The Wolf's Cub (The Wolf's Peak Saga Book 3) Read online

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll put in a good word for you with the elders.”

  He shrugged. “Look, girlie, I wish I could help you. I don’t know where he went.”

  Defeated, I nodded and turned. As I was leaving I could hear the men hissing at me, but I ignored them. I was focused, a one–track mind as I left the dirt and musk of the prison behind me.

  I weaved my way through the dark halls until I found the staircase. I stumbled up the stone steps, trying and failing to keep my balance as my heart pumped more rapidly than I could handle. I clutched the railing, trying to catch my breath. I looked out the window at the top of the stairs. Despite my revelation, the courtyard outside was still calm and still.

  The men hadn’t returned yet.

  I couldn’t wait. Every second I paused was an extra second that Lowell was in danger. I needed to act now.

  Annabelle couldn’t help because she had Daniel to take care of. Ingrid was bedridden, and Christoph was by her side. I wasn’t going to ask Anne and Bernadette for help; they’d cause drama and I didn’t need that. That left me with only Bridget and Hazel to help me find Seth and rescue my baby. That was hardly enough, but Bridget’s lycanthropy made her extra valuable. We wouldn’t be able to separate, but perhaps together we could be a force to be reckoned with.

  The hallways seemed particularly labyrinthine as I weaved my way across the second floor to the wing where our rooms were. Finding Bridget and Daisy’s room, I pounded on the door until a surprised Bridget opened it wide.

  She must have read a crazed look on my face, because she took my arm and led me inside.

  “My lady, what’s going on?” she asked, her face twisted with worry.

  I showed her the cap. “Seth is still in the castle,” I told her.

  She frowned. “What makes you say that?”

  “I found this in the prison,” I said, handing the cap over to her. “I think Seth hid out there while the men searched the castle, then once they left, he came out of hiding. I think he’s here, waiting for Jasper and me.”

  She nodded. Somehow through my rambling, it had made sense to her. She led me to sit down, and Daisy watched interestedly from her bed.

  “What do you want to do?” Bridget asked, clasping my hands.

  “We need to search this place, top to bottom,” I said.

  “We?” Daisy asked. “Shouldn’t the men do this?”

  “We don’t have time to wait,” I implored. “Seth could be doing anything to Lowell right now.”

  “Wouldn’t we hear him crying?” Bridget asked.

  “Christoph is missing a needle and a bottle of barbiturates. I think Seth is sedating Lowell to keep him calm.”

  Tears sprung to my eyes as I spoke, imagining Seth poking at my baby with a giant needle. My stomach was all twisted up.

  “All right,” Bridget said, suddenly all business. “Who else can help us?”

  “Hazel.”

  She paused. “That will have to do. We’ll start downstairs and circle the house. No splitting up. Do you have any weapons?”

  “Just the gun that the men gave me earlier,” I said. It sat heavily in my pocket.

  She shook her head. “That’s not enough. Anything else?”

  “I think Jasper left a knife in my room.”

  Bridget nodded. “That will have to be a start. There’s swords all over the house, but I think they’ll be too heavy for you ladies to lift.”

  “Oh, to be a werewolf,” I sighed.

  “Don’t say that,” Bridget said, shaking her head.

  “Sorry,” I said, biting my lip. “But it would really come in handy right about now.”

  Bridget hesitated. “Perhaps I should go get the men.”

  “No! I need you here.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “For the record, I think this is reckless, but I also understand why you feel the need to do this. Go to your room, grab the knife. I’ll track down Hazel. Last time I saw her she was with Annabelle. We’ll meet you in the hallway as soon as you’re done.”

  Daisy sprang up off the bed and pulled on a pair of boots, lacing them up.

  “You don’t have to come if you don’t feel comfortable with it, Daisy,” I told her. We could use the extra eyes, but I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

  “There’s no way I’m staying behind,” she assured me.

