Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

“Well this has been fun, see ya.” I clapped my little bro Maximus on the shoulder and shot Ethikins a wink as I leapt away into the crowd. I cursed as Max came barrelling after me, crashing into my back and knocking a couple of Fae over in the process.

“You can’t go anywhere without me, idiot,” he gritted out.

“Riiiiight yeah, totes forgot about that, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” he warned, power sparking in his eyes.

“What else shall I call you then? Young whipper snapper? Little bud? Tiny bro?” I suggested, marching off through the crowd so he was forced to follow.

“None of those things,” he hissed.

Little bro had the grumps, but I didn’t know why.

“Rosalie told you not to wander,” Ethan’s voice carried to me as he followed too.

“Meh meh meh meh whipped-bitch meh,” I mimicked his voice perfectly then started up the tunnel we’d entered through, weaving between the Fae still walking in and making Max chase after me.

A giggle left me as I picked up the pace and Max swore at me as the magic between us kept him on my heels. “Slow down. Where the hell are you going?”

“I have places to be and stuff to do,” I sang. “Come on, chase me!” I ran faster and Max sprinted after me while Ethan fought to keep up, my feet taking me in diagonal lines through the crowd.

Fresh air hit my lungs outside and I went skipping down the hillside, my gaze locking on a gang of posturing dicks wearing tank tops, their muscles shining with tattoos loitering around a black SUV. They were the unsavoury flavour of Fae I’d often been around in Darkmore, and the biggest one didn’t see me coming as I leapt at him, headbutting him in the face and breaking his nose.

“Ah!” he cried, fire magic exploding from him in defence, but I was a far stronger creature of flames and I quickly caught hold of them, sending fire bursting towards his friends, urged on by my own magic. They ran for their lives, splitting apart like ducklings lost on a raging river and I snatched the keys of the black SUV from Mr Breaky-nose and hurried into the driver’s seat.

“Stop!” Max cried, but I just smiled my most twisted smile, dropped the back window and used air to snatch both him and Ethan, dragging them inside so they fell in a tangled heap on the back seats.

Max’s Siren powers exploded over me and I gritted my teeth against the tsunami of strength spilling from him. He was trying to capture my emotions, make me feel all submissive and nicey-nice, but I didn’t have the usual kind of mind to master. His Siren powers lashed onto me but my emotions danced and jumbled, taking him on a tailspin.

“What’s with you?” Max called, giving up on trying to get hold of my emotions as his Siren powers fell away.

“He’s Sin Wilder, there’s no controlling him,” Ethan answered for me and I bared my teeth at my brother in the rear-view mirror.

“That’s right, baby bro,” I said keenly. “I’m as wild as my name. Did you ever feel like something was missing all these years? Something full of mayhem, sweet bedlam to shake up your candy cane of a life? Well I’m back, crumble cakes and I’m here to stay. We’ll rule the world, me and you. Brothers and bros, besties and baddies, am I right?”

“Watch where you’re going!” Max yelled and the car bumped up in the air as we hit a ridge on the hill.

“There’s gotta be a road around here somewhere,” I muttered as Ethan clipped his seatbelt into place. Ever the worry worm.

“It’s back that way,” Ethan said firmly. “Where are you going?”

“To the past, my friend. To the middle of it all, not the beginning but the centre. Where my story pressed pause before I was snatched away to Darkmore by a hundred Fae in uniform.”

“I highly doubt it took a hundred Fae to capture you,” Max scoffed.

“Oh-ho, he wants to challenge me already, are you feeling threatened, smalls?”

“Threatened?” he laughed and there it was, the beautiful insanity in him too. Yes indeed, he was powerful alright, just like me, and that wasn’t where the similarities ended. I’d bet if I could tempt out the madman in him, he’d be up for playing with me in the dark. “I’m an Heir, I’ve faced bigger threats than you and seen the whole world change before my eyes. You don’t scare me, Whitney.”

“Whhhhhhitney he calls me!” I laughed, howled really, then smacked the steering wheel to set the horn a-blaring. “Damn he has good comebacks. But oh Maximus, you’re not an Heir anymore, I heard.”

