The Rogue

BRAX

I couldn’t sleep. The others didn’t understand, but I felt too much of what my mate was feeling, and it meant closing my eyes was filled with pain and nightmares. She was in pain, and there was nothing I could do.

My shadows couldn’t get to her; she was blocked by something. They still felt hers, locked inside her, screaming to get out. But they couldn’t, and I had to endure it.

It was worse for Zale and Enzi; they were powerful and had no idea how to harness the power they had been given—not fully, anyway—and they knew something was wrong with their shadows.

They looked for her, even for Kai, searching with their shadows but meeting the same wall inside her as I was. She was purposely keeping us out so the pain wouldn’t hit us as harshly. I appreciated that idea for the twins, but I needed her to let me in so I could get to her.

I was one sleepless night away from giving in to the urges and rage that clawed at my insides and demanded I go get her. It was only the twins that stopped me. I couldn’t leave them unprotected.

As much as I trusted Derik with my life, it was hard to trust anyone with the twins. Especially since Derik was very obviously losing his shit—we all were—but he had never been this lost before.

It was as if losing his mate had broken him more than anything had before. His parents were worried, asking if they needed to step in. However, they didn’t share our ideas on leadership, and we had worked hard to undo the instinct-led way things were before.

I wasn’t letting it go back to that, not when I had to make sure there was a pack worth coming back to once we got Lorelai and Nikolai back. And I had no doubt we were getting them back.

Whether we had to storm the vamp territory or they figured out how to get free on their own, I knew they would. Because there was no future in our pack without them, and that was not balanced.

The witches wouldn’t allow it. Maybe if only one of them had been taken, but both? No.

I left Derik in our suite, bathing, before heading to the twins.

Cain and Beenie were in there, whispering quietly by the window as the twins cooed in their arms. I reached out with my shadows, instantly finding theirs.

Their shadows entwined with mine, drawing comfort and affection from me before they went back to their own silent communications. Then, I looked to the hybrid and his mate.

She looked like she was sleeping as well as I was.

“Kai only just came out of what they did to him last time,” she whispered, and I nodded. I remembered how bad he was. I remembered the fights, the aggression, the revolving door of unmated women. But it was different now.

“He has Lorelai there. She’ll protect him, trust me. It’s much harder to be on this side, knowing what is happening and not being able to do anything.”

“I doubt that. You have no idea what they are going through.”

That was true, but the unknown was infinitely worse because I had a wild imagination, and it was doing me no favors when I closed my eyes.

“No, I don’t know what they are going through, but I know that I would trade places with my mate in a heartbeat if I could. Because being in physical pain is nothing compared to the crack in my chest when she is gone,” I said, my voice low and raw so she knew exactly how much I meant it.

Beenie eyed me before she nodded in concession. I dropped it, my point made, then turned to Cain.

“Can you get through to her? Heal her?” I asked Cain, knowing he couldn’t. If we couldn’t get shadows through, there was no way he could reach her either, but I had to check.

“I’ve tried, but she has the same lock on her magic that we have Adrenna in. Nothing will get through until those shackles are off.” Cain sighed as Zale fussed in his arms. Cain handed him over to me, and I held him close, kissing his forehead, his eyes so wise beyond his age.

“She’ll get out. Or we’ll break and go get her.”

“You do that and this entire pack dies. You know that as well as I do, or I would’ve already gone to save my brother,” Beenie said through a clenched jaw and watery eyes that had dark shadows under them.

I didn’t bother arguing; we both knew she was right, and we all knew I would be there with her, saving them too.

“I set the pack on patrols, runs, shifting, training. There’s a team restructuring the school, a team hunting the straggler vamps. Hopefully, it will help.”

“It will,” Beenie said, her voice far away, and I had learned not to question it when she got creepy like that.

“The humans—they’re leaving?” Cain asked, but he was magic enough to know the answer. I nodded.

