Pack Possessed, page 3
part #4 of Thrown to the Wolves Series
“Aurelia did.” Sabrina’s casual tone has us all whipping our heads her way. “She outsmarted him, imprisoned him. Imprisoned all of you. And it’s taken him how many centuries to figure out how she accomplished it, yet still, he needs her to undo it. If she was willing to sacrifice her freedom to pull this off, it doesn’t sound so much like she betrayed you and sided with the humans, more that she was willing to do whatever was necessary to stop what was happening. I imagine if it was only Ash she wanted to stop, she wouldn’t have gone through all of the effort of imprisoning all of you guys, so logic dictates he wasn’t the only one that was a problem back then.”
As he stoically stares her down, she shrugs a single shoulder. “Hate to give him any credit, but I’ll admit, Ash does have a point. Everyone’s rendition of events are tweaked to paint them in a better light. Even if you were a victim of circumstance, Ash let you live for a reason when all of the other original demons were killed by either life, or his own hand. There has to be a reason for him holding out where you’re concerned, even if it’s as simple as he was sentimental, but you’ll understand that I’m not exactly overcome with sympathy for the tough position you claim to have been in.”
Her voice subtly shifts, emerging as a smooth taunt cold enough that it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s not Sabrina speaking anymore. “After all, Xander. Your hand wasn’t exactly forced when you chose to butcher that village, now was it? You drew those deaths out as long as possible for every poor soul you came across. If you only wanted them dead, you wouldn’t have taken the time to play with your victims.”
The manic glint returns to my father’s eyes as he hisses, “I was protecting our home.”
With a derisive scoff, she counters, “From the tiny village of fisherman and widows? Has it really been so long that you’ve convinced yourself that the lie you both clung to was the truth? An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind to everything but the pain of reality, Xander. An endless quest of ‘getting even’ will always have another strike coming, yet the ones that pay the price are far too often anyone besides those involved. An enemy’s spouse or children, anyone and anything they love to wring out maximum anguish under the guise of making a point; the same pitying plea you just attempted to excuse your part in Acheron’s dirty work.”
He clutches his temples and bows his head, the energy surrounding him lashing out like a series of whips to keep us all at bay. Without missing a beat, Kaige takes a long, slow inhale, the smoky haze rushing toward him as if the Pied Piper himself called. As his deadly presence grows, my father’s diminishes. Bo appears at Sabrina’s free side, settling a hand on her shoulder and encouraging her back a step, and reluctantly, I let her go for both of their sakes. After a small moment of hesitation, she concedes, humoring the beta though we all know it’s futile.
A single step won’t make any difference in the grand scheme of things when we’ve lost enough ground that we can’t even see what lies on the horizon.
“Get out.” He doesn’t immediately move, and this time, when I snap, it’s all me. My inner demon is there as silent encouragement, but the fist that drives into my father’s cheek when he doesn’t budge is thrown completely by my choice.
Scrubbing his jaw, his eyes narrow. “Damia-”
“Grab Mom, Mason, and Gage, then get the fuck out of here. Because if you stay-” I shake my head, sifting through my rage to see if I might regret the words, but only find an undercurrent of sad acceptance that’s bitter on my tongue. “I can’t trust you; not around my family. If you stay, you’re a threat. And even if I can’t bring myself to do it, I won’t stop one of the others from doing what’s necessary.”
The look of shock in his blood-red eyes will be permanently etched in my memory. “I was the first one that protected her!”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I focus on the sting for a few seconds before trusting myself to reply. “You said you pushed back against Ash when I was born and it broke you. I was five when Sabrina was born, yet you risked Ash’s wrath to get her away from him. I should have been that important to you, too. Which means that either I’m not, or you’re a liar. No matter which answer it is, it means that I don’t want you around either of us again.”
When my other half rises just beneath my skin, he stops before attempting to break through or wrench control away from me. He simply lets the pressure be a comfort, reminding me that I’m not in this alone.
