The night turned inky and the wind died, leaving an intense, echoing stillness. Barely discernable as a strip of deeper blackness between the dark trees, a straight road shone faintly, the hard surface reflecting the scarce starlight. The drone of a distant car had been getting steadily louder, and now a set of headlights topped a slight rise, blazing fire into the still night and highlighting a figure trotting slowly along the edge of the asphalt. The car roared swiftly closer and ruffled his fur as it zipped past.
A heavy screech of tyres biting the hard surface made Riley's drooping ears wince, but he kept his nose close to the ground and limped doggedly on, barely noticing the subsequent heavy slam of a door, or footsteps approaching, until a soft drawl said, "Hello old fellah. You're out late. Looks like you're going somewhere, are you lost? Let me just take a look at your collar."
The woman almost managed to get a hand on his ruff. He was so tired, his dodge was slow and awkward, and he winced as he landed hard on his cut paw when he swerved around her and trotted on, slightly faster. He could hear her panting as she tried to catch up, and increased his pace a bit more, tuning her out as he sunk back into his tired old lope. He had a job to do.
The car screeched and roared past him again, slewing to a halt across his path as the woman jumped out for a second time. Riley huffed in frustration, and winced his way over the spikey stones at the road edge, lumbering across the ditch into the orchard of knotted old trees while soft, cajoling words followed him, calling him back. He felt awkward, slightly ashamed, ignoring the human, but he had to. And some of them were so insistent.
The tired old hound swayed in the darkness under the fruit trees, wanting to fold and sleep. He was so hungry. A burning ache seared his joints, and his foot throbbed. He had been too tired to pay proper attention for a long time now, so the edge of his pad had been cut when it had landed on a sharp stone. He had licked it clean but was leaving a patchy trail behind him, a faint line of blood dots disappearing into the distance back down the road. Riley's brain was fuddled with pain and exhaustion and hunger, but he knew what he was doing.
Following the trail.
Guilt was partially what pulled him along. Riley wasn't a fighter, he never had been much of one and now he was too old, too stiff. Those wolves had been so big. So many. And while the old beagle had circled the horde of them savaging at the Alpha, trying to see an opening, he had stumbled over the scent trail. The same strange car scent as before, that the Alpha had told him to follow, from home. The urgency of the command had still echoed in his head: follow it. The old beagle had hesitated, watching the fight that he couldn't hope to win. And had turned to track along the scent. Hoping this was right. He was still tracking. Hoping.
His tired brain couldn't remember properly now, through the weariness, but he thought he recalled, not long ago, hearing that strong voice in his head again. Telling him to look at the white shiny board on the metal post by the roadside, coaxing him to focus fuzzy eyes on the black squiggles crossing the surface. The voice had hurt his head so much, the pain making him a little dizzy. Had he heard it?
Across the ditch, a car door clunked, and the engine purred away into the darkness. The woman had gone. The old beagle, trembling, limped painfully back across the ditch and resumed his tired lope along the faint, rubbery, chilling scent.
An hour later, Riley barely heard the next car, head drooping between his shoulders in weariness as he limped doggedly on. Then he blinked, heart aching on a sudden thud as he dodged the door opening just ahead of his nose, whining at the pain in his paw.
He stopped and blinked again, nostrils twitching at the scent of the person sliding out of the car: the boy who lived next door. He smelt funny, even more strongly wolf than earlier, but it was Adam alright.
Then the hound's haunches hit the asphalt, hind legs collapsing as the scent of the driver striding around the rear of the car washed over him. The Alpha was so much stronger. And furious. Riley's limbs were melting under him in fear, and he trembled, head dropping instinctively to rest on his throbbing forepaws as he peered up at the looming figure approaching, the tip of his tail supplicating. He had meant to do right. But the Alpha was so angry.
The hand caressing over his head reassured him, then he gulped half a yelp as he was scooped abruptly into strong arms just before the wolf leapt over the roadside ditch holding him, and strode off across the stubbly field.
Riley's fur was standing on end, being carried by this volcano of explosive feeling. But he was soothed by the hand still expertly fondling his ears: the Alpha was not angry with him.