He shrugged, but maybe it bothered him, maybe it didn’t. Hard to tell when you were driving a hundred miles an hour across terrain so dark you couldn’t see your butt from your ankle. Oh headlights. Right. I switched them on along with the windscreen wipers and found me a road, turning onto it with a crack that fucked up the front of Mr Breaky Nose’s car real good.

I got my bearings then sailed off into the night, taking my stowaways with me and singing a ditty at the top of my lungs, making up the words as I went. “There once was a mutt who put things up his butt and he liked it more than he would say.”

“Shut it,” Ethan barked, but I just sang louder.

“He liked things round, grown from the ground, as big as a tree or as small as a flea, and shoved them up, up, up his butt, butt, butt.”

“Sin!” Ethan snapped and Max gave him the side-eye.

“What?” I smirked. “I never said it was about you, Wolf boy, you must just relate to the lyrics.”

Ethan pouted and I continued my song at full-volume, taking roads at high speed and finally arriving in the nearby town where I had once planned on putting down roots. It was surrounded by trees, the birdsong here like no other place I’d ever found.

I pulled onto my land, following the drive through the woodland and coming to a halt in front of the cabin that belonged to me. It wasn’t much, but it had once been everything.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” I said then climbed out my open window and went swaggering up onto the porch in front of my house.

There was a tea cup turned over by the door and I flipped it up, finding a slug hanging out with my key. I tipped him a salute for protecting my property and tossed the teacup back over him before heading inside.

It was just as I’d left it. With my favourite wooden chair sitting by the window, the extra legs I’d screwed onto it giving it the look of a bug, especially with the horns I’d added to the back. I patted it in greeting and took stock of my things. My sack of bottle caps sat proudly by the fireplace and the collection of hats I’d taken from all kinds of fair folk were hanging on the walls alongside a selection of photographs I’d snapped of interesting things. Like an array of cakes, a man with a half-burnt eyebrow, a donkey eating a shoe, a crab in a handbag, and all other kinds of amazing stuff.

My odd shoe selection was lined up by the door and – holy shit! “Ganderstein,” I said excitedly, kneeling down to wave at the spider I’d befriended years ago. “You’ve gotten bigger, and browner and more gangly.”

“Sin, what is this about?” Ethan stepped through the front door with Max a pace behind him, the two of them looking around my living room curiously.

I left Ganderstein to his ganders, standing up and feeling suddenly exposed with my little brother’s gaze picking apart my house. Ethan was cool with weird stuff, but Maximus? I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at my less than usual possessions. Was he going to do what most people did and cringe away from my oddness?

“Where are my manners?” I said, a little jittery as I grabbed some napkins from a basket hanging from a hook by the kitchen door, doing a little twirl and tossing them out at their feet. “Welcome to my abode.”

I bowed, then twirled some more and was pretty sure that was enough etiquette. I’d brew them tea and put on one of my fancier hats or some shit when I was finished with my business.

“And in answer to your earlier question, it’s about a lot of things, Wolf boy,” I purred. “I have a lot of valuable things in my house and I’m here to collect them. I didn’t know the Hellion Hunt was held so close to my pad, but here we are.” I swept over to my sack of bottle caps, picking it up and tossing it to him.

He caught it, looking inside with a frown. “How are these valuable?”

“How are they not?” I tsked and headed into the kitchen where a toy bat was floating in a bucket, still paying the price for the reason I’d put him there. “Alright Batticus, you’ve paid your dues.” I took him out the bucket and placed him by the pile of gloves I’d stuck googly eyes on.

I picked up a flowerpot and tipped out the tape recorder which I’d used to give myself reminders.

Max took the device with a curious look and played the last recording. “Don’t forget to climb that tree in that place where that judgemental shrub is.”

“Oh yeah!” I said excitedly, throwing a few precious things into my flower pot – like bubble gum and un-popped popcorn – then I raced for the back door. I threw it open, running up the garden path that was lined with gnomes – all of which had been planted face down in the ground – then I raced away into the woods.

“Sin!” Ethan called as he followed and I felt the magic linking me to Max yanking him after me too.

I didn’t have to go far to find the judgemental shrub in question, though it had grown a whole bunch since I’d last been here, the judgemental vibe it gave off more of a welcoming uncertainty now.

