Her screams turned into sobs and she slumped against the bars of her cell, her cries coming hoarsely. She lay on her side and clutched her knees to her chest, sobbing into them.
“Damien,” she whispered. She could not sense him at all. Her stomach cramped and ached, and she bent over, trying not to let herself imagine the death of her two babies inside of her. There was no blood, but she knew. Gone, gone, they were all gone. All gone away. She had nothing now. Nothing…
All of the energy had vanished from her body, and she did not know if she slept or if she was awake, it was so perfectly dark and silent. It might have been hours or days. Once she slept, and she dreamed that she was a wolf, running through the forest, looking for a stream.
She woke up, her arms tightly wrapped around her belly, already crying. If only she’d never started this, any of this. If only she’d accepted herself in human form and left it at that! Why had she wanted to shift? It was that which had led them back into this territory. If she’d stayed at home, stayed human, none of the wolves would ever have known about her or Damien’s pack. If only she’d stayed normal, Jordan would still be alive. Her twins would still be alive—
Julia balled her hands into fists and pounded them against her head, crying hoarsely through her tears. She tried to shift, her fingers scrabbling against her clothes, but nothing happened. She screamed and nobody came.
Lying on the cold floor in darkness, Julia cried and cried and wished that she would die.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Damien
A piercing shrill of fear and fury filled Damien’s head. What had they done to Julia? What could have made her shriek and sob like that? The answer loomed up from the blackest corner of his mind but he refused to accept it.
“What did you do to her?” he snarled at Grath. He could feel the veins standing out in his arms and neck. He strained against the chains even though he knew he had no chance of breaking through them.
“You said you will fight, did you not?” Grath said.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“That female is no longer your vessel. You will have no children in my pack”
“What?”
Damien could hear the amusement in Grath’s voice; he was relishing this, the utter power he had over Damien. “Your unborn litter,” Grath said, “will remain unborn.”
Damien’s non-comprehension held for one last, sweet fraction of a second. Then the understanding came tearing through him.
“Will you fight?” Grath asked.
Damien threw his head back and screamed in an unadulterated blend of agony and rage. The sound caromed off the cavern walls, multiplying and warping.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Grath said.
Damien’s body sagged. The cuffs dug into his wrists but he was barely aware of the discomfort, barely aware of anything except one bottomless, inescapable notion: His children were dead. Killed. It was his fault. He hadn’t protected her. He hadn’t protected them. His babies.
He screamed again.
They left him hanging, and all he could do was talk. He pled sometimes, pled for his life and for Julia’s. Then he threatened to kill, to torture. Finally he was reduced to hoarse cries that he could not even hear over the roaring in his ears. All he could say was her name. He apologized over and over again.
“Our babies. Julia,” he cried, the words splitting through his cracked lips. “Julia, our babies. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Julia. Julia...”
The rage and grief swirling inside him gradually became so twisted together that they were one emotion, one raw, all-consuming emotion. His chest felt as if his heart had been scraped away, and at the same time adrenaline blazed through his muscles in preparation for killing the monster before him.
A monster who’d murdered his best friend and his children.
Grath and two other shifters took him off of his chains and led him up the stairs. They walked outside for a bit before Grath opened a door. Damien heard whimpering inside.
“Julia?” Damien said.
“Damien,” Julia gasped, and Damien stretched forward. He hadn’t sensed their connection in this place.
There was a series of small metallic clangs, which Damien guessed was Grath unlocking Julia’s cell, and then Julia flung herself into his arms. She clung to him the way a drowning person would cling to a rescue line.
“Damien,” she sobbed. “The babies…”
“I know,” Damien said, not wanting her to have to say it; somehow that would make it worse, even though it didn’t seem like it could get any worse. Damien didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing he could say, nothing anyone could say that would make a dent in the pain.
And now he had to tell Julia, who’d just lost her babies, that she was about to lose her mate too.
“Julia…I—I have to fight Grath.”
“What?” Julia said blankly.
“Grath wants our territory.”
“Then he can have it!” Julia cried.
“He won’t listen to reason. The tradition is that he has to fight the alpha.”
“You have to fight him all by yourself?”
“Yes,” Damien said, and forced himself to add again, “To the death.”
He felt Julia flinch at the last word.
“But—but you’re blind!” she said.
“Yes.”
“That’s not fair at all! That’s ridiculous!”
“He doesn’t care about fair. He only cares about tradition.”
Julia was beginning to grasp the implications. Damien could her breathing quickening.
“Damien, you can’t.”
“I have no choice.”