“You either walk away from this place now, or you’ll be our practice run to figure out how to kill Ash.”
Chapter 3
Kaige
“They’re lying!” my other half screams in my head, loud enough that I visibly wince. His infuriated shout of frustration is followed by a sharp, stabbing pain that lances through my brain until the pulsating ache can be felt in my teeth. Calmer, he repeats, “They’re lying,” as if he’s determined to convince himself of the fact through sheer, stubborn determination. “Damian caught Xander doing so already, so the rest of their claims are bullshit, too. They’re still playing their games to trick Sabrina into picking the choice they’re leading her towards. They need her to want to do this, because they can’t force her. She’s stronger than them and they know it, so they have to resort to manipulation tactics and guilt trips. Ash will have a contingency plan for whatever answer she gives him, and then back up plans for those back up plans.”
“So we map out every choice in front of us, and then create a new one that even Ash couldn’t have possibly anticipated.”
Hunter emerges from Damian’s parents’ room with a handful of pants he raided from their closet, tossing a pair of jeans my way. “What are you mumbling about over there?”
Despite them being a bit snug, I yank them on with a low rumble vibrating my chest, more annoyed by the fact that I’m fucking growling in the first place. It’s always been either him or me, but now that he’s decided to set up shop and be everywhere constantly, my temporary reprieves have been stolen away. To say it’s an adjustment is an understatement, but I’m trying to convince myself it’s a blessing in disguise.
No more blacking out when he takes over. I’ll always be able to know what he’s doing with my body, even if at times I’m helpless to stop him. Plus, it gives me an excuse to break some shit and blame it on him.
“You’re the one that talked Sabrina off the ledge and pointed out that blaming her actions on her wolf wouldn’t make her problems go away, you damn hypocrite.”
You mean demon, remember?
“... Fuck.” A few seconds tick by before he continues, more subdued than before. “He couldn’t have told us? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a prisoner in someone else’s body, told you’re a curse, an abomination that needs to be tolerated? That the chances are abysmally slim that you’ll ever be able to feel the earth beneath your feet? Never know the feeling of the sun heating your skin?”
I’m not sure why Dad never said anything. Unless he told Mom and she feels like passing it on, we’ll never know, either. To be fair though, it's not like we can trust anything that comes out of anyone’s mouths here, so there’s no point even asking her. And after the way we left things on this last visit, I highly doubt she’ll want to help us.
“Kaige?” Sabrina’s voice has our internal contemplation pulling to an abrupt halt, both of our attention latching onto her as the lifeline we desperately need.
“Yeah?”
She’s leaning against the wall amongst the sea of furniture destroyed between Xander’s meltdown and the Hawthornes’ shifts. “You were talking about mapping out every path in front of us?”
Scrubbing a hand down my face, I curse. “Sorry.”
She offers a wry smile. “If anyone gets it, it’s us. No need to explain, I was just getting you back on track.”
Crossing the room, I slide down the wall beside her to sit on the floor. With one leg stretched out in front of me, I rest my arm on my bent knee. The guys finish pulling some clothes on as I catch them up to as far as I’d made it before my train of thought shifted tracks.
“So he’ll be prepared for you to do what he wants, object, run, or try to kill him. If we want any hope of getting a leg up on this guy, we need to do something that even he could have never predicted or prepared for.”
Hunter’s face is a pissed off mask, but that’s hardly a new development. He’s always kept the world at arm’s length, hiding behind his anger. “You want her to do it, don’t you? To try and free them? Did you know what we were? Because you sure didn’t look that fucking surprised when Xander was talking before Ash showed up.”
Everyone in the room turns to face me, and with the exception of Sabrina, I flip them all the bird. “You can fuck right the hell off with that shit. Xander was mumbling to himself as he was freaking out, talking about the block and how it should have been impossible to find her. Annika wouldn’t have come back here after giving birth, so it was pretty easy to get the gist, regardless of me not knowing the details. And the ‘free the demons’ was a dead giveaway even for an idiot.” I sweep a hand to encompass the Hawthornes. “They just couldn’t say anything because they were a bit busy when we got there.” Slade offers a terse nod of confirmation, beginning to pace.
