Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) (6 page)

I bit him below his shoulder. Still,
he fought against me. I clamped harder and my teeth broke flesh.
The bitter taste of blood coated my mouth but all it did was enrage
him further. He managed to get his rear paws underneath me and
kicked me. My teeth ripped free, pulling fur and flesh with it and
leaving a gaping hole where I’d bitten. I yelped and rolled to my
feet. His agony echoed through my mind, stunning me.

It was such a warring emotion. I was
connected to him, to all of them, and the alpha in me wanted only
to protect. Their pain was my pain. Yet here I was being the one to
cause it.

I howled. Dammit, it hurt.

George’s wave of concern
increased. I tried sending him the message,
I got this.

Nick scrambled to his feet and came at
me again. But he was even slower than before and the pain
distracted him. My teeth caught him around the throat. I applied
pressure and then stopped when his vein pulsed against my teeth. If
I bit now…

Nick growled. It reverberated in my
open mouth. The bond flared with decision as he gave in to the
darkness. There was no more Nick. Only thirst.

“
You taste my blood or
I’ll taste yours,” he said. The words were a growled whisper. A
promise. If not now, then later.

I bit down.

In seconds, it was over. Nick’s heart
tripped over a beat and then stopped.

Blood was everywhere. It ran in rivers
down the sides of my jaw and dripped onto the ground. It coated my
tongue. It matted Nick’s fur. Even after I spit and chewed grass, I
tasted the bitter tang left behind.

At George’s instruction, Nick was
removed from camp and some of the pack left to prepare a burial
plot. I didn’t argue or add any instruction and no one approached
me.

After the crowd dispersed, I slipped
into the trees, grateful to be alone. I found clothes stashed
behind a tree and sat, too numb to care about shifting back. Things
like this—raw emotion—were always easier as a wolf.

The weight of the loss, of my part in
it, pressed against the space between my ribs. My pack. He was my
pack and I’d lost him. It needed to be done, but that didn’t take
away from the loss. Forty-five.

Now there were forty-five.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat that way,
but when George found me, I was still sitting in the same spot. At
some point, I’d shifted back to two legs. I couldn’t even remember
when I’d done it. His presence triggered me to look down. At least
I had clothes on.

“
What happened back
there?” he asked, sitting next to me, cross-legged.

“
Nick …” I wasn’t sure how
to finish. “He just—he gave into it.” My voice broke. I stared into
the trees in the direction they’d taken Nick.

“
He didn’t shift back, did
he?” I asked.

“
No.”

“
Alex told me once you
only shift back if you have your humanity left.” I sniffled. The
first tear fell.

George was quiet for a few moments,
probably giving me time to collect myself. There weren’t enough
hours left today for that to happen but I didn’t say that. A pair
of wolves, Emma and Janie, approached. I could hear them through
the bond, their concern and uncertainty at coming too close, but
they wanted to help.

George turned to them. “Is Chris back
yet?”

“
No,” Emma
said.

“
Find him,” George told
her. “And get Wes.”

The girls said they would and bounded
off, relieved at having something useful to do. They were of the
more humane variety of rescued hybrids. I didn’t mind their voices
in my head, although their teenaged hormones sometimes got on my
nerves. Janie didn’t like that her manicures were always ruined by
shifting. Both of them stared at George a lot.

I continued to sit.

After a while, the sun dipped behind
the trees, throwing shadows over everything. Through the bond,
George searched my feelings, testing my mood. At first, I was too
numb to give him much. When that gave way, I worried more than
anything. Worry that it would happen again. That darkness would
surface in someone else and I’d be forced to put them down. Or
worse, that they’d hurt someone else—a human—before I could stop
them.

Despite our remote location, it wasn’t
more than a short run to the edges of town. And there were too many
of them to keep tabs on all day, every day. Even with the bond, one
could slip through my awareness so easily.

“
They’re like a ticking
bomb, George,” I said quietly. My voice sounded rough and scratchy
after sitting so long in silence.

“
I know. But they have us.
You and me and Chris.”

Right now, that didn’t seem like
enough. I nodded anyway.

“
They still have their
humanity,” he said, following my thoughts.

“
As much as can be
expected.”

“
They’re going to be
fine.”

I couldn’t help but be skeptical. Nick
had hung on to his for a while too. Until he couldn’t
anymore.

“
You’re doing the best you
can,” George said. “You’re doing more than CHAS would.”

That knowledge darkened my mood. CHAS.
Steppe. If he knew how tenuous the hybrids’ hold on themselves was,
he’d eradicate every one of them. He already wanted to. He just
needed opportunity. I was determined not to give him
one.

“
Screw Steppe,” I
muttered.

“
Damn right,” said someone
behind me.

“
Chris,” I said, relieved
to see him in a way that surprised me.

I’d come to rely on him these past few
weeks. Our attachment at first had been largely due to the bond and
then him protecting me against Kane’s strike team in the woods that
day. Still, I would’ve expected more animosity on my part
considering he’d tried to kill me before all that. But now, there
was a solid friendship between us, and more than that. There was
trust.

“
How are you?” He sat in
front of me and looked into my eyes, searching for whatever answer
I might not give aloud.

“
I’m … I’ll be okay,” I
said finally, knowing it would be no use to lie. I swallowed.
“There was a lot of blood.”

His eyes were full of understanding.
“You did what you had to do,” he said.

A branch crunched nearby. All three of
us jerked toward the sound, ready to leap up.

“
Calm down. It’s me,” Wes
said.

