The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (49 page)

The bear plants a giant paw on Sedna’s chest and glares down at her.
 

Sedna smiles at him. Blows him a kiss. Her wounds are healing. The flesh returning to her face even as the bear glares down in triumph. The biting flies swarm above them both, a hovering cloud of death awaiting my command.
 

“I know you love me,” Sedna whispers. “That’s all I need.”

The bear leans his massive bulk onto Sedna’s chest.

She’s right. He does love her. In spite of everything. In spite of seeing her true spirit. He loves her. The fool.
 

The bear nods, nuzzles Sedna’s neck, drags his teeth across her black flesh. He could take her head off with a single bite.
 

But he doesn’t.
 

“She’s calling us, Anik,” I scream. “Please! The All Encompassing needs us, Anik. Can’t you hear her? We belong with her. Roaming free. This does not end here.”

Sedna reaches up and strokes the bear’s ears. “I think it does,” she says softly. “I think it ends for you and your nasty swarm right now.” She’s looking Anik straight in the eye. “All you need do is prove your love, Anik. I forgive this travesty. I promise. Nothing will stand in the way of our love. No power. No pack…”

My biting flies fall to the ground, dead.
 

“She’s returning!” I yell, running at the great bear, hoping to make him see the truth. “Siphoning your strength, Anik. Feeding from you. You must murder her—”

The bear lifts his great head. His third eye sparkles and begins to glow a deep-black blue, like a sapphire in moonlight.
 

“No,” I say. “It can’t be. This isn’t the way…this isn’t what I’ve witnessed—”

“What you’ve witnessed is the dream of extinction,” Sedna spits. “This is the
beginning
of our story. The First Fallen is Becoming. The One Without Value! We’ve waited so long. And now he draws near. Without Anik your pack will turn on itself. Risen against Risen.” Sedna peers into the bear’s eyes, then whispers, “Anik is mine. He is to
remain
mine.”
 

The bear’s eye glows bright blue-black, an odd light that seems both part of the darkness and wholly different from it.

“Join me, brother,” I say, my voice a buzzing sound in my ears. “Remember the hunt. The kill. The gift your prey grants you.”
 

The bear looks away.
 

“Yes,” Sedna whispers. “Return to me, my love. Do not forsake the forsaken.”

The light emanating from Anik’s eye falls upon Sedna’s naked body, lands on the necklaces and ornaments hanging heavy around her neck. The fingers on the necklaces begin to move.

Sedna’s eyes widen. “No,” she says. “Stay with your love. Remember what I gave you. What no one else can.”

The bear snarls and spits. Bathed in the blue light emanating from the bear’s third eye, the fingers on Sedna’s neck crawl up her chest, toward her throat. She tries to squirm away, smacks her hooked wings into the bear’s back, cutting him, but the bear holds firm. The fingers inch over Sedna’s skinless chin, pry open her mouth, worm into her throat.
 

“No,” she says. “He promised me. He promised me—”
 

But her words are silenced. The crawling fingers split her jaw open and pour into her, stuffing her mouth full.
 

The walls of the cavern begin shaking again.

Sedna’s head thrashes madly from side to side as the fingers choke her.
 

Anik lifts a paw and brings it down, cleaving Sedna’s head from her neck, then tears open her chest to reveal a beating black heart. The sight of the black heart makes my stomach churn with hunger. I rush to him, wait while he eats his fill, then scoop what he leaves for me in my hands and feed.
 

The taste of Sedna’s beating black heart reminds me what it means to hunt.

***

 
The bear steps away and when I finish feeding and turn I see Anik, my packmate, bloody and broken, staring at Sedna’s mutilated corpse.
 

“She suffered more than one spirit should ever have to,” Anik says. “She didn’t deserve this. Didn’t begin life this way. She began a lonely princess staring across the sea, wondering over her future. Like all of us.”

“Bitterness and anger turned her,” I say, staggering toward the door as stones shower around me. The cavern walls are beginning to split and crack. “There are more, aren’t there? Like her? The black-hearted? Up above?”

Anik nods. “They brought me to this place. They stole…they stole my little sister.”

“Do they know who she is?”