  I swallowed, touched and slightly emotional. “Thank you,” I whispered before leaving the room. I took a deep breath, heading down the hallway to my room. I’d grab a bag for Lowell while I was in there. Surely he’d need a diaper change, perhaps even a new pair of clothes. I was so deep in thought I didn’t notice that the door was slightly ajar. I stepped into the room, dusting off my dirty boots on the carpet. When I looked up, I froze.

  Seth stood with his hands behind his back, looking out the window at the falling snow. In the bassinet beside the bed, Lowell was sleeping. I gasped, not caring about the noise; he already knew I was in here. I rushed across the room to my son’s side.

  “No!” Seth said, turning around, dangling the knife right near the bassinet. I froze, not wanting to antagonize him. I glanced at my baby. His clothes were wet and dirty, but I could see his chest rising and falling with each breath. He was still alive.

  “Don’t hurt him,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

  “Oh, no, we’ve got to wait for Jasper to get back,” Seth said. “Where is he? Still off on a wild goose chase?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to suffer,” he said.

  “I already have suffered,” I nearly shouted. “You’ve tried time and time again to destroy my life!”

  “You keep getting in my way!” he roared back.

  “That is not my fault,” I said. “Your plans are just ripe for failure.”

  Seth lowered the knife closer to Lowell. “Is that so?”

  “Leave him out of this! He’s an innocent baby!”

  “He has something I want.”

  “You have to know that even if you kill me and Lowell and Jasper, the elders are still never going to give you the role of alpha,” I said. “They’ll find some distant relative to inherit the title.”

  He shrugged. “At this point, it’s really more about watching you suffer.”

  “What on earth happened to you?” I asked. “What made you like this?”

  “Does it scare you?” he asked, “to know that Jasper and I have the same blood? That Jasper could be capable of the same things?”

  “Jasper would never.”

  “You do know he has a temper, right? I’m not sure how you could have missed that.”

  “Jasper might have a temper, but it’s not one that he would ever use on me.”

  “Could just be one wrong step…”

  “No,” I said, “that’s where you’re wrong. You use your temper like a toddler. You get angry if the world doesn’t give you what you want, and you take it out on people who don’t deserve it. People like me, people like Lowell. Jasper would never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. Yes, perhaps he takes out his temper on pottery and glass, but at least he’s trying to contain it! At least everything he hits is replaceable. You’ve taken away things in this world that can never be saved.”

  He smirked, examining the blade of his knife. “Do you know what that’s like?” he asked.

  “Horrible, I imagine.”

  He shook his head, stepping toward me. “No, Christine. It’s power. Do you know what it’s like to have the power to drain the life from someone?”

  “That’s not power. Anyone could kill anyone. Killing doesn’t make you special. Choosing not to kill, that what sets me apart from you. Killing is irrational and damaging.”

  He stepped forward and dragged the knife along my neck, scraping at my skin, not deep enough to bleed but deep enough to cut through the first layer of skin. I didn’t step away. “You would never kill me?”

  “I didn’t say that,�
�� I said. “Because here’s the thing. When I kill you, it will be for a very, very good reason.”

  “When?”

  “When,” I confirmed.

  Seth sighed. “You know, we could have been very happy together. You have a lot of fire,” he said.

  “You might have been happy with someone like me, but I would never be happy with someone like you.”

  “You say that now, but another situation, things could have diverged onto a very different path.”

  He reached out, placing a hand on my waist. I resisted the urge to back away and vomit.

  “It wouldn’t have worked anyway, I suppose,” he shrugged, turning and walking back toward the window. Then he paused, turning back to me. “Especially after what happened to your mother.”

  “What do you know about my mother?” I asked him.

  “You never heard the story?”

  “A rogue councilman killed her, trying to make it seem like your father couldn’t keep his men in line.”

  “And who do you think suggested that idea to him?”

  I froze. “You didn’t,” I whispered.

  “Oh, my dear, I did,” he said grinning. “It was my first murder, so to speak. I mean, it was contracted out, but it was my first real test of my powers of persuasion.”

