Chapter 81
Saturday 27th January
Star POVProperty belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.
My head feels like someone has repeatedly hit me with a hammer. I search my addled brain and try to remember what happened.
Our witch friends brought a man they said was part of my mother’s pack, and I instantly disliked him.
Something was thrown in my face, and then I was suffocated.
“Saffron, are you there? I can’t feel you sweety, are you okay?” I push past the fuzz that is my brain, searching for my other half, my head is splitting in two, but pain is not new to me, I have felt worse, so I keep pushing, calling for Saffy.
I am getting worried that whatever they did to me has somehow caused her to leave me, sobbing her name. I am about to give up when I see her.
She is curled tightly into a ball of silver fur. I can see her whole body shaking. I call to her and try to move closer, but it’s like there is an invisible barrier between us.
I scream at her, and she lifts her head. She looks so scared. We don’t have time for this!
I bang my fists on the barrier, causing shooting pain to run through me, but it will not stop me. I punch the barrier again and shout at my quivering wolf.
“SAFFRON WE ARE NOT WEAK, SO GET YOUR A*S UP AND HELP ME BRING THIS f*****g BARRIER DOWN, NOW!”
She slowly gets to her feet, shaking her head, “I SAID f*****g MOVE!” She stares at me and I see her eyes flash, “That’s it Saffy, get f*****g angry, use it, hoe dare your f*****g weak human order you around, come and kick my a*s, or are you to weak? Just going to wait like a little damsel, waiting for our Alphas to find and save us?”
If looks could kill, I would be sitting in the goddess’s garden drinking mojitos. She bares her teeth and roars at me, then leaps at the barrier. We both fall to the ground as pain shoots through us.
I lift my hands and push against the barrier, “let’s try something a little less violent shall we?” She stands on her hind legs and pleases her paws on my hands, the barrier stopping any physical contact, “push baby-girl, push with everything you have.”
We push and push and then push some more. Finally, I feel it start to crack, “keep pushing Saffy, it’s working.” With one last burst of energy the barrier breaks and we fall into each other’s arm, I stroke her fur, talking to her softly, she lifts her head and butts me in the chin, I chuckle, “yeah, yeah, I get it you didn’t like me shouting at you, but it worked right? Are you okay?”
She nuzzles me, “yes Star I am okay, weak but okay.”
I push out of the depths of my mind, pulling her with me. Once we are out, I collapse. The effort has sapped all my energy. Closing my eyes, I let my body relax.
“Star, how did you do that? I was trapped so deeply in your mind you should not have been able to find me.”
“I don’t know Saffy, I just kept pushing past the pain.”
“Okay, let’s see where we are and start to make a plan. We wouldn’t want anyone to accuse us of being a damsel in distress, now would we?”
Ha, I knew that one stung. I open my eyes and look around my prison; the room is tastefully decorated, beautiful rugs on the floor, a little seating area and the bed I am lying on is comfortable, the window has no bars and the door looks like a normal wooded door.
“Star, I can feel magic in the air. That is probably what is keeping us prisoner, our abilities against magic. I just don’t know if we are strong enough.”
“Our best defence is knowledge, we need to keep our cool, we made sure not to reveal too much about our abilities to the witches, so they are working with knowledge gleaned from my mother, we know we are much stronger than she was, in abilities and mental and physical strength, that is our advantage.”
I lie back on the bed, conserving our energy, “we need to be at full strength, Saffy I need you to go deep, we do not want them to be able to sense you, they need to think that whatever they gave us has worked, and we are separated.”
I feel her retreating until I can no longer feel her. Closing my eyes, I let myself dose, searching for Saffy, really took it out of me. I need rest to replenish.
As I drift off, I picture the faces of the men I love. I know they will be looking for me. I just need to be strong enough to take on the witches when they get here.
Alexei POV
I have been working on ‘Caster’ for hours. He was a strong fucker, kept telling me to just kill him, that he wouldn’t tell me anything. He soon changed his mind when I ripped his legs off.
