Page 34 of Trapped By Vengeance

But as I stood at the edge of the property, I wanted nothing more than to turn back and continue my life with the thought of my adopted family—my pack—living safe and happy back home.

Because I knew if I continued forward, I could never cherish that illusion again.

Everything was quiet. I didn’t hear a single conversation or trace of laughter. And the air smelled wrong.

It smelled like death.

“No!” I yelled into the air, defying the stench it carried as I leaped over the boundary fence meant only to mark territory, not protect it. Why didn’t I build them a higher wall?

I ran across the grounds I spent my childhood playing carelessly in. Surely, this sacred space had not been violated. Surely, there was still some goodness in the world—

The stench reached a level that stopped me in my tracks.

There, cast carelessly in the long grass, was the shell of the elf who raised me from a pup. The one I called Pa.

“No,” I whimpered, feeling like that scared little boy he found cowering in his stable. The one this man clothed, fed, sheltered, and raised as his own when the rest of the world rejected me.

Now, the rest of the world had rejectedhim.

Throwing my head back, I howled into the coming evening. My skin itched to give myself to the moon, to become a beast with no grief—only hunger.

But I did not only love Pa. And even if Ihadonly loved him, he still loved so many others. I had to search for them.

I closed Pa’s eyelids, ignoring the blood staining his green tunic, marking the way he was brutally murdered. Then I plunged a fallen branch into the ground next to where his body lay so I could return to bury him.

Shakily, I rose again. Then I saw that Pa was not the only corpse I smelled. The younger of his sons by blood, Bartholemew, laid a yard away, a notched bow still in his hand and a sword embedded into his stomach.

I glanced back, searching for the corpses of the men who attacked them, but there were none. The fool wasn’t shooting to kill, and now he was dead.

Once again, I kneeled beside a corpse and closed his eyes. Bartholemew was fully grown by the time his father took me in, so we never played together. But he watched out for me, got me apprenticed into the Mercenary Guild . . .

The Guild I was working with instead of protecting my family. I’m the one who was trained to take out multiple opponents—not them. Lastnight was the moment I could have repaid all they invested in me.

But I was not there.

Now, I had to find Bartholemew’s girl in the next town over to tell her their spring wedding was not to be.

If she wasn’t also murdered for the crime of being an elf.

I stabbed another stick into the ground and stood. Then I almost collapsed upon seeing a third corpse just to the right.

Pa’s eldest son lay prostrate, so many crossbow arrows protruding from him. There were other corpses beside him, two men I didn’t recognize and bearing kinfolk arrows.

Of course, Matthias fought valiantly. He had a family to protect. Little Eloise—

Eloise!

I leaped over the carnage and hurried toward the main house. Surely, these monsters, capable of killing innocent men in their homes, were still not depraved enough to slaughter a child?

The wooden door to the multi-story cottage hung open, and I pushed my way inside.

Ma was on the floor. The dried blood on the floor seemed to have flowed from the back of her silver head. Elves were swifter and nimbler than mortals because their bones were weaker and more flexible. Here was the evidence— agentle woman snuffed out by man’s roughness, thrown back because she should not keep the door closed against the bombardment it received.

I nearly blacked out, but I heard something. A whisper of movement. Eloise and her mother?

Up the stairs I ran. And there was Matthias’ bride, half-collapsed against the wall. Her form was still, her hand outstretched. One finger pointed toward the storage cache by her bed. A wardrobe had been pushed in front of it to keep it hidden.

I stepped over Martha and pushed the wardrobe aside, obeying her last wish. Then I tore open the cache door.

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