Slowly through the fog of exhaustion in his brain Riley recognised - the Alpha was proud of him. While Adam pumped in water, the powerful wolf gently, swiftly washed his paw in a little trough at the side of the orchard, then licked it healed himself- properly healed. Together with licking over his other clean pads, so that they buzzed and tingled fire, but stopped aching. Then Adam and the blazing Alpha shared out a delicious supper of warm pork chops from a paper bag, all three of them standing around gnawing together. Riley's tail was waving exuberantly as he devoured his share of the delicious feast.
Sharing meat with an Alpha.
Shortly afterward, the old hound sat happily on the passenger seat, tired brain clouded with fuzz, and flopped against the upholstery as the pair of two-leggeds spoke to each outside the open car door. Mac crouched down abruptly, lifting the beagle's head to look into his eyes, but Riley winced and looked away. It hurt. He was too tired. Then he whined apologetically as the Alpha surged back to his feet and said, "Are you sure?" in a brittle voice to Adam while he carefully closed the door.
The boy pressed a palm to his own head, crushing flat the grimy once-white cap that was now tied to his scalp with a dark ribbon. The boy's voice was harsh, vehement as he vowed, "Yes."
The wolf grunted and handed him the car keys and his phone, turning slightly to flicker a burning glance back down the road in the direction from which they had come. "The travel sickness will be horrible once the drug wears off - try and get as far as you can before you have to abandon the car, but don't get arrested."
Adam grunted, and strode impatiently around to the driver's side. The Warlord half-growled, and Adam jerked to a halt and looked back across the roof of the car, gaze caught and held by the burning brightness of the Alpha's. Mac seared a deep, searching, almost yearning look into the werewolf's eyes for a long moment, before he nodded, growling again, "Keep in touch." There was a flash of white fur, and in seconds the graceful wolf vanished in among the trees.
Riley was staring at the spot where the Alpha had disappeared, heart aching. Then he felt familiar fingers stroking between his ears, and stopped whining. "Good boy," Adam whispered hesitantly while the driver's door clunked shut behind him. "It's just you and me on this hunt now - Mac has to lead the more direct attack. But one way or another, we'll find Gem."
***
That had been far too close, Mac thought as he limped into the Marshmont dining hall the following afternoon.
The vast chamber took up almost the entire third floor of the cliff fortress, flanked to the west by a series of large kitchens, and to the east by a smaller, private dining room. A long, wide corridor running along the windowless north side connected all the rooms to the central stairway, and the doors in the north wall of the corridor opened only onto a series of store-rooms and butchering rooms.
The long bank of tall windows opposite the dining room doors flooded the space with warm afternoon light. A vast, detailed map of the broad valley and surrounding mountains covered almost the entire length of the long wall opposite the windows, behind the equally long, heavy wooden tables. The sparse melee of besieged Marsh wolves were chattering in relief as they swarmed in toward the succulent food, relating in hushed, excited murmurs the staggering series of events which had enabled them to repel the night attack, an attack that had commenced only minutes after the Mackeld had parachuted in.
Mac was trembling with fatigue after his second night of battle without rest, covered in sweat and healing wounds, both those from this new fight, and those which had not yet fully healed from the battle down at O'Connell. He collapsed onto one of the benches, scowling at his excruciating piquant, and ignoring the empty winged seat at the head of the top table to which Karim Marsh was beckoning him. Jon Marsh's seat. The Marsh wolf heeded the warning look he received and settled with a grimace on a bench to the right of the empty seat, next to Mac's brother-in-law Will Bancroft.
Mac's brain was seething, his heart keening. He hadn't managed to fight through to Jian-Xi Tzo. He still didn't know where she was. Warlord Tzo had arrived with a mass of new forces at dawn to augment the attack here at Marshmont, leading an all-out assault to take the fortress. What the hell was the Tzo himself doing here?
The Tzo pack had flown in with their remaining air transport. Mac shuddered at the thought of the position the Aster would have been in if his mate hadn't invented her travel drug. They would have had no chance of keeping up with their enemies.
His Gemma.
Wincing, Mac's eyes lit with fury and he reached for the overpoweringly enticing meats piled in the dishes before him with a hand trembling with fatigue and anger. As soon as he had refuelled he would sortie out and beat her whereabouts out of the fucking Tzo himself, if necessary.
