsteps echoed off the walls as I sped toward the opening of the mountain.

I assumed my wolf form the moment I burst out into the open. Landing on all fours, I hurtled away from the mountain and into the nearest line of trees. I ran, gathering all the speed my limbs could muster, whizzing through the forest in a blur.

I tried to lose myself in my speed, as I had done the night the hunters had struck Rock Hall. The night I’d thought that Victoria had betrayed me.

I ran and ran, unsure of where I was going. I could only think that I needed to reach the shore. A boat. Or maybe just leap into the ocean again, despite its dangers. The water would mask my scent better.

I would never have stopped—not once—until I reached the coast, if the sound of howling had not pierced the night. Howls so anguished, I stalled. My ears perked up. It sounded like the howls were coming from the East. In a daze of confusion, I couldn’t help but be drawn toward the sound. I hadn’t heard such cries since the night the hunters invaded. My pulse raced, and a part of me feared that they might have even returned somehow to exact revenge.

I sped for miles, the howls growing louder and louder, and then I realized… I was racing toward the Northstones’ lair. I pushed myself faster still, until I burst forth from the trees into the glade outside the Northstones’ mountain home.

For a split second as I gazed upon the scene before me, I thought I was witnessing a battle. But I quickly realized that it was a massacre. A bloody massacre. The Mortclaws, in their giant black wolf forms, were dragging members of the Northstones from the entrance of their abode out onto the glade where they ripped them apart. I almost yelled as I realized not only were they murdering them—tearing through their necks with their teeth, and into their stomachs with their razor-sharp claws—they were
eating
them
.
Just as I had witnessed them do to Brucella,

They were killing the Northstones for food.

I had prayed with all that I had that the Mortclaws had eaten Brucella only because they had been desperate, because there had been nothing else edible on that ghastly island. But The Woodlands was a verdant land filled with food for wolves.

The Mortclaws were cannibals, through and through.

I choked as I caught sight of my father grabbing hold of Sergius, who was attempting—pathetically—to fight back. Sergius and I had never been very close. But I’d grown up calling him Uncle, and he was never abominable to me. If it weren’t for his wife, I was sure that we would have been closer.

My desire to remain hidden from the Mortclaws completely vanishing from my mind, I hurtled toward my father, my teeth bared. Although I wasn’t nearly as large as him, the force of my colliding into his side made him stagger, and as he realized it was me, he dropped Sergius. But, from the amount of blood that was gushing from Sergius’ neck, it was obvious that he was already as good as gone.

“What are you doing?” I roared, panic and desperation gripping me.

My father, apparently mad with hunger, averted his attention from me and scooped up Sergius again.

“No!” I bellowed.

“Bastien!” my mother called behind me.

I turned to see her mouth dripping with blood. Whose blood, exactly, I didn’t want to imagine.

“We must eat, child,” she scolded, as if I was the unreasonable one. “We have been starved for decades!”

“But there are plenty of—”

My voice trailed off as a female wolf cried, “Father! No!” Then came a stifled howl.

My eyes darting to the direction of the voice, I realized that it was Rona. She had come speeding from a hidden side of the mountain toward her father… only to be quickly caught by one of the younger males of the Mortclaw pack.

My mother had already lost interest in me by now—her attention span matched my father’s, it seemed, when it came to the warm flesh of their own kind. She darted toward a fallen corpse and continued eating, while I zoomed in on the male wolf dragging Rona toward an emptier area where I knew he was about to rip her open. I leapt forward. Reaching him, I managed to blindside him, causing him to stagger aside. Infuriated, he whirled on me… but on seeing who I was, he reined himself in. With a frustrated growl, he retreated.

Gripping the back of Rona’s neck between my teeth, I tugged on her, indicating that she follow me through the trees. The ground squelched with blood; the glade had become a red marshland. Droplets soiled my legs and underbelly as I raced away from the clearing and back into the forest with Rona. We kept running until the clearing was out of sight.

Then I paused as Rona fell behind, my limbs quivering from the shock and trauma of what I’d just witnessed.

Rona struggled to run any further as she broke down. “My father!” she rasped.

“If you want to stand a chance of living, you have to keep up with me,” I growled.

She forced herself onward, bounding alongside me with uneven footing. As we moved away from The Northstones’ lair, the howls grew less and less. Not from the distance we’d put between us and them—I imagined every one of them had been felled by now as the Mortclaws relished their midnight feast.

I’d never had a nightmare as abhorrent as this.

My life has become worse than a nightmare.