“I think so. They must.”

“Then your sister is in great danger. If she has our blood…they may turn her.”

Anik looks at me with a broiling, dark expression. “Do you know what you are?”

“I am your packmate.”

“No. I mean inside. Your…animal?”

I hesitate, not sure what to tell him. But I decide on the truth. “A plague,” I say. The black heart I consumed courses through me, warm and nourishing, and suddenly I’m hungry for more. I ask Anik: “Are you able to walk?”

Anik nods, takes a step forward, collapses into the bones scattered around us, shivering uncontrollably. “Don’t leave me here,” he says.

I smile. “We need to find the one who leads.”

Anik shakes his head. “My sister…Pimniq.”

“Without the All Encompassing we’re lost.”

“I can’t…abandon my sister.”

“Seeking Pimniq now means ruin. They’ve grown too powerful. Our pack is stronger together. United under the All Encompassing…we might be strong enough to rescue your sister.”

Anik lays his head down in the shaking bones. “I wanted rest,” he says. “Wanted to be left alone. Wanted to be rid of the thing inside me. But he’s not inside me. He doesn’t possess me like a demon or malign spirit. He
is
me. I didn’t believe that, and Sedna turned me against myself.”
 

“Stand now, Anik,” I say. “We have to leave this place.”

Anik grimaces, pushes to his feet.
 

“Can you scent the way out?”

Anik nods. “And if there’s more? I’m too weak—”

“I’m not. Trust me. The time will come when you carry not only me, but all of us. But for now…”

I open my mouth, unleashing a vast cloud of buzzing red-winged flies. The flies circle under Anik, build onto him until they form a solid mass beneath him, then lift him into the air. Another cloud swarms around the door, consuming it in seconds, and as we walk into the corridor I ask, “Did you love her?”

“I wanted to,” Anik says as my flies swarm around us. “I thought I did. But it wasn’t love. No love creates ruin.”

We enter the corridor. Anik scents the air and nods left. We continue in silence. I think on Anik’s words and remember Priest Gabriel.
 

My packmate is wrong.

Love
is
ruin.
 

I
WAKE
IN
the back of a cargo van so busted and tired I can barely move. Nash is at the wheel. Mia’s riding shotgun. Sorry’s sitting beside me, his usually mellow face dour and grim. Before I can say a word Sorry nods to the back of the van.
 

There. Half-hidden in shadow, is my bloodmate Lily.

She’s hog-tied. Eyes closed. She looks dead.
 

My heart leaps in my chest.
 

Then she shakes her head and moans.

“Untie her,” I say, my words coming real slow through my rage. “Or I swear I’ll gut every fucking one of you.”

Sorry’s eyes gleam. “Can’t do that, brother.”

I make to move. Blinding pain flashes through me, sends my head knocking against the cargo van’s metal panel. Mia whips around and glares at me.
 

“Welcome back, lover boy,” she hisses. “You and your Skin girlie had one hell of a ride.”

Sorry tells her to be quiet. Mia smiles and faces the front window.

Nash hasn’t said a word. That’s not a good sign.
 

“Tell me what happened, brother,” Sorry says.

I choke down my nausea and say, “Prez. Remember? I’m your fucking Prez.”

“Yeah. You are.
We
haven’t forgotten that.”

“You think I have?”

Sorry shrugs.
 

We drive in silence for a long while. Sorry rubs his knuckles while I watch Lily. Wave after wave of conflicting thoughts crash through me. She’s just a Skin bitch. She’s my bloodmate. She’ll ruin me. She saved me from that fucking—

“Tell me what happened, Prez,” Sorry says. “Tell me everything.”

I look into my brother’s eyes. He’s always been the level-headed one. The one I turn to when shit gets out of hand. I trust him beyond question. So I tell him about Lily carrying us through that RV. About the orange-red light and her burning skin. About the spirit-eater. And the more I tell him the more I understand what has to happen.

Sorry’s shoulder’s tense as I speak. He’s bigger than me. Bulkier.
 

And I’ve always wondered, if it came to a challenge—

“We have to kill her,” Sorry says once I’m done. “If you’re right about who…
what
she is. We have to kill her before she Becomes. It’s the only way we live.”

