Ryatt
The village of Cerserne sits on the southernmost border between the Roguelands and Rifthold.
Quiet, scant, and nothing but rolling, grass covered hills, it’s a peaceful place. The men quickly ushering their wives and children into the scattered pale stone cottages aren’t at peace, however, not with a band of wolves marching into their village.
The burly man in brown leather who walks in my direction looks murderous, but his expression shifts to one of skepticism and concern as he recognizes the dark emblem of the Roguelands on the armor on the bodies of my warriors who are still in their human forms.
I walk between the dozen or so warriors, Granger walking a few paces behind me. My warriors part to allow me to edge right up to the Alpha of Cerserne–an Alpha who once allied with Kane.
“What do I owe the…pleasure?” he croons, giving me a dramatic bow. His thick black beard brushes against his chest as he rises to his full height and crosses his arms over his broad chest.
I say nothing. I let silence simmer between us while I keep my gaze fixed directly on his. I don’t blink. I let my powers writhe over my skin, my shadows curling between my fingers. I am not fucking around right now.
My mate is missing. I can feel that she’s alive, but that’s it. Our bond is barely traceable, and I’ve exhausted all efforts to find her at this point. For three weeks, I’ve been on the verge of absolutely exploding with fury and grief, and the only reason I’ve been able to keep myself together and use my power to go scorched earth on anyone who even looks in my direction is because I know Ella, wherever the fuck she is, is giving her captures hell.
All we have as a clue to her whereabouts is that band of rogue wolves and the witch they follow.
The Alpha finally bristles and takes a single step backward.
With dominance asserted, Granger clears his throat and steps up to my side. “There’s been reports of a band of rogues moving across the Roguelands. We’ve been following their movements.”
The Alpha looks from Granger to me. I say with ice in my voice, “We have reason to believe they may have crossed through the northwestern edge of your territory.”
Several of his men begin to walk toward our group, drawing weapons from their belts. In the distance, wolves peek out from between cottages, some of them edging forward as thick, heavy tension absorbs the air between us.
But the Alpha rolls his neck and relaxes his shoulders, motioning for us to follow. “They did. Come, we were able to stop one before they left the territory.”
I glance at Granger, raising a brow. Granger is stone faced beside me. He doesn’t want to be here. None of us do. We should have crossed the river into Rifthold and been halfway across enemy territory by now, laying down the new laws and forcing enemy Alphas into submission.
But instead, we’ve been tracking my mate, and the serious threat that put her in this situation to begin with, across the Roguelands. All the while, whispers of conflicts brewing across the river into Rifthold have been flowing through each village. Another war is brewing, another enemy army posed to fight.
I’m running out of time to bring peace to my people.
But all I can think about is Ella.
The Alpha of Cerserne caught a rogue, however. This is the closest we’ve been to the group of soulless wolves now moving in a pack through my lands and harassing my people.
“It’s a female,” the Alpha says as we pass through the main section of the village. The rolling hills stretch on for miles, the grass a bright green against the stark gray sky. In the distance, a storm is rolling toward the village. Dark clouds stretch toward us like smokey hands.
The spare trees around us whisper in a warm breeze, but the birds are silent.
A sinking feeling tightens my gut as I follow the Alpha between a crop of stone cottages and a larger building rises into view.
“How do you know it’s a female?” Granger asks gruffly, his voice full of disgust.
I glance behind us at the warriors we’ve picked up along the way. Artyom is directing them to seek shelter from the incoming storm in what looks like a barn in the distance.
Good. I have a feeling whatever we’re walking into isn’t going to be pretty.
“She’s mostly in her human form, and our healer confirmed it.” The door to the roughly built stone building is shoved open and a cold rush of air comes spilling out, followed by the sound of panting.
I blink to adjust my eyes to the darkness. The air is damp–so humid I can feel the moisture on my skin. The smell is… indescribable. Like death itself. That sweet, rotting scent of spoiled meat.
But a young woman rises from a stool nearby holding a small mortar and pestle in her hands. A witch. I can feel the power coming off her as she bows low, her flaxen blonde hair falling over her shoulders. She lifts her head but keeps her eyes down as she steps aside.
But pale fingers curl around the pestle until her knuckles turn white. I don’t blame her for being nervous, and not because she’s in the presence of the Alpha King. No, it’s become clear over the past few weeks of searching the Roguelands for any sign of Ella that the witches who have left the coven to work as healers in the scattered packs and villages are being hunted. Many of her sisters have gone missing.
But my attention is stolen from the young witch by a scraping sound in the furthest reaches of the wide, darkened room. Something is chained to the wall. The light spilling from the open door to the village sends fractured ribbons of light stretching toward the far wall.
I pull in a breath, my chest going tight with hope, fear, and absolute despair as a filthy, battered woman in chains turns her head to look at us. Her dark brown hair is matted and falling over narrow shoulders. She’s wearing a pale dress that was obviously given to her by the village, but her feet are bare, and her hands…
Pale gray paws replace her hands, her gnarled claws catching the light.
“Ella–”
She looks right into my eyes, and I feel a wave of relief sweep over me as her dark brown eyes rake over my face.
Not Ella.
For three weeks, every time we’re in this situation, it’s never been Ella.
