Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

The wind hissed through my hair, fat drops of rain driving against my cheeks and carving lines of ice across my skin, but I could barely feel it as we flew over a dark and unfamiliar terrain.

Mountains pierced the ground below in a jagged, broken formation which punctured the swathes of flat, open jungle between them, and fog hung in deep pockets over the valleys, hiding the secrets of the land.

This pain in my heart was a ruinous thing, set to devour me from the inside out, gnawing through me relentlessly until I found it hard to draw breath.

Dante banked hard, plunging from the sky and I braced on instinct, my body knowing how to move with him as he flew even while my heart broke apart within my chest and threatened to fall out of me piece by piece.

A flash of dark, feathered wings drew my attention to the Harpy who flew with us, my eyes tracing over a myriad of tattoos which were visible on his bare chest and back as he passed us. Gabriel had come all this way to help us but even with him on our side – the greatest Seer in Solaria – we had failed so horribly. Had he known? Had he seen it and not stopped it?

As the thought occurred to me, I dismissed it. He’d made it clear our odds of success were low in his predictions about the escape and yet I’d chosen to stack our fate in the hands of them anyway. I was certain he wouldn’t have allowed this fate to play out if he had seen any way to avoid it, or realised that it was coming at all. But like all things, fate was never set, the future could change on the toss of a coin and even the greatest of Seers couldn’t predict every outcome.

Esme was sobbing quietly behind me, but the others were all deathly quiet.

I didn’t look to any of them. I couldn’t. Not while I held so many of them accountable for us losing Roary. The men at my back had claimed such devastating feelings for me but had still ripped me away from the man I had sacrificed so much to rescue. They’d forced me to leave him behind. They’d taken that choice from me, and no matter what justification they might claim for doing so, my anger at them was second only to the raw pain tearing through my heart.

Leon still held me close, though the kids’ arms had grown slack around my waist, their little bodies becoming soft with sleep during the long flight. I’d stolen strength from the love in their embraces, but I hadn’t been able to look at any of them either, the weight of my failure ripping through me, the guilt grinding away my core. They’d never seen their uncle Roary in the flesh and had come all this way because they’d believed in me and my foolhardy plans. They’d been as eager to finally meet him as he had been to hold them in his arms at long last, but that sweet and beautiful moment had been snatched away in the wicked claws of fate.

They’d come to unite with him and had been forced to swallow the bitterness of my failure instead. I closed my eyes tightly against a fresh surge of tears as I tried to swallow the reality of that failure.

Dante tucked his wings and Hastings shrieked as we plummeted towards the ground with a low, rumbling snarl, electricity crackling from his scales and setting the clouds sparking with light.

“Oh my Jolly Rodger!” Plunger cried and Cain cursed darkly.

Thick beads of heavy moisture swept across my skin as we dove into a cloud, the world becoming swathed in thick grey all around us, the fine hairs lining my arms standing on end as the Storm Dragon’s electricity infected the air itself, the static clinging to me and zapping against my chilled flesh.

The cloud cleared as suddenly as it had engulfed us, the rainforest filling the view beneath us in a rush.

We hit the ground with a violent thump, Plunger screaming as he fell from his spot behind me while Dante chose a perch on the side of one of the mountains, landing in a clearing between the towering trees that was big enough for his immense body.

The others began to dismount, but I remained where I was, staring out into the trees where animals squawked and bellowed, chirped and hooted. The air was muggy and thick with moisture, my filthy skin growing slick with it as I stared out at nothing and tried to come up with any kind of plan which might fix this.

Leon gave my shoulder a squeeze then lifted the kids into his arms and leapt down to the jungle floor, neither of them waking as he cradled them against him. I found myself watching them as he moved to speak to Gabriel in a low tone, the black-winged Harpy having landed several paces away from the escapees. My eyes fixed on them, their murmured words of loss and pain, of horror over the way this had gone washing over me as if they were hurling accusations at me with vitriol. I wished they really would offer me their anger. Instead, there was this air of bleak acceptance to Leon and Gabriel, their disbelief and sadness not bleeding into the rage I deserved for failing them.

“Rosalie, love?” Ethan murmured, his hand landing on my shoulder.

I jerked away from him, snarling darkly as I pushed to my feet and glared at him.