The smell of burning flesh from quarterizing his stumps is still in my nose. His real name is Francis, and he is from somewhere in Surrey.
The information that he had been given did come from a wolf that his Alpha had had in prison for years, so there may actually be a member of Thalia’s pack being held by the Miller brothers.
He had been told to come with Anne-Marie, and snatch Star before we left for Greece, Star is to be held at the coven until the Millers go to collect her, they thought we would assume that she would be taken to the Hollow Moon pack.
They are assuming that Star’s power is the same as her mothers; they don’t know that she far exceeds that. The dust that was thrown in her face was meant to suppress her wolf. They have tested it on both white wolves and elemental wolves to test its capabilities.
There was nothing else to get out of him. The begging really got started when I started cutting his left arm off. That’s when I slit his throat.
Heading to our suite, I get some strange looks. I know I must be covered in b***d, but I really could give a f**k. The plan is to regroup back at the suite, so that’s where I’m going.
I walk through the door and hear lots of voices. Looks like everyone is back. “looks like you had fun. Did you get anything?”
Dad reaches to pat me on the shoulder, but changes his mind when he can’t find anywhere without b***d.
“Yeah, he gave everything up when I took both his legs. He gave me everything he knew before he died. I’ll shower and then we can compare notes.”
Stripping my clothes off, I throw them straight in the bin. No way that much b***d will come out. I quickly shower and grab fresh clothes and head back out, finding everyone in the dining room grabbing plates of food.
Looking around, I don’t see my brothers, sniffing the air I finally find them in a spare room, both look dejected, Ace is sitting on the bed, head in his hands, Ash next to him a faraway look in his eyes, they look like they have given up, and it pisses me off.
“Come on, get some food and we can share information and go get our girl. We don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves.”
Ace jumps up and gets in my face, “at least we f*****g feel something, you don’t get to come in here and act like our wife hasn’t been taken from us, she is f*****g lost Lex,” he pokes me in the chest, I push his a*s on the bed.
“And you are acting like you don’t know Star at all. I bet she is already making a plan to escape. She won’t be waiting for us to sweep in and save her. She is the strongest, most powerful person I know, and you act like she is nothing, just someone pretty for us to save. You know better, so put on your big boy pants and man the f**k up, be the men that Star deserves.”
I slam out of the bedroom and grab some food before heading to the lounge, not waiting for my brothers I begin, “She is being held at Anne-Marie’s coven, they won’t move her until the Millers think it’s safe to go and get her.”
My brothers come and sit on either side of me, the both bump my shoulders, and I smirk my brothers and I have been arguing since the day we were born, we very rarely need to verbally communicate how we are feeling. I turn my attention to Mary-Beth.
“I assumed as much, my covens warriors tell me that the Ivychurch coven has all its defences up, it’s going to be difficult to get past them, we are a powerful coven but Ivychurch is much bigger than us, the only hope we have is that we still have friends inside that will turn against Anne-Marie.”
Leaning my elbows on my knees, “don’t discount Star, she is a much more powerful than you know, and she is intelligent and crafty, she will be doing her bit to help us from the inside.”
I ask Ash what he found out from Evelyn; he confirmed Star’s suspicions; she is mated to Barton Miller; he has beaten and raped her since he found her; they have six children together, four girls all under ten and two boys, Kia and an elder boy Wayne, she was told if she didn’t come here with Kia and keep her mouth shut then he would kill their daughters, so now we have four young girls to save as well.
Dad said Kia didn’t know anything about today’s attack, his father only trusts people with little bits of a plan, so he is pretty much useless, although he did tell dad that there is a group of rogues in the woods outside town, there is about 20 of them.
Blair and Liam have taken some warriors to wipe them out and search for any other groups.
We are now waiting for news from Mary-Beth’s coven. They are going to help open portals for us. From there, it’s only a twenty-minute run to Ivychurch.
Dad is staying here with half our warriors. The rest will come with the three of us. No, brother will be left behind this time. I just hope my baby is okay. I can’t wait to hold her in my arms.