“Yeah. Pearl and Galen are taking them back to the men’s village in the grasslands. They’re going to bunker down there and protect themselves. It’s safer at the moment. At least until Lorelai is back with her magic. Or winter ends,” I explained, and Cain nodded.

“The witches are going to be hard to convince, Brax. You sure you want to go to them with Lorelai’s plan? They’re not on Adrenna’s side, and they don’t care enough about the human to give him what he wants,” Cain said, and I shrugged.

“It’s Lorelai’s plan. I’m not going against her, and I think it’ll work. Honestly, I think we should use Adrenna and her magic to go against the vampires.”

Beenie turned on me then, Enzi in her arms cooing, playing with her long necklaces.

“She already turned on Silas; if you let her out of those cuffs, she’ll turn on us too. Until she knows for sure you are going to honor your word, don’t let her out,” Beenie warned, her eyes wild.

I checked her feelings with my shadows, grimacing when I felt her entire being warn me off doing it.

“This is why I stay away from the pack,” she muttered, then handed Enzi to Cain and stormed from the room.

“She’s…”

“Stressed. Leave it, Brax. You don’t know what she’s dealing with,” Cain shook his head. I knew better than to tread there since I had been like that before Kai and Derik had accepted me.

I had been so nervous about the pack finding out I couldn’t turn. When I had been forced into it, I had been nervous again for them to find out how I had been able to; I had shied away from any responsibilities.

I had let my parents run the pack for too long, then all for the merging of the packs so I could lean on my brothers. It was time that stopped. I had taken it from Derik while he fell apart, but I understood how hard it was even after one day.

I was so torn in every direction, in my head, my heart; it was chaotic. I had to keep an eye on every team, every wolf, checking their control, their emotions, and then to open that link was to feel more from Lorelai and Nikolai. Add to that my shadows, and I was a mess.

But I had to hide it, and I had never given Derik enough credit for how well he had always done that.

“I’m sorry, you know? For what happened back then. We didn’t mean to force that, and the witches were vague with what would happen.” Cain swallowed, and I turned away. I didn’t want to talk about that time in my life, especially not with him.

It had happened; I was a werewolf, I turned just like they wanted, and I stole a wolf that was never mine. But it was done, and it was my guilt to live with.

Cain followed though, putting Enzi in her bed and covering her with a blanket. I put Zale in with her, then wrapped their bassinet in my shadows and went back to the window, taking a look outside. The dark seemed darker somehow.

Cain sighed deeply and stood next to me before he spoke again.

“I’ll let you in on a secret, Brax. Mom had to do what she did. She tried to argue; she went to the witches to tell them of your parents’ request, and she said no. She tried to refuse,” Cain said, his voice raising, his anger touching me and my shadows.

I frowned at him, hating that his words were sinking in, that they were making me feel things I thought I had put away.

“She tried?”

“They showed her what would happen if she didn’t,” Cain shook his head. “You would have been killed. Every single wolf in the pack would have torn you to shreds. Your parents would have handed the pack over to the next lineage, and it would have been a completely different future. The joint pack would have broken apart, and Silas would have picked every single one of you off.”

“So you’re using the ‘it was for the greater good’ excuse?” I scoffed, hating that it was so cliché. Of course, it was; my parents had said that to me over and over when they were convincing me I had to do it.

“It’s not an excuse, and no, I’m not. My mom still refused, saying that if we were murdering pack members for the greater good, then we were no better than the evil we were trying to balance.”

“She said no?”

Cain shrugged. “She tried. They said they would strip her magic if she didn’t do it. She wouldn’t have minded that if it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t control my magic, and she is the only thing that stands in the way of me and the witches. They hate me for being a hybrid. Hate that Mom was given me by the balance and for that—they won’t let me take the oath to be a part of their magic collective. But like I told her, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“So if she had refused, and they took her magic…”

“They would have killed me too. We all knew that was what they were alluding to between the lines. So she tried to compromise, make you a hybrid, not use a full sacrifice, but the witches were fed up with her by then. She had already pushed the boundaries by refusing to come back to the mountain because of me, so they put her in her place. They punished her for disobeying.