“Don’t,” I warned before turning my back and leaping to the ground. I couldn’t bear to look at him after what he’d done to help drag me from that place without Roary in my arms.

The impact with the dirt jarred through my legs but I ignored the twinge of pain, stalking around Dante’s large, dark blue body and moving to stand before his face.

He was utterly enormous in this form and I raised my chin as he looked me over, his bright Dragon eyes sizing me up in a way which might have made another Fae shit their pants.

‘You left without him,” I hissed, my body tight with tension, rage eating me alive and fury making me toss blame out in every direction I could.

Dante shifted suddenly, causing Ethan to curse loudly as he was dropped to the jungle floor in the process. I was forced to tilt my head back to glare up at my cousin who towered over me in his Fae form.

“We’ll fix it, Rosa,” he swore. “You know we will.”

A lump formed in my throat, a thousand furious accusations tightening my gut. Those same words had been tossed around for the last ten years and they hadn’t meant shit. This had been our shot to get him back. Our one chance. The backs of my eyes burned as my fingers curled into fists which threatened to crack bone, my agony desperate for an outlet that I couldn’t offer it.

“Despair won’t get you anywhere,” Dante growled, catching my chin in his grasp and forcing my eyes onto his. I blinked and two tears spilled down my cheeks, racing one another towards their demise, their easy escape from the agony within me making me jealous of their brief existence. “Take that pain and forge it into something fierce, something powerful, something real, Rosa. Make it drive you or it will break you.”

I flexed the fist curled at my side and he caught the motion, raising his chin to offer me a target if I wanted it. But punching him wouldn’t make me feel better. I couldn’t truly lay any blame at his feet anyway. This had been my plan. My responsibility. My failure.

“I need to return these convicts to custody,” Cain snarled from my left and I whirled on him, happy to have a real target for my rage as I bared my teeth and advanced on him.

“Try it, stronzo,” I said in a vicious tone. “See how far you get.”

Cain looked from me to Plunger, Esme, Pudding, Ethan and Sin before finally finding Hastings who was skulking at the edge of the trees. Cain jerked his chin, glancing to Sin once more in a clear command, but Hastings shook his head, backing up a step.

“I’m done, Mason,” he said in a shaky voice. “I’m fucking done trying to control those animals. You don’t know what I saw in that place. They…ate Officer Kato’s brain. They bound me and tortured me and I witnessed so many fucked up things. I saw potatoes endure a fate worse than death…”

“What the fuck are you talking about, potatoes?” Cain demanded while Hastings’ eyes flicked to Plunger then away again as he cringed back into the foliage looking haunted.

“Oh, is it time for them to be used, Ma’am?” Plunger asked me, drawing my eyes to him where he stood butt naked, covered in smooth, grey hair, fists on his hips as he dropped into a squat.

“That’s savage,” Sin muttered, fascination lacing his words as his gaze remained on Plunger.

I wrinkled my nose and looked back to Cain, not needing to see any more of that fucked up nonsense.

“Looks like you’re fresh out of friends,” I hissed, taking a step closer to him and peering into his grey eyes with nothing but threat in my expression. “And you also seem to be in need of a dose of reality, so I’m going to lay it out for you. You’re not Officer anything anymore, Mason. You aided in our escape, ran with us across that fucking minefield and leapt onto the back of the Storm Dragon just like the convicts you so despise. You killed to get us out of there. You plucked me up into your arms and used your speed to ensure I escaped. You and Hastings aren’t going to be able to just swan back to Darkmore and say ‘oh hey guys, sorry about that – we got caught up in the idea of running for our lives and forgot that, in doing so, we were aiding and abetting.’ What do you think they’ll do, stronzo? Give you a pat on the back and a medal of valour for trying so hard to stop us that you accidentally ended up helping us instead?”

“That’s not how it was. You’re twisting it from the truth,” Cain growled, stepping up to me, fury burning in his expression. “I would never help this band of miscreants gain access to the outside world. I can prove it. I’ll offer myself up for Cyclops interrogation and-”

“And let them watch you hunt me, lie for me, kill for me and fuck me before finally hurling me on to the back of my cousin and ensuring I escaped? Good luck explaining that to the FIB,” I taunted and Cain’s face paled.