“Someone humbled you,” I said, nodding to it then walking up to the big oak tree beside it, looking for a foothold. My gaze fell on an old shovel beside it and I gasped with my remberings, quickly sticking it in the ground and starting to dig. My stashed wooden box wasn’t too far down and it wasn’t long before I yanked it from the ground and tossed it at Ethan. “Look after that. Go put it in the car, flitwit.”

“We should really get back to the hunt, Rosa will be looking for us,” Ethan pressed.

“Nahhh she’s probably being boned by the Vamp patrol right now, she’s not missing us,” I said, waving a hand at him.

“They’d hardly have sex down in that pit,” Ethan dismissed me, but I knew my wild girl liked a danger dong when it came dinging.

“Nah, I think we have time.” Max swept past me, nudging me aside and started climbing the damn tree, finding a foothold with ease. He went up and up and I stared after him with the biggest smile on my face.

Ethan sighed and headed back to the car with my box while I followed Max up the tree, moving in his footsteps as he taunted me about being too slow to keep up. He made it to the very top and swung his legs over a branch, sitting there and gesturing to the place beside him.

I pulled myself up, taking in the view over the valley, the trees rolling away for miles and miles beneath the luscious moon.

I exhaled a breath, reminded that I was free. Gloriously, endlessly free. “I used to dream of views like this down in Darkmore. Sometimes it would feel like you’re choking down there. The air isn’t pure like it is out here.” I inhaled deep and tasted the pines and the summer breeze. “Oh to be a bird, I’d think. Fluttering its wings and sailing into the eternal sky.”

I felt Max’s eyes on me and turned to him, finding a frown creasing his brow.

“How long were you in there?”

“Too long, little bro. Too damn long.”

“I don’t know what to make of you,” he admitted in a low voice.

“Most Fae don’t.” I shrugged. “Most don’t hang around long enough to find out either. Will you stay or will you go, I wonder?”

“I’m undecided,” he murmured. “But I think I’d like time to know you outside of what the world says about you.”

“What they say is mostly true, Maxy boy. I’m a deranged, unusual creature. I don’t know if they represent me as I truly be, all I know is I am what I am and most of the world don’t have time for different.”

“I have time,” he said, his arm brushing mine.

I looked at him and he looked at me. There was no denying our parentage, we shared the same eyes, same hardness to our jaws. But would Maximus really stick around once he knew what I was? It took a special kind of Fae to do that. Jerome and Rosalie being the shining examples. Max Rigel didn’t look like a man who could be easily spooked, but spook him I likely would.

A glint in my periphery made me turn a moment too late and I growled as a dart lodged in my neck at the very same moment one lodged in Max’s. My eyes widened at the familiar feel of Order suppressant slithering through my blood and my Incubus went bye-bye.

The tree shuddered and the branches around us coiled around us like giant arms, snaring my limbs as fire blazed from my hands, trying to burn them away.

Max tried to wrangle the wind and I joined him in his efforts, the whips of air wrapping around us and attempting to yank us from the branches banding around us. But the bark bit deep and dragged my hands back time and again, knots of leaves winding around my fingers, and every time I burned through them, more took their place. The tree was bending, bowing as if to the forest itself and we descended rapidly to the ground, slamming into the mossy dirt with force.

My head connected with a rock and my magic faltered as a daze took hold of me, noises sounding like echoes. Someone slapped cuffs onto my wrists and my magic locked down in an instant, the cold feel of them reminding me sharply of Darkmore.

The muffled sounds of a struggle made me turn my head, and I found Max being shoved into the back of a black van, magical cuffs glinting on his wrists and a wild look in his eyes. Ethan was on his knees beside it, his hands cuffed too and his mouth gagged with a vine.

The branches of the tree forced me to kneel and one slid under my chin, making me raise my head to the Fae who had done this.

Jerome stood over me, my dear brother giving me a look that left my brain confused. Behind him were a group of Fae, his followers all clustered close to Jerome with their hands on his shoulders, power sharing to gift him unspeakable strength.

I glanced around, sure he had come to save me from whoever had made this tree attack me, but his fingers moved and the branches holding me did too, telling me without doubt that it was him controlling them.

A wild laugh escaped me, my grin so very wide. “No fair, you didn’t give me a chance to fight back! Let’s go for round two but this time you can’t go sneaking up on me, you cheeky chappy.”

