Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

I took no pleasure in the steaming shower or the feeling of proper clothes hugging my body again for the first time in months. I didn’t feel like the girl who had owned these jeans or claimed that blue shirt as her favourite. My room felt too big and too small all at once, tucked away in the top of the house.

When I’d first come to live with my Aunt Bianca and her huge famiglia, she’d spent ten minutes in my company before patting the back of my hand and bustling off to clear out this old loft space for me. It was a long room with exposed rafters which ended in a triangular wall set with a single, circular window above the white iron bed. The window was in a white frame which was scuffed from the hundreds of times I’d swung it open and climbed out onto the roof beyond to sit beneath the moon.

There was no dust in here – Aunt Bianca kept the place spotless and the scent of lemons lingered in the air. She used them to make her own cleaning potion from the tree in the courtyard at the centre of the property and that sweet citrus mixture along with the view across the endless rolling vineyards sung a lullaby of home just for me. But it wasn’t home without Roary. Not anymore.

I ran my fingers over the mate mark on my arm that linked me to him, closing my eyes and praying to the moon for guidance. It wasn’t like my bond with Ethan – I couldn’t feel Roary’s pain, but I feared that if I could then I would have been screaming by now.

Roary needed me. I’d gone to Darkmore to save him and I had the terrible feeling that I’d only made his situation worse when I’d failed.

A single knock at the door made me look up, tension lining my body as I expected Ethan or Sin or maybe even Cain to have come looking for me, but I released a heavy breath as I found my aunt pushing the door wide instead.

“Rosa,” she said softly, the door snapping closed behind her before she approached me.

I swallowed thickly as she assessed me, this little woman with a heart bigger than the moon itself. She was short, her dark hair streaked in grey and coiled into her usual bun as she pierced me with eyes so like those of her son that I felt as though Dante were the one appraising me with that look. Bianca had stood at the head of this household for a long time since losing my uncle back in the gang wars which used to rule this part of the kingdom. She wasn’t our Alpha but she was our mama. Me, Dante, the rest of her blood born children and a hundred other Oscura waifs and strays besides. We weren’t all blood but we were all famiglia.

Bianca sighed as she took me in, carefully tucking a lock of ebony hair behind my ear, her fingers brushing against the rose vine tattoo that peeked out from the top of my shirt before she drew me into her arms.

I stiffened. I wasn’t like the other Wolves in this way – I didn’t need the constant tactile behaviour, endless hugs, or to sleep in a pack huddle. I liked my own space – which was precisely why she’d given me this room. Close enough to everyone here to know I belonged, but at enough of a distance to buy me the space I so often craved.

She murmured soft words to me in Faetalian and I slowly unravelled in her arms.

“Let it out, lupa,” she encouraged, her fingers stroking through my hair, and I cracked apart just like that.

A sob shook my chest and tears spilled once more. She didn’t ask anything of me. Didn’t need to. In this house news spread like wildfire and I was certain that by now every detail of our escape and our failure to rescue Roary would have circulated three times already, the facts mixing with fiction, embellishments at every turn but the truth of it immovable all the same.

“Who are you, Rosa?” Bianca asked me after the world had shattered around us and grown anew again, more twisted and darker than before, the void where Roary should have been taking up so much space that it was hard to breathe around it.

“I’m a failure,” I breathed.

“None of that,” Bianca barked, still holding me like a babe but no give in her tone.

“I am…” My mind whirled with all the answers I could offer to such a question.

I was a creature made of malicious design raised in a house of hatred then given a home bursting with love. I was brutal and powerful, fragile and fickle. I was a thousand unheard wishes and one potent demand. This world hadn’t offered me a place when I was born but I had carved out one for myself regardless. I was my scars and my pain, my honour and my love. I was a Wolf and a loner. I was a mate twice over, a lover more times still, a prisoner and yet freer than most Fae I’d ever met because in my heart I knew who I was and what I demanded from this life which was so prone to wickedness. I was Rosalie Oscura. And nobody told me no.

“I am Rosalie Oscura,” I growled aloud.

Aunt Bianca nodded firmly as she stepped back and looked me up and down. She didn’t wipe the tears from my face and neither did I. They were no sign of weakness but of the potency of my love for Roary Night and a mark of what I would do to get him back.

“A morte e ritorno, lupa,” Bianca said firmly. “You have work to do yet.”

“A morte e ritorno,” I echoed and strode from the room with my chin high and heart pounding because I knew what I had to do.

I moved through the twisting house, enduring the embraces and soft touches of my many family members as they slipped from rooms and made way for me to pass. Their eyes trailed me as I walked, each of them moving aside for me as their Alpha, a tension rolling through the household which had everything to do with my pain. They were my pack so they felt it too.