“It’s why she can only be away from her place for short periods of time, why she ages and the witches don’t, why she gets weaker. Because she refused and they had to force their magic on her, overwhelm her and take control through the collective,” Cain explained, and it turned my world on its head.

My heart raced with every word he said, at the picture he painted that defied what I had seen. Tabitha was the villain in my head and had been for so long. If Cain and she weren’t at fault, then I had nothing, no face for the regret and hatred during that time.

It was numbing; my head was washing and cleansing, trying to reset the information that had sat inside it for so long.

“Neither of you said anything. She really had no choice?” I asked, and Cain shook his head.

“They took control, which is why I hate them and their fucking collective. They preach balance, but they’re out for themselves. The more powerful the realm is, the more magic they are fed by it. That’s their agenda, and they know I know it, so they use Mom against me, and it is the only reason I haven’t climbed that mountain myself.” Cain narrowed his eyes out the window as if he could see the mountain and visualize the deaths of each and every entity up there.

“Why are you telling me this?” I snarled, hating that he was getting in my head and changing everything. I couldn’t deal with this right now, not when I had the pack in my head and every other damn thing.

“Because you may be pissed at how you became what you did, but it is not her fault, and I am sick of watching her take your shit for it,” Cain snapped, and I bit my tongue at the alpha in me that reared up at his tone.

It wanted to rip his fucking head off for the way he spoke, but the other part of me? It knew he was right.

“She never told me. Just let me hate her.”

“She’s a huge fan of people coming to these things and feelings on their own. I’m not,” he said.

“I owe her an apology,” I admitted.

Cain nodded. “Yeah.”

“Next time I see her, I’ll make it right,” I promised, putting it off for a bit. I knew what I had to do, but I wasn’t in the right headspace to fix that part of my life at the moment.

I needed to think about what I wanted to say and exactly how to say it before I stormed in there with a sorry that I could only half-ass because I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.

“I’m going to check on Beenie,” Cain said finally before leaving me to stew in my regret. It was a fierce one too. I swallowed and looked over the twins. They weren’t asleep, just looking, and I smiled down at them.

How two little things, tiny things, could change everything so drastically was beyond me, but I did know that if they were meant to be the key to this, then I would help them at every turn and be there every time they needed me.

“And to think, you were this withdrawn little alpha not so long ago with only the water as a comfort,” Derik teased as he came in with a smirk. I shook my head, a tug on my own lips pulling them up.

“And to think you were a bossy shit trying to remove his head from his parents’ asses,” I taunted back, and he laughed, coming over to put his finger in Enzi’s hand. She grabbed it and started sucking his finger with a happy gurgle.

“Still am,” Derik scoffed, his words muttered under his breath. “Thank you, for taking on the pack. I know I should have my shit together and be the one that everyone can rely on, but I don’t have it in me right now. I don’t trust my decisions.”

“You should. You’ve always done right by us,” I reassured, believing every word. Derik let out a heavy sigh then nodded.

“So have you, Brax. Now go take a minute, I’ll watch the twins,” he said, and I wanted to say I was fine, that I could handle the new pressure without needing a minute, but we both knew I’d be lying.

Instead, I nodded and stood up.

“You know where I’ll be,” I said, and he nodded back.

“Yeah, but be careful, that place is mutual now.”

“I will,” I said, then left the room, the mansion, and the city, heading for the only place that could calm me down, could help me see things straight. The lake.

It wasn’t far from the city. The main pool of the lake went into a cliffside, the water running down it, breaking the silence in the most serene way.

I loved it in winter when the water was so cold but so refreshing. It was peaceful, undisturbed, exactly the way I needed it.

I stripped out of my clothes, then checked the forest, eyeing every tree in the forest line and the cliff edges, before reaching out with my shadows. They spread over the lake, up the waterfall, and into the forest, stretching as far as I could before coming back with nothing—which meant I really was alone.

I walked into the lake, slipping under the water with a slow sink that immersed every thought in there. It blocked everything else out and gave me a clarity that never happened anywhere else.