  My eyes welled with tears. I tried hard to choke them back. I didn’t want Seth to know that his words were having an effect on me. My mind flashed to the last memory I had of my mother, us playing together in the forest, laughing and running before she was mauled by that wolf. It had been so horrific I had blocked it out for twenty years.

  “Oh, Christine,” Seth said, striding across the room, wrapping me in some sort of mocking embrace. I tensed, anger boiling in my chest. I slipped my hand in my pocket and pulled out the revolver. Seth didn’t realize anything was amiss until I cocked it and pushed it into his torso.

  “Do you know what happens if I shoot you here?” I whispered in his ear. “That’s your stomach. One shot, and your stomach acid leaks into your body, killing you.”

  I swear, he almost laughed. “Well played, Christine,” he said. “You’re very smart. Just not quite smart enough.”

  With an insurmountable amount of strength he shoved me backward and I fell hard against the floor, the gun tumbling out of my grasp. He leapt to the bassinet, holding the knife vertically above Lowell, the tip of the knife pressing into Lowell’s stomach.

  “No,” I gasped.

  “I had really hoped to wait for Jasper to come home, but I guess we’ll just have to surprise him with your corpses. Such a—”

  The door flew open behind me. I glanced to see Bridget standing there, sword in her hand, eyes wide.

  “Christine, what—”

  I took advantage of the distraction. I had to. Moving quicker than I ever dreamed was possible, I snatched the gun off the floor and shot. Once, twice, three times. Seth’s body jerked in the air before tumbling to the floor.

  The noise must have snapped Lowell from his drug–induced haze. He began screaming. Hazel, Bridget, and Daisy rushed into the room as I scrambled from the floor and hurried to the side of the bassinet. I scooped him up in my arms, holding him close to me, tears streaming down my face.

  “Oh my God, my baby, oh my God,” I murmured, rocking him in my arms.

  “Is he all right?” Hazel asked, hurrying over to me.

  “I think so,” I choked. “He needs to be changed and I’m sure he needs to eat.

  I brought him over to the bed when a hand clenched onto my ankle. I would have tripped if Hazel hadn’t been there to support me.

  Seth was still moving, body seizing and blood spilling from his mouth and the holes in his body. “You can’t get rid of me that easy,” he said.

  I kicked my foot away from him. He had some strength left, but not much. Despite this, he still tried to crawl after me.

  “I’m going to get you, you cunt,” he said, blood spraying everywhere. “You aren’t going to get away with this. I’m going to kill you and kill your spawn, and then I’m going to kill your husband, and—”

  I fired again, Lowell still in my arms, and the room became silent. Seth’s head flopped to the floor just as I saw a glint of metal. I watched, aghast, as Seth’s head, mouth agape and eyes open, rolled off to the side. I glanced at Bridget, who stood there, leaning against the sword.

  “Just making sure,” she said with a shrug.

  I sank down onto the bed, the baby still in my arms, total shock overtaking my body. Seth was gone, and this nightmare was over.

  “He can’t heal from that, can he?” I whispered.

  “Nope,” Bridget said.

  Over.

  It was over.

  I wasn’t shaken from my reverie until Lowell started crying again. I sprang into mom mode, changing his diaper and clothes and pulling him to my chest so he could finally eat.

  The men returned just a few moments later. The gunshots had rung out over the Swedish countryside, and they had rushed back to the castle. Jasper wrapped an arm around me and whispered reassurances as I fed Lowell and we watched the elders bag up Seth’s body.

  Chapter Twenty–Eight

  I sat in shock as the men moved around me. Jasper put a blanket over my shoulders, as a sort of comfort. Eventually I moved to lean against the headboard for support, Lowell still at my chest, the blanket pulled tight around me. I was having difficulty processing everything. I tried to look back on the past half hour, and my brain simply froze. Eventually, once Lowell was done eating and was curled contently against me, someone brought me some tea and I began to relax. Or rather, I relaxed as much as the situation would allow me to.

