Saving Briar

Briar opened her eyes as the small plane began its descent, and felt Torin’s arms tighten around her.

“We’re almost home, Wolfling. It isn’t the homecoming I imagined for us, but I promise you, on my life, that I won’t let anyone hurt you, ever again. We’re going to find your sister and save your mother, and then we’re going to live happily ever after. Because that’s exactly what you deserve.”

Torin’s voice was low and rough in her ear, and Briar realized that even with the familiar landscape of home looming below them, she felt entirely safe in her mate’s arms. She knew that he would do whatever it took to protect her and the people that she cared about. And in turn, she would do the same. She might have been smaller and weaker than most wolves, including other She-Wolves, after years of hardly eating, but she had begun to realize that the life she’d led had given her advantages that others didn’t have.

First off, she knew just about every building in the pack like the back of her hand. She’d served in all the places where social gatherings were held, from the Pack House itself, to many of the other, larger houses that were owned by higher ranking wolves. Since she’d turned fourteen she had served at parties all around the pack’s lands, and she hoped now that that knowledge might be useful.

Briar also knew that she could blend into the background, moving silently without being noticed, because that was the only way she’d managed to stay out of trouble over the years. People seldom really paid attention to their servers and while the Goddess might have once intended that she be Luna of this pack, she said a silent prayer that she still had the ability to move without being noticed, keeping her head down and her ears open.

“My house, I mean, the home that I grew up in… it isn’t anything like yours.”

They had been driving in a Land Rover with two other men that had met them when the plane had landed, when Briar said the words that had been bouncing around in her mind as they neared the border of the pack’s lands.

“I know, Wolfling. I didn’t imagine you lived in a palace, when you arrived at my door half starved. But all of that is behind you. Not only are you safe with me, but I promise you that once we save your sister and mother from whatever it is that’s going on out here, none of you will ever want for anything ever again.”

Briar didn’t respond to his words. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Finding Torin had given her a second chance that she hadn’t expected, but just as she began to imagine what the future might hold in store for the two of them, another obstacle came along, threatening everything that she’d begun to hope they might have. She couldn’t just leave her sister and mother to whatever fate awaited them if she didn’t come back home.

“I just don’t understand why this is happening. You really don’t think that this has anything to do with Theon?” They were less than a mile from the pack line when Briar laid her head on Torin’s shoulder and asked the question.

“I really don’t. The only reason I let him come along with us when we went down to Vegas was because I genuinely believed that he felt horribly about what had happened to you. And I knew that we needed all the help that we could get if we had any chance of getting you out of there. But if for even one moment I had believed that he meant to harm you, or that he meant to hurt anyone you care about, I wouldn’t have hesitated to end the pup.”

“Hell, if I didn’t know that doing it could have hurt you I still would have been tempted. But he seemed so damned broken and sincere. And I got a text from Ted earlier. He, Oaklyn, and Theon are probably in the air now, but he’d been with Theon constantly since we’d left and he was certain Theon hadn’t contacted anyone.”

The guard at the border crossing hardly stopped them when they rolled up to the gate, nodding when he saw Briar, before waving them forward.

“I never understood wolf packs. Cutting themselves off from the rest of the world like this.” The larger of the two Kodiak shifters, whose name Briar just couldn’t seem to remember even though she knew that Torin had said it at least three times since they’d met up with the men, spoke for the first time in over an hour.

“It’s not all wolf packs.” Torin replied before Briar had a chance to. “I read somewhere that about half of them have lands that at least appear to be open to the general public. Sure, there are areas reserved for the pack, like the Pack House, but they come up with excuses, usually calling it a private club, or something along those lines. They aren’t particularly welcoming to outsiders, but it isn’t something like this, where basically an entire town tries to masquerade as a gated community.”

“It wasn’t gated when I was younger. I hardly remember that time, but my mom talked about it now and then. I’m not sure why they put up the fence. I think they said that it was to prevent rogue attacks, but there hadn’t been one of those in over a decade when they built the wall.” Briar shrugged as she said the words, but Torin could feel her tense beside him as she pointed them in the direction of her home.

“Here it is.” They pulled into the driveway of the small, gray home that stood by itself at the end of a long driveway. It was clear to everyone in the car that the property had seen better days. The yard was just a little overgrown, and between the cracks in the cement of the driveway where roots were pushing up from below to buckle the pavement, along with a couple of shutters that were hanging crookedly, the small home had a general air of neglect.

Briar pushed open the door and slipped down, her feet touching the ground as Torin practically flew out of the car after her, his eyes scanning their surroundings, as if he expected someone to come at them the moment they stepped out of the vehicle.

“No one ever comes out this way. We’re a pretty good distance from where most of the houses are.” Briar said the words as an explanation, but Torin immediately shook his head.

“Next time at least give me the chance to look around first.” Briar looked at him like he’d lost his mind, so he rushed on with his explanation as he wrapped his thick arms around her shoulders, pulling her against his chest as he continued to scan for danger. “What if whoever it was that took your mother was waiting here for you with a rifle? He could have taken you out with one shot and I wouldn’t have been able to get to you fast enough to get you out of the way. And Briar, you need to know that I can’t lose you. Not now that I’ve found you. If something happened to you, it would kill me.”

Briar nodded, and snuggled further into his arms.

The door of the house slammed open, but before Torin had registered who was coming towards them he had put himself between his newly found mate and the sprinting blur. He caught the girl before she slammed into him, lifting her up to stop her forward momentum before setting her lightly on her feet next to Briar.

He assumed that the girl was her sister by her reaction. Briar bent, throwing her arms around the youngster’s thin shoulders, before lifting her up, even though Briar wasn’t all that much taller than the younger girl. But while his mate’s reaction told Torin exactly who was standing in front of him, he was almost certain he wouldn’t have guessed that the two were related based on their appearances.

While Harlow might have been able to pass for Briar’s twin, Briar’s younger sister had light brown hair that was nearly blonde, and large blue eyes that had absolutely nothing in common with her older sister’s dark chocolate gaze. The one thing that the two did have in common was that like Briar, Lilliet had obviously been underfed, although perhaps not as severely as Briar was thanks to her older sister’s sacrifice. It was hard to guess exactly how old the girl was, because she was so slight, but if Torin was pressed to guess he would have thought that she was probably around ten or eleven, maybe a bit older given the circumstances and her pack rank, although the Bear-Shifter wasn’t certain how much that affected wolf shifters when they were growing.

Finally, setting the girl down Briar turned to her mate, a small smile on her face, as tears shone brightly in her dark eyes.

“Torin, this is Lilliet, my little sister. And Lilli, this is Torin. He’s my mate."