12. Life & Death

Unlike in waking in the cell, the first thing Sona’s body did was trigger all five senses at once. It jolted her from groggy to wide awake—as awake as she could be with all the trauma it endured. She couldn’t tell what hurt most: her body, her heart, or her soul.
She bolted up from where she was lying on her side. Unfamiliarity surrounded her—she wasn’t in the wildflower field, but on a dirt floor with a red-fabric tent up and overhead. When she twisted to look around, she heard the clink of metal, followed by the cold rawness rubbing her wrists and ankles. The end of the chain was tethered deep into a thick tree stump.
Captured again. *Is this a new habit*? she wondered bitterly. *Going unconscious and waking up chained to the floor?*
“Aurelia.”
It wasn’t her name but she knew the voice. “Arden?” she whispered, twisting at the waist to find her friend chained as well. Blood spattered his face and neck. “Did they break your nose too?”
“Just my jaw, but it seems fine.”
In the low light, Sona assessed it and was relieved that it looked mo different. “Cleared. Where the hell are we? And what did you—”
“Redtown. I think. Your name is Aurelia Orla,” he murmured with emphasis, green eyes bright with intent. “And you’re living in Valleytown because your Moonvalley mate died a year ago from a Moon Run incident.”
She fought skepticism with the knowledge that Arden was doing this for a reason. What was he trying to protect her against—or who? Did it matter who she—
Oh. Right. She was Gamma Conri Grayhide’s mate. That could be used against her.
“Aurelia the widow,” she repeated quietly. Arden nodded. They were quiet for a moment, and Sona used it to assess herself. Her nose felt better, but she was still sticky with blood and dirt, just like her shirt and pants. Despite everything, her hair was still in its single braid. All intact. Except—
Her jewelry was gone. The gold ring she wore on her right pointer finger made by her grandfather before they left Goldwater, the silver band topped with a small green gem gifted by Arden on her left pointer finger, the gold chain that dipped between her breasts with a lock of Raff’s hair within a locket, and…the sturdy gray ribbon choker that marked her as a mate of a Leto werewolf.
She felt utterly stripped. There was nothing left of her. Nothing left of her to take.
Sona wanted to die on the spot.
“No,” hissed Arden as if he’d read her mind, snapping her gaze back up to his. “You have me. You have Raff and Auryn. We’ll get through this together to get your family back.”
Those weren’t a lot of things, far less than she’d had at the beginning of that damned dinner, and yet those two things were her entire world.
Sona swallowed her tears. *I’m stronger than this*. “Alright. Thank you, Arden.”
His smile was bleak. He opened his mouth to speak, but the violent flap of the tent entrance cut him off.
Taos Redbone’s massive body and presence—gods, it was like its own entity—filled the space. Suddenly it was hard for Sona to breathe. “How precious,” the Alpha purred, grinning savagely. “Supportive friends who *love* each other. Well, that’s no use to me, so keep shut about that optimistic shit. Unless you want to *make* love. My bed is rather large.”
“Fuck no,” Sona snapped before she could stop herself. Then she realized that he was splattered in blood and demanded, “What did you do?”
Taos glanced down at himself. “This? Oh, just tortured one of your guards. Sang like a songbird about all the shit that’s just gone down. And I was going to say,” he added pointedly, looking back at her like he was eyeing a meal, “I’ve just a little deprived of pleasure lately. That’s why we—*I*—don’t like sentimentality.”
“Why didn’t you just ask us?!” Sona asked, not expecting her voice to be so shrill. But if there was a Moonvalley Epsilon was hurt—
“Would you have?” Taos asked curiously.
“Yes, because we’re innocent!”
“But now you’re an enemy of your own pack.” Taos’ curved smile promised unspeakable things. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You should think the same. We can help each other.”
Sona opened her mouth to retort, but Arden interrupted, “I’m the rightful heir, Taos, but I won’t employ your methods to take my throne back.”
“My methods?” Taos made his deep voice sound wounded as he set his hunter’s eyes on Arden. “Oh, you mean shedding enough blood that it runs down the street? As it stands, howe my plan is to sell you to Grayhide. Once my demands are met, I’ll kill him—and then I’ll kill you. If he kills you first, then I’ll kill him second. I’m flexible.”
He crouched down in front of Sona. His stench hit her like a punch; she turned away, keeping her eyes locked on Arden, who looked torn between wanting to beat the shit out of the Redbone Alpha and grabbing Sona and fleeing.
“And you, beautiful,” Taos murmured, voice soft. Sona saw his gaze roaming up and down her body in her peripheral vision. When his fingers brushed down the length of her braid, she stiffened and Arden jerked at his chains with a snarl.
Taos, just out of reach, ignored him. “What are you worth, Sona Mai? It’d be a shame to waste such an exquisite body. I have a harem—you could join it. It would save you from that death penalty I heard you’re facing. Which would you rather—”
*He knows my name*, Sona thought with dread. Arden’s eyes widened. *He knows exactly who I am and what I mean to others—the mate of a Gamma.*
She turned to look at him. His smile broadened and it made her sick. “I’m not playing to your whim. I’m not joining your harem. Let us go.”