“Stop it.” Sabrina’s soft whisper is almost imperceptible, but everyone in the room immediately freezes. “We’re not going back to being at each other’s throats and playing the blame game. If we can’t trust one another, we might as well save Ash the trouble and off ourselves.” With a humorless chuckle, she slides down to sit beside me on the floor. “Pretty sure that’s our first off-road path; imagine his face if all of his meticulously crafted plans died two feet shy of the finish line.”
Boden fists his hair, glaring at the ceiling. “Even if he seems all-powerful, he’s sent other people to do his bidding rather than leave his seat of power. He cannot possibly have reach throughout the entire world; there has to be somewhere we could go.”
Cinjin tilts his head, eyes glazing over as he silently communicates with his other half. “What about Carina?”
Damian scrubs a hand over his jaw as he contemplates it, looking like the last half hour aged him a solid decade. But despite how overwhelming our situation is, he doesn’t appear hopelessly resigned like I’d imagine. If anything, it seems to have lit a fire under his ass. “Her brother might have kicked us out of town, but she could probably sway him to let her stay in Khalida while we deal with this. After the way Carina was eyeing Sabrina, though, the bigger problem would be getting her back. You really think sending her away is a good idea, though?”
Snorting, Cin beats Sabrina to the punch when she opens her mouth to object. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I’m saying that the woman clearly has some influence at her disposal, and her brother sent chills down my spine when he threw us out of the hotel. So whatever kind of shifters they are, it makes a mind-fucked wolf demon nervous, and that could be a leg up in our favor if we got them on board.”
Picking up where he left off, Reid slowly nods. “She said her brother’s legion slaughtered the elders and freed all but the wolves that cling to their hierarchy to survive. I don’t think the other shifters are under the same sort of curse as the... Nightmares are. We literally need that structure to survive. If we don’t have our alphas to siphon some of the misery from our shoulders, it crushes us, or we go mad.”
Hunter leans against the opposite wall, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow. “At the pool there was a woman with claiming marks all over her, and the others that were obviously with their mates, nothing to be seen. Doesn’t mean the marks weren’t somewhere discreet, but just the one proves that mates work differently from shifter to shifter. If they have their own mate curses, they likely suffer in separate ways than we do. Say the Nightmares really were meant to siphon some of the pain from the ungrateful humans’ shoulders; it’s on par with alphas and their packs. Might look differently than once upon a time, but the roots are still there.”
Sabrina strums her fingers on her knee. “Carina did the same thing that Ash did; masking her presence until she wanted to reveal it.”
Cinjin furrows his brow. “You did, too.” As we all look at him in confusion, he slowly elaborates, “Outside of the police station when we were all going to meet Nate after he called saying we needed an alibi. Everyone was pissed off and I remember thinking that it was weird you were lessening your presence, like you were trying to fade into the background. I thought it was an anxiety thing, but you said it was a gift, letting Slade take point because he needed to at the time.”
“To be fair, none of us have ever tried to appear like less of a threat.”
Slade closes his eyes and sighs. “If I were Xander or Ash, I’d weave my lies subtly in between a heavy dose of the truth. I can’t see how lying about the types of demons could remotely apply to what Ash’s attempting to get you to do, so we can reasonably assume that at least was true. If a Nightmare’s power is rooted in twisting reality and messing with people’s heads, then logically, taking on people’s suffering would hit us harder than the other branches. Even if the other demons carry some related affliction, it makes sense why we’ve put such emphasis on our place in the hierarchy as a means to define who we are.”
Sabrina wraps her arms around her legs, thumping her head back on the wall. “Maybe this isn’t actually a bad thing. It sounds like the demons are as much victims in this as we are.”
