Page 78 of Rabid
We don’t hesitate to follow him, our paws racing down the surprisingly wide set of stairs. We hit the bottom a second after Tyran, staying so close that we can feel every swish of his tail against our front legs.
The space is a plain square room covered in Twin Rivers’ scents. There are pinpricks of light feeding from the ceiling that make it look like someone poked holes into the top, like feeding air to a bug in a jar. If it weren’t for my wolf’s superior senses, I wouldn’t be able to see much of anything.
Both my wolf and Tyran’s stop to take it all in as Kier comes up behind us and does the same. Anxiety pulses through me at the dead silence in the room, but my wolf is focused as she allows herself a moment to take in her senses, determining what she can pick up. With so much of Twin Rivers polluting the air, it’s difficult to pick up anything else other than the scent of bleach, as if they mopped this place floor to ceiling in the caustic stuff.
In front of us is a hallway, a claustrophobic expanse of concrete walls and floor. But my wolf’s lips peel back, nose tilted in the air, because she smellsus, and right next to it is Presley’s scent, thicker and filled with fear and blood.
Tyran’s wolf lets out a low growl, and then he creeps forward, pausing once to look back at us. I’m confused for a second, but then realize he doesn’t want us walking behind him. My wolf steps up to him, and only when we’re side-by-side does he start forward again. Kier takes up the rear with two layers of wolves behind him, just like two layers of wolves are in front of us. Our paws silently tread forward, noses trained and ears perked for the slightest sound.
My mate’s side presses against mine, muscles tense as we walk. Lights hang uselessly from the short ceiling above us. The bare bulbs are turned off, the depleting light making the darkness close in on us more and more, like the hallway might just swallow us down at any moment.
It’s why we don’t see the attack before it’s right on top of us.
Thepop pop popof an all-too familiar tranq gun goes off at the same time that five wolves burst through a doorway to our right. The front layer of wolves dive in front of the darts, taking them full-on, but still fighting the intruders mercilessly as the drugs start to kick in. Screams and yelps bounce off the cinder block walls, but we rush forward in search of Presley.
An overwhelming scent of fear and desolation makes my wolf want to sneeze in order to dispel it. We smell other females down here, females that felt debilitating fear. With a snarl from Kier, someone behind us shifts and starts opening doors.
Terrified screams pierce the quiet as we go, but Tyran and I are focused on one thing only, rescuing our pack member.
Halfway through the cells, we smell her again. An impatient whine escapes my lips as we wait for someone with hands to open the latch on the door. There are no locks that we can see, only old industrial freezer-like handles that automatically lock once they’ve clicked in place.
An arm reaches through the cluster of wolves, the hand yanking on the latch and swinging the door open. More pops fill the air, and another layer of wolves in front of us take several darts with growls and well-timed leaps to ensure their alpha and luna aren’t hit. We rush into the room, making short work of the two Twin Rivers betas who were lying in wait with their tranquilizers.
We spin, looking for any more threats, and that’s when we see her.
Lying on the ground in her human form, beaten almost beyond recognition, is Presley. The smell of blood, hate, and terror float in the room, and my wolf and I can’t help but see ourselves in the broken female that’s sprawled out on the cold concrete floor. Tyran moves to approach her, but I cut him off. If her time was anything like mine was down here, a female’s touch and comfort might be less alarming at first than a male’s.
My wolf and I smell Conrad on her skin as we move closer, and visible handprints have been bruised into her arms and thighs. She whimpers as she senses our approach, and my wolf immediately pulls back, giving me control. Our fur falls away, our jaw cracking into place as I step forward and put myself in Presley’s line of sight. Her eyes are squeezed closed, but I notice a fresh bite is marked into her shoulder, and my wolf and I rage at what’s been done to her.
“Presley,” I whisper, trying to choke down the horror tightening my throat as I take her in. I’m careful not to touch her, not to trigger her in any way, and I wait until my voice registers and she hopefully opens her eyes. “Presley, it’s me, Seneca. We’re here to get you out,” I reassure her, but she’s lost in her mind, her body trembling violently against the fear I can smell rolling off of her in waves.
Tears drip down my cheeks as I look up at Tyran, the brown eyes of his wolf staring at me while we trade agony back and forth through our bond. I pull in a shuddering breath, my wolf losing it inside of me, needing to destroy the males who did this to our pack. The sounds of battle reach down to us from the cells, and I know we need to get Presley out of here and find the others. I’m terrified I’ll traumatize her even more by just picking her up and carrying her away.
So instead, I bite back a sob and move across the room to palm a dart gun that’s resting on the floor. I hate what I know I have to do, hate that it’s what they’ve done to herandto me. But if she’s unconscious, we can get her home, get her somewhere safe and familiar, and then try to help her work through the horrors that happened in this room.
With quick succession, I send two darts into the meat of her outer thigh, and my heart breaks when she doesn’t even cry out from the pain. It’s as though she’s locked down tight in her mind, and I worry if we’ll ever be able to coax her back out again. Tyran growls deeply, and two wolves from our group immediately shift and bend to pick Presley up.
Agony rips through me as I give myself back to my wolf, and as soon as we’re on our paws again, a fire and furor like we’ve never felt before consumes us. We look over at Tyran, and we can feel the same resolution pulsing out from him.
It’s time to make the fuckers pay.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tyran and I tear out of the cells like vengeance made corporeal.
The cries of abused and newly freed females fall away in our wake. Kier’s voice echoes behind us as he arranges extraction for each and every one of the ten wolves that we found down in the bunker. Disgust and horror provoke a merciless response from us as we start to tear through Twin Rivers wolves like vengeful tornadoes, leaving only destruction in our wake.
We hunt for Britton, Hess, and Burke as we purge a path of destruction through the land I once called home. I revel in the blood spilled by our teeth and claws every time my wolf and I take another enemy down.
Plummet Lake and Ruin Falls destroy Twin Rivers wolf by wolf, and it’s music to my ears.
While Tyran and I continue to fight together, taking down anyone who comes for us, a huge black wolf leaps at me. At first, I think it might be Burke, and my wolf snarls in anticipation of taking the fucker down, but it becomes clear that it’s not him when we don’t smell his sickly-sweet scent of rotting fruit. Tyran and I quickly destroy our attacker, and the taste of his blood keeps us hungry for the hunt of the alpha.
Howls fill the night air all around us with calls of retribution and declarations of fear as Ruin Falls and our allies purge this pack. While Tyran and I dispatch another beta, I smell him...Conrad. Burke’s beta calls to me like a beacon, demanding justice for his sickening scent being all over Presley, for the stench he left behind in the cells, for what he wanted to do to me.
Ferocious focus fills both my wolf and me, and we nip at Tyran, who’s finishing off another attacker, to tell him to come with us. We follow the scent my wolf has latched onto, dodging fighting wolves and dead bodies strewn across the ground. Twin Rivers is suffering mass casualties, but I can’t find it in my heart to care. Not when their scents cover that bunker. Not when they all helped to run this pack with fear and force.
Burke and his boys systematically destroyed everything that this pack, our people, were supposed to stand for. Too much of this pack let a monster call to their own, while the rest of them turned a blind eye, thinking the depravity and destruction wouldn’t come for them.