“Give him the territory!” Julia cried. “Just give it to them, we’re moving anyway—”
“It’s not the land he wants, Julia. It’s the females. It’s you.”
He heard a few expulsions of breath from her mouth, the beginnings of words that died before they could form.
“How can you beat him if you can’t see?” Julia asked finally, desperately.
I can’t, Damien thought—but then he got mad at himself. He had to kill Grath. He had to. He was probably going to die himself, but he was going to go down clawing and biting and tearing.
“All it will take is one good bite,” Damien said.
“Just refuse. Refuse to fight, they can’t—”
“They’d kill me. And I doubt they’d make it painless. At least this way I have a chance.”
“That’s enough,” barked Grath from nearby. “It’s time.”
Julia was yanked away from Damien, out of his arms. Just like that. Gone. He realized in swooning horror that he was never going to feel her touch again.
“No!” Julia shrieked. “Nooo—”
One of the shifters grunted and then suddenly Julia was pressed against Damien once more and she was kissing him and he kissed her back for all he was worth.
Then she was ripped from his arms and he knew the shifters would not let her escape again.
“I love you, Julia,” Damien said hoarsely.
“I love you,” Julia cried out through tears as the shifters dragged her away. “I love you!”
Grath’s presence loomed in front of Damien.
“Shift,” Grath ordered.
The feel and taste of Julia’s lips lingered on his own. He relished it for one last moment in human form. For the last time. Then he shifted.
With slaps and kicks, the shifters guided him into the cavern again. The cavern was no longer empty; a few dozen people must have been clustered inside down there. Talking and laughter echoed through the room, and Damien felt the air crackle with excitement. The pack had been brought in to watch the fight.
When Grath stepped into the cavern ahead of Damien, a hush swept the crowd, and there was a shuffling of feet as people moved toward the edges of the room. Damien had expected roars of vicarious bloodlust and shouts of encouragement to their leader. The silence was eerie.
He heard a half-stifled moan behind him and knew that Julia had been brought in to watch as well. Helpless bitterness rose in him like bile. He did not want her to see him die. Especially not like this.
No, he snapped at himself viciously. You will not be slaughtered like a chicken. You will fight, and you will kill him.
“Alpha,” Grath said. “I will take your land. I will take your mate.”
“I will kill you first,” Damien breathed.
Grath’s claws clicked softly on the stone floor. It was the only sound in the cavern. He could have curled his claws back off the floor, which would have made his footfalls all but silent. He wanted Damien to hear. He was going to draw this out. Relish it.
Damien stayed perfectly still, his every hair bristled, his every muscle fiber humming with electricity. He surrendered himself to his senses.
It was a good thing the crowd was silent. Grath surely thought it didn’t matter whether Damien could hear him. Grath’s confidence would be Damien’s biggest advantage. He paced across from the bigger wolf
“You’re a disgrace to our kind,” Grath growled. “I kill one of your lieutenants, take your mate, kill your pups, and you want to negotiate? I would have demanded a fight. I don’t care if I was blind. I don’t care if I was paralyzed. Better to die fighting, no matter how badly you lose, than to live with your tail between your legs.”
Damien said nothing. Grath was moving around him in a slow circle, well out of reach.
“That’s what you get for trying to integrate with humans,” Grath continued. “Their civilization is a veneer. They try to make their own rules but ultimately the only rules that matter are the rules of nature. You begin to forget that if you live too close to them. You begin to think that love is important, and money, and luxury. No—all that matters is winning. The universe is one giant competition. Winning the chase after that deer. Winning a mate. And winning the right to take what you want.”
Grath went silent then—completely silent. Not only did he stop talking, the clicking of his claws ceased. He may have simply stopped moving, but Damien had to assume that Grath had curled his claws up off the floor and was sneaking up on Damien on the soft pads of his paws.
This was it.
Kill. That was the only thought in Damien’s mind as he strained his senses. Kill.
Now that Grath had fallen silent, tiny noises from the crowd became more prominent in Damien’s ears—fabric rustling, feet shifting, throats being cleared. As soft as these noises were, they were enough to conceal Grath’s even softer footfalls. Damien had no idea where Grath was.
A breath of air on his right haunch.
Damien lashed around with a snarl and snapped his jaws—but there was nothing there. He’d imagined it.
A laugh split the silence from a completely different direction. Grath was still at least ten yards away; it didn’t sound like he’d moved at all from where he’d been when he stopped talking.
A whisper of movement and claws ripped at his side. Damien lunged in that direction but Grath leapt back too quickly. The pain barely penetrated through Damien’s adrenaline buzz. Blood trickled down his side but he did not care. He would kill the man who had killed his children.