Jerome didn’t smile, regarding me with all the coldness of deep winter snowfall. He was playing a real good game here, committing to the bit and I wanted to play too. So I’d have to accept being the helpless prisoner.

“Please! Please don’t hurt me!” I screamed at the top of my lungs then laughed and laughed. Jeromeo didn’t crack. My foster bro still looked all murderous and shit. He was good at this game.

“Sin,” he growled and the branches around my limbs tightened enough to bruise. “You had a chance to return to me. More than one in fact. But you chose that Wolf time and again. You’ve abandoned me.”

I frowned, not seeing the glint of fun in his eyes I was waiting for. It was all serious Simon in those eyes, and I suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“Abandoned you?” I scoffed. “Never, J man. I’m just in love, that’s all. My heart’s gone and made itself a home with someone else. You can’t undo shit like that. Least, I don’t think you can. And anyways, I don’t want to. Not ever.”

“That’s precisely the issue,” he said cuttingly and even the birds in the trees fell quiet.

I was feeling a sense of the uh-ohs that I was pretty sure I needed to pay attention to. But this was my Jeromeo, what could there be to worry about?

“Okay untie me now, it’s my turn to play big bad boss man,” I insisted.

“You’re a fucking fool,” he barked and one of the branches punched me in the face, splitting my lip open.

My gaze settled on the earth, my frown deepening and the cogs whirring in my head as I was left with the confused feeling that something wasn’t right about all this. I just couldn’t say what exactly. I looked to Ethan who had rage in his eyes as he glared at Jerome, and I got the sense that I should trust that anger.

“You think all those years I would have put up with your incessant chatter, your mindless, crazy bullshit if you didn’t hold value to me?” Jerome demanded.

“Crazy?” I echoed in a whisper, that single word among his sentence sticking in my head like a needle.

“Yes, crazy. Fucking moronic too. You took a pittance for the hits I organised for you while I pocketed the real cash.”

“What do you mean? I have two million auras and this really cool cabin,” I said, trying a laugh, but Jerome didn’t break character. He was really committing to being this angry, bitter man with a stick up his ass.

“You killed Fae across Solaria whose heads were worth millions, Sin,” he said, shaking his head at me like I was so very idiotic.

“Pfffft, you’re making stuff up now,” I said. “That’s my brother in the van by the way. Do you want to meet him? I think you guys will really get along.”

“That’s Tiberius Rigel’s son?” Jerome’s head snapped up to look at the van and I guessed he was super excited to meet him.

“Yeah, come on. Get this tree off of me and let’s go have a cup of tea in the house,” I urged.

Jerome leaned down to stare me in the eyes. “Listen to me, hear this and know it is the truth, Sin Wilder. You are a pawn to me, nothing more, and now you have shown that you will no longer play by my rules. You will not take the jobs I need you to take, and now you have betrayed me by revealing my dealings to Tiberius Rigel. The FIB are hunting me from Alestria to Iperia and there is no stronghold that is safe anymore. So I have done the only thing I can and made a deal with a man you delivered right to me. Do you know how valuable an Incubus Order would be to one of Roland Vard’s clients?”

My frown was so deep now that I could feel it in my eyebrows. There was a darkness pressing in on me, whispering to my demons and urging them awake. Enemy, they purred. Danger, they warned. “The price he’s offered me is generous indeed, and he is going to triple it when your Moon Wolf bitch comes coaxing for you along with that Lion Vard is hunting for. Now you have delivered me the Rigel boy too, no doubt he will pay me a hefty sum for his Order and I will get some well-deserved revenge on his father for the headache he has been causing me of late.” He wielded the tree, making it hurl me into the van and I cried out to Ethan in alarm as the door was slammed shut in my face.

“Cut him free. He can tell Rosalie Oscura where to find us and we’ll soon learn whether she’ll risk everything for her Incubus like she implied,” Jerome said and I relaxed marginally, relieved to know Ethan would be freed.

But my mind was spinning too fast and emotions were warring through me that I’d never felt before. I tried to place them. Tried to understand this turmoil, but I couldn’t find the right word for it. It didn’t matter anyway. I had no use for words anymore, only blood. The demons inside my mind were wide awake and baying for carnage, and I would reap it in the worst ways I knew how.