A perfectly detached eyeball rolls to a stop just in front of me, as if to punctuate the entire scene.
“There were just so many, and I couldn’t. I can’t,” Violet is stammering in her shaky voice, straining out the last words through another sob.
Slowly, I heave myself the rest of the way up, quickly pulling my cement-covered shirt over my head and dropping it aside.
“Why were we in the ground? Why is my throat slit? Are the omegas okay?” she prattles on, sounding scattered and not really present.
Two severed heads lie at my feet as I strip out of my jeans. My gaze moves up to where two separate, mangled bodies dangle from the rafters above.
My line of view shifts to find several other bodies or body parts up there, bumping the body count up closer to the number I caught at a quick glimpse when I first woke.
“I didn’t mean to. They were burying me. Why were they burying us?” Violet goes on through her broken whimpers, and my eyes finally land on her.
She’s sitting and staring at her bloody fingertips as she rubs them together, her body trembling as she sits with her knees pulled to her chest.
She’s drenched in blood and cement. It looks like she’s taken a swim in one of Arion’s fountains and fell into a construction site at the same time.
Her eyes are vacant and barely dilated, as her heartbeat slowly but steadily climbs.
“Shhh,” I say softly as I go to scoop her up.
Her arms limply come around my neck, as though she’s functioning on autopilot.
“No one’s supposed to know,” she rambles on, her head shaking as her pupils stall their growth. “Mom said more people would hunt me. But there are monsters everywhere. Not just me.”
“Not just you,” I tell her as I kiss the top of her head, trying to wrap my own head around the amount of damage she’s done, while mentally assessing each wolf’s face.
I see three absent in total I need to find before anyone breathes a word about this.
I carry Violet to the broken, shattered doors of the barn.
“They shouldn’t have buried me. I didn’t do anything to them,” she goes on, hiccupping around another sob, like she’s fighting to get her breathing under control. “I can’t panic. I shouldn’t panic. They panicked me. It was too late. I can’t turn back once it’s started. It was just too late.”
“Shh,” I say again, exhaling harshly as I put her down.
Her arms fall away from my neck, and she wraps them around her legs, as she starts rocking on the ground.
I look back at the carnage still left behind.
She tore them all apart in under five minutes, and for the first time, I notice the pink ribbon lacing through her neck, the skin there already pulling together in a healing process.
She can’t…die.
She can’t panic.
And none of this can be happening.
Worried Arion will be torturing wolves to find her, I start searching dismembered torsos for phones, finally finding one in a shirt pocket that isn’t too badly damaged.
I dial Vance first, and he answers immediately.
“Yes?” he answers with an edge to his tone.
My gaze flicks to Violet as she whispers over and over, “Mom said tell no one. No one. No one.”
Walking away in case he hears her, I say, “It’s me.”
“Emit,” he says on a harsh exhale.
“That’s Emit?” I hear Arion ask with an eerily calm tone. “Tell him I’m going to kill one wolf for every hour Violet is missing, starting with the two who took her, and work my way down to any wolf who smells even the faintest—”
“Violet’s with me,” I tell Vance, even though Arion is the one running his mouth.
“The omegas said she was hurt—”
“She’s fine,” I say as I glance over my shoulder to find Violet staring vacantly out at the woods in front of her, still rocking.
Her pupils are still too small as she rubs her fingers together. “She’s slightly traumatized, but physically fine,” I add tightly.
I hear something akin to a small scuffle, before I Damien’s voice comes over the phone. “Where are you?” he asks very coldly.
I glance around, noting that I’m definitely not in my woods. “That remains to be determined. Put me back on with Vance.”
He curses as Vance’s voice comes back on the line.
“I know you take issue with hurting your wolves, but tonight that changes unless there’s a damn good reason Violet was—”
“A very small portion of my wolves were involved in the mutiny tonight, and Violet was just a token they used. They wanted to restart the wars, and force you to fight within the parameters of the law of heavy exposure.”
“That’s the most half-cocked mutinous plan yet,” Vance growls.
My eyes flick over to Violet, seeing the blood-soaked satin lacing through her neck.
“Yeah. Luckily they fucked up every part of it,” I lie, knowing there’d definitely be hell to pay had she died.
The wars would have started.
Arion doesn’t play nice when things are taken from him.
It’s clear he’s developed a small attachment to Violet.
For the first time, I see the power this little gypsy already has, and an uneasy feeling fills me. Mostly because this gypsy has no clue what she even is, and she’s certainly unaware of the power she’s unintentionally garnered over the three of them.
“But Arion is right, which is hard for me to say. We’re being too lax with her, thinking our name strikes more fear than it does in this era,” I go on, keeping this casual.
“Your wolves don’t know how to properly fear, and I’ve been underground for a fucking century, which debunks a lot of my motherfucking fear factor!” Arion snaps, his calm edge now gone.
“I have three missing,” I say, sniffing the air, smelling their trail. “I’m assuming they’re headed back to town.”
Ian is the only one who will talk, and I already have his trail scented toward the east, moving away from town. He’s running. He knows he’s fucked, and he’s terrified, because I can smell his fear from here.
“Who?” Vance asks on a growl. “I just need a name or face to hunt.”
“You don’t get to touch them,” I caution.
“Now’s not the time for—”
“They’re still my wolves,” I say on a low growl. “No one touches them until I say so.”
Vance exhales harshly. “The punishment better be fitting of the crime,” is all he says before Damien is back on the line.
“Call when you have Violet close to home,” he says like he’s the only one left with any faux calmness.
“Send my omegas to my house. You’ll probably have to look really hard if they were attacked along with her.”
“You really think now is the time for—”
“I had to let the wolf take full control tonight. It was the only way to get us out, because they tried burying us alive. She would have suffocated,” I start, knowing Violet will be stalked and hunted by wolves who feel she’s a threat if I don’t get my packs sorted first.
“Did you hurt Violet?” Vance asks quickly, back on the line.
“By some miracle, no,” I answer quietly, my eyes back on the girl who left an entire room in bloody ruins in less than five minutes. “I’ll call you back when I know where I am. The first two wolves won’t be hard to find. I’m sure there’s fresh blood on them, but remember to keep them alive. Happy hunting, Van Helsing.”
I have no idea how they’re going to react to this new information, so I decide it’s best to keep it to myself. For now. At least until I’ve convinced myself of what’s going on before I start convincing them.
Looking back at the carnage, it’s possible my wolf—fully unleashed—could do just as much damage…if it had more time than she did.
“Anna was wrong. Buffy would so not kick your ass,” I hear a girl saying, and I glance over to see the triplet ghosts and one male.
I snarl at them, stepping closer, needing them to forget what they saw as I clutch the phone in my hand.
They all take a wary step back from her.
“If anyone learns of this, you’ll all be tortured piles of salt by the time I’m finished with you. Understand?”