It was humiliating, but when he slowed down at all, the wolves behind him snapped at his haunches. Soon his sides were bruised and aching and his face was bleeding from scores of scratches.
Julia and Dee were behind him but he said nothing to them, not wanting Grath to know how much he cared about them—he would be more likely to use them as leverage. Grath had said the females wouldn’t be harmed, and Damien had gotten the impression he wasn’t lying. He took some short-term comfort in this, but not much.
Even though he was not interacting with Julia, and even though their connection was still flickering for some reason, all he could think about was her. Thoughts of her forced out the fear and drove him onward with teeth-gritted determination. He didn’t know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he did know he would stop at nothing to keep her safe. Ideally he, too, would survive for her sake, and for the sake of their unborn children…but that was not his priority.
What did Grath want from them? What was he planning to do to them? He’d said the whole pack had to bear witness. To what? Was he going to execute Damien as a show of force, maybe torture him first? Whatever Grath had in store for them, it wasn’t good.
Throughout the journey, Damien racked his brain for some brilliant plan, but none came. He was outnumbered, blind, powerless; it was maddening. All he could think to do was try to reason with Grath. Short of that, his goal was simply to stay alive as long as possible and hope that an opportunity to escape would arise, or that Mara, Katherine, and Kyle would track them down and figure out a way to rescue them.
Finally, the pack and its captives slowed down as they approached a heavy concentration of wolf scent, presumably their den.
“We fight later,” the wolf said.
“Fight?” Julia’s voice was scared.
“Fight?” Damien asked. “Fight who?”
There was no response.
The alpha was huge in human form, his weight thudding audibly when he stepped.
“Will you fight?”
Damien frowned; it was a strange question. If Grath wanted to fight, there was nothing stopping him from attacking Damien. But if there was any hope of resolving this, it would be through negotiation and words.
“There’s no need for us to fight,” Damien said. “You have your territory; my pack has my territory—
“That’s the question here, isn’t it?” Grath asked.
“There is plenty of land to go around.”
“Not many females, though.”
Damien’s blood chilled and simmered at once. “You can’t have them.”
“Then you’ll fight?”
“If we fight, I’ll kill you,” Damien said, filling his voice with a cool confidence he didn’t feel at all.
“Supposing you won, you can have our females. There are only two, but they understand the pack’s needs quite well.”
Damien frowned again. “I don’t want your females.”
Now it was Grath’s turn to sound puzzled. “What?”
“If your females want to join my pack, they’re more than welcome, but—”
“Welcome?” Grath hissed. “They would be yours.”
“My females decide for themselves which pack to belong to. They’re in my pack because that’s their choice.”
“We do things the traditional way in this pack,” Grath said, and Damien could hear his disgust. “The right way. So if you want to keep your territory, you’ll fight.”
Finally it made sense. Grath wanted Julia and Dee. But he would insist on going through the ritual as though it was a fair fight. That way none of his wolves would see his actions as wrong.
“We don’t need to do this,” Damien pleaded.
“Please, blind one,” Grath spat. “You’ve been around humans for too long. My wolves and I are not civilized weaklings, we’re predators. We take what we want. You’re a pathetic excuse for an alpha. Nevertheless, the tradition must be observed. If you want to keep your females—or I should say, if you don’t want me to take them—you’ll fight.”
“And if I don’t agree? Will you just kill me?”
“I think you’ll agree.”
“If I don’t?”
“Then you will desecrate thousands of years of tradition that has been faithfully kept in this land.”
He leaned forward, and Damien smelled the dead flesh in his teeth as he spoke again, could feel the hot putrid breath of the shifter in front of him.
“But you will agree.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Julia
The tears felt like drops of ice by the time they got halfway down her cheeks. She shivered. Dee curled her body more tightly around Julia, enveloping her in warm fur. They were huddled on the damp stone floor of a cell.
They were going to hurt Damien, Julia was sure of it, maybe even kill him, and there was nothing she could do about it, absolutely nothing, she couldn’t even see anything. The darkness was so thick it seemed to physically press against her eyes. It was like being in a coffin.
As soon as this thought popped into her mind, she tried to shove it back out, but it was too late. The walls of blackness began to close in around her and suddenly her lungs felt constricted—she needed more oxygen—she sucked in a ragged, panicky breath but she couldn’t seem to get enough, there wasn’t enough in the air—
The door flew open and blinding gray light filled the world. Julia cringed reflexively against the back wall of the cell.
The silhouette of a tall, broad-shouldered man split the streaming light. He stepped into the cell, followed by the figure of a child.
Dee snarled, but the snarl turned to a whimper as her body twisted on the ground. At first Julia thought that Dee was being hurt, but then she realized that her grandmother was shifting back into human form. Without wanting to. She lay nak*d and breathless on the ground.