Like the water knew I needed it to wash away the thoughts and the fear that constantly played in my mind, to refresh it.

I sank right to the bottom, crossing my legs on the bed of the lake that was a light sand. It felt damn good against my skin. The top of the lake looked highlighted, which was weird. There was no moon, but from under the water, I could’ve sworn it’s what I could see.

It wasn’t very bright, but it was enough to make the lake feel magical, despite it being just a water source. But my connection to it? That felt stronger. It felt like that for my whole pack.

Like the water was a calling, one that we had to answer every now and then, or we couldn’t concentrate. It was how Kai got when he hadn’t had a run over the grasslands in a long time, or how Derik needed to be in nature every now and then to calm his thoughts.

It was part of the magic that spoke to our blood, but I was sure I felt it more strongly, thanks to the shadows and winter-born thing.

A fat lot of good it was doing me now, though. I couldn’t even find my mate.

My chest burned, my throat closed as little bubbles escaped my lips. I held my breath until I couldn’t anymore, and shot up to the surface, breaking it and gasping in air, letting my hushed thoughts come running back to me. But they didn’t crowd me like before.

They came in one by one, like a task list that made it easier to cope with.

I blew out a deep breath before lying back on the water, looking up at the dark sky. The cold bit into me, but it was surface deep—I wasn’t cold.

I should have been—without Lorelai’s magic, we were prone to feeling more than we usually did as wolves, but the lake never felt cold to me, only refreshing. It relaxed every muscle, every tense breath, and I soaked it in.

I closed my eyes, listening to the crash of the water from the waterfall, then took a deep breath and let myself sink back down into the lake. I made it to the bottom as relaxed and calm as I could be without Lorelai and Nikolai safe.

The second I thought of her, my chest tightened, aching like all hell, but I couldn’t move.

The water locked me in, and I frowned, my shadows thrashing around me. I tried to kick off the lake bed, but the water wouldn’t let me go. It held me in place, and my eyes flung open, trying to see a way out, but instead, I saw something that had me collapsing into the sand.

Lorelai.

She was hanging against a wall, bloodied and bruised, her head hung, her arms out, shackled in silver clasps with the same magic binding seal on them.

I tried to reach out in front of me, to the vision in front of me, shimmering in the water, but it swiped it away. I scrambled for it, making my lungs ache, my eyes burn, but I didn’t care. I needed more.

The lake gave it to me.

Lorelai appeared again, my shadows crowding the image as they tried to get to her too.

She was in the same place, on the same wall, in the same abused state, and I tried not to scream. But the alpha in me, the mate in me, was already there, screaming, clawing at my insides, trying to break free.

But the lake kept us both there, staring at the dull, murky image of our mate.

Until the moonlight I had seen earlier on top of the lake fell on the image, highlighting the silver cuffs on her wrists. The crescent shone right down on them, and I went still.

The cuffs.

They were stopping her from getting out, breaking free, and getting her and Kai out of there.

It rammed home inside me, and I knew what I had to do.

This time when I kicked off the sand, the lake let me go, and I shot through the surface. My shadows were already swirling around me, helping me dress before I was running back to the city.

Before I got there, I sensed I was being followed and spun to face the single entity stalking me, baring my teeth and red eyes, my wolf right there, testing my control as the scent of it hit me. Another wolf. But not one of ours.

“Rogue,” I snarled as it came out of the shadows, scraggly hair with blood around its mouth. It sneered at me.

I raised a brow as her lithe, naked form stopped before me. She was all skin and bone, nothing to her, and I frowned at how annoyed it made me to see one of our kind starving.

“Alpha Braxton.” She bowed, and I snarled again. Rogues didn’t bow, and they did not have alphas. They had given up that right a long time ago.

“What do you want, rogue?” I demanded, anger flaring higher at the interruption when I had to follow through on the plan forming in my head.

Zale and Enzi had reached their mom before, pulled her through a closed portal—created one—to get her back. I had to get them to do it again, and this time, undo those cuffs.