  I had killed a man. It wasn’t my first time trying to kill someone, especially Seth. When he had attacked me in the forest, I had stabbed him so many times that I had thought he was dead. Every time I had injured someone, it had always been in self–defense. I had prided myself that killing was something that separated me from Seth, but now I had killed him. I’d never shot a gun before this, but I had seen where the bullets landed. Even with his werewolf powers, he was dead before Bridget beheaded him.

  I glanced over to see how Bridget was doing. She sat in the chair by the window, watching as the elders gathered up the corpse and the head. The sword had been leaned up against the wall, blood dripping onto the carpet, but no one really seemed worried about it staining. I wasn’t surprised to see that Bridget was more composed than I was. Living on the streets she had seen more horrific things than I had, and it hadn’t been her child that was at stake.

  While I held my child close and sipped at the tea, Benedict came over to me. He sat down on the edge of the bed, giving me a small smile. “Are you all right, Christine?”

  I nodded as Jasper’s arms wrapped tighter around me.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Benedict asked.

  I moved to set my teacup down on the bedside table. As I lowered it down, the liquid splashed, my hands still shaking. Benedict took the cup from my fingers and placed it on the surface.

  “Take your time,” he said gently.

  “I had just woken up,” I said. “My brain felt scrambled, so I needed to go for a walk. I went outside and walked around the castle, just trying to clear my mind. I went to check on Ingrid and Christoph, and noticed one of Christoph’s needles missing. He looked in his bag, and discovered a sedative was missing as well. It made sense that perhaps Seth was still in the castle, drugging Lowell to keep him quiet.” I was leaving out some information, but I didn’t want any of them admonishing me for my plan to find Seth myself. “I went back to my room and that’s when I found him. Lowell was asleep in the bassinet, and Seth was standing by the window. He dangled a knife over Lowell, threatening to kill him.”

  I pulled my baby close to my chest, breathing in his scent, thankful that he was in my arms again. “I still had the gun in my pocket. I threatened him with it and he shoved me backward. Bridget came in to see what was going on, and I took
advantage of the distraction to shoot him. I raced to Lowell, and while I was holding him Seth lunged for me. I shot him again, then Bridget sliced off his head with the sword.”

  Bridget folded her arms. “I don’t regret it,” she said.

  “No,” Benedict said, shaking his head, “I don’t imagine you would.”

  I slept for a long time. It was late in the afternoon by the time that Lowell and I got out of bed. Both of us were exhausted from the chaos of the past day, and although Lowell had been sedated, he was still very sleepy.

  All three doctors examined him, concluding that he was going to be all right. They cited the fast metabolisms of both the lycans and babies as helping to get the sedative out of his system. They reassured me that as soon as it worked its way out of him, he’d be back to his lively self.

  When I woke I was hungry. I’d scarcely eaten since the night before. Jasper had been popping in and out of the room all day, constantly checking up on us, and when he saw we were awake, he summoned for food to be brought. I ate slowly, worried that if I ate too quickly it would make me sick. Once I managed to get some food down, Jasper came and sat next to me.

  “How are you doing?” he asked me.

  “I’m...drained,” I told him.

  He wrapped me in a hug. “I’m so glad you’re all right,” he whispered.

  Later that night, we went down to the dining hall for dinner. This time, I didn’t dare leave Lowell behind. I was too terrified that something bad could happen to him, even though Seth was dead. I just didn’t want to be separated.

  Once again, the dining hall was set up with one long table in the center. We sat down in the same positions we had before, Jasper and me near the middle of the table on the guest side. Once everyone had filed into the hall and sat down, Benedict stood up and raised his glass.

  “I would like to propose a toast,” he said, “to two very brave young women, who fought off a monster. Let us raise our glasses to Christine Wolfric and Bridget Chambers.”

  Bridget and I both blushed as everyone toasted to us. Both of us had only been doing what we needed to, so the congratulations seemed unnecessary.