Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(51)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I flew backward and hit a tree trunk. I absorbed the blow and rolled to my feet. I heard the sound of paws on the ground. I felt him leaping—

Thud.

A large wolf—tan fur, white markings, lethal—collided with the invisible predator midair. A high-pitched yelp turned into a growl as the two of them hit the ground, each grappling for control.

Sora was brutal, efficient. Fighting an invisible opponent, she was nothing but fangs and claws, beautiful, deadly grace. Blood, so dark it was nearly black, marked the white fur around her muzzle. Phantom teeth sunk into her flank, but she shook her assailant off violently and whirled around, jaws snapping, fur on end.

The air quivered, like the surface of a pond under an onslaught of skipping stones, and then Wilson appeared again.

This time, I doubted it was on purpose.

In wolf form, he was the creature I remembered from my nightmares. There was a white star on his forehead. His eyes were intelligent, his fur matted with blood. Suddenly, I didn’t have to work to hold on to the red haze.

It threatened to overwhelm me.

Escape. Have to—run—have to—

I reined it in, pulling the power inward, feeling it as a ball of fire in my chest. I wasn’t four years old anymore.

I wasn’t running.

Sora flew through the air again, mouth full of blood-marked teeth, death in her eyes. She grabbed him by the throat.

She pinned him.

His legs scrambled for purchase, but she slammed her body sideways, crushing his limbs under her weight. She met his eyes, his blood filling her mouth.

And then he Shifted—silently, effortlessly, as only a dead werewolf could. She let go of his neck, just for a second. Blood dripped off his body, disappearing the moment it hit the ground.

He gargled.

For a second, they stared at each other—wolf and human, twins. I knew, beyond all rationale or reason, that she’d held him at this point before.

That she’d let him go.

I stopped breathing. She nudged his face with her nose. Licked his chin. And then, without warning, she lunged. Her teeth closed around his human neck. She bit down, until she hit bone, and then she jerked her head sideways.

His spine snapped.

His eyes lolled backward.

His head hung on by a thread.

I felt Sora begin to Shift before I heard it. In human form—naked, her body smeared with blood—she knelt next to him.

“Give me a knife.” Her voice was rough, her words short and sharp. I walked to her, knelt next to her, placed my knife in her hands.

She leaned forward, whispered something in his ear. Then, dark hair running free down her back, her lips ruby red with her brother’s blood, she drove the knife into his chest and cut out his heart.

His legs turned gray, then his torso, his arms, his face, until we were looking at a corpse. His eyes sank back in his skull; his body decomposed. The earth rumbled under our feet, and in an explosion of light—fireworks at midnight, the sun just after an eclipse—he was gone.

Sora collapsed backward on her knees, her body folding in on itself. The curve of her spine caught the last bit of twilight, and I could see heavy breaths wracking her body.

Fifteen, twenty seconds later, she rose. She walked calmly to her discarded clothes. She got dressed, and then she turned back to me.

“The message I gave you?” she said. “For Devon?”

I nodded.

She closed her eyes. “I’ll tell him myself.”

Belatedly, I remembered to let go of the little room, the panic, the fear—and the fight drained out of my body with it. I was so tired, exhausted—and I hadn’t even done anything.

“That’s the danger,” Jed said gruffly. “You stay there too long, you hold on too tight—it can kill you.”

Because what I really needed was to add more to the list of things that could kill me.

One by one, I surveyed our little group. We’d survived. All of us. But as I met Lake’s eyes, I realized something was wrong.

“Where’s Griffin?” I asked.

She didn’t respond, and I realized that he hadn’t come back. Wherever he went when he wasn’t here, wherever Wilson had sent him—he hadn’t come back.

“Bryn.” Sora—a clothed Sora—called my name from the Stone River side of the Montana-Wyoming border. I forced myself to tear my attention away from Lake, even as I felt her fighting a silent battle with herself—

Not to care.

Not to let it hurt this time.

Not to think about burying him again.

I staggered toward the border, turning my eyes and mind away from Lake, giving her what little privacy I could.

“Thank you,” I told Sora quietly, wondering if taking her twin’s heart had provoked in her some measure of what Lake was feeling now.

The bond between them had outlasted even death—and now he was gone. Really gone.

Sora inclined her head slightly, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge my thanks in any way. I waited for her to speak and wondered if there was something I was supposed to be saying.

Hallmark didn’t exactly make cards for occasions like this.

“You promised me,” Sora said finally, her voice dry and hoarse, “that when this was over, you would give Callum a chance to make things right.”

Apparently, the fact that she hadn’t died didn’t void that promise in her eyes, and that made me think—

“Make what right?”

There was another long silence.

“Make what right, Sora?”

She may not have been part of my pack, but I was an alpha, and that dominance was audible in every single syllable as it exited my mouth.

“Griff!” Lake’s voice broke into our standoff, and reluctantly, I tore my eyes from Sora’s in time to see Lake launch herself at newly reappeared Griffin. In a flurry of overly long limbs, her body collided with his, nearly bringing them both down. She wrapped her arms around his body and squeezed, hard enough to leave marks.

Anyone else’s hands would have passed through him, but not hers.

Never hers.

Griffin ran a hand through Lake’s hair and tweaked the end of her ponytail, a calming gesture and a familiar one. Then he pulled back. He untangled himself from Lake’s arms, extracted himself from her steely grip, and turned his attention to me—and by extension, to Sora.

“It’s Maddy,” he said.

The second I heard her name, my insides twisted—a portent of things to come.

“She’s in labor,” Griffin continued, sounding calmer than he looked. “I would have stayed with her, but I couldn’t. The baby—it made me—I felt it—I couldn’t be there.”