Mac tore off a mouthful with no table manners whatsoever, chewed ferociously, and was already biting off a second piece when he noticed the figure of Hakan hovering hesitantly in the far doorway of the dining hall, beyond the packed tables of hungrily wolfing Marsh. The White second was shivering lightly as the scents caressed his nostrils, his battle-battered packmates peering past him longingly, foreheads creased with their own piquant headaches.
Ah. Damn, thought Mac.
The Alpha shook his pounding head, dragging his mind out of his brooding fury, irritated with himself for not realising, remembering. He rose quickly back to his feet, swaying slightly as his stomach howled for more, clenching his claws into the wooden tabletop.
"Karim Marsh," he called across the long tables, voice thundering above the noise, and the gorging warriors in the hall all suddenly froze, falling silent, heads turning to the formidable Warlord.
"May my Whites share your kill?" asked Mac formally.
A sense of relief washed through the hall, and Karim spun to face the wolves packed just outside the Western doorway. The heartfelt howl of his fria welcoming the guests was echoed by a wave of slightly shamefaced laughter throughout the vast chamber, and the Marsh wolves quickly rose to shuffle seats and benches sideways to make room for their new allies, calling them in, beckoning them to the free places.
The accidental informality was actually beneficial, Mac thought to himself as he sat down again, watching the mingling packs. The Whites were dotted everywhere in and among the Marsh, and the warriors of both packs were beginning to swap stories eagerly. The Marsh could not make the slightly hesitant Whites more welcome: their rescuers, who had crashed through the Tzo lines, enabling the Aster wolves together to expel the Tzo warriors who had broken through, and then together Marsh and Whites had sealed the breech in the Western buttress. Even the wariest of the Whites, unaccustomed to other packs, were slowly relaxing under the delighted shower of goodwill.
The White warriors must be as starving as he, Mac rebuked himself silently. They had had no time to stop and eat, since he had called them urgently just after dawn, ordering Hakan to select fifty elite warriors to hijack a truck, and just get here. Fifty - well, fifty-two, had used up all that Ada had had of the travel drug - and it had been lucky that Will had still been with them, since none of the Whites could drive. The other two Mac had sent elsewhere.
You did well to remember the etiquette, the Alpha conveyed silently to Hakan. I have been guest-free here for so long, I had forgotten. My apologies.
As his eyes met those of his White second down the long room, Mac briefly touched his fingertips together in the sign of contrition. He felt the little rumble of feeling from the watching Marsh who saw the exchange between wolf and Warlord.
Hakan smiled a lopsided smile and flicked his fingers to the Warlord in the old sign of fealty, lowering himself with a wince into the seat that Karim had pulled forward for him, and accepting a haunch from the proffered bowl.
I would not shame my Alpha, he conveyed smoothly, a hint of amusement buried in the tone.
Mac flickered a burning look at him, then dropped his eyes and stared at the meat on his plate, waiting for each of his Whites to take at least two mouthfuls before he allowed himself to bite back into it: a self-imposed rebuke.
He waited.
Then he looked up, distracted by the almost pained scent of frustration in the room. Every single wolf was staring at him, waiting for him to resume eating.
Damn protocol.
"Eat!" he commanded them. Some reached hesitantly for their food, but then looked at the unmoving figures of Karim, Hakan and Will, and stopped short. Mac sighed, and explained impatiently, "I ate before my pack had food. An Alpha should know better. So I will wait until you are all eating before continuing," he announced, a note of steel in his voice, meeting Hakan's eyes again.
The roomful of hungry wolves still waited in silence while the White second answered softly for them, "You are our Alpha, our Warlord. We wait for you to eat first."
Hakan was still keeping his face perfectly straight, but Mac wasn't fooled.
"You have spent much of your recent days with my mate," the Alpha acknowledged softly, while his eyes sparkled with increasing danger. "But do you really wish to challenge me as she does?"
The words especially now hovered unspoken in the air. Hakan shivered.
"Eat," Mac finished softly.
Hakan reeled backward where he sat, and sighed as he obediently picked up his joint. "She says I spend too much time with you," he muttered to it, and took a bite.
Mac closed his eyes to prevent his glare from burning the wolf, then felt his heart jolt as Karim's iPhone, set on the table beside him, buzzed with an incoming call. Leaping to his feet, he snatched up the handset and conveyed fiercely to the March second: Bring me that road map.
