Talon.
When Ivy glared at me and told me the woman was hers, I knew without a doubt that something terrible was about to happen. Without even a warning, she took off in a full sprint as fast as she could from the property. The car had long sped away down the driveway but knowing Ivy, that wouldn’t stop her.
“We have to stop her,” James cried out. “She’s pregnant, and she hurt the babies—”
James had a point. Damien wasn’t here yet. Hale was in town until the end of the day. James was a good man and was too able to take care of a lot. But he didn’t have the power needed to subdue Ivy like this.
Shifting into my wolf, I took off across pack territory, darting over the lawns down the hills towards the woods where Ivy had disappeared through. I had to find her. I couldn’t let her do something she would absolutely regret. Even though she was the same person, she just seemed to have this alter ego that pushed through, making her more dominant when she shifted.
I knew deep down she would feel nothing but guilt if she ended up killing this woman. It would be the first person she had physically killed.
That sort of thing was never easy for anyone.
Catching her scent, I moved faster, pushing myself as hard as I could, her body coming into the distance as I kept trekking over the lands until, abruptly, she stopped. Not wanting her to know I was chasing after her, I halted in my position, hiding behind the shrubbery of the woods, watching her, waiting to see what she was going to do.
She was hunting, seeking this woman as if this woman was an elk that became her prey.
There was no stopping a wolf when it was in mid-hunt. They were dangerous, primal, and very territorial.
With Ivy not technically being a wolf, but being something else entirely—there was no telling what she could do.
The mind link that linked my brothers and me and even Ivy was going wild. However, Ivy’s side was dormant. She had closed herself off in order to focus, and I had to push back mine in order to focus on her.
‘Where are you?’ Damien pushed through the link, using his alpha tone, catching me by surprise.
‘Currently about 5 miles north of the pack. She’s hunting.’
‘She already ran five miles? There’s no way she was able to do that. Are you sure of your location?’ Damien snapped.
Did he really, honestly, think I didn’t know where I was?
I grew up on these lands. These woods were my gain out of the four of us. I was the more primal hunter. There was no way they would know these woods better than I did.
‘Are you seriously going to fucking ask me that question?’
Silence met me, and at the moment I had been dealing with Damian, Ivy bolted without warning, running north, deeper and deeper into the darkness and thicket of the woods. I followed her.
The canopies of leaves above us protected us from the sunlight, where creatures usually blended in with the darkness. Watching and waiting for the right moment to make their move.
However, today they were silent, and it made me wonder if those creatures knew what she was, and they themselves found her terrifying because right now, the shift she had made was nothing like I had ever seen before.
Her figure almost glowed within the darkness, her long hair shimmering in a sea of light that didn’t exist from any other source around her.
The way she moved was elegant and as graceful as a fairy. But yet as quick and as dangerous as a wolf. Entranced by who she was and the fact that she was my mate, I didn’t dare stop her. I didn’t care what the others thought. I couldn’t. At least not right now.
There may be a point where I could try to talk sense into her, but the time was not. Now, that was very obvious. After a little while, she came to a slow jog until her feet crept across the forest floor.
In the distance, a cabin sat alone within the darkness; the only light in that cabin came from the single pane window near the front door. What shocked me the most, though, was that the car the elder had driven was parked out front.
The woman who supposedly came directly from the council to see us was only 20 miles north of where we actually lived, and that was completely unsettling.
Why was the elder here?
This was not anywhere close to where the Council headquarters was.
I had thought I had concealed myself, tracking her the entire time I had been doing so. But as she stopped in her tracks, her hand upon the trunk of a tree, she looked over her shoulder at me and smiled.
She had known I was there the entire time, and not once did she stop me?
What was she waiting for?
‘You joined me, pretty wolf?’ her delectable voice said through my mind. It taunted me, egging me on to play with her and I was shocked she had opened the link just enough for me to speak with her, though; it was pretty obvious we were the only two in this conversation.
‘Ivy, please turn back now. You’re pregnant and cannot be in a fight. Think about our children.’
Turning her attention back to the cabin, I could sense she found nothing but amusement in my words. ‘Do you really think that I would do anything that would hurt my children?’
‘No,’ I replied without hesitation. ‘But that doesn’t mean that they won’t do something that could intentionally hurt them. Please think about this. She is not worth it.’
‘That is where you’re wrong. My children are hungry.’
