Page 107 of Wolf's Endgame

Maybe.

“He got anything?”

“A guilty conscience,” Royce snorted. “Hannah too.”

I didn’t meet his penetrating gaze. Doc’s actions came from Hannah’s insights, and I felt therefore that she was equally to blame. I had not punched Hannah. Not because I was a good male who didn’t hit women or some human reason—we were shifters, we fought—I didn’t hit Hannah because Royce had stepped in front of me and blocked her from me.

“Shaman?” he asked.

I shook my head. “He moves between the three rooms like a wraith, but nothing changes.”

“I sent out search parties for the druid.”

“Who was able to join a search party?” I asked sourly. The fight with the Anterrio Pack had been brutal, and while we had won, who was I fooling? No one. We didn’t win. We defeated Bale, but we lost.

We lost so much.

Almost too much.

“Leo,” Royce told me with a look I knew well. It meant he didn’t approve, but he wasn’t in a position to say no. “Ned.”

“Luna,” I huffed out a laugh. “That’s a search party I want to avoid.”

“Nikan.”

I nodded, breaking eye contact. “Of course.”

Royce placed a mug of coffee in front of me and picked up his own. “Do you think you will be able to see some of the pack today?”

“No.”

“Cannon…”

“I can’t.” I shook my head. “I walk out that door and—” I cut myself off as I took a sip of coffee.

“You aren’t abandoning her if you go outside.”

Placing my cup down on the counter, I stood. “Being down here is too far from her.” I gave him a shrug as pitiful and as hopeless as I felt. “I can’t.” I made to move to the stairs.

“Take the coffee with you,” he reminded me.

Silently I picked up my drink and slowly climbed the stairs, making my way to my room, where my mate lay in a dreamless sleep. Her body was unresponsive. She wasn’t even breathing on her own. Doc had hooked her up to a ventilator, and she just lay there. Doc told me her brain activity was low. He hadn’t said anything else, but I knew what he meant.

Kezia was barely hanging on. If she was even still in there.

Closing the door behind me, I settled into the chair that sat beside the bed, and I took her limp hand in mine. Every time I looked at her, I saw her body torn and ripped open, saturated in blood. I heard her screams as the silver embedded deeper into her bloodstream, her agony as we forced the final shift.

Leaning back in my chair, I tilted my head back and looked at the ceiling, not seeing the white paint but instead the night of the battle as it played on a constant rerun in my head.

After our first attack, the night we broke Kris and Cass free, Bale had ramped up his security. It wasn’t enough to stop us in our assault, but that didn’t mean they weren’t waiting for us. Leo’s patrol made first contact, and Bale had not taught his pack stealth. They had charged out of the compound like human brawlers from a pub.

With them being so unruly and undisciplined, the rest of us had charged in, and we’d clashed in a battle of ferocity and hate. Despite everything I had said to my mate, I had gone looking for that prick Landon. Kris too. It was an unspoken agreement between us. I had left my pack to find the limp dick twin.

He’d been chained to a wall, naked, sitting in his own filth, with a silver collar around his neck, two silver cuffs on his wrists, and so badly beaten his face was a swollen mess. Neither Kris nor I could break him free. Kris had shifted back to his human form, and using soiled blankets, he had used them as protective wraps for his hands.

It took both of us—with a lot of strength, cursing, and sheer brute force—to free him.

Kris had slapped him several times to get him to wake up and then forced him to shift. It was obvious he would need to shift several times, and Kris had told me to go back to the fight.

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