Page 4 of Rising Reign

I shoved out of his hold and stalked away. Puck may have had it right with all the pacing. “Ender, anything from your source?”

He shook his head, his expression completely impassive. “He’s pulling all his usual lines. I’ll hear back as soon as he has something.”

Fuck.

Every second we did nothing was another that Wren lived in agony. My vision went blurry as fury surged. I moved without thinking, letting out a roar as I grabbed the antique coffee table and hurled it at the wall.

It splintered into countless pieces, shattering glasses of drinks and plates of uneaten food with it. The whole room went silent. The only sounds were the pieces of my destruction settling and the fire’s crackles and pops.

My chest heaved as I dragged in ragged breaths. It wasn’t enough. Nothing was. I’d failed Wren in the worst possible way, and now she was paying the price.

I charged toward the hutch against the wall, needing to shatter that, too. Puck, Brix, and Ender all moved in, Brix and Ender grabbing my arms as I battled against them, snarling and snapping.

“Fuck,” Puck muttered. “Should I get a tranq?”

We kept them in the medical room in case one of us slipped into a feral state, but the idea of him injecting me with one now only had me fighting harder.

Ender cursed. “Yes. Get it. Now!”

“Wait!” Locke yelled. “I’m in.”

Those two words ignited the barest amount of hope in me. A lead. Information. Something that could help us get Wren back safely.

The urge to fight slid clean out of me. Brix and Ender kept a hold of me, waiting to see if it was a false submission, but it wasn’t. After a few seconds, they released me.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I’m sorry. I⁠—”

“Bugger off,” Puck muttered. “I hated that table anyway.”

I wanted to laugh, but I couldn’t make the sound. Instead, I rounded the couch, wanting to see the computer. The others followed. Locke’s fingers alternated between typing and using the trackpad. And then they stilled altogether.

“Fucking hell,” he swore, then expanded a camera view.

Wren stood before Bastian, who was on a goddamned throne, but that wasn’t what had Locke panicking. It was Wren’s back. She faced away from the camera, which had to be tucked in a tree, and wore an oversized T-shirt that should’ve been white, given the color of the sleeves. Instead, it was stained pink, red, and brown, with a mixture of blood and mud.

Wren’s scars played in my mind. Evidence of all the torture she’d endured at her father’s hand. And now she was back there. My back teeth gnashed so hard I was fairly certain I’d fractured a molar. But I didn’t give a damn. I only had eyes for Wren.

“We have to get her out,” Puck rasped. “We can’t leave her there.”

Brix’s breaths came quicker, more ragged. “I…am going…to kill…each and every one of them. I am going to bathe in their blood and put their heads on pikes.”

“Locke,” Ender said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Map out every camera location and watchpoint.” He looked at me. “They’re right. We can’t wait any longer.”

I knew he was right. It didn’t matter that we were up against a pack thirty times the size of ours. We’d find a way. “I’ll ready the plane.”

My phone rang as I pulled it out, but the sound was a notification for the gate. I frowned and tapped the screen. A familiar face poked out of an SUV window and filled my screen. “Hera? What are you doing here?”

Her pale-green eyes were hard as she stared back at me. “I know how to get her back.”

3

WREN

A fist slammed into my face, making my head snap back, but I barely felt the pain. I was numb to it now, and that was for the best.

The past forty-eight hours had been challenge after challenge, my father losing more and more patience as I defeated each of his female wolves. The first had been his pet, a woman who, even now, glared at me from her spot at his feet. Next had been one of his female enforcers. Next, I was going up against one of the male enforcers.

The males of our species had more strength—it was a physical-makeup thing—but that didn’t matter when I could use their size against them. Especially after my father had been forced to make good on his word to give me a hot meal, a shower, and a bed for the night. My strength had been revitalized.