I wouldn’t let them near the vamps physically, but they had shadows for a reason, and if they let me guide theirs, then I could help her and Kai get out. Give them a fighting chance. I just had to get rid of the rogue first.

“Figures. You don’t remember me, Brax?” she asked, her eyes wary and red as she tried to circle me. I gnashed my teeth at her, and she stopped.

“No, but I know you’re a rogue, which is all I need to know.”

“How does my brother’s wolf feel inside you?” she snapped, and I halted in my dismissal.

My entire frame went rigid as my friend’s face flashed in my mind. He’d had a family. They hadn’t been told much, but she had figured it out. Guilt gnawed at my heart, and every shred of peace I had found a moment ago disappeared.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped back, but she smirked.

“Sure you don’t. Look, I’m not going to fight you or challenge you over it. I tried that and got kicked out for it—”

“What?” I demanded, her story not adding up with what I had heard. She gave me a dry laugh.

“Of course you don’t know. They took my brother as a sacrifice, and my parents were so pleased to offer him up to the alpha family. Then your parents had the loose ends killed. Luckily for me, I had fought them on the sacrifice idea, and they had already cast me out, made me a rogue for it. I’ve accepted it, but times are tough, and I need a favor,” she said.

My heart stuttered, trying to connect the dots and remember the circumstances around what had happened, but it was spotty, and I couldn’t put full sentences together.

“What do you want?”

“I want back in,” she said quickly, and my eyes went wide.

“It’s Winter. We can’t let rogue wolves in during that time.”

“I never wanted to be a rogue. I always respected your authority.”

“That doesn’t mean I can just let you back in,” I said, looking over her dirty brown hair and pale features.

I felt sorry for her; there was no denying that. I was sure the pity was all over my face, but there was no way I was letting her in the pack when we’d had so many issues with backstabbers. I wasn’t about to let the next one in.

It also wasn’t my decision. I could, technically, make it, but I wasn’t going to. Not when Lorelai was the reason for my existence and might have a bitch fit about it. A well-deserved one, but still, I had to give her the choice.

“Why not? You know I deserve to be there, and shit is different now. The vamps are everywhere, and I am sick of paying for this shit when it was never mine. I tried to save my brother. I know it went against everyone—”

“What’s your name?” Brax interrupted, and she swallowed.

“Heather.”

“Heather, I know it’s bad out there, and I hate the idea that our kind, rogue or not, is out there getting picked off by those bloodsuckers. But I can’t let you in the city. Our Alpha and Luna are being held captive by vamps; the wolves are losing their shit. And honestly? It’s a shit show here too,” I explained.

She looked past me to the city, her eyes wavered, and she nodded. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Any chance you’ve got some food on you?”

I shook my head. “No, sorry. But I’ll have some delivered to the gate. You can pick some up and let the rogues know there will be a basket there every day with refreshments.”

She smiled sadly and shook her head.

“They won’t come. They know you guys are a target and have vamps everywhere. They won’t risk it, and they will think it’s a trick,” she shrugged, and pain pierced me again. Fuck it, why was I the pushover?

I let out a deep sigh before looking over my shoulder and back at her.

“The water villages aren’t being used by the humans. The rogues can hide out there if they want, and we’ll talk about you joining us again once I get my mate back. Until then, I can’t promise anything,” I said, and she lit up.

“You said she’s being held by the vamps?”

I nodded.

“And if I help get her back, you would consider taking me back?”

“It’d be up to her.”

“I can help; they had me locked up there for a while. I can get them out.”

My heart raced at that before I narrowed my eyes.

“How do you know how to get them out? How did you?” I demanded, my wolf burning but my shadows calm, and that held me at bay.

“I look like a weak little thing, but I can hold my own. I used that underestimation to my advantage.” She grinned, and I smirked despite not wanting to give anything away.

“My mate, she’s winter born. She’s locked in by magic cuffs,” I explained, and she paled.

