The Wolf King's Demand

7

For a moment, their eyes locked. He did have beautiful eyes. Then, she chided herself for thinking such a thing at this time.

Tyler seemed to come to a resolution. “Okay,” he said. “But you’re to hang back until we secure the camp, and then you can come in and help with the kids.”

She felt better having a part in it. There was no way she was prepared to stay at home and be an ornament.

Sooner than she expected, she was hiding outside the camp with a small group of shifter warriors. She smelled the stench of the camp even without having a shifter’s sense of smell. She peered out through the bushes, waiting for the signal.

A flare flew up over the camp. That was it, time for action. They had the camp surrounded, and now the pack leapt in for the kill.

She and the large gray squad of wolves she was deployed with headed for the entrance where the slaves were being held while the enforcer wolves went to fight. She tried to ignore the screams and yelps of pain that erupted from the camp as the shifters were attacked by Tyler and his crew.

The gates on this side were guarded by two shifters. One was a wolf, one a brown bear. The two rogues were outnumbered, and the wolf was quickly dispatched. But the big bear posed a problem. He had a long reach, and the squadron of wolves couldn’t get near him. But Addison had an advantage. She could climb.

She was supposed to hold back, but she had this. She had been trained in using daggers when she was growing up. So she took advantage of the situation and shimmied up a nearby tree.

The leader of her squad saw what she was doing, and they herded the bear under the branch where she crouched, ready to spring.

She schooled her breath to calm herself. If she let fear rule her, she would fail. Slowly, the bear had no choice but to enter the space directly beneath her, and she dropped lightly onto its back, burying the two long hunting knives into its neck on either side.

The beast bellowed and thrashed, but it was no use. The lifeblood drained from the gaping wounds in its neck. It fell to the ground in a pool of its own blood, and Addison leapt free.

They quickly released the slaves and gathered all the women and children they could find. Some were free women, followers of the rogue pack who must have been here keeping an eye on the slaves. Addison noticed one of them slap a young girl of about four across the face because she didn’t move out of the way fast enough.

Addison was furious. She hated cruelty of any kind. She picked up the child, who was crying from the blow. “Where’s this child's mother?” she demanded.

“That was her mother,” the slave woman next to her said. “She always treats her like that, the poor little mite.”

The woman had disappeared between the tents, but Addison wouldn’t let her get away. One of Tyler's shifters shot after her, his nose to the ground.

“Hey, it’s okay, little one,” Addison cooed to the child in her arms.

The child turned her face toward her, and Addison noticed a birthmark across her cheek, a strange dark stain in the shape of a crescent moon. She brushed the girl's hair aside to look at her. The girl squirmed in her arms and tried to hide her face.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said. “Everyone thought I was a freak when I was growing up because I couldn’t shift. I used to get bullied even though I was a princess. I get what it’s like to be different.”

The child looked up at her shyly, then buried her face into Addison's neck, crying. Addison’s heart melted for this poor, neglected child, and she was consumed by an overpowering need to protect her. “Hush, child,” she said. “You can come home with me. I’ll look after you. Don’t fret.”

Just at that moment, the enforcer returned, dragging the child's mother behind him. “You will not take my daughter away,” she screamed at Addison, overhearing what she had told the girl. “Cassia is my child, not yours.”

Cassia flinched away from her mother as the woman reached to grab her out of Addison's arms. “No,” the little one cried, clinging to Addison tightly.

“You don’t deserve this child,” Addison told her.

“Who are you to come around stealing other people's children?” the woman snarled. “You’re the shifter princess who can’t shift, aren’t you?” she said, disgust in her voice. “Some queen you’ll make, you half-blood. You’re pathetic.”

That was it. Addison had had quite enough of this woman. “Take the child,” she said to another of Tyler’s enforcers. “I don’t want her to see this.”

The enforcer took the little girl and carried her away to join the other camp children who had been taken to a ramshackle shed nearby while everything was being sorted out.

As soon as the child was out of sight, Addison leapt at the woman, taking her to the ground. She didn’t mess around, landing on the woman’s chest and punching her in the face. The woman struggled to shift and fight Addison off at the same time. But Addison was strong and lithe. She wasn’t about to let the b***h get away with such disrespect and hate.

The woman landed a lucky strike, raking Addison with her claws, but in doing so, left herself exposed. Addison slammed the woman’s head so hard she lost consciousness.

A cheer went up, and she realized that half a dozen of Tyler’s warriors were standing around her watching the fight. She smiled inside as she stood, shaking the pain out of the hand she’d landed the punch with.