“No.”
 

“You know what happens if she lives, Aaron. Her pack rises. A new species. Our time—”

“Our time is over,” I say, my voice heavy. “Whether she lives or not. The fucking Stricken that burned Nash? The breeding lairs? It’s
over
.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sorry says. “But I know this: you choose that Skin chick over your pack, I can guarantee
your
time is over.”

“So that’s it? She goes or I go?”

Sorry nods.

“And I guess…you all came to some sort of agreement when I was out? Like a fucking pact? Because you know what that is,
brother
?”

“Yeah. We know.”

“It’s treason. A blood challenge.”

“You might call it that. Or maybe it’s just your packmates having their leader’s back.”

“Nash?” I say, raising my voice. “You in on this bullshit?”

There’s a heavy silence, then Nash says, “I’m in.”

Course I don’t bother asking Mia. She’s made her opinion about Lily more than clear.

“Well, fuck every single one of you.”

But the truth is I know they’re right. And I know what they’re doing. They’re making the choice easier by seeming to take it out of my hands. So I have someone to be pissed at besides myself.
 

***

“Jesus fucking hell,” Mia whispers as we pull up outside Lily’s apartment.
 

Nash drives down an alley and parks the van in a shadowed corner where we can still see the apartment. The entire building’s on fire. Flames lift into the rain-shrouded sky. A couple of fire crews are busy dousing the fire with water cannons. Flashing red lights illuminate a crowd of curious onlookers, and sirens wail into the night.

“Can’t stick around, prez,” Nash says, turning to look at me. “Place is a literal heat score.”

Sorry slides open the side door. Cool air rushes in.
 

Lily moans, lifts her head. For a second I see the panic in her eyes. She thinks the cult fanatics have abducted her again. Then she sees me, and the look she gives me…fuck. I’ve had a lot of shitty looks thrown my way. But this one? The betrayal and hatred? Nothing even comes close. My wolf paces in his cage. This feels wrong. All of it. But there’s no right answer. That’s the world of Skins: fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t.
 

Or maybe that’s just the world of an alpha.

“Make it quick,” Mia says, and something in her voice makes Lily sob.

I crawl to my bloodmate. Grab her bound wrists. Drag her out of the van.

She won’t even look at me.
 

Rain pelts my skin. I look down the alley, and the thought of running with her hits me.
 

If she is what I think she is…we could run.
 

But they’d find us. They can track her scent.

Make it quick? Yeah. Wonder who that’s supposed to be easier on? Her or me?
 

“You’re not worth it, Lily,” I say, gripping her cheeks and tilting her head to mine. “You hear me? Not worth it by a
long
shot. You better run and never look back. That’s the only hope your kind has. Because I swear: you come near me and my pack again, I’ll let Mia swallow you fucking whole.”

Mia sticks her head out the passenger window, looses her long, forked tongue and hisses in triumph.

Lily doesn’t move. Doesn’t say a word.
 

Doesn’t even look at me. Just stares at her burning apartment.
 

The rain’s slicking down her hair and it reminds me of how we held one another in the shower—

I shake my head and murder the thought. My heart hardens. Yeah. Sometimes an MC Prez has to be hard. Ruthless. Sometimes he has to make tough decisions; sacrifice personal need for the good of his pack.

“I need a phone,” Lily says, her voice cool and calm.

“What?”

“A phone. I need to—”

“C’mon Prez,” Sorry growls from inside the van.

“Just get her a fucking phone!” I yell.
 

Fuck this. I’m starting to lose it.
 

I want Lily to
look
at me.
 

Want to see the hatred in her eyes.
 

I can feed on that hatred.
 

It’ll keep me going. For a while.

Sorry hands Lily his phone. She dials, puts the phone to her ear.
 

A few second’s later she says, “Connor? Hi. It’s Lily. Connor I…I’m in trouble. No, I’m okay, Ha, yeah. No really. I’m okay. It’s just…my apartment. It’s on fire and I…yeah. Fire. I’m outside…but I’m okay. Thank you so much. I’m sorry. Yes. I’ll be here. Thank you.”