The kitchen was a grand room at the heart of the villa, a table big enough to seat forty – and yet still often not big enough for all of us – dominating the central space while work surfaces, the sink and ovens surrounded it. As usual, a meal was being prepped across the longest counter, vegetables chopped and diced, sauce simmering on the stove.

I found Ethan sitting at the table, his hands clasped around a mug of coffee while four pups – my cousins’ kids between the ages of six and nine – were huddled in close either side of him. They were petting his hair and prodding at the tattoos that were visible on his arms, asking for stories about each in turn. His eyes moved to me the moment I entered the room and I paused, the sight of him there among my famiglia so natural that for a moment I had forgotten that he had been so afraid to come to this place, to mix with the terrifying Oscura Clan.

I arched a brow at him as if to say ‘I told you so’ and he nodded, though the movement was a little uncertain and only grew more so as Dante strode into the kitchen behind me.

“What is this one for?” little Andre asked, poking the serrated crescent moon symbol of the Lunar Brotherhood where it was inked proudly across Ethan’s chest – which had only been revealed because Roberto had grabbed the collar of Ethan’s t-shirt and half ripped it in his eagerness to find more tattoos.

“You know that one, Andre,” Maria drawled, all seven-year-old sass. “It’s the same as Zio Carson’s – the one Zio Leon calls ‘his great shame’ when he has his short hair face on.”

“Maybe that one is a story for another time, eh kids?” Ethan suggested, trying and failing to yank his collar back up while giving Dante a wary glance.

I looked to my big Storm Dragon cousin, taking in the sadistic gleam in his eyes then I grabbed an apple from the bowl which was overflowing with them at the heart of the table and dropped into the seat opposite Ethan to watch the show.

“I hear you decided to mate yourself to my little Rosa while you were in that hellhole, Lunar,” Dante said, spreading his fingers against the table as he leaned down to get a good look at Ethan. “Tell me, did fate whisper her name in your ear the moment you laid eyes on her?”

Ethan glanced at me, but I gave him nothing. If he couldn’t face off against the big bad Storm Dragon then he wasn’t worthy of a place in this family, moon mate or not.

“Something like that,” Ethan hedged.

The silence dragged on, punctuated by the kids giggling and tugging at Ethan’s shirt to seek out more ink.

Dante whistled sharply and they scattered, shrieking and howling as they ran, calling out to the other kids who were no doubt lurking in the closest rooms waiting to learn all they’d discovered about the new arrival.

“Look, I dunno what Rosalie has told you about the way this all happened,” Ethan said, once again shooting me a look but I only stared back blandly. My mind was on more important issues than him figuring out the power balance with Dante anyway.

“Assume nothing. But I’d suggest against lying all the same,” Dante purred like a bastardo and my lips almost twitched with a smile but my heart hurt too much for that.

“Where are the others?” I asked, having expected them all to have been ushered into this room – the heart of the house and all that, but there was no sign of them.

“Let’s focus on the Lunar first, hm?” Dante suggested and I rolled my eyes but waved a hand, indicating he should get this over with.

I bit into my apple again, the juice rolling over my tongue but I tasted nothing.

Ethan blew out a breath. “Alright, I’ll tell you straight – I fucked up. When me and Rosalie first met I knew I wanted her, shoulda seen then and there that it was more than simple want, in fact. She was my destiny staring me in the face pure and simple. She was beautiful – obviously – but it isn’t that I fell in love with. Her soul is like a blazing mirror to my own. I’ve never met anyone as strong as her, in spirit and mind. She drew me in like a fish on a line and once she’d got that hook in me, there was no denying that I was utterly hers. But…”

“But?” Dante asked darkly and yeah, maybe I’d relayed a bit of the but to him and maybe he was looking all kinds of pissed off already. Ethan was gonna have to get used to that if he was going to become an Oscura though.

“Like I said, I fucked up,” Ethan said on a long breath. “I…well I can fill you in on all of it if I must but what it comes down to is that I failed her. I didn’t step up. Tried to hide what we were…are. It was fucking cowardice if I’m honest. I knew claiming her would equal the end of my pack, my rule and though I should have understood faster that she would be worth anything I lost in the claiming of her tenfold, I took far too long to come to terms with that truth. In doing so, I guess I lost my chance to claim her as mine alone but when Rosa was mated to Roary too I realised I hadn’t ruined everything. He…I…we aren’t a thing like that, but he’s my pack now. The three of us are in this for the long haul and I’ll spend every day I am fortunate enough to be able to call that stunning creature across the table from me mine making up for the ways I failed her in the beginning. I’ll be worthy of her. I swear it. And if you harbour hatred for me because of the shit that went down back at Aurora Academy between us then-”

“Wait,” Dante said, frowning at Ethan, electricity crackling in the air around him. “What shit at Aurora? I didn’t go to school with you, stronzo.”

