Chapter 65

-Johan-

The insignificant shifter groveled at my feet. He thought he could protect his small pack by giving himself up. I stood over him, scowling, disgusted by his feeble pleas for mercy.

“What kind of Alpha are you?” I growled down at him as my fellow Tally shifters stood behind him, claws ready to rip and tear on command. “You think that by giving yourself up I’m going to spare your people?”

1 crouched in front of him and sneered in his face. “How arrogant of you. What makes you think that your single life is worth more to me than that of your people?

His frightened cries were music to my ears: The wasn’t the first of this kind of mission that I had embarked on. The Tally needed soldiers. Our numbers had grown rapidly as we continued to recruit restless rogues and pack turncoats who were sick of the Bielke and their past actions.

Many of our members had turned agaisnt their old packs after being disgusted at the way their leaders groveled and submitted towards the Bielke’s armys in the name of peace. My own old pack, the Khall had done exactly that and the move. had never sat well with me.

I had been a friend of Ignatius back then, however, and I thought it was a good thing that tensions between our people would be eased somewhat. I had been a fool.

The Khall were weak to give in to the Bielke so easily. The Tally would not allow them to continue their reign that had only come about through violence and fearmongering.

This man’s pack was small and insignificant. It would be days before anyone even noticed that they were missing. His people would be easy to wipe out with only a small fraction of our forces, and he was aware of that.

If they wouldn’t join us we would force them to fight for us. I was skilled by then in the art of threatening and blackmail. I had twisted many arms in my favor. I had broken a few too.

If his people were still non-compliant even after the threats held over their heads, well.. we had use for corpses too

The man seemed baffled at my words. He had genuinely believed that by handing himself over we would pass by his pack without a backwards glance. He was wrong. I gripped his face between my claws and forced him to look at me.

“Tell me Isaac, was that your name? Are you going to join us or do we have to take some more extreme measures?”

The man seemed at a loss for words, stumbling over his sentences as he tried to reason with me. “You can’t! We can’t. None of us are soldiers, we’re a small pack, we’re not bothering anyone, you can’t force us to fight in this war, we’ll be slau ghtered!”

I sighed and blew my hot breath into his face. “That wasn’t the answer I was looking for Isaac,” I rutted and then looked up at the Tally soldier behind him. “Round them up. We take them dead or alive.”

This seemed to make Isaar less than happy and his voice raised as he continued to protest, fighting against my grasp as my men set out to capture every member of his sorry little pack. I sneered at his futile attempts of escape.

“You’ve really let me down haar,” I said, feigning disappointment and snapping his n*eck with one twist of my arm. The man fell silent and I dropped his b*dy to the floor. I gestured towards the other Tally shifter. “Take him too. Lady Tally is in need. of some new puppets”

It wasn’t long before we hard rounded up the small pack. They were easily frightened, comprised mostly of elderly members and small families. That didn’t matter. We would do what we could with what we had. The Tally may have a bad rep but we were never wasteful. Larry handy was useful. Every drop of blood brought us closer to victory

We set off with our new raptives, leaving a few soldiers beland to sums up any remaining stragglers that were returning home that day

I was in need of a replenishment, I could feel any joints beginning to grid and crunch as I walked, and my skin had begun.

10:59 Fri, Jan 26

Chapter 65

to take on a papery, translucent look as my b*dy began to decompose once again.

60%

That didn’t bother me very much though. It wouldn’t be long before we were back at base camp. After some replenishing and a little bit of planning, we would be ready. The war was coming, the day of reckoning was upon the Bielke and they didn’t even know it

I had never felt more alive..

-Angie

Before I could register what was happening I was tackled by a borly coming from the left. It slammed into me with a force that kisocked me aside and left me winded as 1 hit the dirt. I looked up in a daze to see Gideon’s stricken face from where he had me pinned to the ground.

He wretched his heavy b*dy off of me just as quickly as he had barreled into me and I pushed myself upright. I cringed at a sudden seating pain, putting a hand to my shoulder where all of Gideon’s weight had been pinpointed.

Gideon climbed to his feet and stepped back a few paces. The look on his face way one of devastation and bewilderment. I soon discovered why.