Two minutes later he was leaning over a small chest under one of the windows, tracing a pen along the large scale map while talking urgently in a low voice on a phone. He was following a line of dotted red circles which traced a slow, short pathway through a mishmash of dense roads.
His voice was brittle, "You can't work it out - which was the last of them?"
"No," Adam's voice was exhausted, wretched. "We've tried them both, but the trails seem to be fading in the rain, Riley's - he's so miserable about this, he managed for so long." Mac could hear the tears in the young voice.
Not their fault. "You need to find shelter - you're in a small town, there must be a hotel that'll take dogs. Get some food. Rest," the Alpha ordered quietly. His brain was expanding in urgent need, searching for possibilities. "And yes, the rain is a setback, but only a setback. You must be close - two sets of Argen tyre-tracks means you are converging on the goal. You will be close."
"But we've lost her trail," Adam whined in angry misery. "We can't smell either of them any more - I couldn't reliably anyway, but now not even Riley can."
The boy was still too human to be able to differentiate human vehicles from wolf. Realisation flared in Mac's mind, and his brain cleared sharply. A small, feral smile lit his lips.
"Don't worry about that, Adam," he reassured the young werewolf. "You may not yet have the nose to smell the car, but unlike us, you are able to smell scent-masked wolves. You are a werewolf, still partially human. And between you and Riley, you have narrowed down the search area immensely."
His eyes ranged over the expanse of forested mountains to the east of Adam's marked trail: it was a large area, but a thorough search would find her captors.
"All wolves have to hunt the wilds around where they are based - you will find a trail of those wolves, scent-masked or not, if you search methodically," Mac explained.
He was pleased to hear the reviving enthusiasm in the young voice, while Adam burst out eagerly, "I'll go and look now - I'll find something. I'll hunt everywhere."
"No - go and get some rest, first, both of you. Eat. They will not be hunting in the rain," returned Mac. "You will be more alert, faster."
He heard a sigh of acknowledgment.
"And I have sent two of my best trackers to join you," Mac continued. "Let me know where you find lodging and they will come and meet you. They will probably not be able to scent the wolves, but they will be able to sight track, and recruit and hunt with stray dogs from the local area. You will have to direct them all in what to do, what to sniff for."
And the werewolf would no longer be alone.
Mac's skin was shuddering at the knowledge of the danger he had let loose, the laws he had broken by setting the werewolf and the hound to hunt alone. Yet - to bring the boy here, to a fight he hadn't the skill to fight, and so imprison him with no hope of atonement - no, that would not have been looking after him.
Ada was too slender to overpower Adam if he lost control, but she could outmatch him with skill. And between them, she and Penny should be able to keep him in check, if necessary, until Nils got there with the others.
"What about Riley?" the young werewolf interrupted Mac's thoughts.
All that Adam heard in reply was a heavy, pained grunt, and the thud of the phone hitting the wooden floor as a distorted howl echoed through the handset, followed by a thunder of scraping benches and pounding footfalls and yells.
"The terrace!" Adam heard the ringing challenge of the Alpha's bellow above the cacophony. "Karim - hold the Eye!"
***
Two days later, Bethan drove slowly into a small town slumbering in a brief patch of midday sun. She blinked around at the small signs of peaceful urban normality, feeling oddly displaced, unreal. Angry. Hunched low in the seat beside her was the unhealthily skinny figure of Ada. They hadn't said an unnecessary word for over a day, each holding to their own silence.
Bethan still couldn't believe that she had let Mac talk her into this trip, it was such an infuriating waste of time. She and Kate had answered his call to go with Nils Fealden to help Adam, Penny, and Ada hunt for Gemma as soon as he had asked, no question. But almost immediately after they had arrived at the damp patch of forest and met the others, Mac had - well, ordered Bethan and Ada to divert on this trip.
She had argued. She was half-Italian, after all, and well used to teasing Mac.
But this time - there had been something implacably cold in his voice down the phone. Dark. Mac hadn't argued back, just given her a stark ultimatum. The eerie stillness of Ada, Penny and Nils, waiting beside her, had been disturbing, almost frightening, crumbling the fire in her voice to a whisper. Bethan reassured herself again that she hadn't just folded.