Ethan narrowed his eyes on Dante then gave me an accusatory look. “Did you tell him to say that to fuck with me?”

I snorted. “No. You clearly didn’t make much of an impression. Told you he wouldn’t remember some jumped-up Lunar stronzo from ten years ago.”

“I wasn’t just some random Lunar – I was Ryder Draconis’s second,” Ethan said firmly, raising his chin and looking at Dante like that should be all it took to jog his memory. “I didn’t have so much ink back then,” he added when Dante looked just as non-plussed by him.

“Ryder’s second was Scarlett Tide. You’re not her.”

“No,” Ethan said. “Well…yeah, but also no. I was his second at the academy after all that Bryce shit went down. You gotta remember me. We had all those run-ins. I kinda assumed you’d wanna beat my ass for even looking at your cousin – not that you could, but-”

A booming laugh made me flinch so violently I almost dropped my apple and my head snapped up as I looked to one of the beams which spanned the roof of the kitchen where Sin now hung upside down, grinning at us.

“It’s alright, kitten. Nobody minds that you were a nobody at school,” he purred, tossing Ethan a wink.

“I wasn’t a fucking no-”

“Lemon?” Sin offered, pulling a bright yellow fruit from his pocket and holding it out to me in offering.

“What the hell are you doing up there?” I asked him, accepting the lemon because I’d learned that if Sin Wilder offered you lemons, you just took them and didn’t ask questions.

“Hiding.” Sin pressed a finger to his lips but a shriek of delight came from the doorway where a hoard of pups had just come flying into the room.

Sin shrank so fast it was as if he’d disappeared altogether, a slight weight landing on my shoulder, followed by a tiny giggle letting me know where he was. His tiny feet pattered across my shoulder before he used a strand of my hair as a swinging rope and launched himself onto the table.

I watched as he sprinted towards the window, taking a running jump for it and shifting again as he did so, becoming a woman coated in ginger hair like a cat, long tail swishing wildly as he disappeared through the open glass.

The pups all whooped and howled in delight, most of them turning and bolting for various doors to get outside and chase after him, though a couple dove headfirst out of the window, almost sending a huge vase of wildflowers toppling after them.

Gabriel stepped into view outside it, catching the vase before it could fall and offering me a knowing smile which said he’d seen that coming.

“You’ve brought chaos into the future of this family by bringing that one to our door,” he said, gazing after Sin who was now racing along the edge of the pool laughing maniacally as the pack of pups chased him.

“Oh I know,” I agreed.

“Point is,” Ethan said firmly, drawing the attention of the room back to him. “Rosalie is my mate and I’m not going anywhere. So if that’s going to be a problem then we need to sort it out now.”

He pushed to his feet, muscles bulging, jaw locking, staring down a Storm Dragon as if he did so every other Tuesday. I had to admit, Alpha asshole looked good on him even if I was still pissed at him for helping to drag me here and leave Roary behind.

Tension filled the air, Dante’s lightning crackling against everything, making me curse him as I bit into my apple again and got a jolt to the tongue.

“Good,” Dante said finally, dropping into his seat at the head of the table and taking an apple from the bowl for himself. “Welcome to the pack then, Lunar. I look forward to seeing if you can keep up with me the next time we run beneath the moon.”

Ethan blinked, glancing to me as if wondering whether this was some kind of trap and I sighed loudly, waving a hand towards his chair.

“Sit down, stronzo,” I told him. “You’re in now. I told you it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Yeah,” Ethan agreed, lowering himself back into his seat slowly, still seeming uncertain, though a smile was hinting at the edge of his lips. “I guess you did.”

His gaze moved to me and fixed there, but I leaned back in my seat when he leaned forward in his, ignoring the hand he held out to me across the table.

“We’ll get him back, love,” Ethan said in a low growl. “I swear it on all that I am. We won’t lose him.”

“Maybe you should have considered that when you were running away instead of going after him back at the prison,” I said acidly.

“You know we had no choice. They already had him. If we hadn’t run then they’d have caught the rest of us too. And don’t go pretending I went against him somehow by helping ensure you ran with us because that’s bullshit and you know it. Roary wanted you to get out more than anything, love. He wouldn’t have thanked any of us for getting ourselves caught with him. From here we can actually help.”