My eyes widened in horror as I took in the scene before me.

The young girl was gripping her throat with both hands, bright red blood spilling from between her fingers where Lance. had sliced at her n*eck.

She hiccuped and choked as she tried to stem the flow, struggling to breathe and staring at me, wide-eyed and fearful. The knife she had pulled from her jacket lay in the dirt beside her.

Lance was standing behind her with his own expression of distraught terror. He had retracted the claws he had used to save me and was staring at his bl oody hands as if they had acted of their own accord with no consent from himself,

Lance had killed before, dozens of times in fact. I had even watched him take pride in his skill in the art of violence. But never before had he ever faced off against children

I stared at the young girl, at her d*rty, tear-streaked face and her desperate gasping as she fought for air that would not come. She let go of her throat with one hand to catch herself as the toppled forwards, wheezing and choking.

Eventually, that arm gave out 100 and she rolled onto her back. Tcrawled forwards in the dirt to take her bloodied hand in my own. Her eyes were wild and wide as she stared at me.

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to speak but no words were possible, only a trickle of blood and saliva escaped her l*ps as she coughed.

I heard Far calling for a healer but it was already too late. Lance, in his panic, had cut too deep and there was no coming back from a wound like that. I gripped her hand tightly as a quake rocked through her b*dy.

the never took her eyes off of me. And I could read her thoughts as clearly as if our minds were connected. She wanted to know how she ended up here, so far from home and so very alone. She wanted to know why this was happening to her. She wanted to know why it hurt so much.

I had no answers for her. Had no one ever warned her that the world was unfair? That we were all doomed to replace ourselves in the most impossible of circumstances, purely by chance, and that when it came to taking lives, death was never picky

Her b*dy was rated by one final spasm and then she finally lay still, her eyes sull wide open as her pupils expanded and her hand in mine went slack. My soldiers around me were silent haunted by the sheer wrongness of it all

Cadeon turned away, sinable to take in the small b*dy mader the overazed jacket and the blood seeping into the soil to be soaked up lay the land around

Lance fell to his knees, balling las hands into fists and pressing them to his eyes as he abandoned composure.

“She was going to kill you” be gasga

ariely “I didn’t think, I just acted, 1-I’m sorry!” he wasn’t apologizing to me. “Ti

I

10:59 Fri, Jan 26

Chapter 65

so sorry!”

I gently removed my hand from the girl’s limp fingers and brushed her eyelids closed. Behind me, Gideon had sidled closer, still keeping his eyes away from the scene, and handed me his own jacket.

We used that to cover the girl’s face and only d*rty tendrils of her bottle-blonde hair could be seen in the stained dirt.

I heard the revving of an engine as the van arrived to escort the other prisoners to the Bielke cell. I nodded to Fae who began guiding the shackled assailants into the opened doors of the back. None of them fought back, they just stared over at me and their fallen member.

Some with hatred, some with tears in their eyes. But most of them just looked afraid and out of their depths. These weren’t soldiers we had captured. There were civilians. Children and innocent victims of a war that had nothing to do with them. I felt sick to my stomach. Devastation and distress give way to a fierce burning fury.

Once all the captives had been rallied up and carted away, Fae came to stand beside me where I was still crouched on the ground beside the girl. She didn’t say a word, only placed her hand on my head and I leaned it against her leg as we both gazed at the figure hidden under Gideon’s jacket.

“We should report back to Ignatius,” she said quietly. “You can go. I’ll handle this.”

She was trying to be strong for me. But I could hear the tremor in her voice. I didn’t need to look up to know that there were tears in her eyes, I shook my head slowly. What kind of leader would I be if I turned away from what one of my own has done!

Lange had fallen silent, numb and empty as Gideon coaxed him to his feet and led him away. I hauled myself upright and stood beside Fae.

Her fingers, ever so gently, laced with my own bloodied ones and I gripped her hand tightly. Tight enough, I hoped, that I would never be able to lose her too.

War was coming and survival was not certain.

I held on tightly to Fac’s soft hand.

It was a long while before I could bring myself to let it go.

SEND GIFT

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