Dante chuckled darkly while Leon spluttered in surprise, pointing between me and the asshole guard like he couldn’t see it. But my poor, sweet choir boy stole the show by stumbling towards us and pointing his finger straight in Cain’s face.

“You?” he gasped, any lingering remnants of his belief in good and bad fading away before my eyes as I watched his hero topple from his pedestal in a crushing blow that shattered his little choir boy heart with a dose of brutal reality. “You and her?”

My gut twisted guiltily at the pain I found in his eyes as he took in the truth of what had been going on right under his nose this entire time, perhaps seeing me clearly for the first time since we’d met. And seeing Cain for what he was too.

“It…I…” he spluttered.

I moved to him and took his hand in mine, squeezing softly as I looked up into his horror-struck eyes. The innocence which had been so present in them before had dimmed, a hardness blazing in those rings of blue which spoke of all he’d witnessed and survived. I’d done that to him. I’d dragged him into this.

“I’m not good enough for you, ragazzo del coro,” I told him softly. “I’m all sharp thorns stained in blood beneath these pretty petals. You deserve a far sweeter flower than me.”

He frowned, swallowing thickly, words building between us, but Sin got there first.

“And she fucks like a demon too, bro,” he said seriously. “All the holes. Over and over. She likes to dominate, be dominated, get rough, get violent, choke on one cock while taking another in the ass, and you, my friend, daydream about pretty little good girls gasping your name between soft thrusts in dim lighting. Don’t get me wrong – I ain’t yucking your yum, but you never could have handled our wild girl.”

He patted Hastings on the shoulder consolingly while looping his other arm over my shoulders. Hastings had turned beetroot and my cousin was shaking his head and making a show of covering his ears while Leon loudly announced that it clearly ran in the family.

“Enough,” I snapped, shoving Sin’s arm off of me.

“You were in on this,” Hastings accused Cain and my hard-hearted guard seemed to soften a touch.

“It wasn’t meant to happen. I just…” Cain looked at me and my throat thickened from the raw anguish in his eyes, then he tore his gaze from mine and shook his head at Hastings. “I’m sorry I’m not what you thought I was, kid.”

“I don’t think anything is what I thought it was anymore,” Hastings whispered, anxiously pushing a hand into his soft blonde hair. “I think the stars are telling me something about myself too. Something deep and dark and ominous.”

“Hastings…Jack,” I said, moving towards him again and taking his arm so he was forced to look at me. “You could go back. You didn’t do anything to help us. You were just trying to survive. I’m pretty sure that if you return to Darkmore you could-”

“No,” he rasped. “I’m not going back there. Not now. Not ever.”

I glanced at Dante who shrugged at me. He’d pulled on a pair of sweatpants so at least he wasn’t naked now and he’d taken Luca from Leon’s arms.

I sighed, looking between the rest of our group. The plan from here had been to dole out stardust then let everyone go on their way and try to keep hold of this chance at freedom. But we’d lost so many of our group. And I needed Sin to appease Jerome who would be waiting to see that his efforts in getting the Incubus released had paid off. Ethan had made it clear he planned on sticking with us anyway. Esme was looking at me like a wounded puppy, still wearing the leaf bra I’d forged for her while we ran and nothing else. That left Pudding, Plunger and the guards.

I didn’t know what to do with all of them and my head was too full of everything that had happened to Roary to be able to come up with a plan at the moment.

“We’re sticking together a little longer,” I said decisively, not looking to anyone else for their opinion on this. “Let’s head back home.”

Dante glanced at the assembled convicts and guards, arching a brow at me which said ‘seriously?’ but he made no further complaint as Leon took a pouch of stardust from his back pocket.

We closed in around him and Gabriel looked up at the sky, frowning darkly.

“What is it?” I asked the Seer as he rustled the feathers of his obsidian wings.

“The FIB will raid the Oscura stronghold and surrounding vineyards in two days. The family lawyers have already been at work providing alibies for us – they even have eighty eyewitnesses who spent the night in Dante’s company to prove it couldn’t have been him who rescued you.”

“You let Carson take on your appearance?” I asked my cousin, knowing already that it had to have been him.

“Yes. Though I will admit that I’m concerned about what he will have done to my reputation while I was supposedly at that party,” Dante said.