I clucked my tongue, muttering some wholly insulting things about his idea of what was best for me in Faetalian and Dante sighed.

“He’s right, lupa,” Dante said to me. “You’re hurting and you’re angry but aiming it at the people in this house won’t do shit to help get Roary out and you know it.”

I shot a glare at my cousin then huffed out a breath. “I know,” I ground out. “I just…we were so fucking close…”

Tears burned the backs of my eyes but I blinked them away. Crying wasn’t going to help Roary but I was fresh out of other ideas too. Escaping from Darkmore once had been a miracle – trying to break him out twice was surely impossible.

“Rosa?” Aunt Bianca’s voice called to me from the TV room and I got to my feet.

“What is it Zia?” I called back, heading through the house with Ethan stalking my steps.

“You’re on the news,” she replied and I stepped into the room with the huge TV hanging from the wall, enough couches lining the big space that it was like attending the movies coming in here.

I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t have time to waste on watching news coverage of the escape but I fell quiet as my eyes fell on the screen where two rows of mug shots sat. Each image had been taken when we’d entered Darkmore, my own scowling face looking out at the camera from above the board denoting my name and number assignation.

My gaze skimmed the row of images from Ethan to Pudding to Sin, Plunger, Esme, and finally to Roary and Gustard whose faces sat right alongside ours.

“The convicts who managed to escape the so-called impenetrable penitentiary include notorious gangsters, a sexual deviant, a skilled thief and most alarmingly of all mass-murderer Gustard La Ghast who was convicted of the abduction, torture and eventual murder of more than-”

“Why are they claiming Roary and Gustard escaped with us?” I demanded, striding into the room and staring at the huge screen, my eyes on the image of Roary taken ten years ago, his hair long and eyes empty with despair. I swallowed thickly. I’d already failed the man in that picture by taking so long to come for him and now I’d done worse than that – I’d given him hope and seen it dashed before his eyes.

“They claim you kidnapped those two guards too,” Bianca said, her chin bobbing in the vague direction of the room upstairs that she had given to Cain and Hastings.

I scoffed. “Those two are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Is that so?” Cain’s voice came from the doorway and I looked around to find him there, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across his broad chest.

“I thought the door was locked to keep you out of the way?” I asked him in a bored tone but we both knew a little lock wouldn’t stop a Vampire from escaping and that he’d never really been locked up anywhere.

“There was me assuming the lock was to keep your pups away from me,” he drawled.

“The pups are far harder to contain than any Vampire,” Bianca said with a dismissive snort. “But this is a problem,” she added, waving a hand at the screen. “Escaped convicts they’ll give up on eventually – kidnapped guards on the other hand…”

“Once they review the evidence, they’ll figure out that Cain ran with us quite willingly,” I replied. “My main concern is why they would lie about Roary and Gustard.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Cain asked, going on when I gave him a blank look. “They don’t want anyone asking about the bodies.”

A snarl broke from my lips and I lunged at him for even suggesting that. Ethan grabbed my shoulder to stop me.

“Easy, love,” he said. “That’s not true anyway. They don’t care about bodies in Darkmore and they aren’t hiding the deaths of those other bastards who were trying to escape with us. Look.”

He directed my attention back to the screen and my heart lurched painfully as I found Sonny and Brett’s faces looking back at me alongside several of Gustard’s cronies, the news anchor now naming those who had died in their attempt to escape before moving on to a list of guards who were killed during the riots.

I swallowed thickly. I hadn’t wanted any of them to get hurt. I’d only ever wanted to get Roary out.

“Okay,” I breathed, trying to focus on what mattered now. “So they’re not covering up deaths but they are claiming Roary and Gustard got out with us. Which means…”

“They don’t want anyone asking where they’ve gone,” Cain finished for me.

I met his gaze, a flicker of fear running through me as I thought of the Fae who had been taken to Psych and of whatever fucked-up machinations had been taking place down there. Could this have anything to do with that?

“We need to figure out where they are,” I said firmly, my brain turning it all over, each piece slotting into another. The escape, the FIB, the guards, the lies on the news.

“Is this a private party or are we all invited?” Sin’s deep voice drew my attention back to the present as he strode into the room and threw himself down on one of the couches.

“Sin…” I said slowly. “Jerome was able to hack into the prison cameras while we were escaping. That means he might have still been watching when we got away, right? He might have seen where they took Roary. He can help us get back in.”

Sin’s eyebrows rose in understanding as he thought about that and a wicked smile crept across his seductive mouth.

“You know, kitten, I think you might just be onto something there,” he purred.