Page 78 of Bound

River knelt beside the vampire under Sofia’s thrall, placing two fingers at her temple.

Vlad began to pace.

Shouts echoed from down the corridor. A stray flashlight beam skittered over the wall. My pulse jackknifed. I whirled to where River knelt over the vampire. My brother’s face was a mask of concentration. A thin stream of blood trailed from his left nostril, tremors causing his hands to jerk uncontrollably. Fuck.

“River,” I whispered.

“West.” My mother’s expression was hard. Her eyes didn’t leave River. “You and I will take the first cell. Vlad and August will clear the last one.”

I growled, raking a hand through my hair. With a shudder, River fell forward onto his knees. I dragged him up, over to the computer terminal, where he clumsily typed in the codes. Holding the wall with one hand, he staggered to the next cell.

“River—” I started again.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly, wiping his nose. “We have to go. I can hear them. They’re nearly here.”

I wanted to tell him I was sorry. For not telling him often enough how proud I was of him. For letting the fact that I was still coming to terms with my own magic keep me from reaching out to him in a year when he’d probably needed someone to talk to, after losing Dad, after Ellie. For not recognizing sooner how much trauma was involved, for him, for Brody and Topher, and for everyone else who went into harm’s way to try to save lives. That I knew some part of him both loved and hated what he had been called to do, and that he still got up every day and went out into the field in spite of it, went into hellholes just like this one, knowing he was sometimes the only thing standing between men, women and children like the ones we’d pulled from these cells, and an unspeakable fate.

The first lock disengaged. River slumped to the floor. A radio crackled from somewhere down in the tunnels. Fifty yards, at most.

“We’re good,” I shouted to August. “You get the last cell.” I yanked open the heavy steel door, took two steps inside, and froze.

A man sat motionless on a cot, dressed in a plain gray jumpsuit. His sandy blond hair had been buzzed short the last time I’d seen him, not unlike Brody’s. Now it hung in a long wavy mane that fell to his shoulders, making him look eerily like an older version of Dallas.

“Dad,” I whispered.

Behind me, my mother gasped.

I would question later whether it was the shock of all of us rushing towards him at once. If the sight of his cell door being opened after so long combined with the gunfire was too much for him to take. But as Mom and I entered the cell, Ben Caldwell bared his teeth.

I’d seen all the others, shouldn’t have been surprised, and yet the sight of my father utterly crazed with feral wolf madness knifed me in the gut. Beside me, my mother slowly held her hands up, palms out in a submissive gesture. I didn’t breathe, didn’t move a muscle, hoping somehow he’d recognize us, come back to himself.

As more gunshots tore through the corridor, his body exploded in midair, fur sprouting from skin, bones lengthening, muscle and tendon reforming into an enormous gray wolf, an Alpha wolf. All three hundred pounds of which were intent on ripping out our throats.

He never got there. Even as I flinched, my mother flicked a hand and the gray wolf crashed to the ground at her feet, still as death.

“Mom,” I whispered. “Is he—”

“Get your brothers, West. We’re leaving.”

“Clear!” a male voice shouted from down the corridor. Flashlight beams danced along the walls outside the cell.

Rowan entered, half-carrying River. They froze at the sight of the wolf.

“Dad—” River started.

The shouts from out in the corridor grew louder. Rowan stepped forward. Kneeling, she took Sofia’s hand and gripped the wolf by the scruff of the neck. They vanished, leaving only me and River.

“Where’s August?”

“He’s coming. Vlad’s with him.” River collapsed at my side, eyes on the door and the approaching lights. “Listen. There’s no time and no easy way to say this. Phoenix betrayed us. He’s been allied with Zara this entire time.”

“What—”

“Yeah. It gets worse. According to him, Kieran was badly injured several days ago. And when Topher found out—”

The night a year before up on Bluff Point came roaring back. I blinked, tasting the cold damp algae of Lake Buchanan, the caustic burn of smoke and accelerant searing my eyes as the fire from Hayden’s trailer tore through the hills. Topher was a haunted shell of himself as we faced off, hovering at the cliff’s edge, his wolf eyes feral with pain and loss, clawing towards that impossible drop down to the rocks and black, cold water below. A fall that would surely spell his death. Not caring about anything but stopping the pain.

I’d saved Topher that night, then held back every time the spark between us started to grow, so ashamed of what I was that I kept our bond closed down, starved him from the very thing he’d wanted all along.