She was lying. Mac's voice had been the truly frightening.
Ada wrinkled her nose as they passed a gas station. Bethan noticed the movement out of the corner of her eye, and opened her mouth to comment, again, but shut it with a snap. The damn skinnybunny had been refusing to give out practically any information - obviously the first rule of Mac's mob was you do not talk about Mac's mob.
That was what Kate had christened the motley little crew of hunters, each with their eager crowd of scruffy dogs. Bethan and Kate had speculated again on their way down to join them just which agency Mac belonged to, and why he was pulling together this small, secretive group to hunt for Gemma instead of going to the standard authorities. They had whispered loudly in front of their escort Nils, but beyond flickering a slightly amused eye their way, he hadn't responded.
Whatever - whichever organisation he worked for, Mac was obviously pretty senior, judging by the way the mob both referred to him and responded to him. Plus there was the ease with which he issued orders. He must have been under cover back home in Lemark, at Gemma's place. But thinking about it, Gemma's flatmate had always had that easy air of command, even though he had rarely used it.
No wonder he was so damn attractive.
One titbit that Ada had imparted was that the reason the hunt was so secretive was because Mac was under strict orders not to waste time on it: Gemma's fiancé was tied up in in charge of something pretty major going on further west, and the forest search was in some way prohibited.
Hah, thought Bethan, like that'd stop him. But then she seethed again. So why the fuck did you pull me and Ada away from the hunt, just when I had gotten started, Mr Mac?
"Left here," the stick-like girl beside her murmured. Ada's eyes widened, she looked almost shocked while she watched two pre-teen boys in jeans and t-shirts cycling around in the empty parking spaces to their right, showing off on their bikes. The boys were competing to see who could keep the front wheel aloft over the longest distance and jump onto the kerb, shouting and laughing to each other in easy camaraderie.
If Bethan was seething, Ada was almost stunned by the relaxed, sleepy atmosphere of this small town. Using the travel drug, she and Penny had sprinted down on public transport to join the young werewolf, and the Mackeld had been driving them relentlessly to assemble a pack of dogs to hunt for the Alfamme, his orders driven by in furious worry.
Then a snap of acute, visceral anguish had skewered him, recoiling on the entire pack. Even now, almost two days later, the piquant still lingered faintly in her head from the pain of that backlash of that blow. However, the pain it had wrought had been buried almost instantly by fear.
Seconds after, almost on the recoil of the staggering pain, the Alpha had slammed down his shields and locked them out. Everyone: Mackeld, Whites, the Wolflord himself could not break through without crashing him. Her heart had been keening since, a slight, constant tremor of fear - the whole pack felt the same, wordless fear. Fear for their Alpha. He had barricaded them all out, although the faint tug in her mind of her oath to him still held, and he still led the relentless tide of battle-melds to defend Marshmont. But it was like being sent commands by a computer. There was no emotion: the feeling in him was all smothered, crushed.
Please, my Alpha.
Ada jumped faintly, pulled out of her tense thoughts when the human driver beside her muttered irritatedly, "I heard the directions too," and took the corner a little too fast.
In contrast to the frozen atmosphere up front, on the back seat, the old dog suddenly awoke from his slumber, rolled over with difficulty onto his stiff and aching legs, and reached his head up to sniff loudly at the crack in the window. Almost like a young dog, Riley then surged to his feet, pressed his nostrils flat to the wide crack, and started to snort and snuffle eagerly, his tail beginning to wag.
Ada turned her tear-bright blue eyes to the beagle, and even in her fear a laugh was surprised from her when, with a burst of enthusiasm, the hound turned to poke his wet nose into her cheek and slurp a kiss on her jaw.
She squeezed shut her eyes. Why did this command of the A's feel like a form of farewell? Settling accounts?
They parked up two minutes later.
Both girls walked Riley into the feed store to which Adam had directed them, Ada with a hand on the suddenly rejuvenated dog's collar. Bethan cast up her eyes and held her mouth in a straight line as the medium sized-hound towed the slender waif eagerly in through the open double doors past a weatherworn 'Dogs Welcome' sign.