We all relaxed.

I’d been so involved in using the bond
to communicate with George and Chris, I’d almost missed Wes. He was
in human form, his auburn hair and browned skin blending with the
trees so perfectly it was easy to overlook him in the gathering
dusk. He watched me with tenderness and concern and even without a
bond, I knew he sensed my distress.

He sat down on my other side, cupping
my cheek with his hand and turning my face toward his. “You okay?”
he asked.

“
Define the
word.”

He nodded, his expression hard where
his eyes were soft. “Emma told me what happened. Are you
hurt?”

“
No, I’m fine.”

His eyes caught on my wrist. “You’re
bleeding.”

I held it up, inspecting the place
where Nick had bit me. It wasn’t deep, but it was healing slower
since I’d shifted back. A thin line of dried blood coated the
wound. “It looks worse than it is. It’s just a scratch,” I
said.

He looked at Chris. “Is she in
pain?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m right here,” I
said.

They both ignored me. Chris shared a
look with George. They probed my mind, like little fingers
massaging the answers out. Eventually, they turned back to Wes.
“No,” Chris said. “She’s fine.”

Wes nodded. “Good. In that case, I’m
going to make out with my girlfriend until she’s better. You guys
staying or …?” He lifted a brow.

I couldn’t help but smile at the
expression Chris wore, like he couldn’t figure out if Wes was
serious.

“
C’mon, dude,” George
said. “Walk with me.” He rose and pulled Chris up with
him.

“
Nick—” I
began.

“
Is handled,” George said.
“I’ll fill him in.”

“
Much better,” Wes said
when we were alone. He leaned in and kissed my temple.

I scooted closer as he brought one
hand up to rest on my cheek. I found the other with my own and
curled my fingers around his.

I didn’t feel much like making out,
but Wes didn’t even try. Instead, he pressed light kisses to my
forehead, cheek, neck … everywhere but my mouth. In between, he
stroked my hair. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he
whispered.

I leaned in, soaking up the
comfort.

“
Wes …” I wanted to thank
him for being here, for always knowing the right thing to say, but
my voice wouldn’t work without the accompaniment of
tears.

“
Let’s give it a minute,”
he said. “Take a breath.”

I nodded against his shirt.

After several deep breaths, he
smoothed my hair, pulled me into his lap, and planted a kiss on the
edge of my nose. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

I gave him the full replay in broken
sentences and stumbled-over words. But I managed to remain tear
free. “If I hadn’t put him down, he would’ve come after me and he
wouldn’t have stopped,” I finished.

“
You did the right thing.
You had to protect yourself. And the others. He could’ve hurt one
of them too.”

“
I know. But it’s still
hard. I experience everything they do. Hunger, pain, all of
it.”

“
It would hurt more if
you’d let it go and he’d done his damage elsewhere.”

He was right. That didn’t make the
loss any easier. “I’m worried about the rest of them. If it
happened once, it can happen again.”

Wes didn’t argue. I suspected he was
thinking the same thing but didn’t want to voice it. “You did the
right thing,” he assured me.

I leaned against him. I didn’t want to
talk about it anymore. “Have you heard from Derek or Cord? How’s
their trip going?”

Underneath me, his chest rose and fell
with a heavy exhale. “The trip was a bust. The pack leader wouldn’t
even see them.”

“
Why not? I thought he was
expecting them.”

“
Changed his mind. I think
he must’ve heard from someone we’d already been to see. Gotten a
head’s up.”

“
Head’s up? Why does it
matter? He’s an ally, right?”

“
They’re all distancing
themselves from us. No one wants to be associated with this
thing.”

Something about his tone made me
pause. “What do you mean?”

“
Fee said she talked to
Edie during a break in today’s meeting. They’re calling for a
summit. A vote. They want to dissolve the treaty.”

“
We’ve known that was
Steppe’s intention for a while,” I said. I frowned, realizing Wes
spoke of it in present tense and not some far off possibility like
I’d been treating it. “Does he actually have enough support to make
it happen?”

“
Maybe.”

I shivered involuntarily at the
thought. Not for me or even the hybrids. But for people like Jack
and Fee. Derek. Wes. Their entire life’s purpose was The Cause.
Peace between the two races. Or at least, no more bloodshed between
them. Steppe would erase all of that with a single vote, and just
like that, they’d be fugitives. Hunted. The idea of Fee having to
run for her life made me tremor with rage. I would do anything for
her. For all of them.

It was a darker conversation than I
wanted to have right now.

“
How’s Vera?” I asked
instead. Not much lighter of a topic.

“
Unconscious, but stable.
For now.”

The mental picture of her sleeping
face, unwakeable, made me think of Alex. So much darkness. So much
bad. It seemed there wasn’t a subject left for
distractions.

“
I want to go see
her.”

“
We’ll go tomorrow, first
thing.”

I didn’t have it in me to argue for
sooner. “First thing,” I repeated.

“
Where do you want to
sleep tonight?”

I thought of the tent in the center of
camp. I’d slept there a few times to be closer to the pack but it
wasn’t very comfortable even with the foam padding. Besides that,
my mom always freaked out when she knew I stayed here. “You don’t
know what sort of things are out there in the woods at night,”
she’d say.

To which, I’d laugh and tell her I
most certainly did know. I was one of them.

But if I could avoid making her stress
and worry, even a little …

“
Can you take me home?” I
asked.

He kissed the side of my head. “Of
course. Should we take the car or run?”

“
The car. I’ve had enough
of being a wolf for one day.”