Taos hummed a laugh. He was still considering her, and Sona felt like an object he was considering buying. And he was still tugging on her braid. “You don’t seem like a fighter, do you, Sona Mai? Werewolves like you are hard to find—”
A male stuck his head in from the entrance of the tent. “Alpha, Grayhide denied our demand.”
Arden looked sharply between him and Taos. “What demand?”
“He refuses to trade these two for anything,” the male said. Sona figured he was a part of the Redbone Epsilon based on his red uniform. “He doesn’t need them because he figures you will kill them yourself.”
The Epsilon might as well stab Sona through the heart. Conri doesn’t care if we live or die. H*e doesn’t care that his mate was kidnapped by the enemy who murdered his family and burned his home*.
Sona looked at Arden and her chest tightened further. The devastation on his face… oh, moon goddess help them.
“Fuck!” Taos snarled, still inches from Sona. She flinched. He noticed. Rising from his crouch, he inhaled deeply. On the exhale, she sensed his anger cool. “Fine. Don’t think I didn’t prepare for this. Better to have backups for backups because you never knew what a new enemy is like. Epsilon, ask him if I bring him their heads if he’ll at least fulfill a request. In the meantime, you two will tell me all about this Leto usurper, unless you want your heads gone sooner than it takes for him to respond. Usefulness is what prolongs your life.”
Sona’s head was spinning. *Keep calm, keep calm. Keep levelheaded. Stop spinning, damnit.* She just had to ignore the fact that Taos put out a ransom for her and Arden, Conri refused it, and both couldn’t care less if she lived or died.
These males were volatile. Within little time of Alpha Artem’s death, Conri was doing what he wanted for goddess knew how long: getting back at the Redbone Alpha.
*“I’m not after revenge or even justice,”* Conri had said. *“I just want to protect our home. Our family.”*
How much of that was true now?
She would not be caught in a crossfire between two bastards driven by selfish reasons, much less be a pawn for them. She had her own plan, and it was far simpler: rescue and escape with Raff and her grandfather.
Sona was a healer, a pacifist, and knew she would flee from a battle, not fight it. No way could she navigate this new landscape of whatever schemes Conri and Taos were creating, but she could try. And if they were going to treat her like an object, then she would show them she was much more.
She was a werewolf. She wouldn’t play lamb.
*We need to live*. That’s what Arden told her. She looked at him, seeming young and lost. He could fend for himself, but not against two massive enemies. Though Sona was not much of a force for him to join with, they could work together to not only save her family, but return him to his rightful place as Alpha of the Moonvalley pack.
He was the heir to that title. Not Conri.
Both goals included escaping Redbone camp and getting to the Alpha’s manor.
Easier said than done.
“You seem like a male who likes deals.”
Taos turned to her. The interest that sparked in his dark eyes made her gut roil.
“Sona,” Arden warned in a hiss. “Conri doesn’t want us, Taos, so we’re no use to you—”
“Hush, hush, banished Beta. I *do* like deals,” he purred, lowering himself onto his knees in front of Sona. Covered in blood, smiling fangs stained with it, he looked like some dark god kneeling to obey an even darker god. “What do you propose, trinket?”
“First, stop calling me that—”
His tongue slipped out to lick his lips, eyes not on her own but on her own. “But you’re as pretty as Goldwater art. Though I doubt that art is as foulmouthed as you.”
She swallowed her disgust. “The deal is that if I help you, you help me back.”
Taos’ brows knitted dubiously. “That’s it? What a poor suggestion. May I add on?”
“No—”
“You”—Taos tugged lightly on her braid—“help *me*”—he pointed dramatically at himself—“kill your mate so I can assume control of the Moonvalley pack and in return…” His gaze shifted to Arden. “And I won’t kill him. Keep him alive just as a challenge, you know?”
“He’s your competition,” Sona blurted.
“Sona,” Arden warned in a bark.
“Mm, yes. He wants ‘the throne,’ I want the throne… Why keep him alive if I want what I want, you mean to say?”
Sona pressed her lips together as Taos’ curved into that wicked weapon of a grin. “Not going the way you planned, trinket? Maybe it’s because I don’t know the whole story. Correct me if I’m wrong. You and Grayhide are mates. But now he doesn’t care if you live or die. Does that mean your missing piece…*left*?”
Sona refused to look into her mind’s eye to that imaginary white soul to see if it was incomplete. But after feeling so ill before she passed out…like she felt Conri’s piece shiver…it seemed certain.
Taos leaned back, finally letting her braid go. “But you still care about him. You don’t want him dead.”
*I don’t want to orphan my son the way you did to Conri and the rest of the Leto pack’s pups*, she thought. Nor did she want Conri’s life to be ended in whatever brutal way Taos intended only to keep Raff safe.
“What if I kill the poisoner?”
Sona broke her silence with defiance. “I don’t want anyone dead! I’m a healer, and there is too much death—”
“A healer! That is *incredibly* useful.”
*Oh fuck*.
Taos’ dark eyes gleamed in the dim light. “You are life, Sona,” he breathed, “and I am death.”
“You’re insane.”
“I believed healers to be nonjudgemental.”
*Don’t you dare say the same words Del said*, she wanted to spit.
“Anyway. How does this sound?” Taos rose to his feet and pushed his hair off his forehead. Sona swallowed and she couldn’t have said why. “You become my healer, I don’t kill your former mate. How’s that for a deal?”