As soon as they entered, Riley rushed off down a high aisle stacked with chicken feed bags towards a side door to some inner sanctum, dragging Ada sideways, causing her to hop off balance on one foot after him and out of sight. Bethan could hear the other girl muttering, "Wait on, wait on!" under her breath.
Bethan sighed in exasperation. Then she grinned. Ada had been sent along to look after the dog, so on her head be it if she wasn't up to the task. She herself was merely the chauffeur on this idiotic trip, and would be glad to see the back of it. So she left the pair to their struggle for leadership and approached the cashier counter instead.
"Excuse me?" she said.
A square, capable-looking older woman wearing a bright, soft cotton shirt and jeans was standing behind the desk. She looked up enquiringly as Bethan stepped forwards.
Bethan gestured behind herself, to where they could both hear the other girl simultaneously cajoling and heaving the dog back up the aisle, "We found this dog on the road south of town and he seemed to be headed this -."
The shopkeeper's eyes had already dropped to the beagle being dragged reluctantly around the corner, and the dog looked up and spotted her at the same time. He changed direction and bounded eagerly forwards, yanking the girl still clinging to his collar into a patter of quick footsteps before Ada let go with a short laugh. The woman's pale blue eyes lit up in answer.
"Riley!" she cried in delight, darting out from behind the wooden desk to fall to her knees on the hard floor, returning his exuberant greeting with one of her own as the dog launched himself onto her.
"Oh Riley! Oh - thank-you, thank-you, we've been looking everywhere, where did you find him?" cried the woman, not looking up, her words muffled by a bombardment of ecstatic love while she rubbed her face in the dog's short fur and hugged him back.
"South of here," repeated Bethan. Dammit, she really couldn't keep the smile from twisting her mouth, but her eyes were sombre as she watched. "Glad to be of service. He was headed this way and we just gave him a lift, thought the feedstore the best place to ask if anyone knew him," she lied glibly.
"Oh, thank-you so much. Can't I give you a coffee, a drink, anything for your trouble?" asked the woman now sitting unselfconsciously on the concrete floor with her legs curled to one side, turning her happy, tear-streaked face up, her arms cuddling the equally happy hound who had crawled onto her jean-clad lap and was snuffling her ear with repeated licks.
"It was no trouble," Bethan smiled at her. Which was a lie. She wasn't about to tell this woman just how far south Riley had been.
Ada bent to run a hand over the dog's short coat one last time, also smiling, a little sadly. "It's good to see him so happy to be home," she added in a soft voice.
They were looking for you, she told the old beagle. There were posters asking for news of him everywhere, she had seen them on the lamp-posts as they had driven through the little town.
Riley didn't reply, he was too busy making sure Jane knew how much he'd missed her. Besides, he didn't think the comment worth responding to. Of course they'd been looking. He was family.
Ada sighed a little wistfully as she turned to follow Bethan back out of the door, popping another of the travel pills the Fealden Alfamme had fedexed her.
Through the windshield, Bethan lifted a hand to the woman standing with her dog waving farewell in the doorway while she backed to circle out of the car park, then her face fell back into grumpy creases as she turned the car towards the main road. "I can't believe we just wasted two days dropping off a bloody dog in the middle of this hunt," she growled impatiently.
Ada sent her companion a cool look, reminding her in a crisp tone, "Riley is no longer needed: we have other dogs who know the scent now. Mac decided that it was time he got home safely. That hound's was horribly homesick, and he's too old for this, but did wonderfully tracking Gemma from here despite his aching bones."
Bethan snorted. By the time they got back it would be four whole days wasted, when she could have been hunting for Gemma! Mac didn't seem to know what was important, any more.
Ada looked out of the side window and her eyes crinkled slightly as she remembered the happy tilt of the beagle's head, the look in his filmy eyes when he'd scented his home again. Riley had helped the Alpha immensely: without him, the hunt would have been impossible. Mac did know what was important.
Her heart began to shiver again as she worried just why her Alpha had decided that the hunt for his mate was no longer the highest, utmost priority for them all.
***
There was a slightly yielding, smooth surface under her back. The surface was buzzing faintly, vibrating against her frozen skin. Frozen. Her blood felt petrified, congealed to heavy slush in her veins, only the faintest hint of movement of red blood cells seeping between the packed, unmoving crystals of ice. Pain numbed by cold.
