Page 3 of The Warrior's Captive

“Harder? That’s the fun of it.” Zeus gave a salacious grin that spoke to just how much fun he was going to have disabling the current guards when the time came.

“Either way, we take the woman. She comes to the woods every day with the kids. She’s the best bet.” He’d already decided, but he continued like he had to convince Zeus, when really, he only needed to convince himself.

“I still think we should fight our way to the heart of the pack. Take on the alpha himself.” Apollo wasn’t content to stay inside. He had to insert his hissed opinion like a snake into the heart of them. He leaned against the pink stucco, crossing his arms over his broad chest, but there was still a challenge in his eyes.

“This isn’t about starting a pack war that spans the entire nation. This isn’t political. It’s about avenging my brother’s death. I’m in charge of the mission and you will obey, or you’ll find yourself waking up on the wrong side of the turf, and by waking up, I mean you won’t ever see the light of day again.”

“You’d kill your own?” Apollo questioned again, but he was trying to goad Castor into a physical fight.

He was too carefully controlled to do anything more than roughly remind Apollo that he was in charge. There would be no fight. Ever.

“I’ll do what it takes to make you listen to leadership and follow orders. Make no mistake, you’d be nothing more than collateral damage and my actions would be warranted. You’d be the one to go rogue. If you don’t like my plan, bow out now and go home with your tail tucked between your coward legs.”

“Fuck you, god of no death.” Apollo shook his head and stormed back into the room, slamming the door behind him.

Zeus’s throat worked like he wanted to say something. He eventually did, facing Castor down, but with a gentle understanding. He always looked like that. Like a shining example of what yoga could do for one’s health and countenance on the surface, while being a maelstrom of destruction on the inside. “You saw your brother through those hellish tours. You served a country that would have been happy to do nothing more than exterminate you. I heard once, like a legend, that when you got back you wanted to set it all aside. That it was your dream to settle down, find a mate, raise some young.”

He shrugged. Pollux never could settle. He’d left parts of his soul back there, hidden in the fine, shifting grains of sand so different than the red dirt of home. He’d seen too much death and violence, and it was a poisonous corrosion slowly eating at his soul. He’d needed an escape. He was restless. It had indirectly led Castor down the same path, he was always pulling his brother from scrapes, finding him in dangerous situations. Castor’s first job after leaving the military was extricating his brother from some such situation, his services in exchange for his brother returned to him whole and unharmed.

That restlessness eventually led Pollux to a band of wolves who needed that same escape, the Rangers. Did that make them wrong? Volatile, yes. Violent, very likely. Disloyal? No.

No matter what happened, Pollux always wrote. The last letter came postmarked from the snows of Wyoming’s Yellowstone, all the way through to the deserts and bluffs of Arizona.

His brother always liked the sound of nothing at all best. Wide open spaces and empty expanses.

Where was he now? In the stars they’d been named for? At home, feasting with their ancestors?

Those were old beliefs. Beliefs that Castor didn’t hold true, even though he’d never say so. He believed that death was the end. A black finality of nothing. Peace and rest, one could only hope.

“We take the woman tomorrow,” he ground out roughly before he turned and charged down the rickety metal staircase.

He needed a run. Didn’t matter that it was broad daylight. Nothing would keep him from his ultimate purpose. Somewhere out there, maybe where his brother’s spirit finally ran free, it was written in the stars that it would happen.

Chapter 2

Briar May

The laughter of the twins filled up the spaces between the trees in the woods she knew like her own body. They were familiar and comforting, the ancient trees in so many varieties, the rough sandpapery brown bark, the smooth papery white interrupted by black bands, the soft moss and rustling leaves, the whisper of pine needles and the melodies of birds. This was her home away from her small cabin. Others preferred the open fields, the small lake, or the creeks, but she was a child of the forest.

She loved bringing the twins here. Laurel and Harlan were curious and playful. It was good, having young wolves in the family again. Not that the pack didn’t have plenty, but none that she’d ever been entrusted to watch over the way she did her niece and nephew now. At nearing forty, she’d always hoped one day to have a family of her own. But when her father had been alpha, pack laws were strict. Mates could only be taken from the neighboring packs that shared their boundaries and history. However, no one had sparked her interest. Now that her brother, Kieran, was alpha things might change.

But it was still early days…

“You smell good!” Laurel leaned in and sniffed at Briar May’s flowing cotton dress.

She liked vintage clothing. This one was blue with small yellow flowers smattered through the fabric. The princess cut at the waist, the heart-shaped sweetheart neckline, the small cap sleeves, the fluttering skirt—it was all so perfectly made. When she wore it, she liked to think of its previous owner enjoying similar long, hot summer days.

“Thank you. It’s the new perfume your mom made.”

“She was supposed to be doing herbs, like grandma does, but she likes the perfume better.” Laurel sounded uncertain about that, like it might be a crime to give up on medicine and find one’s own calling.

“I think she’s still studying herbal medicine, it’s just that she’s found another interest and she’s very good at it. She’s still working with your grandma, like before.” Before the ten-year gap. Before Zora left and hid herself in the city, hid the twins because she was afraid of what Kieran and his pack might do to them.

The answer was, of course, nothing except love them and cherish them, but Zora didn’t know that. She hadn’t been raised in the pack. There was so much that an outsider couldn’t know because it was kept from them. To outsiders, only the alpha could have family and under the old law anyone who transgressed was punished. Her father had outlawed this, but the pack had kept its secrets. It was only through a stroke of luck that Kieran found out about the twins at all. He’d immediately set out to win Zora’s forgiveness, her trust, and her heart. He’d defied his parents’ wishes and taken her for a mate, but they made him alpha anyway. In the four months that Kieran had been alpha of the Nightfall Pack, he had tried to change things. But any changes would be very slow, however with his mate by his side, Briar May was certain that the pack would flourish.

It was a good love story. A beautiful one, really. A love that everyone in the pack could see plainly displayed at any time of the day or night, whenever Zora and Kieran were together.

That love should have warmed Briar May, but it made her feel empty. It was a reminder of the things she’d never have. She’d be forty in a few weeks, and there she was, childless and alone. Afraid of life. Afraid to venture past their pack lands. She was afraid of the city, the boiling humanity, the endless unknown.

---