The man tossed a bundle of gray cloth at Dee’s feet. A tattered, grimy dress.
“Dress yourself,” the man said. “No one wants to see those saggy wrinkles.”
Julia glared at the man, hate seething in her gut and helped Dee with the clothes. Tired, Dee pulled the dress up over herself with trembling hands.
Julia turned to the witch, who was watching her with big, bright, blue-gray eyes. These eyes were somehow too innocent, like a cartoon version of a child. Julia recognized the face.
“You…you helped me before,” Julia said to the witch.
“You,” the man growled, pointing at Julia, and cocked a thumb at the door. “Let’s go.”
Julia had no choice but to obey. Dee started to follow but the man shoved her back.
“Dee!” Julia cried, but the man shut the door and pushed Julia out with a cruel expression of joy.
They stepped out into the pack’s den, a patchwork of thatch-roofed huts and log houses surrounding an expansive, grassy courtyard. The sky was a flat slate of clouds, harshly bright through the clouds. Julia had no idea where the sun was. The forest encircling the den was a dense, dark wall, the sky seeming to seep down in the form of mist along the branches.
“Please,” Julia tried again. “Please. You helped before—”
“How did I help you?” the witch said. Her voice was just like her eyes, so angelic it raised the hairs on the back of Julia’s arms.
“You lifted the curse,” Julia said. “You made me able to shift.”
“I did nothing you could not have done yourself.”
Desperate frustration built up in Julia and tears stung her eyes. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping them?”
The werewitch didn’t answer.
The man moved them along, directing them into a hut that was actually a covering for a wooden staircase. The steps plunged underground, lit by a weak, flickering torch set into the wall. They were precariously narrow and there was no railing. Julia felt like she was descending into a tomb. Maybe she was.
“Please,” she whispered to the werewitch, hoping the man wouldn’t hear; she had to keep trying, there was nothing else she could do. “You can help us, I know it…”
Julia voice trailed off into a gasp as they reached the bottom of the staircase and rounded the corner into a huge cavern. Studded with stalactites, the ceiling of the cave was high and arched, the point of the roof retreating into darkness. The many wall-mounted torches gave the air an orange-red hue.
Damien was chained to one of the walls, his arms strung up at his sides.
Before Julia could process any of this, the werewitch said, “Now? Now I will help you more than ever. Ak-kar-ali-ma!”
And as she said this, her angelic voice became cracked and phlegmy, the voice of a shriveled, spiteful hag, a crypt keeper, and Julia’s body was frozen still. The witch snapped up one hand to Julia’s face and forced a vial between her lips. Julia screamed and thrashed and tried to wrench her head sideways, but the witch yanked Julia’s head back and held her chin shut. Acidic liquid filled Julia’s mouth. It burned, oh it burned!
Julia tried to spit it out but to no avail. She choked as the burning liquid slid down her throat, hot and sinister.
The witch snapped her finger and Julia fell to her hands and knees, coughing, retching.
“Julia!” Damien strained against his chains, wrenching his body out toward her; the jangle of the iron links echoed in the open space like a grating cackle. “Don’t do anything to her! I’ll fight! I’ll—”
The liquid scorched down Julia’s throat like a shot of extra high-proof alcohol, but unlike alcohol, the burn didn’t fade. It intensified, it spread. Icy flames of agony licked through her body. Her skin broke out in sweat and gooseflesh at once as the angry fire branched through her chest and down, down—
Down to her womb.
“No,” she breathed, pressing both hands to her stomach, the pain abruptly forgotten. Time seemed to freeze, trapping her in that initial moment of incredulous horror.
The steady soft beating of the twins that had become so much a part of her own self had suddenly stopped. She searched within herself for the sense of their presence, but her body was hollow, empty.
“NO!” she screamed, her fingers scrabbling across the skin as though she could find them by hand. “What have you done?! What have you done?!”
“Julia!” Damien cried hoarsely. “Julia, what is it? What is—”
“What have you done?!”
The two shifters standing guard grabbed Julia’s upper arms and began to drag her away. Her body twisted as if in death throes, her legs dragging along the ground, her mind a sucking void of anguish. She screamed so hard her throat felt like it was tearing.
“YOU! What have you done!!!”
The witch stood watching her, once again a grotesque caricature of childlike innocence.
The men wrestled her up the narrow staircase and into a room, hurled her into a barred cell, and slammed the door, locking her in blackness. But this wasn’t the cell she’d been in before, no, Dee was not here, where was Dee?
“Dee?” Julia moved to the bars, her trembling hands fluttering over the cage that held her in darkness. “Dee!”