A dim sense of alarm trickled through her as the vibration continued to gently shake her frozen body, a muffled shouting beating at her ears, then slowly dimming, as though she was sliding her head into a box. The loss of sensation sounded a vague alarm somewhere inside her.
After some moments within the depth of numbness, Gemma realised on a panic that she wasn't breathing, and the shock drove a sharp, gasped intake of air to flood into her lungs, lifting her chest.
Her chest screamed.
Raw, ripped edges - screaming, bleeding pain through the frozen cavity - if the rest of her hadn't been an ice statue, the rake of the pain would have lifted her into a piercing, howling arch to try to ease that agony. Inside her ribs, she felt grated. The hole inside, where her heart had once been connected, all of the arteries and vessels were choked or ripped off, discordant, mutilated. Each raw nerve speared directly into her mind, stabbing her again and again with a twin, nauseating, unbearable ache.
The feeling of immediate dread rang louder through her as with a faint hissing noise below her feet, the voices dimmed further. But her ripped heart and mind couldn't respond, she couldn't take this pain, couldn't move - couldn't.
Still, her ears absorbed the words that the female standing somewhere below her feet was shouting across at the male. A name caught at her, drawing together her shredded brain to slowly percolate some meaning from the shouts.
"... lost your fucking temper! Now it's dead we have lost our bait for the Mackeld too, you spineless whelp!"
The words swirled in her throbbing head, dull and almost senseless, held together by the name.
That name.
A tiny speck of heat struggled within the broken ice-shards in her chest.
A second creak of moving metal, and a blast of air hit her from the right. Her brain began to absorb the other urgent messages from her senses. The dusty scent surrounding her was - curdling, and Gemma's awareness was jolted by a sudden, new fear. Realisation dawned: "It's dead".
It.
The werewolf.
Her.
Realisation dragged a splintering fear in its wake, the name of her mate echoing more loudly through her. They thought she was dead.
Her Mac.
That was the pain: she couldn't sense him. At all. Never before had she been aware of the thread of feeling between two wolfmates. Until now, when it was gone. She couldn't sense him.
So he couldn't sense her.
The old warning from Valerie thudded through her veins: "When you die, early or late, then so will he, in grief, and guilt."
Her brain catapulted into full alert, leaden lids peeling painfully open revealing unyielding darkness, but the scents aligned her. She was lying nearly smothered in an enclosed, heavy box, on a conveyor belt of metal rollers. A shuttered vent beside her was blasting air in just below the surface on which her body was lying. The whole tiny space smelt of ash. Fine ash and overheated metal.
The fear quadrupled, lifting the hairs on her human skin, and Gemma was on her side, tearing weakly at the shorn, mangled shutter with her bare human fingers. The gashed, broken metal fell away and she squirmed desperately to scrape her small, sick frame around the ninety-degree bend into the vertical air duct as she heard a click of a new valve opening behind her. Terrified by the half-recognised scents, the blood now pounding in her ears muffling the continuous, vitriolic shouting match that had erupted in the room below, she had no idea how far or how fast she managed to jam her way up through the solid metal chute against the blasting air, before heat seared at her feet and legs, blistering them with pain.
She erupted into a T-join in the square ducting, terror and pain driving her, and crawled some feet along a slightly wider shaft before she was brought up short by a second, fully closed valve leading away from the torrent of air behind her. This one was undamaged. Belatedly recognising the heavy claw-marks that had shredded the valve at the bottom at some time in the past, what it meant, that some wolf had clawed desperately at that vent from the inside, trapped in the inferno -. Gemma's heart cramped in revolted realisation, her stomach heaved, and she was violently sick into the tiny shaft in which she lay.
Her stomach heaved convulsively, repeatedly. Her mind swirled, nose twitching, dimly absorbing - something else amiss. Curling as far in on herself as she could in the mercilessly hot, cramped space, almost screaming at the pain in her heart, her mind fragmented under the agony which surged back to overwhelm her now as the immediacy of death sank back.
Distantly through the sick stupor sinking back through her limbs, her ears absorbed the roar of the gas inferno in the small cremation chamber from which she had escaped, and beyond, the continued bellows of fury between the antagonists.
Mac, her mind whimpered.