Reid picks up his glasses, scowling at the crack in one of the lenses. “It kills me to agree with you, but to be fair, the ones inside of us didn’t even know what they were. They may be our bodies, but they were born into them as much as we were.”
Pulling Sabrina onto my lap, I rest my chin on her shoulder, inhaling her intoxicating coffee shop scent to settle my raging nerves. “What have they actually done beyond exist? Hell, Reid, yours was dormant almost as long as Sabrina’s was. It’s not like he ruined your life or even warred for control until that injection that you chose. He let you live your life, and resigned himself to rotting away until recently.”
Sabrina holds out her hand in front of her, claws lengthening and retracting before she sighs. ”Even if they weren’t a part of us, can any of us seriously pretend that we’re good people?” Gesturing at Bo, she demands, “How many have you killed, not because you had no choice, but for money? Sure, you picked garbage humans that arguably deserved to die, but it’s not like we’re exactly saving orphans from burning buildings, here.” Indicating Cinjin, she emphatically decrees, “We start the fires; not put them out. And it isn’t because of our brains’ roommates, it’s because of us.”
Wrapping a tendril of her hair around my finger, I take a page out of her book and silently count to ten before speaking. While I need the answer, I secretly hope that my other half will use the time to stop me. Unfortunately, he’s just as nervous as I am, but more afraid of not knowing, and remains silent.
“Are you saying that... you want to help Ash? After Aurelia killed herself trying to stop him?”
Boden interrupts before she can reply, staring at me like I’m an idiot for even suggesting such a possibility that our mate could sympathize with that monster’s plight. “How can literally unleashing hell on earth possibly be the right thing to do?”
She looks him dead in the eye. “We are living in a hell on earth; look around you.” Tossing up her arms, they flop down again in defeat. “Take away the wolves and gods know what else is lurking in the shadows, and still, what are we left with?” She shakes her head, climbing off of my lap, and I get a glimpse of the anguish within her eyes, my stomach flipping. “I’m not saying I agree with him, I’m saying that things aren’t as black and white as who’s wrong or right, and we shouldn’t treat them as such.”
She turns to face Damian. “You were obsessed with saving your pack to the point that you made several questionable decisions. Is this really any different?”
With a soft growl, Damian retorts, “He’s made everyone he’s ever come into contact with suffer, used us all as pawns.”
“He orchestrated a way to bring back the one person that has the ability to set everyone free,” she counters.
Boden presses the issue. “Which is why he manipulated your life so that you’d be disappointed by the humans and sympathetic to his cause, to play right into his hand.”
Slade sighs. “We can run, but then we’ll never be able to stop.”
“Look.” Beyond frustrated, Sabrina slaps a hand against the nearest wall, shutting everyone up with the harsh sound. “People don’t do what’s right because it’s fun, they do it because someone has to. It’s hard. It’s not fair. But neither is letting innocent people continue to suffer for crimes they didn’t commit. And yeah, it’s a selfish motivation, but I want more out of my life than constantly fighting and struggling to survive. I’d rather just fucking deal with this now instead of having an axe hovering over our necks forever. I’m not running, and I’m not hiding. And no, I’m not confident that we can outsmart the fucking savant of human chess, or come up with a solution that will make everyone remotely even close to happy. But I’m also not going to roll over and give up. With those options ticked off the list, the only ones left that I see are either doing what he wants and trying to escape before he stabs us in the back, or using that same knife to get a final shot in on our way to the grave. May not kill him, but at least we go out with a final ‘fuck you,’ and I could make my peace with that.”
“So... what?” Reid demands. “We go to Ash and say ‘sure thing, Satan. We totally trust that you aren’t a goddamn liar and have a way to exorcise your buddies without killing us in the process, because I’m sure you have our best interest in mind. You know, despite the fact that you resent humans after centuries stuck in one’s body after you were already at war with them? As long as you pinky promise, we’re good to go?’ This is insane, Sabrina.”