The look of amusement on Gabriel’s face confirmed that ‘Dante’ had gotten up to all sorts of reputation-altering nonsense, but I couldn’t summon the interest in that to ask about it further.

“Time to go then,” I said firmly.

We all moved close enough to be transported by the stardust, but Cain held his ground, folding his arms across his broad chest.

“I’m not going to a den of heathens in the heart of the criminal underground,” he snarled.

I shrugged, past the point of caring about his wavering moral compass. “It’s that or hang out here in the middle of the Baruvian Jungle, stronzo. Take your pick.”

Gabriel lifted a fistful of stardust above us, and I growled in a low tone as Ethan and Sin pressed in close either side of me before he tossed it over our heads.

A blur of motion announced Cain darting into the group a heartbeat before the stars snatched us into their grasp and we were whipped away into the embrace of the glimmering celestial bodies.

The whispers of the stars themselves hissed sharply in my ears as we were hurled through their embrace, the world whipping by around us in a vortex of sparkling light before they spat us out violently.

My feet hit the ground with a solid thump as we were released from the hold of the universe and deposited at the top of a steep hill where the Oscura vineyards stretched out away from us and the scent of home wrapped me in its embrace.

It was beautiful here, like an island set away from all the bad in the world where the sun shone down brighter on everyone who could lay claim to any piece of this stunning slice of land. In the distance, orange light was just beginning to crest the horizon, the sweeping landscape of hills and vineyards rolling away from us in every direction. It felt as though no other place existed in the world but this.

A sob clutched my chest as I inhaled deeply, the lack of my mate driving into me even deeper as I found myself back here without him. Everything about this was wrong.

The Wolves descended, a tide of Oscuras racing from the house, the vineyards, the woodland beyond and I was swept up onto the wide porch which ran along the front of the beautiful white villa where I had spent the best years of my childhood.

Cries went up, raised voices calling my name, then their excitement turned to confusion as they hunted for Roary. Dante’s deep voice rang out to silence the questions, a dark promise of explanation falling from his lips as he beckoned the swarm of Wolves to follow him into the house.

My pack dragged the convicts inside too, my Aunt Bianca cooing about the state of them, promising hot baths, fresh clothes and a hearty meal. I felt her eyes on me but I didn’t turn to look at her as Dante guided her away too, unable to face her penetrating gaze which always saw so much and understood so clearly.

Even Cain and Hastings were hustled into the house, all of them heading into the depths of the one place in this world where I had ever truly belonged.

I didn’t follow them.

I moved to the edge of the porch and took hold of a metal flagpole which had been driven into a huge flowerpot there, a crudely painted Wolf fluttering on the white flag above my head as I looked out towards the horizon which had just brightened with the blazing orange of dawn.

Minutes crawled by as I watched the dawn rise and let myself feel the jagged truth of what had happened, my heart reaching out in a desperate cry for my Lion, my soul wanting to tear itself in two just so that some part of it could find its way back to him.

I clenched my jaw, my fingers biting into the metal pole which I was fairly certain had become the only thing holding me upright anymore.

This failure ran deep within me, this pain a river that washed through my blood and left nothing but a burning, pointless longing in its wake.

I had failed. In all of this, there had only ever been one goal which truly mattered to me. One thing I had dedicated myself to for ten years, one utterly uncompromising reality which I had to achieve and yet… I had failed.

It paralysed me this pain. It tore at everything good that I clung to in myself and ripped away at the tattered soul remaining beneath the bravado and bullshit I dressed myself in so easily. I couldn’t live with this reality. I couldn’t sleep or eat or fucking breathe until I had rewritten this fate, but I had nowhere to turn this frantic energy, no way of doing what I knew had to be done. There were no clues to my salvation and I knew that he was suffering with every moment I delayed. I had failed him. And nothing I did now or could do in the future would ever be able to rectify the terrible truth of that.

But as I stood there staring at the dawn which should have been such a beautiful sight with him right there watching it beside me, I swore that I would get him back. By the power of the moon, I would go to the ends of the world and beyond to return Roary Night to my side.

My skin began to glimmer with the power of the moon as it bound my fate to that promise, an echo of the one I had made ten long years ago, and I tipped my head back as it imbued me, releasing a long, sorrowful howl to the sky and swearing on all that I was that I would fix this, or give my life trying.