Her heart was bleeding, raw. He was gone.
Ripped away.
Gemma bit hard on her tongue to keep from screaming as the pain of that tear surged back to the fore while her sick body heaved with the compulsive, violent retching. She lay shivering, the weakness in her limbs smothering her to the hot metal as she exhausted herself holding in the anguish bludgeoning through her. Tears lit her eyes. The ice in her veins was helping her remain still, smothering her, but it couldn't entirely douse the agony.
Never before had she realised how deeply he was entwined in her. Had been entwined: now he had been ripped out. Half of her ripped to furious, agonising, savaged shreds.
The wolf inside her was keening, sinking deeper and deeper through waves of depression, alone, sick, sick to death. No pack. No mate.
Shut up, she cursed herself. What do you think he's going through?
Her wolf.
Her mind clamped into clarity, furious. And carefully, she pulled her physical self together again, lying in an exhausted, shivering heap, face contorted against the pain of the ice in her veins and the blistered burns on her feet and calves.
She had to get to him, let him know. Somehow. Gemma shifted wolf, to tear out the valve above her head with her claws.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, desperately, a hand sweeping sluggishly up across her human skin to check for the Argen collar, but it wasn't there, she was completely naked.
Why couldn't she shift? As she lay shivering, her hand landed in a pool of liquid. Ugh. But... her nose and mind slowly filtered an oblique answer to her question. A vile answer. She had just vomited into the shaft in which she was lying. But she couldn't smell the result, only feel it. The only thing that blocked scent for a wolf was silver. Silver.
She couldn't shift because she had been silver poisoned. That was why she was 'dead'.
So she couldn't move. Couldn't reach him.
The tears were rolling down her hot cheeks.
Eventually the roaring beneath her stopped, and Gemma heard a click above her head, the scrape of metal on metal. Her mind sorted through her options, and she realised that the searing, agonising burns on her legs and buttocks were not fading. Her feet were still scorched agony, feeling tortured. Sickness dragged at her, making her feel sluggish, maimed. She couldn't heal. Couldn't shift. Couldn't sense her mate, or anyone, all alone in her head. She felt human.
The lonely echo within her, the pressing walls of metal and the impenetrable blackness drove the despair in stronger and stronger waves through her head, shuddering through her screaming limbs even as her heart sank slowly beneath the desolate isolation. Trapped. The wildness within her shuddered, beginning to shake out of control.
Stop it, she cursed herself, focusing fiercely on her mate. She had to get out.
The traces of dried tears of her cheeks tingled. Inside her, however, the faint tang of blood in her mouth tasted of life, and her remaining heart was slowly growing more fiery, burning with fury.
She was not human. The wolf was there. Trapped in her heart, in furious sorrow. All of her was igniting, the need pulling her together, one whole being. They - the scheming wolves below, had stolen her from her mate, torn him from her. They had severed them.
Mac would be in such pain too.
Worse pain.
She had to get moving.
Gemma finally recognised, now, what she had never completely trusted before. Mac loved her. She knew this. She didn't need that bond to know. It was simpler than the deep tie of songmate. He loved her. The wolf knew. She knew. No doubts.
But she also knew, the dread heavy in her stomach, that if she didn't stop him - her heart was thundering in terror at the idea: Mac following her into death. The terror eclipsed the pain and the fear of the cramped space clawing at her internal wolf, and the fear of the darkness pressing on her human psyche. Gemma felt around above her head, feeling the open slats of metal where air was now free to travel. She gripped one thin slat and began to twist it, trying to force her sluggish, pain-drenched limbs to break a way through into the dark vent, seek a way out.
Wisps of the retreating, furious shouts that she could still hear teased into her numb brain as Gemma worked clumsily at the slats barring her way.
"Couldn't you have fucking resisted playing with the Mackeld's toy until we'd got him too?" the female cursed.
"I didn't see you resisting playing with her brother," Nicholas Grey howled his response.
The furious pounding inside Gemma's aching chest interrupted with a staccato jolt, then began to beat a harder, erratic rhythm: double fury. What she had heard thundered again and again through her pounding head, waking her further, setting her teeth to a silent snarl as she worked. So. Two reasons.
Where had she heard that woman before?
Hold on, my love, she thought out into the darkness. Please.