Chapter 3

Lyrielle

The pack was crawling with guards. Some I recognized. Others I didn’t. All of them, though, knew me. Knew that I would be put out to slaughter in less than two hours.

They were our biggest hindrance.

Jared guided me well, making sure no one followed and covered our tracks as much as possible. Our scents, on the other hand, had been difficult to mask. Wolfsbane was essential for hiding scents and deterring anyone from coming close to our trail.

On the other hand, it would also alert anyone close enough that someone was trying to deceive them.

“Stick to the shadows and behind trees. Watch out for the brambles about one kilometre into the treeline,” Jared whispered as we made our way across the expansive lawn of the pack house. Not that any pack member ever entered it. “Keep your hood up. I laced it with wolfsbane. It will mask any scent; you know this. Head south.” He instructed meticulously.

His hand was large and warm in mine. Clung to me almost as much as Gishlaine had clung to Cillian. The sparks danced along our touching skin, both a reminder of what I had and what I was giving up.

But this was his last act to keep me safe. Keep me alive. And I loved him all the more for it.

“I should have worn boots,” I murmured, looking down at my feet for the briefest of seconds.

It was a second too long.

One moment Jared was by my side, the next, he was ripped away from me by a large snarling black wolf. Cillian. The scream that escaped my lips ripped the night air open. Birds scattered into the night sky.

“Jared!” I cried, but his limbs were already tangled up with Cillian’s. In his human form, Jared didn’t stand a chance against the Alpha.

A flash of teeth too close to a head of golden hair had me second-guessing my running. My feet lagged before reason could kick in. The golden head flashed again, this time with strands of red mixed between them.

Fear chewed me up from the inside out. These were the boys I had loved since I was five years old. The men I loved enough to let inside my heart and body. Brothers not by blood but by bond. And I was the one now ripping them apart.

Without another thought, I threw my hand out, wanting to demand that they stop this insanity. But Jared got free for a moment, just long enough to look at me and scream. “Run, Lyra!”

I regained my senses then. Knew that there was no other option but to go. So, I fled. Ran right for the forest pathway that Jared had told me to take. I reached the treeline just as I heard a sickening crack and knew, deep down, what Cillian had just done.

Tears, hot and thick, spilled from my eyes, nearly blinding me as I stumbled onward.

Jared… He was fine. Cillian would never kill his brother. I was just an orphan. A burden. Disposable. Jared wasn’t. He was his Beta and the only person Cillian truly trusted. There was no way.

But the growing hole inside my chest told me a different story.

I hadn’t gotten to the brambles before I heard the Howl of the Hunt. A symbol that the chase has just started. That the game was on and my hour head start was now null and void.

Whoever Jared had bargained with, sold me to, would only be at the meeting point after midnight. And the odds were stacked against me for making it that long.

“Help me,” I whispered to my wolf.

Her ears perked, and she bared her fangs. I knew she was displeased with me, but what was new? We had never agreed on anything since the day I got her.

‘Only if we head east,’ she snarled, and it took all of my self-control not to laugh.

Not because any of this is funny, but because even the most animalistic part of my being wasn’t willing to help me unless I begged. Unless I gave more and more of myself. Which was nothing new.

“Why!” I demanded and stepped right into a long Sweet Thorn tree thorn. Pain flashed inside my body. A scream threatened to escape me. More tears stung my already swollen eyes.

Another howl sounded, closer than I was remotely comfortable with.

There was no time to worry about my foot. No time to argue about the direction we needed to head. No time for anything. Yet the thought of just curling up right then and there consumed me. Without Jared, without Cillian, there wasn’t much to live for anyway.

Why was I running? Why was I fighting? There was no reason to carry on anymore. No reason to-

‘We are going east.’ The declaration was final. The transformation swift. Fur the same golden brown as my hair quickly replaced skin. Fangs grew from an elongated snout. One minute I was me and the next… I was nothing more than a beast howling at the moon.

By the time my wolf body’s energy gave out, I was much further than I would ever have made it on my own. There were no howls. No snarls. Just the shuddering quiet of the forest.

An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. An animal scurried in the underbrush. And I was utterly naked, spent, on the forest floor with no idea where I was. Of how long we had been running.

In the background, there was a dull roaring. A hum of some kind that I couldn’t fully make out. Not a sound of the forest or any other sound I knew.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

I thanked my wolf for the effort, regardless.

Through the trees I noted the faint changing of the night sky. A subtle pink lingered just through the branches. Dawn.

But my body was stiff. Sore. And I had no energy left to spare. No will to carry on a fight I hadn’t started. What was the-

“Now, now, what do we have here?” A deeply rich voice crooned from my left.

“Another little wolf that stumbled too close to their gods?” Another voice asked from my right. My body went rigid, yet the fear never came. I was too tired for it. Too broken to care what they wanted to do with me.

“Well, brother, I think we have another plaything to take home.”