Her words were like ice trailing down my spine. Moving forward, faster than I could process, she disappeared from my sight, and it wasn’t until I heard the shrill screams, growls, and cries from within the cabin I realized what had just happened.
Ivy was tracking at a slower speed so I could keep up with her. We had to follow her the entire time when she went out on these hunts. It wasn’t because she was slow, and we were fast enough to keep up with her. It was because she wanted us there and knew we would follow her.
Shifting back into my human form, I ran naked towards the cabin, throwing open the door that was barely cracked, only to find the bloodiest scene I have ever seen before laid out in front of me.
Ivy had killed three people within this cabin. Two of them I knew, one of them I did not.
Blood coated her skin from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers. She was soaked in red, and the most peculiar thing of all was she had a satisfied grin on her face as she swallowed down a bit of flesh, closing her eyes and pure satisfaction.
“Did you just eat them?!” I exclaimed in shock, with my eyes wide, and an unfamiliar sense of confusion flowed over me I had never felt before.
“Those two?” she replied with a smirk as her eyes glanced towards the elder and another man. “No, I did not eat them.”
“Then what did you just swallow? If you didn’t just eat them?”
With a small laugh, she lifted her hand and pointed at the other body on the floor. “This one tastes different. The other two are wolves and I have no interest in eating the flesh of my ancestors, but that one. That one is intoxicating, but I don’t know what it is.”
Her words were almost like riddles. I knew there were other supernatural creatures out there. Everybody was aware of that, but the problem was they rarely come by. So much so, most of the wolves believed them fairy tales.
“What do you mean, they’re different?” I asked as I stepped forward, looking down at the body before me. That almost seemed human.
Tilting her head from side to side, she stepped towards the creature and bent to her knees before her hand reached out and grabbed its face, inhaling deeply.
“I don’t know what it is, but it tastes delicious. “
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes, running my hand over my face as I tried to calm the small, logical part of my personality hidden deep within me. I was primal.
I was considered more of the loose cannon, but yet my beautiful, perfect innocent mate was eating a creature we couldn’t identify.
To top it all off, she killed a council member, and Devyn… the son of a neighboring Alpha.
A very particular Alpha that didn’t like us whatsoever.
“May I ask why it is Ivy that—Ivy, leave it alone,” I said, interrupting myself as I grabbed her hand, pulling it away from the creature. “You have no idea what it is or where it’s been.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she groaned, rolling her eyes as her senses seemed to rein back in. “What I did was for a reason, and at least one of us did something.”
“What are you talking about? You literally killed a council member and the son of an opposing alpha. Not to mention something else entirely that we don’t even know. If it was a royalty of its species… look, you can’t just go around killing things because you want to.”
Raising her brow, she looked me up and down and stepped over the creature, making her way towards the door as she licked her fingers clean. I had no idea where she was going, but wherever it was, she seemed very content with what she did.
“Ivy, will you please stop and talk to me? Tell me what is going on.”
Getting out an exaggerated sigh, she stopped in her tracks, closing her eyes for a moment before she turned and opened them, facing me. “There are things I cannot explain because I don’t know how to explain them. However, they were a threat to our pack. To my needs and my children, and I took care of it as I will every single time a threat comes about.”
“OK, but the problem is you can’t just go killing anybody you want to. If you find a problem with someone, you need to let us know so we can handle it properly.”
She shook her head, staring at me as if she couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. “As I’ve told you before, I will do what I need to do to protect my children and the laws of your world do not apply to me. Even if I am softer minded at times, this is the side of me that will eventually completely take over.”
Hearing her say the side I was looking at now was the side that would eventually take over was not a very comforting thought. The entire conversation, of course, I had opened through the link so that the others could end up hearing it as I was hearing it.
She was making it clear what was going on was going to have to be accepted one way or another. For some odd reason, she considered those people to be a threat, and she executed them appropriately, something my brothers and I were going to have to learn to handle or simply take care of when needed.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. You have to let us help you. We’re your mates,” I finally said, before she turned away from me once more.
“Talon, are you afraid of me?” she asked as she stared at me with an intensity I had never felt before.
“Why are you asking that question, Ivy?”
“Because I want to know the truth. Do you fear me, Talon?” she asked again, waiting for my response.
“No. I don’t fear you. I just want to understand you.”
Laughter escaped her lips as she walked closer to me. Gently running her finger over my chest, she leaned up and kissed me with the blood of her victims on her lips.
“You should fear me.”