Werewolves had very strong self-preservation instincts, but that no longer mattered now, when my mate was gone. If I hadn’t completely lost it and given up, it was just because I wasn’t done with my revenge.
Edgar Clayton had betrayed Luna. He might not have been the one to poison her, but he’d arranged the whole thing. And now, she was dead.
He knew what he had done, and he knew we were furious. When we all burst out of the hut, he didn’t face us outright, perhaps realizing the extent of his mistake. Instead, he sicced his Beta and the rest of his guards on us.
But that didn’t work, because Rowan provided Sam with the distraction he needed to kill Ellery. It wasn’t enough to win this battle—we still wouldn’t survive it—but we didn’t have to.
The Alpha had stopped running. He could no longer retreat, not without displaying the true extent of his weakness and shaming himself in front of the Firewolves. Rowan and Rufus were still fighting, clawing each other like the savage animals we all were, but that didn’t mean the other members of their pack weren’t paying attention.
“You’re a coward,” I growled at him. “Hiding behind your Betas, sending females to do your dirty work. But then, that’s not really surprising. You’ve always been like this, no matter how hard you tried to hide it.”
“Your whole bloodline is cursed,” Nate said. “Luna was only an exception, so you wanted her dead. She was better than you in every way.”
Edgar barked out a harsh laugh. “Luna? Better than me? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I don’t think we are. The Claytons are known to turn against their loved ones. Isn’t that why Stuart tried to kill Luna? Isn’t that why you killed your mate?”
All the Wolfsbanes froze. The Firewolves’s attention zeroed in on us. Even Rowan and Rufus stopped fighting so they could pay attention to the conversation.
My accusation shouldn’t have surprised them that much. Among the Wolfsbanes, it was no secret that Edgar had killed his first mate. He’d never recovered from it, and Luna didn’t seem to know about it, but it wasn’t unusual for stuff like that to happen in the Clayton line. I’d heard older wolves talking about it when Sam and I had been guards, and some had believed that it was a consequence of all the work the Claytons had done with various poisons.
Nobody had dared to challenge it, though, or to change the leadership of the pack, not when we’d all depended on the safety the Clayton bloodline provided. But that didn’t matter for me anymore.
“You murdered your mate, and you dare to pretend that you care about your son enough to warrant this? Please. You’re nothing but an insane coward, hiding your weakness behind claims of righteousness.”
“Did you make a deal with Rufus Savage?” Sam asked. “Is that the real reason we’re here? Did you ever even want vengeance for Stuart?”
If Rufus himself had an answer to that, he didn’t show it. He didn’t get the chance to react, anyway. Edgar’s eyes flashed crimson, and he howled. “You know nothing, little wolf. Nothing about me, or my bloodline. Die now.”
His Alpha voice echoed over me and Sam, threatening to freeze our muscles, trying to make us obey. But we would never listen to him. We’d left behind those days long ago, and even if we hadn’t, any hold he’d had on us would’ve broken with Luna’s death.
“Nice try, but your little trick won’t work on us.”
I’d barely finished the phrase when Edgar’s minions jumped toward us. “Get away from the Alpha, rogue,” Dana growled at me. I remembered a time when she’d trained me as a guard of the Wolfsbane pack, but it didn’t make me hesitate.
“We won’t let you hurt our pack any longer,” her mate, Abbott, said.
Flanked by at least ten others, they were an efficient deterrent. Maybe the howl hadn’t been directed at us at all. Maybe he’d always intended to use the rest of the Wolfsbanes as his weapons. It was an efficient method. As strong as we were, we couldn’t fight off so many of our own kind.
It didn’t help that the Wolfsbanes knew us very well and understood the way we fought. The first thing they did was separate us. They shoved me away from Sam, herding us apart through the sheer strength of their numbers. I tried to fight them off, but it was difficult. My time in the Badlands had made me faster and stronger than a lot of the people in my former pack, but that didn’t mean I was omnipotent.
I fought viciously. I clawed and bit at every werewolf I could reach. My bond with Rowan and Sam was still there, and through it, I pushed myself to the limit. My attackers weren’t prepared for it, not at first, at least. But they were also excellent warriors in their own right, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t return to my brother’s side.
Through my bond, I felt the echoes of a renewed wave of pain. I jerked when I realized it was coming from Rowan. I didn’t know how I’d missed it before, but it wasn’t a good sign for any of us.
Our exchange with Edgar had only distracted the Firewolves briefly, and Rufus and Rowan had returned to their fight. Neither of them could gain the upper hand, and the only bright side of the situation was that Rufus’s minions hadn’t stepped in to help their Alpha. If that had happened, Rowan would have most definitely lost. But even with only one opponent, it wasn’t that easy. Our bond with Rowan was a burden now, because it distracted him, just like it distracted me.
Everything happened so fast. Rufus dug his fangs in Rowan’s shoulder. Through some kind of miracle, Rowan avoided having his throat torn out by his own brother, but our luck wouldn’t hold for much longer.
“Rufus, don’t!” I heard Alice Savage cry out from somewhere. “Rowan, stop. Please!”
Her voice was thick with grief and panic, but it was too little, too late. She’d lost her son the moment she’d refused to accept his bond with Luna. If we survived this battle, Rowan would probably kill her too. There was no blood bond more powerful than what we’d shared with our mate. Rowan would never listen to her, not now, not ever. And as it turned out, neither would Rufus.
Maybe the Firewolf Alpha had been even more affected by the chaos than any of us. Maybe it had intensified his anger over being challenged by his brother. Whatever the reason, he attacked Rowan with increasing viciousness.
Both of them were clearly going for the kill now, but then again, so were we. Reality blurred as we pursued the last anchor we had left in this world, our desire for revenge.
And then, out of nowhere, it happened. Our wounded bond stirred with something strange, familiar, yet somehow frightening. I faltered and jumped back, narrowly avoiding getting killed by a particularly vicious Wolfsbane.