“She’s the power they wanted,” she whispered, backing up a little. I frowned at the action and the fear in her face.

“You know they wanted her?”

“They’re torturing the wolves they find—even the rogues—for information on her. Weaknesses, rumors, any information they can, they want her. Silas thinks her power can put him at the top of the food chain, give him what he needs to run the realm, overthrow the balance enough to take it over.” She shivered, and I swallowed.

He might be right.

“She has the border magic inside her,” I admitted.

Heather’s eyes went wide. “Then he won’t let her go until she has agreed to be his. If he binds them in a magic oath, this realm is done,” she cried, tears wavering in her eyes, and I nodded.

“Which is why I have to go and figure out how to get her out,” I said, knowing how urgent it was.

Heather stopped me, her small hand falling on my wrist. Normally, my shadows would have hissed, but they didn’t; her touch soothed them as if they recognized her as the family she claimed.

I frowned at that and looked down at the touch before pulling my arm back. I didn’t trust easily, and maybe she was who she said she was; it didn’t change the fact that I was an alpha and she shouldn’t touch me.

“I’ll help. I don’t know what I can do since I have no doubt Silas is doing worse to her than what I had to endure, but I’ll do what I can. Then I want that conversation, Braxton,” she said, and I nodded.

“Help her and my brother get out, and you’ll get it. With Tabitha and Cain, my mate and our shadows so we know if you’re telling the truth or not,” I said, and she didn’t even flinch, just nodded.

“I’ll pass that test, Braxton. I know you don’t believe me yet, but you will. I want to be a part of the wolf pack; I’ll do anything.”

“I don’t doubt that, Heather. I can feel that you’re telling me the truth when you say that. What isn’t clear is your intentions once you’re inside those walls because that is going to be what affects our answer,” I said before leaving her there, taking off into the city and nodding to the wolves who shut the gate behind me.

I ordered them to gather some supplies and leave them outside for the rogues, and they didn’t argue, but I didn’t expect them to.

The link was taut, the heaviness in the pack making them slaves to my commands because trying to resist would unleash the savagery within, and none of them were risking that.

I ran into the mansion, taking the stairs two at a time, going straight to the twins’ room, pausing when I got in there, grinning at Derik with the twins. He was lying on the floor with them around him, all snoring.

I closed the door and went forward, sitting down next to them, reaching out with my shadows to touch Zale’s that always leaked out when he was sleeping, always checking that someone was there.

Usually looking for Enzi, but he felt my shadows as soon as I touched his with mine. His eyes fluttered open, and I lifted him into my arms.

“Mommy needs us, buddy. Think we can find her?” I asked, and Zale grabbed my finger, his shadows reacting with mine. They wrapped around mine, flooding me with comfort and love, then the feeling of…her.

Everything she was suffocated me, her essence, her soul infecting me, making her feel so damn close. It was everything Zale felt around her and made it hard to take. A sob choked at my throat as the pain in missing her collapsed in on me. I held Zale tighter.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I whispered against him.

“You thought of a way to help,” Derik said quietly, slowly sitting up, adjusting Enzi so she was between his legs sleeping in the bow of them, her blanket tucked in around her. She was always colder than her brother.

“Yeah, and I need the twins’ help.”

“How?” Derik demanded, and I looked down at Zale.

“Their shadows. They found her once, they pulled her back, and I’m going to use them to uncuff her. If I can get her restraints off, she can get them out,” I said, and Derik narrowed his eyes on me then the twins.

“Is that safe for them? Sending any extension of them near Silas?”

“They can’t see our shadows. And mine will be with them the whole time,” I promised to them and Derik.

“You’ve never stretched your shadows that far before. You think you can?”

“I’m going to make it happen, D. She won’t survive what she is going through in there, neither will Kai if I don’t,” I said, and Derik hesitated for a second before he nodded. And that was all the permission I needed.

I knew it would be hard, training my shadows to stretch with Zale and Enzi’s, and teaching them to find her from so far away, so weak, but I was going to do it. We had no other choice.