The woman’s lips pull back to reveal cracked, yellow fangs. I see it then–the remnants of being a rogue wolf. Her skin is peeling and coated in mange. Her body is stooped, her legs bowed and barely strong enough to hold her upright. A faint reddish gleam flashes in her eyes as a growl shudders through the building.
I whirl toward the witch. “How? How is she able to shift into a human form again?”
“I–I was asked–” The witches cheeks burn with a furious blush as she risks a glance at the Alpha of Cerserne.
“Explain it to the king, witch,” he sneers, and she flinches, taking a few wobbly steps backward to put distance between her and the Alpha.
“I was asked to force her to shift. I–I make potions, Your Highness. Alchemy is my gift. She was sickly, and I had a hunch that a combination of a few of my healing potions might help…ease her back to reality.”
“You were able to turn a rogue back into a regular wolf?” Granger asks with a gasp.
The witch blushes again, but her eyes are round and fixed on the toes of her boots. “Not human, no. But close. She’s too far gone to ever return to the way she might have been before.”
“Does she speak?” I ask.
The witch turns to look at the woman–the rogue. “No, she does not.”
The Alpha of Cerserne chuckles. It’s a sound that grates on my senses as I slowly turn my gaze to look at him.
“What’s so funny?” I step toward him, motioning to the rogue. “This woman is essentially being tortured right now for some sick experiment, isn’t she?”
“Why not? It’s not like her mind is human. She’s a monster.”
Granger’s fingers brush over his knife belt.
“I figure I can fetch a pretty penny for her. She can join a circus, or satisfy some sick individuals' fantasies.”
Now, I’m growling just like the rogue woman behind us. “This kind of magic is illegal in my kingdom,” I sneer. I take a step toward him, tilting my head as I stare the man down. “There are rogues running in a pack through these lands. That’s never been seen before, and they’re leaving casualties in their wake. You took one of their own, and I’m willing to bet they will come back for her.”
This obviously hasn’t crossed the Alpha’s mind at all, based on the shocked look on his face.
By some divine intervention of the gods, I’m proven correct only a few seconds after the words leave my lips. Shouts of alarm echo from the village, followed by lifted screams and calls for help.
The Alpha of Cerserne immediately darts out of the building, but I steal one last look at the rogue woman chained to the wall.
“Granger,” I say sharply to my Beta, “go make sure the men are ready to move. These rogues are nearby, and where they are, Ella will be.”
Granger doesn’t waste a second and is gone before I take a breath.
The witch, however, remains, wringing her hands. I turn my gaze to her and notice the tears in her eyes as she fumbles with her apron strings. “Go north to the village of Hannis. Several of your sisters are there and will be returning to the coven within the next month.”
She nods, sniffling, but refuses to look me in the eyes. She’s far too young to have been sent out on her own to set up a practice in a village. She can’t be more than sixteen.
“Do you have family in Moonrise?” I ask.
She nods, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “My mother and father.”
“Why did they allow you to come here so young?”
“I’m gifted,” she says over the shouts from outside this disgusting hellhole and the increasingly frantic snarling of the rogue. “The Alpha of Cerserne requested someone like me after his last healer passed away.”
“Queen Ravenna never sent her coven here,” I argue, my suspicions peeking as the young witch furrows her brows in confusion.
“Sister Petra brought me here. She was the one who announced my assignment. I… I was supposed to continue my studies with the mystics. They only take one alchemist every few years or so, and I was chosen…”
One of Petra’s closest friends is also an alchemist.
I’m willing to bet Petra sent this young witch here, to an enemy pack, so her friend could train with the mystics instead.
I grab the witch by the arm. She yelps, her face flushing with fear. “Listen to me,” I say sharply, giving her a little shake. “Calm down, and listen to every word I say. There is a barn on the outskirts of the village. My men are there. You’re to go to them, and I will have you escorted back to the coven.”
But her eyes fill with tears. “I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“I did–I did a bad thing. I had to. I was forced.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“There’s a cave system nearby, only a mile or two outside of the village. There’s a creek bed, and if you follow it south, there’s a waterfall, and inside the falls is a cave. I had to–” She bursts into tears. I let go of her arm. “She made me make potions out of–out of liquid silver and wolfsbane for her prisoners–”
“Who?”
In my mind, Granger shouts at me through the mind-link to say they’re following a single rogue back toward the edge of the Alpha of Cerserne’s territory.
“Petra,” the girl whimpers. “She told me she’d kill my parents if I didn’t help. The rogues–they guard the falls for her, but something happened this morning. Just a few hours ago, the rogues just… left. They came right through the village.”
“And she was caught.” I nod toward the rogue, who is currently trying to chew through her own wrist to free herself.
“And they came back for her,” the witch says almost wistfully. “She found a family again–”
“Go to the barn, now,” I say, my voice lacking even a shred of emotion. I give the witch a little shove toward the door, then send a new command through the mind-link.
I wait for the witch to leave before drawing a blade and approaching the rogue. I ignore her snarls and growls. In her eyes, past that glowing red, I see a single glimpse of the woman she was before, a woman now begging me to put her out of her misery.
So, I do.
With her blood staining my hands, I send a tug down what’s left of my mate bond to tell Ella I’m coming.
I know where she is.
And if she hasn’t put Petra’s head on a stake yet, I will.